Reminder that the Washington Post lost 250,000 subscribers, more than most outlets will ever have, after its decision not to publish an endorsement in the last election. www.npr.org/2024/10/29/n... That kind of cowardice, not AI or whatever, is what's "drastically reshaping" readers' expectations.

Senator Maggie Hassan has responded to our story about Bondu’s lack of security around kids’ AI toy chat transcripts by sending a letter to the company asking 10 detailed questions about its privacy practices. She calls its exposure of kids’ data “devastating.” www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cach...

Here's our 25-min video news-documentary version of the story of Red Bull, the whistleblower who leaked me the secrets of a crypto scam compound while trapped as a forced laborer inside it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOcN... Hope you'll watch and consider the immense scale of this global crisis.

NEW: The @wired.com Security desk put together a comprehensive guide to filming ICE—with tips for reducing risk at the forefront. No paywall, but please consider subscribing to help find these kinds of resources. And stay safe out there. www.wired.com/story/how-to... www.wired.com/v2/offers/wi...

For those who read our piece about crypto scam compound whistleblower Red Bull, I've verified that this is his real Bluesky account below. Thank for your incredible courage and all your work to achieve justice, @mohammadmuzahir02.bsky.social.

The AI-chat-enabled stuffed toy Bondu invites little kids to have intimate conversations with it, like an LLM imaginary friend. It also exposed virtually all their chats on a web interface with no security. Anyone with a Gmail account could log in and read transcripts. www.wired.com/story/an-ai-...

The AI-chat-enabled stuffed toy Bondu invites little kids to have intimate conversations with it, like an LLM imaginary friend. It also exposed virtually all their chats on a web interface with no security. Anyone with a Gmail account could log in and read transcripts. www.wired.com/story/an-ai-...

A lot is happening right now. Hope you'll still take a moment to read WIRED's story of Red Bull's incredible work as a whistleblower, our analysis of the evidence he shared, the details of his ordeal inside a modern slavery operation, and how he finally got home. /end www.wired.com/story/he-lea...

Red Bull's leaks to me were never detected. But when he tried to escape, this story became a nightmare. He was caught by his bosses, beaten, kicked, drugged and then starved for weeks. Only when the compound had to move to evade an impending police raid would he seize an opportunity to get free.

Red Bull later shared hours of screenrecordings as he scrolled through the compound's internal WhatsApp groups. We at WIRED converted the videos into 4,200 pages of screenshotted chats that reveal the daily operations of a scam compound at a level never seen before. www.wired.com/story/the-re...

Red Bull was determined to expose everything he could about his captors: their scamming systems, scripts, guides, org chart, photos, even videos he secretly recorded. This clip inside the office shows colored flags on teams of workers' desks, connoting whether they met their scam quotas that month.

Crypto romance scams are the most lucrative form of cybercrime in the world today, stealing tens of billions of dollars a year from victims. But the scammers, workers enslaved in Chinese-mafia-run compounds, are victims too. My new source was one of them. He asked me to call him Red Bull.

Last year, a human trafficking victim trapped in a crypto scam compound in the Golden Triangle region of Laos contacted me. He then proceeded to leak to me a huge collection of the compound's internal materials. Then he had to get out alive. This is his story. 🧵👇 www.wired.com/story/he-lea...

NEW: The firm behind the Mobile Fortify app, which ICE and CBP use for running facial recognition scans on the public, was revealed today to be NEC, according to DHS docs reviewed by @wired.com. NEC makes its of face rec platform called Reveal. @regret.bsky.social & @dell.bsky.social with the scoop:

Last year, a human trafficking victim trapped in a crypto scam compound in the Golden Triangle region of Laos contacted me. He then proceeded to leak to me a huge collection of the compound's internal materials. Then he had to get out alive. This is his story. 🧵👇 www.wired.com/story/he-lea...

Insane. But there’s also no statute of limitations for murder in this country.

ICE complains about 'doxing' any time one of their officers is identified. Meanwhile at least 1,000 of them are apparently putting ICE right there in their LinkedIn profiles. from @regret.bsky.social

🇨🇳 new issue is here! Behold: The China Issue. It hasn't escaped @wired.com's attention that one superpower is surging forward while the other one is trying to annex Greenland. Here are 23 ways that China has become the future www.wired.com/china-issue/

WIRED spoke to 10 residents in Minneapolis about what life has been like for them since ICE seized the city. I know there's a lot of coverage out there, but spend time with this heart wrenching piece:

New: meet ELITE, the Palantir app ICE is using to find neighborhoods to raid. Map interface; officers search for immigrants; click person to bring up individual dossier. This is clearest link between what Palantir is building and ICE's activities on the ground yet www.404media.co/elite-the-pa...

This was caused by flawed implementations of Google's Fast Pair one-tap Bluetooth protocol. But it doesn't just affect Android users. Anyone (yes, iPhone users) with audio accessories from Sony, Jabra, JBL, Marshall, Xiaomi, Nothing, OnePlus, Soundcore, Logitech, and Google itself may be vulnerable.

