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- The DOGE Subcommittee Hearing on Weather Modification Was a Nest of Conspiracy Theorizing

- Fired CDC Director Says RFK Jr. Pressured Her to Blindly Approve Vaccine Changes

- Inside Trumpworld’s Reality Distortion Field

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SCIENCE | MOLLY TAFT | SEP 17, 2025 AT 5:10 PM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

The DOGE Subcommittee Hearing on Weather Modification Was a Nest of Conspiracy Theorizing

A House Oversight Committee hearing produced a flood of bizarre claims about cloud seeding, chemtrails, and solar geoengineering. Proven, human-driven changes to the weather were dismissed.

Photograph: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

“What this whole debate comes down to is who controls the skies,” Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia told the audience at a House Oversight Committee hearing on Tuesday. “Do we believe in God and that he has dominion over his perfect creation of planet Earth? Do we believe that he has given us everything we need to survive as a civilization since the beginning of time? Or do you believe in man’s claim of authority over the weather, based on scientists that have only been alive for decades and weren’t here to witness the climate changes since the beginning of time?”

As American culture becomes saturated with conspiracy theories, the idea that the government is controlling the weather—an old chestnut—seems to be getting new legs. This theory has led to a raft of proposed legislation in more than two dozen states. Tuesday’s hearing showcased the messiness of what happens when conspiracy theories collide with a federal government that has proven especially willing to entertain them.

The hearing, titled “Playing God with the Weather—a Disastrous Forecast” and convened by Greene, comes alongside legislation she introduced this summer to “prohibit weather modification within the United States.” The definition of “weather modification” in Greene’s legislation is extremely broad, encompassing several unrelated techniques and phenomena; subsequently, the hearing covered many disparate ideas.

“They kinda threw [different ideas] under this umbrella of weather modification” at the hearing, says Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University.

Condensation trails, or contrails, for instance, are natural clouds that can form behind jets as a result of their exhaust. The word “chemtrails” is a term used for contrails by people who think that these are signs of jets spraying chemicals into the air as part of a plot to control the weather. (The two terms are often conflated.) Cloud seeding—the practice of introducing materials like dry ice or silver iodide into clouds to create more rain—is a common technique that has been used for decades by states and counties across the country; nine states currently have active cloud-seeding programs. Finally, solar radiation modification refers to practices that could deflect or dim the rays of the sun in order to halt global warming. Solar radiation modification, also referred to as solar geoengineering, has never been deployed on a large scale.

Greene has a long history of spreading conspiracy theories about the weather, perhaps most famously claiming before she entered Congress that California’s destructive wildfire season in 2018 was caused by lasers in outer space controlled by a powerful Jewish family. Over the summer she introduced the legislation that accompanied this week’s hearing, after conspiracy theories began circulating online that the floods in Texas in July were man-made. Following the floods, the EPA released an online resource on geoengineering and weather modification, in the name, the agency said, of “total transparency.” (The resource features an explainer on different types of weather modification and US government involvement, including an FAQ.)

“Instead of dismissing these questions and concerns as ‘baseless conspiracies,’ we’re meeting them head-on,” administrator Lee Zeldin said in a video announcement on the resource.

Many of the conspiracy theories that circulated after the floods in July centered around a company called Rainmaker, a cloud-seeding startup with buzzy Silicon Valley backers, that was doing cloud-seeding operations in Texas days before the storms, more than 100 miles south of where the heavy rains hit. Following the floods, Greene tweeted a screenshot of an interview with Augustus Doricko, the CEO of Rainmaker. “I’m introducing legislation to stop weather modification and geoengineering,” she wrote. “People have had enough of chemicals manipulating our weather. And the governments and the industries that profit from controlling it.” (Doricko tells WIRED that the company was not invited to Tuesday’s hearing: “Outright refusing to have us makes it seem like it’s just a grandstanding for a click war on Twitter, as per usual,” he says.)

While cloud seeding is mostly regulated at the state level, some federal laws require that operators report their activities to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Existing research shows that injecting silver iodide into clouds has no harmful effects; however, according to a December 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office, that research is “limited to a handful of recent studies.” It has historically been difficult to evaluate the efficacy of cloud seeding: the GAO report cites between 0 and 20 percent increased rainfall from cloud-seeding projects based on research it reviewed. Still, Dessler emphasizes that this technique can’t cause massive weather modification—as online conspiracy theorists have claimed in the wake of the Texas floods.

“People argue that humans are controlling the weather—that’s nonsense,” he says.

Solar geoengineering, meanwhile, has never been deployed at scale—and historically has been a contentious topic within the climate science and policy community. If it’s deployed over a large geographic area, solar geoengineering could create a wide range of risks, from biodiversity loss to a weakened ozone layer to extreme weather. There’s also no way to test large-scale deployment of these techniques in advance, and the world has never tried to govern a scenario in which one country deploys technology that causes droughts and hurricanes in another part of the globe. Critics also say that focusing on geoengineering detracts from the real solution to climate change: drawing down emissions.

But proponents say that looking into solar geoengineering technology may be necessary as climate change keeps getting worse. “You can imagine a scenario where it’s 2040 and climate change is out of control, and it’s the last tool in the toolbox,” Dessler says. “Most serious people view solar geoengineering as like the airbags in your car. They are for emergencies only. No one wants to use their airbags on a daily basis, but you can imagine a situation where you’re glad you have it.”

Anti-weather-modification bills of all different types have proliferated at the state level over the past few years. According to SRM360, a website that tracks data on solar geoengineering policy and science, three states have banned solar radiation modification since 2024, while more than two dozen states have had bills introduced into state legislatures. At least two states—Tennessee and Florida—have explicitly banned cloud seeding in that time period. The December 2024 GAO report cited one official from Kansas, who told the office that the state no longer has a cloud-seeding program “because of negative public perception and pressure on local officials.”

