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Tech firms ban travel and push remote work amid coronavirus outbreak

Ina Fried, author of Login

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Tech companies are taking fresh action in hopes of preventing employees from getting exposed to the novel coronavirus.

The big picture: It's not clear what course the virus will take, but companies are trying to do what they can to keep running their businesses while minimizing risk for employees.

  • Salesforce is among the companies banning all international travel and most domestic travel.
  • Twitter is encouraging employees to work from home if they can and has pulled out of SXSW in Austin, Texas.
  • Facebook is limiting social visitors to its offices, and is following Twitter in scrapping plans to attend SXSW.

The big picture: A number of tech companies are converting in-person events to digital ones, including Google, with its Cloud Next conference; Adobe, with Adobe Summit; and Microsoft, with its MVP Summit.

  • The moves come on top of a spate of earlier industry conference cancellations, including Game Developers Conference, F8 and Mobile World Congress, along with a number of smaller events.

The other side: SXSW organizers are moving forward with the event, although they said they are meeting with health officials daily. (More than 28,000 people have signed a petition urging organizers to cancel the event.)

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CIA Director Gina Haspel. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

CIA Director Gina Haspel threatened to resign in early December after President Trump cooked up a hasty plan to install loyalist Kash Patel, a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), as her deputy, according to three senior administration officials with direct knowledge of the matter.

Why it matters: The revelation stunned national security officials and almost blew up the leadership of the world's most powerful spy agency. Only a series of coincidences — and last minute interventions from Vice President Mike Pence and White House counsel Pat Cipollone — stopped it.

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John Weaver, Lincoln Project co-founder, acknowledges “inappropriate” messages

John Weaver aboard John McCain's campaign plane in February 2000. Photo: Robert Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)

John Weaver, a veteran Republican operative who co-founded the Lincoln Project, declared in a statement to Axios on Friday that he sent “inappropriate,” sexually charged messages to multiple men.

  • “To the men I made uncomfortable through my messages that I viewed as consensual mutual conversations at the time: I am truly sorry. They were inappropriate and it was because of my failings that this discomfort was brought on you,” Weaver said.
  • “The truth is that I'm gay,” he added. “And that I have a wife and two kids who I love. My inability to reconcile those two truths has led to this agonizing place.”
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