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Warehouse automation hasn’t made workers safer—it’s just reshuffled the risk, say researchers

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Warehouse automation hasn’t made workers safer—it’s just reshuffled the risk, say researchers


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Rapid advancements in robotics are changing the face of the world’s warehouses, as dangerous and physically taxing tasks are being reassigned en masse from humans to machines. Automation and digitization are nothing new in the logistics sector, or any sector heavily reliant on manual labor. Bosses prize automation because it can bring up to two- to four-fold gains in productivity. But workers can also benefit from the putative improvements in safety that come from shifting dangerous tasks onto non-human shoulders.

At least, that’s the story employers such as Amazon have—largely successfully—promoted to the public.

In a recent study, Brad N. Greenwood, Dean’s Distinguished Professor at the Costello College of Business at George Mason University, investigated this question: Does automation make warehouse jobs safer? His co-authors include Gordon Burtch of Boston University and Kiron Ravindran of IE University. Their findings, which appear in ILR Review, reveal that the answer depends on how safety is defined.

The researchers distinguish between two types of injuries: severe and non-severe. Severe injuries include broken bones, traumatic falls, and other incidents that cause employees to miss work. Non- include sprains, strains, and repetitive motion problems, often leading to reassignment or light-duty work, but not missing work.

The findings showed that robots do seem to reduce severe injuries. In robotic fulfillment centers (FC), tasks like heavy lifting and long walks are handled by machines, reducing workers’ exposure to physical hazards. The researchers found a meaningful drop in the number of severe injuries in these facilities.

However, the overall picture is not so clear. In the same robotic warehouses, the researchers observed a sharp increase in non-severe injuries, especially during high-demand periods such as Amazon Prime Day and the winter holidays. The robotic fulfillment centers experienced a 40% decrease in severe injuries but a 77% increase in non-severe injuries compared to traditional centers.

To better understand their results, the researchers also analyzed thousands of online posts from Amazon warehouse workers.

“There was an immediate and obvious discrepancy in opinion, based on whether their fulfillment center was roboticized or not,” says Greenwood.

Humans working alongside robots described their daily experience as “not physically exhausting” and “better than working at a legacy FC.” However, they also reported being expected to meet much higher performance metrics than their counterparts in non-automated FCs—amounting to a two-to-three-times higher “pick rate” in some cases. The faster pace of the human/robot dance was accompanied by a far more repetitive work routine that induced burnout in some workers, while causing others to “zone out.”

This dual reality—robots reducing some injuries while exacerbating others—has serious implications. For employers, simply introducing automation is not enough. Without careful job design, task rotation, and realistic performance goals, the shift to robotics can create new health and safety risks.

“Companies have bottom-line reasons to take this issue seriously. Beyond simple issues of liability, there is a cost to the firm of workers being unable to perform their duties,” says Greenwood.

Traditional safety metrics often focus on injuries that result in lost workdays. But as the nature of work changes, this approach may miss more subtle forms of harm. Chronic, repetitive injuries may not lead to time off, but they still decrease worker well-being and performance.

Looking ahead, Greenwood and his colleagues plan to explore how these trends play out over longer timeframes and in other industries. As robots become more common in fields like manufacturing, retail, and health care, similar patterns may emerge. The researchers hope their findings will help inform both corporate and public policy, ensuring that the future of work is not only more efficient but also humane.

“That isn’t to deny that warehouse robotics benefits workers,” Greenwood explains. “But we need to think more carefully about how to use them, and what that means for the humans they work with.”

More information:
Gordon Burtch et al, Lucy and the Chocolate Factory: Warehouse Robotics and Worker Safety, ILR Review (2025). DOI: 10.1177/00197939251333754

Citation:
Warehouse automation hasn’t made workers safer—it’s just reshuffled the risk, say researchers (2025, August 28)
retrieved 28 August 2025
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Barkbox Offers: Themed Dog Toys, All-Natural Treats, and Subscription Deals

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Barkbox Offers: Themed Dog Toys, All-Natural Treats, and Subscription Deals


As my fellow pet parents will know, it’s amazing how quickly even the tiniest of dogs can demolish their toys and treat stash. We love and spoil them nonetheless. When you subscribe to BarkBox a fresh batch of cleverly themed treats and toys arrives at your doorstep. The costs of pet ownership can stack up quickly, especially if you’re buying your pooch a random gift box that goes well beyond the essentials. That’s why we have Barkbox promo codes and discount options ready to go for you.