The popularity of these conspiracies may also be on the rise in right-wing spaces. Some MAHA figureheads, including Nicole Shanahan, have shared geoengineering content promoting conspiracy theories, while Marla Maples, Donald Trump’s ex-wife, told Fox News in July that she helped Florida’s anti-weather modification bill pass. (Bill Gates’ track record of funding solar geoengineering research has undoubtedly helped fan some of these flames.)

Doricko, the Rainmaker CEO, has spent much of the past year testifying in state legislatures that were considering vague anti-geoengineering bills that would have also banned cloud seeding. In May, he told WIRED that he and his team had spoken in front of 31 state legislatures. Education, he says, is key to getting people on board with the technology.

“I think there’s some cohort of people that believe that, you know, Joe Biden is actually a lizard person,” he says. “I think that a lot of people aren’t quite that far along, but are very concerned about chemtrails, probably. Showing them farms that are greener than they otherwise would have been with testimonies from those farmers—that’s probably the way that we’re gonna win hearts and minds.” (Doricko told WIRED last week that in recent months, his company has had “interest, curiosity, and excitement” from various state governments, both Democratic and Republican, in using cloud seeding to enhance water supply. “The education that we had the opportunity to do ultimately I think assuaged a lot of reasonable people’s concerns.”)

There is one additional type of human-caused shift in the world’s weather that played an outsize role in the hearing: climate change. Greene and other Republican lawmakers repeated many climate denial talking points and bad framing around climate science, including the idea that carbon dioxide is good for the planet because it is plant food. There were multiple mentions of beach houses owned by Barack Obama and Al Gore as a way of illustrating supposed hypocrisy about sea level rise. One of the witnesses called by the House majority works at an organization with a long history of questioning established climate science; he claimed in his testimony that there is “uncertainty as to exactly how much influence humans have exerted” over the global rise in temperature—a take that is out of line with mainstream science.

“My view is that this is mainly a way of saying there are secret forces at work that are making your life miserable, and everything bad is due to these secret forces,” says Dessler. “When in reality, it’s not secret forces, it’s climate change and it’s these other things that are hurting people.”

But even a whole hearing dedicated to a conspiracy theory grab bag may not be enough for some. On X, a popular anti-geoengineering community was alight with posts about the hearing—including many critical of the experts and their findings. “This was a scripted show to protect the government’s weather control agenda,” one moderator’s post reads. “Why no independent voices?”

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/the-doge-subcommittee-hearing-on-weather-modification-was-a-nest-of-conspiracy-theorizing/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

SCIENCE | EMILY MULLIN | SEP 17, 2025 AT 2:57 PM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

Fired CDC Director Says RFK Jr. Pressured Her to Blindly Approve Vaccine Changes

At a Senate hearing on Wednesday, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Susan Monarez said she was fired from her role for not rubber-stamping vaccine recommendations from her boss, Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., regardless of whether they were backed by scientific evidence.

Just two months after Monarez was sworn in to the job, HHS announced on August 27 that she was no longer the director of the CDC. She had been the acting director since January and was the first CDC director to receive Senate confirmation after a law took effect this year requiring the president’s nominee to receive Senate approval. Her ousting led to an exodus of top CDC officials from the agency.

On July 30, when Monarez was sworn in, Kennedy remarked that she had “unimpeachable scientific credentials” and that he had “full confidence in her ability to restore the CDC's role as the most trusted authority in public health.” Monarez, a microbiologist and immunologist, was previously the deputy director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, an agency within HHS that funds research for biomedical and health breakthroughs.

Senators on the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions called Wednesday’s hearing to shed light on the events leading up to Monarez’s dismissal. “This hearing is a direct response to President Trump’s call for radical transparency in how we conduct governmental affairs,” said senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican and physician from Louisiana who serves as chairman of the committee.

The hearing follows mass layoffs at HHS and a shooting at the CDC in August by a gunman who was protesting the Covid-19 vaccine. Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, has implemented new restrictions on the Covid-19 vaccine in his short tenure. He has also removed every sitting member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, a group of outside experts that provides vaccine recommendations to the CDC and is scheduled to meet September 18 and 19. ACIP’s recommendations are often adopted by the CDC director and significantly influence state vaccination requirements.

“Today should not be about me. Today should be about the future of trust in public,” Monarez said at the beginning of her testimony.

She went on to say that on the morning of August 25, Kennedy demanded two things of her that she said were “inconsistent” with her oath of office and the ethics required of a public official.

“He directed me to commit, in advance, to approving every ACIP recommendation, regardless of the scientific evidence,” she said. “He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause. He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign. I responded that I could not pre-approve recommendations without reviewing the evidence, and I had no basis to fire scientific experts.”

Kennedy responded that he had already spoken with the White House several times about removing her, according to Monarez. “Even under pressure, I could not replace evidence with ideology or compromise my integrity,” she said.

Debra Houry, former chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science at CDC, who was one of several agency officials to resign in the wake of Monarez’s firing, also testified during Wednesday’s hearing.

“I resigned because CDC leaders were reduced to rubber stamps, supporting policies not based in science, and putting American lives at risk. Secretary Kennedy censored CDC’s science, politicized its processes, and stripped leaders of independence. I could not and in good conscience, remain under those conditions,” Houry said.

She also accused Kennedy of halting flu campaigns despite the severity of the 2024-2025 flu season, as well as spreading misinformation and promoting unproven treatments for measles.

Houry said she learned that Kennedy had changed the CDC’s Covid-19 vaccine guidance from a social media post on X. “CDC scientists have still not seen the scientific data or justification for this change. That is not gold-standard science,” Houry said, referring to a statement in May that HHS will no longer recommend the vaccine for healthy children and pregnant women

Monarez said Secretary Kennedy had not communicated his plans to change the childhood vaccination schedule to her until their meeting on August 25. Monarez said she told Kennedy that she would be open to changing the childhood vaccine schedule if the evidence or science supported those changes. Kennedy responded that there was no existing science or evidence and elaborated that CDC had never collected that data, according to Monarez.

Monarez said she could not agree to approving ACIP recommendations before knowing what they were. “I have built a career on scientific integrity, and my worst fear was that I would then be in a position of approving something that would reduce access to life-saving vaccines to children and others who need them,” she said.

