Resources & Insights
Crisis leadership thought leadership, practical playbooks, and expert guidance from the frontlines of organizational crisis response.
AI found a hole in half the internet. The FBI said unplug. Who makes the call?
The FBI and NSA told organizations to patch PHP2Shell or take their websites offline. Moodle, Equifax and Oracle's customers show why the hard part is not the fix. It is who is allowed to flip the switch.
After Cornell, boards want prevention plans. Can yours prove it works?
Every university board is about to ask for a prevention plan. Dartmouth, Harvard and Columbia show why the harder question is whether the plan reduces assaults, and whether the school has proof.
Dartmouth wrote an AI rule for students. Now it applies to the provost
Northeastern defended its AI posture. Hong Kong took away a deanship. Dartmouth's review of its provost will set the evidence standard every Dartmouth student is held to next.
AI fakes hit Texas, Alabama, Tennessee. Someone else spoke first
Texas, Alabama, and Tennessee each had a fabricated video of their own people go around. In all three, the first public answer came from outside the building, and that is what it cost them.
Apple, Lululemon, OpenAI named new CEOs. The successor didn't matter
Apple, lululemon, and OpenAI each named a new chief executive. One stock recovered in a session, one is back at 2018 levels, and one board was gone within a week. The successor was not the variable.
McMahon's college test has 2 graders who want opposite answers
Education Secretary Linda McMahon has handed every university the same assignment, and it is graded by two people who want opposite answers. What the nine schools offered last year's federal Compact reveal about the choice every president faces before December, and why the money was never the real exposure.
Publix took 3 days, World Market 2 months: the private-label trap
Publix pulled its blueberries in three days. World Market waited two months. A Quebec distributor never named the supplier at all. When a grocer's private label carries a foreign supplier's contamination, the recall is the cheap part.
OpenAI can pull ChatGPT Health. It can't recall it. That's the problem
OpenAI can pull ChatGPT Health the way it rolled back GPT-4o. What it can't do is what a recall is actually for. The century-old safety valve, pull it, fix the defect, relaunch clean, does not fit a model, and that changes where responsibility has to sit.
Meta let an algorithm pick whom to cut. Now the algorithm is evidence
Meta cut 8,000 roles. Twenty-six employees are suing over the method, not the number: an algorithm they say scored the workers on leave as failures. When the system makes the layoff decision, the system becomes the evidence.
Cal-Maine didn't set egg prices. It moved the benchmark. That's worse
Cal-Maine, Hickman's, and Versova settled a federal price-manipulation case for $3.3 million. They never set the price of an egg. They moved the benchmark everyone else prices off, and that is the harder problem to defend.
Taco Bell didn't grow the lettuce. Its name was on the outbreak anyway
Taco Bell didn't grow the lettuce that sickened more than 1,600 people. A supplier did, and the outbreak carried Taco Bell's name for two weeks anyway. When contamination starts upstream, the brand at the counter owns the crisis it didn't cause.
Brown professor fails 19 for AI cheating, then blames the top
A Brown professor failed 19 students over suspected AI cheating and went public, calling it a failure at the top. Every AI-cheating case before Brown punished students and lost in court. Brown is the first to be in trouble for not punishing, and the fix is not the fight its professor wants.
Cerner lost the data. Huntsville Hospital is the one getting sued
Huntsville Hospital did not lose the data. Cerner did. Huntsville Hospital is the one being sued. Three 2026 healthcare breaches, Oracle Health, Conduent, and Yale New Haven, show who inherits the crisis when a shared vendor is hacked, and why the speed of disclosure decides the cost.
Alabama fires 2 staffers over Kalshi bets, exposing a new gambling gap
The University of Alabama fired two athletics staffers for wagering on Kalshi and self-reported it at the lowest level. The penalty is not the story. Prediction markets are the newest gambling gap in college sports, and they do not look like gambling. Here is how to close it before the fall term.
OpenAI reportedly offers US a 5% stake. The signal is the risk
OpenAI reportedly offered Washington a 5 percent stake, about $42.6 billion, to ease political pressure. Run through CrisisCommand alongside Google's Project Maven and Anthropic's stand, the real exposure is not the deal. It is what the move signals to everyone who uses the product.
