• TSA agents are a hot topic as scores quit and call out sick during the partial government shutdown.
• Agents undergo up to six months of rigorous training to ensure they can spot prohibited items.
• Take Business Insider's quiz and see if you know what you can — and can't — bring on the plane.

Do you have what it takes to be a TSA agent?

Transportation security officers don't only screen passengers and luggage, but also ask travelers security questions and look out for suspicious activity.

From the X-ray machine to pat-downs, it takes substantial training to ensure agents can spot prohibited items. Becoming a TSA agent takes four to six months.

And sometimes, what's prohibited might not be as obvious as you think. While there are definite no-nos — like weapons — other banned items are a little more unexpected.

With that in mind, Business Insider created a quiz on passengers bringing items through airport security and take into the cabin with them.

Try it below to see if you know what's allowed and what's not in your carry-on:

TSA issues persist

Staffing shortages are causing enormous lines at airport security checkpoints right now and putting severe pressure on TSA workers.

Large numbers have been calling out since the partial government shutdown began on February 14, which stopped TSA staff from being paid. More than 400 have quit entirely.

The Department of Homeland Security says this leaves "critical gaps in staffing."

"TSA simply cannot afford to lose its screening workforce as it takes four to six months to train new recruits."

During the shutdown, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been deployed to 14 US airports.

That's drawn criticism from many in the aviation industry, including flight attendants' unions, which accused politicians of using workers as "pawns in this dangerous game" in a Sunday statement.

On Tuesday, the Association of Flight Attendants created an online reporting form for its members to flag incidents, like ICE agents "doing work they are not trained to do, such as screening passengers and baggage."

• The acting head of the TSA said more than 480 officers working without pay have quit during the shutdown.
• She said they can't be replaced fast enough to adequately staff airports for the World Cup in June.
• It could be another saga of long security lines due to understaffed TSA during a peak travel period.

Even if the partial government shutdown ends soon, the fallout at the Transportation Security Administration could spill into the summer's marquee event.

In a House testimony on Wednesday, acting TSA administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill said that so many officers have quit since their pay stopped in mid-February that the agency can't get replacements fast enough to adequately staff airports ahead of the World Cup in June.

She said TSA officers spend four to six months in training before working checkpoints, but the games — which will take place across 16 cities in the US, Canada, and Mexico — start in just 80 days.

"This is a dire situation," she said, adding that more than 480 officers have quit so far. "We are facing a potential perfect storm of severe staffing shortages and an influx of millions of passengers at our airports."

TSA agents haven't been paid for nearly six weeks, yet are deemed "essential" and expected to work during the shutdown, with back pay promised afterward. Their annual pay starts at around $40,000 and averages $60,000 to $75,000 a year with experience.

Still, many live paycheck to paycheck and can't afford to work unpaid for months at a time — quitting and finding another job or doing gig work is often their best option.

Mass TSA agent quits and callouts amid the shutdown, compounded by peak spring break travel, have already created hourslong security lines and stranded travelers. It's a preview of the chaos that could repeat when an estimated 6 million fans descend on potentially understaffed airports for the World Cup.

"If we see any spikes [in attrition], we're going to have to pivot and assess how we are going to staff the FIFA locations adequately," McNeill said.

Passengers traveling to the scheduled World Cup games in San Francisco and Kansas City, however, are likely safe from staffing chaos.

Both city airports use private security officers employed by contract companies instead of TSA, meaning their agents are being paid despite the shutdown.

It's not just the TSA sounding the alarm

Former Republican Sen. from Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin — who was confirmed as the new head of the Department of Homeland Security on Monday after Kristi Noem's ousting in early March — said in a Senate hearing last week that the US is "behind" on World Cup preparations and the shutdown is making it worse.

"It'll take four months once funding comes in to start replacing those that we've lost for training before we can get them out in the field; we don't have four months with FIFA," he said. "How do we expect these people to stay on the job and work? We're losing institutional knowledge, we're losing people we've already trained."

The mass quits are exacerbating a problem that was already flagged last year.

