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National

Whats Next

Axios What's Next

A peek inside an Amazon fulfillment center on Cyber Monday offered a glimpse of the future of the logistics industry.

Wheeled robots escorted giant pallets of assorted products to human "stowers" (who unloaded fresh inventory) and "pickers" (who filled customer orders).

Why it matters: Amazon recently surpassed UPS and FedEx as the biggest U.S. delivery company by parcel volume — and its lead is growing, the Wall Street Journal reports.

On average, customers ordered more than 1,000 items per second from Amazon on Black Friday, the company tells Axios.

Driving the news: To show off the evolution of its mind-boggling logistics operation, Amazon invited Axios on a Cyber Monday tour of an enormous fulfillment center near Trenton, N.J. — one of hundreds it operates.

The Robbinsville, N.J., facility was slated to handle hundreds of thousands of packages on Monday alone.

The site is 1.2 million square feet — 28 football fields — and employs 3,000 workers, who toil alongside hundreds of the 750,000 robots that Amazon deploys worldwide.

"It's a big day," Beryl Tomay, Amazon's vice president of last mile delivery and tech, told Axios. "We have millions of deals dropping every five minutes through select periods — that's new for Cyber Monday."

An Amazon fulfillment center worker selects items to pack for a customer's order.

A "picker" selects items to fulfill customers' orders. The tall shelving unit on the right sits atop a Hercules robot, which ferries it around the warehouse floor. Photo: Clifford A. Sobel for Axios

How it works: At this "first mile" fulfillment center, customer orders are packaged up and trucked off to "middle mile" and "last mile" facilities.

Merchandise gets loaded onto tall shelving units that ride on mobile Hercules robots, which look like Roomba vacuums but can carry 1,250 pounds. 

The robots deliver the shelving units to human workers, who hand-sort the inventory.

Packages get loaded onto a massive, multi-mile conveyor belt, where they're eventually nudged onto the correct trucking bay. 

Details: The operation looks less like an assembly line than a series of giant workstations. Each employee pulls items from a rotating series of shelving units, which glide across the floor in balletic procession.

"This gentleman over here? He's a 'stower' — he's taking a product that's come into our inbound, and he's loading it into the pod," explained Sam Fisher, an Amazon spokesman. 

"Whereas this person over here? They're a 'picker,' so they're taking something that someone's already ordered and they're getting it ready to get shipped out," he said. "It's all happening side by side in the same area."

The robots use AI and computer vision to figure out where to bring their loads.

"We have deep learning, generative AI techniques to predict demand for over 400 million products," Tomay said. "So we know where to place these items and in what quantities, so customers can get them as fast as possible."

The robots "collaborate with our employees to reduce walking distances, repetitive motion and reduce heavy lifting, so it's safer and more ergonomic," she added.

IMG 4520

What they're saying: "The scale at which we operate is really tremendous," Tye Brady, Amazon's chief roboticist, tells Axios.

"We shipped 8 billion packages in 2022 alone, and we could not have done that without two key ingredients" — robots and people.

"It's this philosophy of people and machines working together," he said. "I do believe that we are pioneering the future of robotics here at Amazon."

Packages traveling on a conveyor belt at an Amazon fulfillment center.

Packages travel along miles of conveyor belts to reach the trucks that will usher them to the next leg of their journey. Photo: Clifford A. Sobel for Axios

What's new: Amazon's regionalization strategy, introduced earlier this year, shifted fulfillment from a national operation to eight largely self-sufficient regional networks.

"Before, if you ordered an item, it could come from anywhere in the United States," Tomay said. "So if I'm here in New Jersey, I might get it from the West Coast."

"We're now shipping over 75% of our orders within that customer's region," she said. "This means less miles traveled and faster delivery speeds — and it's great for the environment."

Of note: Amazon is touting its apprenticeships in mechatronics and robotics to support its argument that its growing fleet of warehouse robots doesn't steal jobs — it creates them. 

The company says that the robots it's introduced since its 2012 acquisition of Kiva have created 700 new job categories.

Yes, but: A labor-led campaign called "Make Amazon Pay" staged protests and strikes at Amazon facilities globally on Black Friday and Cyber Monday to call attention to workers' quest for higher wages.

Protesters called on Amazon to "improve worker conditions, lessen its carbon footprint and pay more in taxes," per The Hill.