This Thursday, ACIP is set to discuss the hepatitis B vaccine, which has been recommended for newborns within 24 hours of birth since 1991. But the committee is expected to vote on removing that recommendation and delaying the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine until age 4.

Each year in the US, an estimated 25,000 infants are born to women diagnosed with the hepatitis B virus, or HBV, a serious liver infection that can lead to cirrhosis and cancer. Before the vaccine was introduced, nearly 20,000 babies and children were infected with HBV each year in the US. Now, fewer than 20 get the disease from their mothers.

“Now that we've controlled it, do we let the genie out of the bottle? If the recommendation goes away, and a parent does want the vaccine, insurance will no longer cover it free of charge. She’ll be forced to pay out of pocket,” Senator Cassidy said at the conclusion of the hearing. Vaccine coverage is typically tied to ACIP recommendations.

Cassidy was initially hesitant about Kennedy’s nomination as HHS secretary, given his prior statements about vaccines, but he supported him after, he has said, Kennedy promised to maintain vaccine availability and not undermine public trust in them.

ACIP is slated to discuss Covid-19 vaccines on Friday.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/susan-monarez-fired-cdc-director-senate-testimony/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

POLITICS | JAKE LAHUT | SEP 17, 2025 AT 11:04 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

Inside Trumpworld’s Reality Distortion Field

Before a suspect was even in custody, Trumpworld was on a wartime footing.

Charlie Kirk had been fatally shot. Graphic video of the assassination hit terminal velocity online. Several sources of mine were close friends of Kirk, and when I spoke to them last week, it was clear this incident had changed the level of aggression with which they were willing to pursue a crackdown on their boss’s perceived enemies.

“I think we want to confront violent left wing rhetoric. We want PEACE, and unity,” one adviser to President Donald Trump told me in a text message.

But, they continued, “If this is an organized group—which it seems?—then this is going to be a wake up call like people have never seen.” This person then speculated about an antifa cell in, of all places, central Utah. Other sources suggested that a band of transgender militants plotted the attack. (There is no indication that any organized group or cell planned the attack, with charging documents filed Tuesday indicating it was a lone shooter.)

It turned out that the nihilistic and highly online references inscribed on bullets investigators found near the crime scene weren’t, despite garbled early reporting, so cut-and-dried as to spell out a clear motive for Kirk’s murder.

Republicans kept running with one anyway.

In the week since Kirk’s death, mourning over his shocking loss has metastasized into an unprecedented mobilization effort among the MAGA base, focused on a few main fronts. There is the successful push for firings of regular civilians over the tone and content of their social media posts about Kirk’s death. There is a pendulum swing toward something approaching cancel culture and actual, government-backed censorship on big social media platforms. And then there are the preexisting priorities of the Trump administration.

“They killed Charlie Kirk—the least that we can do is go through a legal process and redistrict Indiana into a nine-to-zero map,” representative Jim Banks of Indiana told Politico at a Republican confab over the weekend, pushing for more partisan gerrymandering.

There was talk of unity from some, but the more dominant tone was expressed by Vice President JD Vance when he hosted Kirk’s podcast. “There is no unity with people who scream at children over their parents' politics. There is no unity with someone who lies about what Charlie Kirk said in order to excuse his murder,” he said. “There is no unity with someone who harasses an innocent family the day after the father of that family lost a dear friend. There is no unity with the people who celebrate Charlie Kirk's assassination.”

Elon Musk, on his long road back to regaining favor with the administration, went even further. Appearing remotely at a far-right rally in London on Saturday, he declared “The left are the party of murder.”

As time went on, there appeared to be only one source of true unity: Agreement between the ultra MAGA and Silicon Valley wings of the party over who the they responsible for Kirk’s murder really is.

It’s anyone Republican leaders want it to be.

According to one expert, that’s the entire point: Trumpworld and its Republican allies, from influencers to tech overlords, have started to become the digital equivalent of high on their own supply.

“Since 2020, quite clearly you've seen a media ecosystem that exists to reinforce and to mobilize the base around ideas that they consider to be advantageous for their political movement,” says Renee DiResta, a Georgetown University associate research professor specializing in conspiracy theories, terrorism, and state-sponsored information warfare. “And so the content creators, and the influencers, and the media outlets that reinforce those ideas are the ones that form a political machine,” DiResta adds, working “in tandem to create a self-reinforcing feedback loop.”

The Purge

Already, Americans are getting fired over their social media posts about the Kirk shooting, and there’s no special reason to think the campaign will end soon, or stop there.

“There’s a lot that I think is gonna come from this,” a Republican member of Congress close to President Trump tells me.

Almost immediately after the shooting, Republicans were both publicly and privately connecting the successful attempt on Kirk’s life to the two unsuccessful ones on Trump’s life last summer. No evidence anyone has made public supports such a claim. But sources of mine, including a second Trump adviser who was close to Kirk, were too overcome with emotion and too fed up with their political opposition to care all that much about the actual motivation of Kirk’s killer.

“This is on them,” the second Trump adviser told me. “As were the two attempts on Trump’s life.”

Of course, there is no organized “them” at play here beyond the broadest definition of the left. There is no evidence of an armed antifa cell in Utah, and none that Kirk’s killing was related to a presidential assassination plot. But when I sent new information about the shooter to my Trump sources—who, granted, were in grief and shock—that conflicted with their priors, they did not respond.

“President Trump is right—for years, radical leftists have slandered their political opponents as Nazis and fascists, inspiring left-wing violence like the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, told me on Tuesday.

As of now, the evidence is something of a Rorschach test. Robinson’s mother told investigators he was beginning to “lean more to the left—becoming more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented,” according to the indictment filed by the Utah County attorney general in the state’s Fourth Judicial District Court Tuesday. When asked by his roommate why he allegedly shot Kirk in a text exchange included in the indictment, Robinson replied, “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out,” according to the indictment. Leaked messages from a Discord in which Robinson was allegedly active, obtained by the journalist Ken Klippenstein, appear to complicate the picture, though, and no evidence that has been made public directly links the alleged killer to a specific political ideology.