Tired: Google Fast Pair one-tap Bluetooth connections Wired: wired

Hundreds of millions of earbuds, headphones and speakers need a security update (yes, you need to update your earbuds) to prevent a wireless hacking technique that can hijack audio, eavesdrop via mics, and in some cases remotely track the accessory’s location. www.wired.com/story/google...

The @wired.com guide to ICE invading your neighborhood:

People are already in the streets after an ICE agent shot a woman in her vehicle in Minneapolis today. Here are some @wired.com tips for protecting yourself from your government. www.wired.com/story/how-to...

New: Grok is generating far more graphic sexual content than on X. Grok’s image generator, Imagine, has been used to create explicit sexual videos of celebrities and violent sexual videos, a review of public posts shows. 70 Imagine URLs appearing to depict minors were sent to regulators today

Does he know we can see the clip too

Video makes clear almost every word of this is a lie.

I feel like I haven’t even been properly lied to about the purposes of this war

When China invades Taiwan sometime in the coming years, it will say the US has no moral authority to oppose its takeover, and to the degree that the US is the Trump administration, China will be right.

A measure of how wildly the crypto scam plague grew in 2025: The top two Chinese-language markets for crypto scam money launderers are now doing $2 billion *a month* in transactions. These are the biggest online black markets ever, operating in plain sight on Telegram. www.wired.com/story/expire...

🧵This week on Gaslit Nation, I talk to Wired senior writer @agreenberg.bsky.social, author of Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency. Here are a few highlights of our chilling discussion about the underworld of crypto. www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-tra...

The names of two partial owners of contractor firms linked to China's Salt Typhoon hacker group also appeared in records for Cisco's "Networking Academy" global training program—years before those hackers targeted Cisco's devices in their sweeping spy campaign. www.wired.com/story/2-men-...

A new anonymous phone carrier startup Phreeli, launching today, will let you sign up for cellular service with almost no personally identifiable information—not even your name. All it asks for is a ZIP code, the minimum info legally required for tax purposes. www.wired.com/story/new-an...

A new anonymous phone carrier startup Phreeli, launching today, will let you sign up for cellular service with almost no personally identifiable information—not even your name. All it asks for is a ZIP code, the minimum info legally required for tax purposes. www.wired.com/story/new-an...

Researchers tried plugging every possible phone number into WhatsApp's web app. They found they could collect 3.5 billion users' phone numbers, plus photos for half and profile text for more than a third, the biggest personal data exposure ever by some measures. www.wired.com/story/a-simp...

Incredible impact from @mattburgess1.bsky.social whose work put a spotlight on Starlink’s use in scam compounds in February.

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer. He is a computer safety researcher. And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine. In under 1600 words. aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

NEW: Experts say that any lags in protections like security updates and network monitoring caused by the government shutdown could lay the groundwork for future breaches. @lhn.bsky.social reports: www.wired.com/story/the-go...

Incredibly classy move from a WIRED reporter who’s just been fired (for what seems like protected union activity) – completely commendable way to look out for your colleagues and their work. Feels like the kind of person any newsroom would be lucky to have, tbh.

A statement from Wired's Conde Union Members

This is a really hard day and I want to just add as WIRED's politics editor -- WIRED's politics reporting isn't going anywhere. We are very much here and won't stop. Please continue to read and support us - canceling your subscription to WIRED is not standing in solidarity with our journalists.

Jake is one of the best and I’ll really miss working with him — whoever gets to work with him next is very lucky!

Not telling anyone how to vote in NYC today but maybe consider not voting for the serially accused sex offender whose campaign posted the most absurdly racist AI slop deepfake attack ad of all time?

Here’s me talking to NPR yesterday about hacking casino card shufflers, because I really can’t shut up about hacking casino card shufflers. www.npr.org/2025/10/24/n... (Hacking card shufflers is the new hacking McDonald’s ice cream machines, fyi)

I cannot actually believe that Cuomo put out this insanely racist AI-slop deepfake ad. In a sane society, this alone ought to be a career-ending move.

Two weeks ago, we at WIRED published a video showing how a hacked casino card shuffling machine can be used for undetectable cheating in poker. Now it turns out the mob and a couple of NBA stars were already (allegedly) using exactly this trick to make millions. www.wired.com/story/how-ha...

Two weeks ago, we at WIRED published a video showing how a hacked casino card shuffling machine can be used for undetectable cheating in poker. Now it turns out the mob and a couple of NBA stars were already (allegedly) using exactly this trick to make millions. www.wired.com/story/how-ha...

Incredibly, the Justice Department today charged a group of alleged Cosa Nostra mobsters with using a version of the exact card shuffler hacking technique we demonstrated in the video below to rig poker games with an NBA player and coach, stealing millions. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Okay here it is