Better.com, Google, Meta got the layoff math right, the delivery wrong
Better.com, Google, and Meta each got the layoff math right and lost on the delivery. In the 2026 AI-cut wave, the execution is the crisis, not the decision.
Florida's 16-1 presidential vote didn't end the fight. It deferred it
Florida confirmed a president 16 to 1 and called the governance fight resolved. It deferred it. UVa and Wisconsin show who inherits the review that was promised.
Klue breach came through a tool your team forgot it bought
SolarWinds, Snowflake, MOVEit, and now Klue. Nobody breached these victims directly. Their vendors did it for them, through an OAuth token everyone forgot existed.
DOJ read a 7-point MCAT gap as bias. Can your school explain yours?
The DOJ read a seven-point MCAT gap as proof of discrimination. ACTS will hand the same reductionist story to anyone who wants it. The institutions that come through this won't be the ones with the cleanest numbers. They'll be the ones who can explain them.
Texas Tech benched its QB for gambling. Why is the Big 12 against it?
Texas Tech caught its own quarterback gambling and benched him before a judge ever got involved. So why is the whole conference lining up against the school? A live CrisisCommand playbook, run the night before the Big 12 board met.
Georgetown Law to UCF: 5 commencement blowups, 1 shared mistake
Georgetown Law. Rutgers. Utah Valley. South Carolina State. UCF. Five commencement speaker controversies before Memorial Day. Different flashpoints. The upstream gap was identical.
Endowment tax surprised some elite universities. It shouldn't have
The Big Beautiful Bill didn't create a crisis for elite universities. It revealed which ones understood their own exposure profile before the law passed and which ones found out after.
A deepfake CFO authorized $25M in wires. Your plan doesn't cover it
Your board has a crisis preparedness plan. It doesn't cover the crisis you're about to face. A deepfake CFO just authorized $25 million in wire transfers. A fabricated doctor network scaled to $401 million in revenue. An AI-generated image of a Pentagon explosion moved the S&P 500. Five attack vectors. Most companies discover them when they’re already inside one.
Why closing stores sank Sears but strengthens Lululemon
Sears closed stores, and it meant decline. Lululemon closes stores, and it means discipline. The action is the same. The interpretation is not.
SVB lost depositors' trust hours before it lost their money
What triggers a bank run is not the balance sheet alone. It's how that information is interpreted — and whether depositors trust that other depositors will stay.
Middle East shipping snarls are a messaging problem, not logistics
Middle East tensions are disrupting shipping routes again. Retail leaders are treating it as an operations problem. It isn't. It never was.
Starbucks, Chipotle show why crisis PR instincts fail in labor fights
Crisis communications trains for precision, control, and risk management. In labor disputes, those instincts create distance at exactly the moment human connection is required.
Paramount, Kroger, Citi: The deal is strategy until the press release
The moment a transaction becomes public, it shifts from a strategic event to a communications event.
When DOJ calls your medical school, it's already too late to decide
Recently, the chief communications officer of a prominent medical school called us for a demo of CrisisCommand. He had not been contacted by the DOJ. He wanted to know what he would say if he were. He brought his deputy because she would be the one writing it.
Arkansas cuts tennis. Stanford, Iowa, Cal Poly show how that ends
Arkansas just cut tennis. Stanford, Iowa, and Cal Poly tried similar cuts - three reversed, two embedded compliance costs that outlived the savings. Each made financial sense on paper. None survived contact with the people who weren't in the room when the decision was made. The crisis came from what wasn't decided before the announcement.
Your crisis plan has never met a real crisis. Deloitte shows the gap
Most organizations have a crisis plan. Almost none have stress-tested it. New Deloitte data reveals the structural gap between what companies plan for and what actually arrives.
Your next crisis won't come from a hacker. It'll come from your own AI
The next wave of institutional crises won't come from hackers or executive misconduct. It will come from AI — deployed faster than governance can follow.
Epstein files name Wasserman. His agency, UCLA, LA28 face 3 risks
The Epstein files named Casey Wasserman. His talent agency is selling. UCLA has gone quiet. LA28 is betting the numbers make it irrelevant. Same person, same facts, three completely different risk equations — and a case study in why single-lens crisis analysis fails.
Medvi had an FDA warning letter. Then it invited The New York Times in
The New York Times didn't create Medvi's crisis. It handed its founder CEO a megaphone.
