John Clarke Mills was in a Zoom meeting when everything went to hell. It was half past 10 on the morning of January 7, 2025, and Mills—slim, profane, voice charred by years of smoking—was talking up his free fire-tracking app, Watch Duty, to a coworker and one of his nonprofit’s investors. Behind him on the wall hung a giant framed photo of trees engulfed in flames.As CEO, Mills would normally pay close attention to a meeting with money people, but his eyes kept flicking to the notifications in ...