Hi! I’m Dhruv Mehrotra, a reporter on the Security desk. I’m taking over the newsletter this week to tell you about the first and largest police drone operation in the country. It’s a trend in policing that could hit the skies over your streets soon. Since 2018, police in a …
Read More »Nicole Shanahan Is Just Getting Started
When long-shot presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that Nicole Shanahan would be his running mate, spectators were confused. Why would Shanahan, a wealthy Silicon Valley luminary and tech entrepreneur who has donated heavily to scientific causes and Democratic politicians, throw her lot in with the nation’s foremost anti-vaccine …
Read More »China Miéville Writes a Secret Novel With the Internet’s Boyfriend (It’s Keanu Reeves)
On a recent Friday afternoon, I found myself interviewing the Internet’s Boyfriend. His name is Keanu Reeves. I introduce him this way because it may be the only time the actor has been treated as a side character in a story. Reeves’ kindness given that arrangement surprised me—boyfriend material indeed—as …
Read More »How Donald Trump Could Weaponize US Surveillance in a Second Term
Every president of the United States has within their grasp the power of a vast surveillance state that has grown significantly over the past few decades and has beaten back any real effort to rein it in. Through America’s numerous enigmatic intelligence agencies, presidents possess the ability to dive deeply …
Read More »A Former President’s Daughter Used X to Bombard South Africa With Conspiracy Theories
On March 9, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, daughter of former South African president Jacob Zuma, tweeted a video that purported to show former US president Donald Trump encouraging “all South Africans to vote for uMkhonto WeSizwe,” her father’s party, in the country’s May 29 elections. In another post, just days before the …
Read More »It's the AI Election Year
In the largest global election year yet, generative AI is already being used to trick and manipulate voters around the world. Will this growing trend have real impact? Today on WIRED Politics Lab, we talk about a new online project that will be tracking the use of AI in elections …
Read More »Trump Campaign Claims $34.8 Million Windfall After Guilty Verdict
Donald Trump’s campaign claimed on Friday that it had raised more than $34 million immediately following the Thursday evening announcement of his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records. The massive fundraising haul comes the morning after a jury found the former president guilty in a criminal hush money …
Read More »Foreign Influence Campaigns Don’t Know How to Use AI Yet Either
Today, OpenAI released its first threat report, detailing how actors from Russia, Iran, China, and Israel have attempted to use its technology for foreign influence operations across the globe. The report named five different networks that OpenAI identified and shut down between 2023 and 2024. In the report, OpenAI reveals …
Read More »2024 Is the Year of the Generative AI Election
Hi! I’m Vittoria Elliott. I’m a reporter on the WIRED Politics desk, and I’m taking over for Makena this week to talk about politicians rising from the dead in India and the rapper Eminem endorsing opposition parties in South Africa. These things haven’t really happened, obviously, but deepfakes created by …
Read More »Trump’s Online MAGA Army Calls Guilty Verdict a Declaration of War
The words “RIP America” trended on X minutes after a jury in Manhattan found former president Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts for falsifying business records in connection to a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Images of an upside-down American flag—a symbol of distress …
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