FDA asks Raw Farm to recall its cheddar. Raw Farm refuses; 9 now sick
The FDA told Raw Farm to recall its raw milk cheddar cheese. Raw Farm refused. Nine people are now sick. This is what every food company should take from it.
5 signs a campus flap is about to become the president's problem
How state-level political pressure, not just federal action, is reshaping the leadership environment for U.S. universities.
AI just made the billable hour indefensible
When AI can tear through documents, models, and decks in seconds, billing by the hour starts to look like a bug, not a feature. The real unit of value is the decision you help the client make.
Campbell's leaked-audio scandal: a response plan in 6 minutes
When a leaked audio scandal hit Campbell's just before Thanksgiving, it became a perfect case study for crisis response. Here's how CrisisCommand helped develop a complete response plan in under 6 minutes.
UVa's 2,000-voice 'no' to the Trump compact was identity, not politics
When UVa asked its community about the Trump Compact, 2,000+ voices produced a unified rejection. But the deeper lesson isn't about the vote — it's about how institutions navigate compound pressure.
UT Austin, MIT split on the Trump compact. Both may be right
UT Austin and MIT are not playing on the same field when responding to the Compact for Academic Excellence. Their different strategies reveal how institutional context shapes crisis response.
ICE is showing up on campus. North Carolina shows how to respond
ICE activity is increasingly landing on leadership dashboards. North Carolina universities are providing one of the clearest examples of how to manage these moments with steadiness and clarity.
Penn's SSO breach was contained. The trust problem wasn't
Every single sign-on login is now a single point of failure. Learn what Penn teaches us about the gap between technical containment and stakeholder trust.
Changing DEI policy will anger someone. How to keep your people
Organizations across sectors are facing intense scrutiny over changes to their DEI policies and programs. This playbook – developed with CrisisCommand FOOD for a hypothetical restaurant company – offers stakeholder insights, practical considerations, and a strategic roadmap to guide teams in a steady, human way.
NCAA's new betting rules: where Division I programs get caught
The NCAA's new betting policy takes effect November 1. This playbook helps Division I athletic departments navigate the transition—identifying vulnerabilities, clarifying communication, and strengthening integrity programs before confusion becomes violation.
Silence won't work on the Trump compact. 10 ways to respond
The White House Compact is now open to every university. This framework maps ten strategies universities can use to respond effectively.
Every president now gets the Trump compact. Read this before answering
The White House Compact for Academic Excellence has expanded to invite all universities. This pronouncement turns a limited negotiation into a national leadership test.
The Live Crisis Method: How leaders regain control when every minute counts
Crisis management has always been about judgment under pressure. Learn how the Live Crisis Method helps leadership teams move from chaos to clarity with structured rhythm and AI-driven precision.
Sign, refuse or stall: The Trump compact has no safe answer
Understanding the unspoken agreements between institutions and stakeholders, and what happens when federal policy forces impossible choices.
NIL turned quarterbacks into investments. Now donors want returns
As higher education faces mounting pressure, athletic directors must navigate quarterbacks as million-dollar balance sheets, donor expectations, and institutional stress tests in the NIL era.
Kimmel's suspension has every board asking: What if it's our employee?
When an employee's political speech goes viral, companies find themselves trapped between outrage, accusations, and questions of consistency. Learn what past cases teach us about navigating these moments.
Why some food brands survive crises and others get eaten alive
A Q&A with Brooke Hovey exploring what separates food brands that weather storms from those that crumble under pressure.
Why research universities are built to lose a political fight
Why America's research universities are under coordinated pressure and how their strengths have become vulnerabilities in a crisis-rich environment.
Most leaders hate crisis drills. That's why their first 72 hours fail
The psychological barriers that prevent effective crisis preparation and how to overcome them through simulation and rehearsal.
From Penn to ASU, presidents lose their jobs in a 72-hour window
What happens when leadership itself becomes the flashpoint, and how organizations navigate this ultimate crisis scenario.
At UT, crisis triage ate our strategy time. AI gives it back
How AI reclaims valuable time for leadership teams, allowing them to focus on strategy instead of being trapped in crisis triage.
AI will be in your next crisis. The question is who controls it
AI isn't plug-and-play. Learn why onboarding AI systems requires the same rigor as implementing enterprise software.