Don’t Call It Cancel Culture

It’s not a coincidence that ideological enemies of the broader conservative movement have been the targets of the mass firing push by Trump supporters. Americans working in education, health care, and government in particular have been targeted, and the right-wing news site Breitbart specifically mentioned those three categories in a post on X.

“This isn’t ‘cancel culture,’” the post reads. “It’s self defense. A nation that empowers the deranged and the depraved is a nation marching toward ruin.”

The longer-term focus from the White House, the lawmaker close to Trump tells me, won’t be limited to just one social media site, such as Bluesky, where scores of posts were compiled and cataloged by the since-offline site “Expose Charlie’s Murderers,” as WIRED reported. Trumpworld wants to come for them all.

“You’re going to continue to see this: Whether it’s Meta, Reddit, Bluesky, Roblox—all of ’em that are actually taking down any content that’s literally calling for more violence and/or recirculating that horrifying video,” the lawmaker told me. They also mentioned Discord as a target for the administration, alleging without evidence that the attack was “coordinated” there. (“These were communications between the suspect’s roommate and a friend after the shooting, where the roommate was recounting the contents of a note the suspect had left elsewhere,” Discord VP of trust and safety Jud Hoffman said in a statement last Friday.)

Fighting against the perception of hypocrisy around cancel culture has already become a focal point of the right wing’s spin.

“There is a big difference between the left canceling people and the right canceling people,” conservative influencer Matt Walsh tweeted over the weekend. “The left cancels you for saying things that are true. To the extent that the right cancels you, it is for saying things that are abhorrent and sick. A pretty important distinction.”

For DiResta, the pendulum swinging from maximum free speech and minimum content moderation to something approaching the very thing Republicans once opposed makes sense from the perspective of being caught in a conspiratorial information bubble.

“Their opinions on content moderation, for example—redefining labeling and fact-checking as censorship—were always part of a political project to advantage their movement when viewed through that lens,” she says. “It makes sense that now they would be in favor of more censorship—I should say, more actual censorship, because in this particular case, what you're seeing is sitting agents of the government calling for the suppression of speech.”

Plug and Chug

Some officials in the Trump administration have gone beyond calls for Americans to be banned from social media or be fired from their jobs.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy on paper and unofficial “prime minister” of Trumpworld, went as far as to call for RICO or conspiracy against the United States charges for those “fomenting riots, that are doxing, that are trying to inspire terrorism, or committing wanton acts of violence.” In remarks on Fox News over the weekend, Miller promised that “the power of law enforcement, under President Trump’s leadership, will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and, if you’ve broken the law, to take away your freedom.”

By Monday, Miller was on Kirk’s podcast describing, in his uniquely dystopian way, a “vast domestic terror movement” and promising to use the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to “identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks” in Kirk’s name. There is no evidence the movement he describes exists.

This type of rhetoric—a push for a no-holds-barred crackdown with the full force of the federal government—was shared by high-profile figures on the tech right such as Musk and Curtis Yarvin, who tweeted, “The firings are just the beginning!”

“This is really the moment they can claim persecution again,” a source in the tech and crypto space tells me, having seen both on- and offline how their colleagues have radicalized over the past half decade. “Everything has to have some sort of conspiracy tie-in. Nothing can be simple, it has to tie into some broader narrative … This has to be indicative of an underground transgender terrorist network, as opposed to [anything else].”

Whether they believe any of this or not, my source says, is immaterial.

“I don’t know,” they say, “whether they believe what they’re saying, or if they just think it’ll get them the attention they want.”

For now, it might be both.

This is an edition of Jake Lahut’s Inner Loop newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/inside-trumpworlds-reality-distortion-field/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

BUSINESS | NATASHA BERNAL | SEP 17, 2025 AT 9:53 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Is Bananas for Google Gemini’s AI Image Generator

The Nvidia CEO reveals his consuming love for Google’s image generator, the artsy side of Grok, and what exactly he uses Perplexity, Gemini, and ChatGPT for right now.

Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is in London, standing in front of a room full of journalists, outing himself as a huge fan of Gemini’s Nano Banana. “How could anyone not love Nano Banana? I mean Nano Banana, how good is that? Tell me it’s not true!” He addresses the room. No one responds. “Tell me it’s not true! It’s so good. I was just talking to Demis [Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind] yesterday and I said ‘How about that Nano Banana! How good is that?’”

It looks like lots of people agree with him: The popularity of the Nano Banana AI image generator—which launched in August and allows users to make precise edits to AI images while preserving the quality of faces, animals, or other objects in the background—caused a 300 million–image surge for Gemini in the first few days of September, according to a post on X by Josh Woodward, VP of Google Labs and Google Gemini.

Huang, whose company was among a cohort of big US technology companies to announce investments in data centers, supercomputers, and AI research in the UK on Tuesday, is on a high. Speaking ahead of a white-tie event with UK prime minister Keir Starmer (where he plans to wear custom black leather tails), he’s boisterously optimistic about the future of AI in the UK, saying the country is “too humble” about the country’s potential for AI advancements.

He cites the UK’s pedigree in themes as wide as the industrial revolution, steam trains, DeepMind (now owned by Google), and university researchers, as well as other tangential skills. “No one fries food better than you do,” he quips. “Your tea is good. You’re great. Come on!”

Nvidia announced a $683 million equity investment in data center builder Nscale this week, a move that—alongside investments from OpenAI and Microsoft—has propelled the company to the epicenter of this AI push in the UK. Huang estimates that Nscale will generate more than $68 billion in revenue over six years. “I’ll go on record to say I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to him,” he says, referring to Nscale CEO Josh Payne.

“As AI services get deployed—I’m sure that all of you use it. I use it every day, and it’s improved my learning, my thinking. It’s helped me access information, access knowledge a lot more efficiently. It helps me write, helps me think, it helps me formulate ideas. So my experience with AI is likely going to be everybody’s experience. I have the benefit of using all the AI—how good is that?”

