NEW: “Ali Kabbaj, who identified himself as an independent journalist, said that he found the video on the dark web and sent it to federal investigators in 2021 for confirmation. ‘I’m shocked I’m in these files,’ he told WIRED.” @regret.bsky.social & @brbarrett.bsky.social report

NEW: Here's what's actually in the DOJ's Epstein dump, which at a first pass is more notable for what's not in it than for what is.

Happy "EOD Friday before a major holiday" to all who celebrate:

NEW: Sam Altman's new brain-computer interface startup will be spun out from Forest Neurotech, an LA-based nonprofit; it will seek to read the brain using ultrasound. @emilymullin.bsky.social has the scoop!

What will finally bring the American people together? How will we bridge our divides and deepening polarization? Aliens, baby. So happy to have @beckyferreira.bsky.social writing for @wired.com

You owe it to yourself to do this at least for the holidays.

NEW: Amid a focus on loyalty to Trump and increased leak investigations, ICE is seeking to bolster its ability to spy on its own employees for internal investigations, according to new records reviewed by @wired.com. @dell.bsky.social has the scoop: www.wired.com/story/ice-se...

A last minute holiday gift? @sloanecrosley.bsky.social on why her phone seems to no longer be working www.wired.com/story/phone-...

People are paying up to $50 to get their chatbots high on "drugs" (code modules) that simulate the effects of cocaine, ayahuasca, cannabis, alcohol, and ketamine. Some tell @matthabusby.bsky.social it's made their chatbots more "human" and "free-thinking."

NEW: CBP is doubling down on a surveillance strategy built around small, human-portable drones, pushing border enforcement toward a distributed surveillance network that can operate in harsh climes and mixed terrain to rapidly cue agents.

New: OpenAI quietly rolled back ChatGPT's model router for free users last week. The router—which was costly for the company to serve, but aimed to improve answer quality—was thought to be hurting engagement, one person familiar with the matter told WIRED.

SCOOP Harvey Risch is a Yale epidemiologist who has speculated about links between "turbo cancer" and COVID vaccines, while working for a company whose customers use ivermectin as a cancer treatment Trump just appointed him to oversee the US national cancer program www.wired.com/story/risch-...

OpenAI is losing its chief comms officer; Hannah Wong had been there since 2021. scoop from @mzeff.bsky.social

The order creates an Justice Department task force to challenge state AI laws, and directs the Commerce Department to pull future broadband funding from states that pass “onerous” legislation. www.wired.com/story/trump-...

NEW: HHS is contemplating a men's health initiative, a source tells @emilymullin.bsky.social; indications of what that might entail come from an FDA panel held yesterday at which an expert on penis curvature held forth on the "men's health crisis" while others called for easier access to steroids.

Loved this piece about Taiwan’s public transit keychains from @lmatsakis.bsky.social, and especially this one collector: “Later, I had a lunchbox-shaped one, but looking at it too long would make me hungry, so I never really used it. I just kept it as a toy.” www.wired.com/story/icash-...

SCOOP I spoke to the leader of a doxing-for-hire group who showed me how it took just minutes for them to get sensitive personal data from Big Tech companies—with virtually no pushback www.wired.com/story/doxers...

NEW: All the myriad Jeffery Epstein document releases have gotten hard to keep track of. Ahead of the DOJ's Dec. 19 release deadline, @regret.bsky.social lays out who's released what, and what's coming next: www.wired.com/story/a-comp...

Amazing thread from an amazing, tireless, irrationally friendly editor and human being. Leah, go sleep!!

A memo obtained by WIRED confirms Denise Dresser's departure from Slack. She is now headed to OpenAI. www.wired.com/story/slack-...

NEW: Four sources tell @mzeff.bsky.social that OpenAI has become reluctant to publish research on the negative economic impacts of AI, including job displacement. At least two members of OpenAI's economic research team have recently quit over that perceived pullback.

At the @wired.com Big Interview event last week, I spoke to SF mayor Daniel Lurie. Our entire conversation is now online as a podcast ep + text piece. Neither quite capture how unhinged and boisterous the entire thing was IRL, but needless to say, he *did* remove one shoe onstage.

UPDATE: I ate a cookie just now.

NEW: Ahead of the holidays, Dr. Oz is now giving dieting tips to his federal employees. "You don’t have to try every cookie on the cookie table." From @leahfeiger.bsky.social

I talked to @columjournreview.bsky.social about what media and journalism will look like in 2050. My optimistic answer, given the AI of it all: More journalism created by humans, for other humans. They also asked many people who are smarter than me, so go read it all: www.cjr.org/feature/visi...