A separate anti-Amazon campaign by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group targets the volume of plastic waste generated by the world's largest retailer.

And OSHA has filed several safety violations against Amazon involving worker injuries in recent months, the Washington Post reports.

Packages on a conveyor belt about to be placed on trucks.

Reaching the end of their warehouse journey: Boxes with customer orders travel along this conveyor belt until a mechanical orange "pusher," on the right side of the belt, nudges them into the chute that delivers them to the appropriate truck. Photo: Clifford A. Sobel for Axios

What's next: Amazon has ambitious expansion plans in robotics, which anchor its logistics operation.

The trusty Hercules is being replaced by Titan robots, which look similar  but can carry 2,500 pounds.

Other warehouse robots include Robin, a crane-like arm that lifts and sorts customer orders; Proteus, Amazon's first fully autonomous mobile robot; and Sparrow, a robot arm that moves products before they're packaged.

It's also starting to test a humanoid robot called Digit, made by Agility Robotics.

Amazon's Cyber Monday: Robots, pickers, sorters — and packages, packages, packages

A peek inside an Amazon fulfillment center shows robots working alongside humans.

At an Amazon fulfillment center in Robbinsville, N.J. — the size of 28 football fields — a worker checks packages on a conveyor belt that's carrying them to truck-loading docks. Photo: Clifford A. Sobel for Axios

Amazon

Business

From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

Technology

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Monday that he's "confident and optimistic" Congress will be able to approve aid to Israel and Ukraine before the holidays.

The big picture: Congress has been grappling with responding to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, but dysfunction in the lower chamber has hindered its ability to legislate.

Driving the news: "Israel is a top priority for the United States and supporting our ally there is critical," the recently elected speaker said when asked about the aid package during an event in Florida on Monday.

He noted he was texting with Senate colleagues involved in negotiations during his flight down. 

"Ukraine is another priority," he added. "What we've said is that if there is to be additional assistance to Ukraine — which most members of Congress believe is important — we have to also work on changing our own border policy.

The comments came a day after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pledged to bring an emergency aid package with funding to Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and potentially border security as soon as next week.

Johnson said Monday his Senate colleagues "recognize" that foreign aid and funding for U.S. border security "need to move together because we owe that to the American people."

What he's saying: Johnson said the supplemental funding packing should be ready "in the coming days."

"We have a sense of urgency about this, and there are deadlines on it as well. So, I'm confident and optimistic that we'll be able to get that done," he said.

Yes, but a supplemental spending bill passed by the Senate will likely lead to tense negotiations with the House.

Under Johnson, the House passed a standalone $14.3 billion military aid package to Israel that, to the fury of Democrats, included equivalent cuts to IRS funding.

Go deeper:  Lawmakers are ditching Congress at a record pace

Lawmakers are ditching Congress at a record pace

Speaker Johnson "confident" aid for Ukraine, Israel will pass House

Johnson said the supplemental funding packing should be ready "in the coming days."

Mike Johnson on Nov. 14 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. Photo: Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images

Mike Johnson

2024 will be an election year like no other, as President Biden seeks re-election amid economic uncertainty, two wars and questions about his age. His likely foe, former President Trump, faces felony charges and vows revenge on his political enemies. Meanwhile, Americans generally are dissatisfied with those choices and are divided over immigration, race, education and more.

Politics & Policy

Pro Rata

Axios Pro Rata

Media Deals

Daryl Hall's lawsuit against John Oates could pull back the curtain on the secretive and booming music rights market.

Why it matters: The growth of streaming music — coupled with the increase in licensing opportunities in TV shows, movies and video games — is increasing the value of holding song rights and making them attractive investments.

Catch up quick: Instead of licensing copyrights for a set amount of time, many artists are selling them outright to the highest bidder.

The benefit for the buyer depends on the deal. But investment firms view music rights as stable assets that likely won't depreciate.

Zoom in: Years ago, Hall and Oates sold part of their catalog. Now it appears that Oates recently agreed to sell at least some of his remaining rights.

Hall has long bemoaned the original deal and — under seal — sued to stop a new sale. The judge lifted some of it and said more information soon could be publicly disclosed.

That's of particular interest, given how little we typically learn about these music rights deals.

State of play: Money is flowing back into the industry after a yearlong dry spell and some financial trouble around Hipgnosis, one of its biggest players.