The leather-jacket-wearing billionaire, who previously told WIRED that he uses AI agents in his personal life, has expanded on how he uses AI (that’s not Nano Banana) for most daily things, including his public speeches and research.

“I really like using an AI word processor because it remembers me and knows what I’m going to talk about. I could describe the different circumstance that I’m in, and yet it still knows that I’m Jensen, just in a different circumstance,” Huang explains. “In that way it could reshape what I’m doing and be helpful. It’s a thinking partner, it’s truly terrific, and it saves me a ton of time. Frankly, I think the quality of work is better.”

His favorite one to use “depends on what I’m doing,” he says. “For something more technical I will use Gemini. If I’m doing something where it’s a bit more artistic, I prefer Grok. If it’s very fast information access I prefer Perplexity—it does a really good job of presenting research to me. And for near everyday use I enjoy using ChatGPT,” Huang says.

“When I am doing something serious, I will give the same prompt to all of them, and then I ask them to, because it’s research oriented, critique each other’s work. Then I take the best one.”

In the end though, all topics lead back to Nano Banana. “AI should be democratized for everyone. There should be no person who is left behind, it’s not sensible to me that someone should be left behind on electricity or the internet of the next level of technology,” he says.

“AI is the single greatest opportunity for us to close the technology divide,” says Huang. “This technology is so easy to use—who doesn’t know how to use Nano?”

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/jensen-huang-has-gone-nano-bananas/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

SCIENCE | SANDRO IANNACCONE | SEP 17, 2025 AT 6:30 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

This Giant Subterranean Neutrino Detector Is Taking On the Mysteries of Physics

Located in China, Juno is a 17-country collaboration that will try to detect neutrinos and antineutrinos to learn more about their mass.

Photograph: Juno Collaboration

Located 700 meters underground near the city of Jiangmen in southern China, a giant sphere—35 meters in diameter and filled with more than 20,000 tons of liquid—has just started a mission that will last for decades. This is Juno, the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory, a new, large-scale experiment studying some of the most mysterious and elusive particles known to science.

Neutrinos are the most abundant particles in the universe with mass. They are fundamental particles, meaning they don’t break down into smaller constituent parts, which makes them very small and very light. They also have zero electrical charge; they are neutral—hence their name. All of this means that they very often don’t interact with other matter they come into contact with, and can pass right through it without affecting it, making them difficult to observe. It’s for this reason that they’re sometimes referred to as “ghost particles.”

They also have the ability to shift (or “oscillate”) between three different forms, also known as “flavors”: electron, mu, and tau. (Note that electron-flavored neutrinos are different from electrons; the latter are a different type of fundamental particle, with a negative charge.)

The fact that neutrinos oscillate was proven by the physicists Takaaki Kajita and Arthur Bruce McDonald. In two separate experiments, they observed that electron-flavored neutrinos oscillate into mu- and tau-flavored neutrinos. As a result they demonstrated that these particles have mass, and that the mass of each flavor is different. For this, they won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2015.

An explainer on neutrino oscillations from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

But an important yet still unknown fact is how these masses are ordered—which of the three flavors has the greatest mass, and which the least. If physicists had a better understanding of neutrino mass, this could help better describe the behavior and evolution of the universe. This is where Juno comes in.

A Unique Experiment

Neutrinos can’t be seen with conventional particle detectors. Instead, scientists have to look for the rare signs of them interacting with other matter—and this is what Juno’s giant sphere is for. Called a scintillator, it’s filled with a sensitive internal liquid made up of a solvent and two fluorescent compounds. If a neutrino passing through this matter interacts with it, it will produce a flash of light. Surrounding the liquid is a massive stainless steel lattice that supports a vast array of highly sensitive light sensors, called photomultiplier tubes, capable of detecting even a single photon produced by an interaction between a neutrino and the liquid, and converting it into a measurable electrical signal.

“The Juno experiment picks up the legacy of its predecessors, with the difference that it is much larger,” says Gioacchino Ranucci, deputy head of the experiment and the former head of Borexino, another neutrino-hunting experiment. One of the main features of Juno, Ranucci explains, is that Juno can “see” both neutrinos and their antimatter counterpart: antineutrinos. The former are typically produced in Earth’s atmosphere or by the decay of radioactive materials in Earth’s crust, or else arrive from outer space—coming from stars, black holes, supernovae, or even the Big Bang. Antineutrinos, however, are artificially produced, in this case by two nuclear power plants located near the detector.

“As they propagate, neutrinos and antineutrinos continue to oscillate, transforming into each other,” Ranucci says. Juno will be able to capture all of these signals, he explains, showing how they oscillate, “with a precision never before achieved.”

Juno’s primary goal is to find a solution to the neutrino mass-ordering problem. It’s known that the electron-flavored neutrino weighs less than the mu-flavored neutrino, but it’s not yet understood whether the third neutrino flavor, tau, weighs more than the other two (in which case, we would speak of a direct hierarchy) or not (in which case, an inverse hierarchy). By measuring, in very high resolution, the energy spectrum of antineutrinos from the reactors, Juno aims to show whether the hierarchy is normal or inverse. The collaboration expects that after about six years of data collection, it should have something approaching a statistically significant finding in answer to the question.

The neutrino signal detected by Juno on August 24.Image: Juno Collaboration

But that’s not all that’s in store for the experiment. At a still later stage, it could help solve an even deeper mystery concerning the so-called Majorana neutrino—a theorized particle that has never been observed. (Majorana particles are particles that are simultaneously also their own antiparticles; a Majorana neutrino is therefore both a neutrino and its antineutrino.) Being able to understand whether or not neutrinos are Majorana particles would possibly mean getting to the bottom of one of the most complex questions in modern physics, namely why more matter is observed in the universe than antimatter, for which there is still no complete, coherent, and definitive explanation.