Barkbox Promo: Enjoy a Free Toy for a Year at Barkbox

When your monthly Barkbox arrives, it’s like Christmas morning for your dogs. I watch as my two dogs, Rosi and Randy, shake their little Chihuahua mix bodies with barely restrained excitement. They’re never gentle on their toys but the stimulation that comes from textures and chewing is good for their little brains. With Barkbox you get a steady supply of two unique toys and two bags of all-natural treats every month. If you want to see how your dogs react, this Barkbox coupon is good for new Barkbox subscription customers and adds an additional toy in your box every month for a year.

Save 50% on Your First Barkbox Food Subscription With a Barkbox Coupon Code

Another reason why Barkbox is the best dog subscription box is how easy the company makes it to keep your pantry stocked with your dog’s food. Use this Barkbox coupon to save 50% off your first Barkbox food subscription, so you won’t have to end up running out to the grocery store in the middle of the night when your scooper scrapes across the bottom of an empty kibble bin.

Fly Travel Stress-Free With Your Dog and Get $300 Off BARK Air Flights

If you live in a Barkbox flight hub destination, please know I am insanely jealous of you. It’s no secret that flying is stressful and can be very dangerous for pets, especially if they have to ride in a cargo hold. Barkbox makes them the VIP with BARK Air, letting them ride in the cabin with you and get doted on, so things are a lot less scary. This is another perk of having a BarkBox subscription, with the opportunity to save $300 off BARK Air Flights.

Support Your Dog’s Dental Health and Get $10 Off With a Barkbox Coupon

Dental health is crucial for dogs, as it can prevent disease not just in their mouths, but their vital organs. Don’t forget to schedule your yearly cleaning with your vet, but in the meantime, use this BarkBox discount code to get $10 off a special BarkBox Dental kit.

Get an Extra Premium Toy in Every BarkBox With the Extra Toy Club

For having such tiny mouths, my dogs can gnaw through toys with surprising speed. If you’re also buried in a pile of shredded fluff and squeakers from disemboweled toys, the Extra Toy Club can help. This subscription includes dog toys for aggressive chewers of all ages, breeds, and sizes, offering extra durable toys meant to last longer. So far, so good at my house. To upgrade to this subscription box, it’s an extra $9 per month.

Get Exclusive BarkBox Discounts: Join the Email List

If you assume that the punchy branding and witty lingo extend to Barkbox’s email subscribers and not just the box subscription, you’d be correct. As a bonus, you can get exclusive BarkBox discount codes when you sign up to receive these emails. Who also doesn’t love a furry face and reminder of their pet in between work subject lines and bill payment reminders, too?



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Here’s Why Trump Posted About Iran ‘Stealing’ the 2020 Election Hours After the US Attacked

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Here’s Why Trump Posted About Iran ‘Stealing’ the 2020 Election Hours After the US Attacked


At 2:30 am Eastern time on Saturday, President Donald Trump posted a video to his Truth Social account announcing that the US had joined Israel in launching attacks on Iran.

His next post, just two hours later, appeared to suggest that the attacks were, at least in part, motivated by a wild claim that Iran had helped rig the 2020 US elections. “Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with United States,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

The post linked to an article on Just the News, a conspiracy-filled, pro-Trump outlet that offered no explanation for its claim beyond the vague assertion that Iran operated “a sophisticated election influence effort” in 2020.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether the alleged interference factored into the decision to attack Iran or what exactly the so-called interference amounted to.

Trump has spent the years since 2020 boosting numerous baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being rigged. Since his return to the White House last year, he has empowered his administration to use those debunked conspiracy theories to inform decisionmaking, from election office raids in Fulton County, Georgia, to lawsuits over unredacted voter rolls.

It’s not exactly clear what supposed Iranian interference Trump was alluding to in his Truth Social post, but Patrick Byrne, a prominent conspiracy theorist who urged Trump to seize voting machines in the wake of the 2020 election, claims to WIRED that it is related to a broader conspiracy theory that also involves Venezuela and China.

Like most election-related conspiracy theories, this one is convoluted and based on no concrete evidence. In broad terms, the conspiracy theory, which first emerged in the weeks and months after the 2020 election and has grown more complex in the years since, claims that the Venezuelan government has been rigging elections across the globe for decades by creating the voting software company Smartmatic as a vehicle to remotely rig elections. (Smartmatic has repeatedly denied all allegations against it and successfully sued right-wing outlet Newsmax for promoting conspiracy theories and defaming the company.)

Byrne laid out the entire conspiracy theory in a 45-minute-long presentation posted to X in 2024. His claims have been widely shared within the election-denial community since it was posted.