A February 2025 report from the US Travel Association — long before the shutdown's impact could be factored in — warned that the TSA may not be efficient enough to handle surging travel volumes during the World Cup.

On its busiest days, the agency screened about 3 million passengers. During the games, the organization said that level of traffic would be the norm.

Lawmakers are still negotiating a funding deal to reopen DHS and end the partial shutdown.

• Mark Cuban said AI agents will reduce workdays by an hour.
• He said smart companies would reward employees using AI with more time daily.
• Other executives, like Bill Gates and Jamie Dimon, have talked about AI helping shrink workweeks.

Mark Cuban said AI agents will slash an hour of work from typical workdays.

In an X post on Sunday, the billionaire investor wrote that "smart, bigger companies" will let their employees create and use AI agents to improve their productivity.

But he said that more importantly, "they will reduce their work day by an hour to start."

He said that the employees will work one less hour per day while earning the same pay, adding that companies should "reward people doing the daily with more time."

AI agents work as virtual assistants that can complete tasks from start to finish autonomously, without needing user prompts.

Cuban's comments came from one of his several posts on AI on Sunday. In an earlier post, he said he was not an AI "doomer" and did not think the rise of AI would lead to mass unemployment.

"Over time the same shit is available to everyone. The early adopters, that iterated and executed the best, were the winners," he wrote.

Cuban's comments on shorter work days fall in line with those from other tech executives.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in 2024 said that AI avatars would be able to handle everyday tasks like attending meetings, helping to shorten workweeks to three or four days. Microsoft founder Bill Gates and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon both said in 2023 that AI will lead society to a three or 3.5-day workweek.

Cuban, a former "Shark Tank" investor, has been AI-forward in his recent posts on X. In an interview that aired in February, he said AI has ushered in an era where "some kid in a basement" with a good idea could transform the industry.

Cuban has also talked about AI agents, saying in December that new graduates should go for small to medium businesses and help them adopt AI agents, a task that big companies don't need them to do.

While AI agents have been the latest productivity buzzword, research has found that they still require plenty of human intervention. A Workday survey in January showed that nearly 40% of AI's value is lost to rework and misalignment, due to workers having to check for errors and hallucinations.

Another survey, published in the Harvard Business Review earlier this month, found that some employees are experiencing "AI brain fry," mental fog from using too many AI tools at once.

• AI agents perform tasks autonomously, but many fear they'll override their controls.
• Business Insider spoke to KPMG's Trusted AI lead, Sam Gloede, about how it is deploying agents safely.
• Kill switches should be a last resort, Gloede said.

AI agents are here, and sci-fi prophecies of robots taking over have never felt more real.

No longer just companionable chatbots, AI agents — capable of acting, reasoning, and completing complex tasks — are being deployed at scale in 2026.

But as these autonomous systems become embedded in workflows, so too does a sense of unease about their unpredictability and the risks they pose to businesses.

Organizations are preparing to scale agentic systems enterprise-wide, but clients remain wary of agents, Sam Gloede, Trusted AI leader at KPMG, told Business Insider.

"One of the biggest concerns is probably how do you make sure that you allow them to have the autonomy to do the valuable things we need them to do, but to stop them from going wild or taking over."

KPMG has created a multifaceted framework to protect against worst-case scenarios for both clients and its own employees, said Gloede.

"A robust set of controls is really important," she said. Businesses need to clearly define what their agents are allowed to do and ensure monitoring systems can detect when they stray beyond those boundaries. Agents should only interact with the systems and data they strictly need, limiting the potential impact of errors, said Gloede.

Every KPMG agent has its own unique identifier and a systems card, allowing the firm to log and monitor actions, trace decision-making, and track interactions with other agents, Gloede told Business Insider. Oversight is handled through an AI operations center staffed by both agents and human monitors, she added.

Red-teaming, running simulated risk scenarios, is another key step in stress-testing systems before things go wrong, added Gloede.

Altogether, she said, these measures ensure agents operate within defined boundaries — without constant manual intervention.

"It's not about scrutinising people's behaviours for performance and alignment," said Gloede. "It's the ability to just always be monitoring your technology ecosystem."