This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/this-giant-subterranean-neutrino-detector-is-taking-on-the-mysteries-of-physics/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

GEAR | BOONE ASHWORTH | SEP 17, 2025 AT 6:30 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

Meta Is Debuting New Smart Glasses Today. Here’s How to Watch

Meta’s next face computers are set to be revealed at its Connect event on Wednesday evening. Some details may have already been leaked, but you can get the full rundown by tuning in live.

Photograph: David Paul Morris/Getty Images

Meta Connect, the annual event that serves as both the company’s developer conference and a platform for its new hardware announcements, is happening this week.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to take the stage at 5 pm Pacific, 8 pm Eastern, and 1 am British Summer Time on Wednesday, September 17, to announce a fleet of new smart glasses. We also expect to hear some updates on Meta’s machine intelligence efforts, and maybe a hint or two about how things are going at the company’s fledgling AI superintelligence lab.

You can watch the video of the Meta Connect livestream from Meta’s Horizon site or on the Meta for developers Facebook page. Unlike Apple or Google, Meta doesn’t stream its conference keynote on YouTube.

If you’re all in on the virtual reality future, you can also watch the event on a Meta Quest headset by going into the Horizon page and selecting the VR viewing option.

If you’re a developer and want to register for Connect, you can do that by plugging your name and email into the Meta Connect website. In the upper-right corner, look for a button that reads “Register for the livestream.” Enter your information and you’ll get information about additional presentations and developer sessions.

What to Expect

While there may be some surprises at the event, Meta did fumble its reveal earlier this week when it accidentally leaked images of some new glasses that seem queued up to be announced at Connect. The leaked image includes the word Display, which could hint that Meta is looking to put out a new pair of glasses with an actual display built into the lenses.

The company showed off its ambitions for such a wearable device at its Connect event last year when it debuted its prototype Orion frames, which relied on a wristband for navigation and a wireless puck for connectivity and computing power. The design of last year’s frames used waveguide technology to create virtual displays of images, text, and videos that appear in the wearer’s vision. Developers have had access to Orion frames for a year, so the technology is likely ready for its next step.

We’re also expecting new models of the smart glasses developed by Meta and its main brand partners, Ray-Ban and Oakley.

Tune in at 5 pm Pacific on Wednesday for more coverage of Meta Connect 2025 as it happens live.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/meta-connect-2025-how-to-watch/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

BUSINESS | NATASHA BERNAL | SEP 16, 2025 AT 5:30 PM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

US Tech Giants Race to Spend Billions in UK AI Push

Microsoft and Nvidia unveiled plans to invest up to $45 billion in the UK during US President Donald Trump’s state visit.

Photograph: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Microsoft and Nvidia have unveiled plans to invest up to $45 billion dollars into the UK economy, in a move that will bolster the building of more data centers as well as research and development into artificial intelligence.

The investment comes as US president Donald Trump travels to Britain, where he is expected to announce a US-UK tech deal alongside UK prime minister Keir Starmer.

As part of the agreement, Microsoft has committed to invest $30 billion in AI infrastructure over the next four years. The company claims this is the largest financial commitment it has ever made in the UK and will make up more than two thirds of the total investment announced into the UK this week, timed to Trump’s visit.

“We are focused on British pounds, not empty tech promises,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, told journalists in a virtual briefing ahead of the announcement today. “We will be good for every cent of this investment.” Half of the money will go to capital expansion— “all new money, all new investments,” Smith claimed—whereas the other half will go to efforts like a partnership with the data center business Nscale, to finance and use its facilities.

Nvidia, for its part, has pledged to spend up to $15 billion on AI-related R&D efforts in the UK. The chipmaker will not invest directly into building out the infrastructure, instead acting through its partners CoreWeave and Nscale.

This announcement comes alongside a new joint venture from Nvidia, Nscale, and OpenAI today, which plans to “strengthen the UK’s sovereign compute capabilities” through an AI infrastructure partnership called Stargate UK. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang traveled with Trump to the UK during his state visit this week.

“Stargate UK ensures OpenAI’s world-leading AI models can run on local computing power in the UK, for the UK,” said OpenAI in a statement. OpenAI will provide up to 8,000 GPUs in the first quarter of 2026 with the potential to scale to 31,000 GPUs over time. As part of the agreement, OpenAI says Nscale is set to significantly expand its capacity across a number of sites in the UK, including Cobalt Park in Newcastle, which will be part of a newly designated AI Growth Zone in the northeast.

“This historic commitment from Nscale shows how the UK can build the future of AI, together with our partners from the US,” Nscale CEO Josh Payne said in a statement. “It’s only by building world-class AI infrastructure that we will stay competitive in the global race.”

When asked to characterize Microsoft’s relationship with Nscale, Smith said simply, “We write the check, and they spend the money.”

Smith was quick to claim that the company did not get a request from the Trump administration to make an investment announcement. “We have had many conversations with the UK government, including with folks at Number 10, as you would expect, and those have been going on for months,” he said.

UK prime minister Keir Starmer said that he wants the UK to be the “destination of choice for companies at the forefront of technological change,” according to a joint press release issued Tuesday by Nscale. The announcements this week are part of a plan to harness homegrown talent and ensure that the UK can compete on artificial intelligence. He labeled these deals as a “decisive step” toward achieving that goal.

Just before Trump’s visit on Tuesday, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, announced a $6.8 billion investment in UK artificial intelligence efforts over the next two years. This will include funding for Google DeepMind, according to an interview the company did with BBC News. The company today also opened a $1 billion data center in the English county of Hertfordshire.

London, which is still Europe’s largest data center market, has been impacted by constraints in power availability and the lack of suitable land, according to data from real estate services firm CBRE.

The UK government deemed data centers critical national infrastructure in September 2024. However, opposition is brewing across the country as environmental, advocacy, and local residents groups complain about the environmental impact of power-hungry data centers.