Iran’s role in all of this, claims Byrne, was to hide the money trail. “They act as paymasters. They keep certain payments that would reveal this [operation] out of the banking system, out of the Swift system so you can’t see it,” claimed Byrne during this presentation “It’s done through a transfer pricing mechanism run through Iran in oil.”

When asked for evidence of Iran’s role in this conspiracy theory, Byrne did not respond. In fact, none of Byrne’s claims have ever been verified, and most have been repeatedly debunked. Smartmatic did not immediately respond to a request to comment.

There have been two actual documented instances of Iranian election interference, however: In 2021, the Justice Department charged two Iranians for conducting an influence operation designed to target and threaten US voters. And in 2024, the three Iranian hackers working for the government were charged with compromising the Trump campaign as part of an effort to disrupt the 2024 election.

Byrne’s allegations, however, have been wholly different. And while Byrne’s claims have been circulating among online conspiracy groups for years, they have been emailed directly to Trump in recent months by Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who has known Trump since they attended the New York Military Academy together. Ticktin also represents former Colorado election official turned election denial superstar Tina Peters.



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A Possible US Government iPhone-Hacking Toolkit Is Now in the Hands of Foreign Spies and Criminals

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A Possible US Government iPhone-Hacking Toolkit Is Now in the Hands of Foreign Spies and Criminals


Google notes that Apple patched vulnerabilities used by Coruna in the latest versions of its mobile operating system, iOS 26, so its exploitation techniques are only confirmed to work against iOS 13 through 17.2.1. It targets vulnerabilities in Apple’s Webkit framework for browsers, so Safari users on those older versions of iOS would be vulnerable, but there’s no confirmed techniques in the toolkit for targeting Chrome users. Google also notes that Coruna checks if an iOS devices has Apple’s most stringent security setting, known as Lockdown Mode, enabled, and doesn’t attempt to hack it if so.

Despite those limitations, iVerify says Coruna likely infected tens of thousands of phones. The company consulted with a partner that has access to network traffic and counted visits to a command-and-control server for the cybercriminal version of Coruna infecting Chinese-language websites. The volume of those connections suggest, iVerify says, that roughly 42,000devices may have already been hacked with the toolkit in the for-profit campaign alone.

Just how many other victims Coruna may have hit, including Ukrainians who visited websites infected with the code by the suspected Russian espionage operation, remains unclear. Google declined to comment beyond its published report. Apple did not immediately provide comment on Google or iVerify’s findings.

In iVerify’s analysis of the cybercriminal version of Coruna—it didn’t have access to any of the earlier versions—the company found that the code appeared to have been altered to plant malware on target devices designed to drain cryptocurrency from crypto wallets as well as steal photos and, in some cases, emails. Those additions, however, were “poorly written” compared to the underlying Coruna toolkit, according to iVerify chief product officer Spencer Parker, which he found to be impressively polished and modular.

“My god, these things are very professionally written,” Parker says of the exploits included in Coruna, suggesting that the cruder malware was added by the cybercriminals who later obtained that code.

As for the clues that suggest Coruna’s origins as a US government toolkit, iVerify’s Cole notes that it’s possible that Coruna’s code overlap with the Operation Triangulation code that Russia pinned on US hackers could be based on Triangulation’s components being picked up and repurposed after they were discovered. But Cole argues that’s unlikely. Many components of Coruna have never been seen before, he points out, and the whole toolkit appears to have been created by a “single author,” as he puts it.

“The framework holds together very well,” says Cole, who previously worked at the NSA, but notes that he’s been out of the government for more than a decade and isn’t basing any findings on his own outdated knowledge of US hacking tools. “It looks like it was written as a whole. It doesn’t look like it was pieced together.”

If Coruna is, in fact, a US hacking toolkit gone rogue, just how it got into foreign and criminal hands remains a mystery. But Cole points to the industry of brokers that may pay tens of millions of dollars for zero-day hacking techniques that they can resell for espionage, cybercrime, or cyberwar. Notably, Peter Williams, an executive of US government contractor Trenchant, was sentenced this month to seven years in prison for selling hacking tools to the Russian zero-day broker Operation Zero from 2022 to 2025. Williams’ sentencing memo notes that Trenchant sold hacking tools to the US intelligence community as well as others in the “Five Eyes” group of English-speaking governments—the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand—though it’s not clear what specific tools he sold or what devices they targeted.

“These zero-day and exploit brokers tend to be unscrupulous,” says Cole. “They sell to the highest bidder and they double dip. Many don’t have exclusivity arrangements. That’s very likely what happened here.”

“One of these tools ended up in the hands of a non-Western exploit broker, and they sold it to whoever was willing to pay,” Cole concludes. “The genie is out of the bottle.”



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