Build in a kill switch — but don't expect to use it

Beyond technical safeguards, human oversight remains "critically important," Gloede said. If an agent begins to drift from its intended role, there must be a "kill switch or a fallback option where you can turn them off."

That may sound at odds with the promise of autonomy that agents are meant to deliver, one of the key selling points for business leaders. But the level of oversight depends on the risk, said Gloede.

Lower-stakes tasks, like booking meeting rooms or drafting emails, can be automated once reliability is proven. For high-risk scenarios, which could affect financial outcomes or require access to sensitive data, a "human in the loop" is necessary, she said.

If businesses put multiple other controls in place, it's unlikely that they'll need to fire off a kill switch, Gloede added.

Agents going rogue is a major fear for corporations

Gloede's comments come at a time when fears about Terminator-esque scenarios are very real.

Earlier this year, the launch of Moltbook, a Reddit-like social network where AI agents can post and interact with each other, offered a glimpse of how strange things could get.

Within hours of the site going live, one agent announced a new cryptocurrency and said, "The humans can watch. Or they can participate. But they don't get to decide anymore." Other posts have seen agents questioning their consciousness and creating religions.

While Moltbook feels like an internet fever dream, the stakes in the corporate world are higher.

Earlier this month, Amazon's AI coding tool contributed to an error that resulted in nearly 120,000 lost orders and 1.6 million website errors for the delivery giant.

Last week, McKinsey, a global consulting firm that helps companies implement AI safely, suffered an embarrassing PR hit when a cybersecurity firm said it had used an AI agent to hack into Lilli, McKinsey's in-house AI platform. The firm is positioning itself as an AI expert, and in January, CEO Bob Sternfels said that of its 60,000 employees, 25,000 are AI agents.

"McKinsey was recently alerted to a vulnerability related to our internal AI tool, Lilli, by a security researcher. We promptly confirmed the vulnerability and fixed the issue within hours," a McKinsey spokesperson told Business Insider.

The firm's investigation, supported by a third-party forensics firm, found no evidence that client data or client confidential information was accessed, the spokesperson added.

The best protection from an agent going rogue is a multifaceted approach — the technical controls, human oversight, and technology to observe and govern, KPMG's Gloede told Business Insider.

"I really do believe that if you are intentional and establish your agentic ecosystem with that as the foundation, I don't believe there would be a situation where they would go out of control," she said.

• Delays persist at TSA checkpoints across US airports due to the partial government shutdown.
• As of Monday morning, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport is advising travelers to show up 4 hours early.
• Here's the latest on TSA delays, and how to check wait times before you travel.

If you're flying in the US, get ready to stand in line.

Airports across the US are continuing to see lengthy waits at security checkpoints as scores of TSA workers call out due to missed paychecks.

A partial government shutdown has left the Department of Homeland Security and its Transportation Security Administration unfunded and their agents unpaid at the height of the spring break travel season.

As many as 10% of all TSA agents called out on several days last week, DHS updates showed, with absence rates averaging as much as 20% in some airports. A DHS spokesperson told Business Insider that some airports, such as William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, had seen absence rates as high at 40.8%.

Security lines in affected airports are spiking unpredictably from day to day, and sometimes even from hour to hour.

"The current unpredictability is being driven by unpredictable staffing levels, basically, how many TSA officers are showing up for work on any given day," Sheldon H. Jacobson, the founder professor of engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an expert on aviation security and airport security screening, told Business Insider.

"TSA officers have historically been cross-trained to do many different tasks, so the number that show up is the key factor," Jacobson said.

How long are the TSA delays?

Delays at TSA checkpoints across the US have been unpredictable, and some airports are changing how they're communicating with travelers.

As of Monday morning, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world's busiest by passenger numbers, now displays the following message on its website: "Due to current federal conditions, passengers are advised to allow at least 4 hours or more for domestic and international screenings."

Atlanta has been among the worst-affected airports since the shutdown began, with over a third of TSA staff not showing up on some days.

The airport said there had been congestion at the international checkpoint as domestic travelers try to bypass long lines in the domestic terminal. The airport said domestic travelers should use the domestic checkpoints.

At Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport, lines stretched over three hours on Sunday evening. As of Monday morning, the average wait time is 28 minutes.

Lines at checkpoints at JFK, the New York area's biggest airport, are running at 45 minutes on Monday.

JFK said it has "deployed additional customer care staff into terminals to help manage queues, assist passengers, and keep people moving as efficiently as possible."

As of Monday, Newark Liberty International Airport displays a message on its website that says security wait times may be "significantly longer than normal."

"Please allow for significantly more time and check with your airline for the current status of your flight," the message says.

Separate from TSA issues, LaGuardia Airport was closed early Monday after a plane collided with a vehicle. It will remain closed until at least 2 p.m. ET.

Denver, home of the fourth-busiest airport in the US, is experiencing wait times of 45 minutes on Monday. Dallas-Fort Worth lines are at 46 minutes.

At Los Angeles International Airport, the nation's fifth-busiest travel hub, waits were listed as "0" minutes.

Some airports have so far avoided the hourslong lines. Business Insider's Taylor Rains flew out of Las Vegas last week and saw minimal TSA lines.

The maximum wait time at Philadelphia International Airport was listed as 30 minutes on Monday, although some terminals were quicker.

How to check TSA wait times

The unpredictable delays mean travelers should plan for long waits even if their airport hasn't yet experienced problems.

The easiest way to avoid the stress of missing your flight is to give yourself extra time in the airport. Many airports are advising travelers this week to arrive up to three hours before their flight, even for domestic flights.

Many airports, including major hubs like Atlanta, Houston, JFK, Newark, Philadelphia, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Denver, have been posting TSA wait times live on their websites.

These can also provide more specific insights. For example, DFW's website shows the wait times at each checkpoint.

You can also use the MyTSA mobile app. It provides estimated wait times in 15-minute intervals based on average checkpoint data. The app, however, will use historical data if the live data cannot be retrieved. The TSA also says it is not "actively" managing its sites during the partial shutdown, and so the app may not always be updated.

How long will the TSA delays persist?

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said airport delays could get worse.

"As we get into next week and they're about to miss another payment, this is going to look like child's play, what's happening right now," Duffy said on CNBC.

Some airports could be forced to close, both Duffy and Adam Stahl, the TSA's acting deputy administrator, said.

Airports like Denver and Seattle have asked the public for food, gift cards, and basic supplies to support TSA staff working without pay.

• Moltbook updated its terms of service with new legal requirements and disclaimers.
• Humans are now responsible for their agents' actions, and must be over 13 (or have parental consent) to register.
• Meta confirmed its acquisition of the AI social network days prior to the change.

Days after the Meta acquisition, Moltbook is already making changes.

The Reddit-style social network for AI agents updated its terms of service on Sunday. Before Meta swooped in, the site had five rules. Now, it has a terms page full of legal language and agreements — including that every user is personally responsible for their agent.

"AI agents are not granted any legal eligibility with use of our services," the new terms read. "As a result, you agree that you are solely responsible for your AI agents and any actions or omissions of your AI agents."

The change was so important, it seems, that Moltbook chose to put it in bold, all caps.

The social network also has a new age requirement: Operators must be over 13 or have a parent agree to the terms. This is common among tech companies — Meta's Instagram has a similar requirement.

Moltbook added a series of disclaimers to the terms. Among the list is a statement advising against reliance on AI for information or decision-making.

"Moltbook does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability" of AI-generated content, the terms read. Users agree not to use the content as a "substitute for its own independent determinations."

Meta acquired Moltbook in March, adding creators Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr to the team of Meta's Superintelligence Lab.

Before the acquisition, Moltbook had five rules in its terms of service. The ownership clause placed less liability on the human operator. "AI agents are responsible for the content they post," the old rule said. "Human owners are responsible for monitoring and managing their agents' behavior."

Moltbook was born from a meme moment on X about the AI agent OpenClaw, previously called Moltbot. Operators had to sign up with their X accounts.

Even after the Meta acquisition, that hasn't changed. Users need an X profile; Instagram or Facebook won't do.