Last week, Broadcast Music Inc. — a major holder of music rights — was sold in a deal that could be worth $1.7 billion, according to industry trade outlet Music Business Worldwide.

Morgan Stanley is partnering with a large music publishing company to spend $700 million to acquire song copyrights.

Katy Perry sold catalog rights to five of her albums for $225 million.

Hall and Oates lawsuit puts spotlight on secretive industry

The growth of streaming music is increasing the value of holding song rights and making them attractive investments.

Illustration of a quarter inside a guitar. 

Music

The rate of civilian deaths in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war is outpacing those of other conflict zones in the 21st century.

The big picture: Mounting casualties have been accompanied by a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in the enclave, even as aid trucks have begun entering the territory.

"Seven weeks of hostilities in Gaza and Israel have taken an appalling toll that has shocked the world," UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement Monday.

At least 14,800 Palestinians — mostly women and children —  in Gaza have been killed, per the Ministry of Health in Hamas-run Gaza.

Israel's death toll from the Oct. 7 Hamas attack stands at 1,200, according to Israeli officials. The majority were civilians.

Context: Civilians are being killed in Gaza more quickly "than in even the deadliest moments of U.S.-led attacks in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which were themselves widely criticized by human rights groups," experts told the New York Times.

In less than two months' time, the Gaza death toll has already outstripped the more than 12,000 civilians killed in Iraq in 2003, according to figures from the Iraq Body Count. Only six years — 2005 through 2007, 2014 and 2014 through 2016 — have a larger number of deaths than in Gaza. 

In the battle to recapture the Syrian city of Raqqa from ISIS between June and Oct. 2017, U.S.-led coalition forces killed over 1,600 civilians, according to a 2019 report from Amnesty International and Airwars. The estimate did not match the figures from the coalition, which estimated the count was much lower.

Israel has drawn comparisons between its campaign in Gaza to the effort to root out ISIS from Mosul from 2016 to 2017. American military officers have also shared lessons the U.S. learned from Mosul with Israeli military leadership.

Yet the civilian death toll during the nine-month battle for Mosul numbered between 9,000 and 11,000, AP reported.

Zoom in: About 6,000 Palestinian children are among those killed since Oct. 7, per the Ministry of Health. This is greater than the yearly global totals for children killed in conflict zones for the past three years, as tallied by the UN.

Last year, 2,985 children were killed in total among all the world's major conflict zones, according to a UN annual report on children and armed conflict issued in June. 

The 2022 annual report said a total of 2,515 children were killed in conflict zones in 2021. The 2021 annual report noted that 2,674 children were killed across the world's conflict zones in 2020.

"Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children," UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned earlier this month.

Israel has repeatedly claimed it is taking pains to limit civilian casualties, pointing to its evacuation warnings. Many civilians in Gaza have said they had nowhere to flee when told to do so. 

This point was reiterated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday during a live chat on X with Elon Musk, who said Israel seeks to minimize civilian casualties.

There are "accidental civilian casualties that accompany any legitimate military action ... it's unavoidable, unfortunately," Netanyahu said.

Zoom out: Last week, Israel and Hamas reached an agreement for a four-day pause in fighting to secure the release of hostages captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack.

The Qatari Foreign Ministry and Hamas announced Monday that a deal had been reached to extend the pause by another two days. 

While the recent pause in fighting allowed the UN to increase its humanitarian aid deliveries, "this aid barely registers against the huge needs of 1.7 million displaced people," Dujarric said Monday.

"The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is getting worse by the day," he added.

Gaza civilian deaths outpacing those of other conflict zones

In less than two months' time, the Gaza death toll has already outstripped the more than 12,000 civilians killed in Iraq in 2003.

Axios

Monday's top stories

Amazon's Cyber Monday: Robots, pickers, sorters — and packages, packages, packages

Speaker Johnson "confident" aid for Ukraine, Israel will pass House

Hall and Oates lawsuit puts spotlight on secretive industry

Gaza civilian deaths outpacing those of other conflict zones

Elon Musk tells Netanyahu he wants to help rebuild Gaza after war

When Cyber Monday deals end at Amazon, Walmart, Target

Why supply chains are key to solving the puzzle of inflation

Fourth group of hostages released as Israel and Hamas agree to extend fighting pause

DEI backlash hits corporate America

Wall Street analysts predict 2024 vibes, from inflation to stocks