Tech justice group Foxglove has called for an urgent review into the UK’s strategy on developing new data centers. “Following the queasy spectacle of CEOs from tech giants like Google, Meta and OpenAI queuing up to pay tribute at the White House this month, it’s little surprise to hear that the Trump-Big Tech axis is dead set on covering the UK in hyperscale data centres,” Campbell said in a written statement to WIRED. “Meanwhile, the UK will foot the bill for the colossal amounts of power the giants need—meaning sky-rocketing prices for households—as well as the water needed to keep them cool.”

Global Action Plan argues that the government has ignored the vast water and power consumption of hyperscale data centers, which are massive, highly automated data centers used for large-scale data processing, storage, and computing.

“More and bigger data centers mean more electricity demand and more pressure on water supplies,” says Oliver Hayes, head of policy and campaigns at Global Action Plan. “There will be a very significant impact on additional power demand. It will make it harder to reach our climate goals. It’s a trade-off, and at the moment they are not being held accountable for that trade-off.”

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-nvidia-uk-investment-trump/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

BUSINESS | KYLIE ROBISON | SEP 16, 2025 AT 4:53 PM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

OpenAI's Teen Safety Features Will Walk a Thin Line

OpenAI announced new teen safety features for ChatGPT on Tuesday as part of an ongoing effort to respond to concerns about how minors engage with chatbots. The company is building an age-prediction system that identifies if a user is under 18 years old and routes them to an “age-appropriate” system that blocks graphic sexual content. If the system detects that the user is considering suicide or self-harm, it will contact the user’s parents. In cases of imminent danger, if a user's parents are unreachable, the system may contact the authorities.

In a blog post about the announcement, CEO Sam Altman wrote that the company is attempting to balance freedom, privacy, and teen safety.

“We realize that these principles are in conflict, and not everyone will agree with how we are resolving that conflict,” Altman wrote. “These are difficult decisions, but after talking with experts, this is what we think is best and want to be transparent in our intentions.”

While OpenAI tends to prioritize privacy and freedom for adult users, for teens the company says it puts safety first. By the end of September, the company will roll out parental controls so that parents can link their child’s account to their own, allowing them to manage the conversations and disable features. Parents can also receive notifications when “the system detects their teen is in a moment of acute distress,” according to the company’s blog post, and set limits on the times of day their children can use ChatGPT.

The moves come as deeply troubling headlines continue to surface about people dying by suicide or committing violence against family members after engaging in lengthy conversations with AI chatbots. Lawmakers have taken notice, and both Meta and OpenAI are under scrutiny. Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission asked Meta, OpenAI, Google, and other AI firms to hand over information about how their technologies impact kids, according to Bloomberg.

At the same time, OpenAI is still under a court order mandating that it preserve consumer chats indefinitely—a fact that the company is extremely unhappy about, according to sources I’ve spoken to. Today’s news is both an important step toward protecting minors and a savvy PR move to reinforce the idea that conversations with chatbots are so personal that consumer privacy should only be breached in the most extreme circumstances.

“A Sexbot Avatar in ChatGPT”

From the sources I’ve spoken to at OpenAI, the burden of protecting users weighs heavily on many researchers. They want to create a user experience that is fun and engaging, but it can quickly veer into becoming disastrously sycophantic. It's positive that companies like OpenAI are taking steps to protect minors. At the same time, in the absence of federal regulation, there's still nothing forcing these firms to do the right thing.

In a recent interview, Tucker Carlson pushed Altman to answer exactly who is making these decisions that impact the rest of us. The OpenAI chief pointed to the model behavior team, which is responsible for tuning the model for certain attributes. “The person I think you should hold accountable for those calls is me,” Altman added. “Like, I’m a public face. Eventually, like, I’m the one that can overrule one of those decisions or our board.”

He’s right, yet some of the imminent harms seem to escape him. In another podcast interview with YouTuber Cleo Abrams, Altman said that “sometimes we do get tempted” to launch products “that would really juice growth.” He added: “We haven’t put a sexbot avatar in ChatGPT yet.” Yet! How strange.

OpenAI recently released research on who uses ChatGPT, and how they use it. That research excluded users who were under the age of 18. We don’t yet have a full understanding of how teens are using AI, and it’s an important question to answer before the situation grows more dire.

Sources Say

Elon Musk’s xAI is suing a former staffer who left the company to join OpenAI, alleging in a complaint that he misappropriated trade secrets and confidential information. In the current era of AI companies swapping staffers for multimillion-dollar compensation packages, I’m sure we’ll see more of these types of lawsuits pop up.

The staffer in question, Xuechen Li, never made it to OpenAI’s internal Slack, according to two sources at the company. It’s unclear whether his offer was rescinded, or if he was onboarded only to be let go. OpenAI and Li did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

This is an edition of Kylie Robison’s Model Behavior newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/openai-launches-teen-safety-features/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

POLITICS | DELL CAMERON | SEP 16, 2025 AT 2:53 PM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

Charlie Kirk Shooting Suspect Charged as Prosecutor Seeks Death Penalty

Utah County prosecutors on Tuesday charged Tyler Robinson in the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, a murder officials say was politically motivated. They intend to seek the death penalty.

Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray announced the indictment at a midday news conference, listing charges of aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, and commission of a violent offense in the presence of a child. Robinson, 22, is also charged with two counts of obstruction and two counts of witness tampering.

“Charlie Kirk was murdered while engaging in one of our most sacred and cherished American rights,” Gray said. “The bedrock of our democratic republic is the free exchange of ideas in a search for truth, understanding, and a more perfect union.”

Gray said that the murder was considered an aggravated offense because it was believed to be motivated by the victim’s political expression. On the matter of the death penalty, he added: “I do not take this decision lightly, and it is a decision I have made independently as county attorney based solely on the available evidence and circumstances and nature of the crime.”

Robinson will make his first court appearance at 3 pm MST on Tuesday.

Kirk, 31, was fatally shot on September 10 while taking questions from students. The cofounder of Turning Point USA, he was credited with galvanizing young conservatives and playing a pivotal role in Donald Trump’s 2024 White House return.