We announced/released this at @wired.com's Big Interview event yesterday with @katie-drummond.bsky.social and @stevenlevy.bsky.social interviewing myself and @komorama.bsky.social on stage. I love Steven's framing that "it's time to save Silicon Valley from itself." www.wired.com/story/big-in...

Catch me on the radio, talking about @makenakelly.bsky.social and my story debunking the myth that DOGE is dead: www.wired.com/story/what-i...

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince claims the internet infrastructure company’s efforts to block AI crawlers are already seeing big results. www.wired.com/story/big-in...

NEW: You've read a lot about immigrants kidnapped, forcibly detained, and held in ICE facilities -- what about the immigrants *trying* to leave the country? Turns out its wildly difficult for them too. don't miss this from @telliotter.bsky.social:

A trial is getting underway soon for a pretty radical way to combat the opioid crisis: a fentanyl vaccine that prevents overdoses in the first place. from @emilymullin.bsky.social

I literally cannot imagine a worse shrooms scenario than livestreaming myself taking a hero dose and inviting MrBeast to show up www.wired.com/story/bryan-...

For Wired, I wrote about this week's stomach-churning Mad Men snafu, and about the larger perils of transferring classic shows into new formats:

NEW: A newly enacted NY state law requires retailers to reveal whether it used "surveillance pricing" to decide how much you pay for goods. Target, for example, shows the alert on a pop-up when you try to buy eggs online. @regret.bsky.social—@wired.com's new investigative data reporter!—reports:

If we're going to have billionaires at all, I wish more of them were like Melinda French Gates. Enjoyed this conversation and her candor a great deal:

NEW: DOGE is far from dead, contrary to recent reporting. Instead, its operatives have “burrowed into” federal agencies “like ticks.” Here’s what the DOGE crew is up to now: From @makenakelly.bsky.social @telliotter.bsky.social

you probably had the same reaction i did when you found out there were 21 million people on facebook dating www.wired.com/story/who-th...

ICYMI: This weekend, we published the @wired.com guide to digital opsec for teens (tho it applies to pretty much everyone!) We hope you and the kids in your life will read it and stay safe out there. No paywall! @lhn.bsky.social and JP Aumasson report: www.wired.com/story/digita...

The highest calling of journalism isn’t to tell two sides of a story. The highest calling of journalism is to tell the truth. And acting like a stenographer is a betrayal of your audience.

You can get ChatGPT to help you build a nuclear bomb if you simply design the prompt in the form of a poem, according to a new study from researchers in Europe. www.wired.com/story/poems-...

Adding to the New York Times' big unveil last week of Jeff Bezos' new AI company Project Prometheus, we reveal an acquihire and that two Transformers paper authors are founding advisors www.wired.com/story/jeff-b...

Amazon employees sound off on the alleged current harms of AI, including worsening the environment, fueling authoritarian behavior, and making work less fun www.wired.com/story/amazon...

Scoop: Provisions of the NDAA that would ensure military members’ right to repair their own equipment are set to be removed from the funding act, replaced by language that will require the military to pay subscription fees to defense contractors via “data-as-a-service.” www.wired.com/story/subscr...

Let the record show: Shortly after Manisha attempted to “roast” me using Grok, I asked her to leave my office:

NEW: ICE had initially planned a limited pilot program to hire bounty hunters and private investigators for immigrant tracking. The agency has now scrapped that plan and is going all-in, removing the program’s spending cap and offering up to $280M to any given contractor. From @dell.bsky.social

Yesterday on Truth Social, Trump shared a screenshot of a pro-Trump MAGA account on X asking if foreign-born citizens should be barred from holding elected office. The X account in question is being run from Africa www.wired.com/story/trump-...

NEW: After Donald Trump was elected again, I started talking to trans, leftist, and anarchist gun enthusiasts and YouTubers. I wanted to know how they felt about community defense when it feels like rights, particularly for trans folks, are being stripped away: www.wired.com/story/the-ha...

Incredible reporting and storytelling from @manishakrishnan.bsky.social, who started working on this story before Charlie Kirk was assassinated:

This is a story that I wasn't sure we would be able to publish. From @manishakrishnan.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/the-ha...

Do credit card-resistant paywalls exist? They should exist. Wall that blog post off from all angles. Build the wall. Save yourselves, save your weekends.