The shooting sparked chaos on campus, where delayed and contradictory emergency alerts left many students and faculty scrambling in confusion. Vigils for Kirk have since been held in Arizona, New York, and Washington, among other states. Across the US, Kirk’s murder has become both a rallying cry for far-right retribution and fuel for an assault on civil society.

Investigators claim forensic evidence links Robinson to the shooting, with FBI director Kash Patel telling Fox & Friends that matching DNA was found on a towel wrapped around the rifle and on a screwdriver recovered from the rooftop where the fatal shot was fired. Patel also said investigators believe Robinson wrote a note of his alleged intent to kill Kirk, bolstering claims the attack was premeditated.

An indictment released Tuesday adds vivid details to the allegations. Prosecutors say surveillance footage captured Robinson climbing onto a campus rooftop, lying prone in a “sniper position,” and firing from nearly 160 yards away. Investigators recovered cartridges at the scene with hand-engraved messages, which prosecutors argue points to premeditation and motive.

Prosecutors also cited interviews with Robinson’s parents and roommate, who said he expressed anger that Kirk “spreads too much hate” and admitted he had “enough of his hatred.” The filing further alleges that Robinson told his roommate to stay silent if approached by police and that children were visible near the stage when Kirk was shot—factors prosecutors say aggravated the seriousness of the crime.

The indictment recounts an interview with Robinson's mother, who told investigators her son had grown more political in the past year "and had started to lean more to the left," the indictment claims, citing "pro-gay" and "trans-rights" views. She described him as becoming increasingly consumed by online debates and grievances, noting his fixation with political topics seemed to intensify in the weeks leading up to the shooting, the indictment says. She added that Robinson had also begun to date his roommate, a transgender woman, adding that his father has “very different political views.”

Charging documents recount an exchange that allegedly took place between Robinson and his roommate, who is said to be fully cooperating with authorities. According to the indictment, the roommate told police they found a note under Robinson’s keyboard reading, “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I’m going to take it,” and later produced texts in which Robinson allegedly confessed, “I am, I’m sorry,” when asked if he was the one who murdered Kirk.

In the messages, Robinson allegedly described a plan to retrieve a stashed rifle, discussed wrapping the gun in a towel and leaving it in a bush to avoid prints, mentioning engraving cartridges as “a big meme,” and contemplated turning himself in through a neighbor who is a deputy.

“remember how I was engraving bullets? The fuckin messages are mostly a big meme, if I see 'notices bulge uwu' on fox new I might have a stroke alright im gonna have to leave it, that really fucking sucks,” Robinson allegedly wrote in a text message, according to the indictment, citing one of the memes engraved on bullets discovered by investigators.

Robinson repeatedly told the roommate to delete their messages, to refuse interviews, and to ask for a lawyer if questioned—details prosecutors cite as the basis for obstruction and witness-tampering counts.

Investigators are also scrutinizing Robinson’s digital footprint. Screenshots obtained by The Washington Post and other outlets allegedly show him confessing in a private Discord chat hours before surrendering: “It was me at UVU yesterday. i’m sorry for all of this.” The same user followed with another message saying he was about to turn himself in through “a sheriff friend.” Discord reportedly confirmed it gave copies of the messages to law enforcement and said it found no evidence that Robinson used the platform to plan or promote violence.

Robinson was arrested roughly 33 hours after the shooting, with authorities saying his parents first recognized him in photos and urged him to surrender. He later turned himself in at the Washington County Sheriff’s Office.

Kirk’s murder was quickly weaponized to marshal power in Washington, with Trump and Vice President JD Vance spinning allegations in tandem about a broader left-wing conspiracy—neither offering any evidence to support their claims. On Monday, Vance hosted an episode of The Charlie Kirk Show from the White House, where he and other officials pledged a crackdown on liberal organizations vaguely accused of fueling unrest.

Critics say the White House is exploiting the death to advance partisan aims, using an open criminal case to exact political retribution through the machinery of law.

US security services have long stressed that domestic extremism is driven by varied ideologies, from racially or ethnically motivated movements to anti-government and religious grievances. Multiple studies, nevertheless, have found that right-wing extremists commit far more attacks—and deadlier ones—than the left, a statistical reality that cuts directly against the administration’s script.

A Department of Justice study showing that far-right extremist violence “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the US was removed from the DOJ’s website this week without explanation.

Updated 3:20 pm and 3:55 pm ET, September 16, 2025: Added additional details from the indictment against Robinson.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/charlie-kirk-shooting-suspect-tyler-robinson-charged-death-penalty/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

CULTURE | MEGAN FAROKHMANESH | SEP 16, 2025 AT 1:57 PM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

Baby Steps Is a Hiking Game That Trolls ‘Slightly Problematic’ Men

The walking simulator, launching September 23 on PlayStation and Steam, stars a jobless 35-year-old “privileged, white male” whose pride stops him from getting help.

Courtesy of Devolver Digital

Game developer Bennett Foddy was watching a Greek myth unfold in front of him.

A playtester for his latest project, Baby Steps, was struggling to navigate the game’s lead—Nate, a 35-year-old “failson” in a stained onesie—up a slippery hill. Each time, the terrain proved to be too much, and Nate skidded uselessly down it.

Foddy has a reputation for making onerous games that take a little bit of masochism to master. This was not one of those times. Neatly placed next to the slippery hill was a staircase, which Foddy says the player took note of after the third or fourth fall. However, this modern-day Sisyphus refused to quit; he continued to flop Nate’s thick limbs up that hill again and again, and he continued to fall again and again. The playtester’s “intense need to climb that mudslide—it's funny to me, it's gratifying as a designer,” says Foddy. “I loved that he was doing it. Like, that's not productive.”

Unbeknownst to the playtester, he was Foddy's target audience. Baby Steps, launching September 23 for PlayStation 5 and PC, entreats gamers to examine how much they unconsciously adhere to damaging masculine ideas, including an unwillingness to appear weak or incapable, whether that’s in how well they play a game or how willing they are to sometimes take the L. It makes its hero less like the muscled protagonists of games past and more like the players: unhelpfully stubborn types with what Foddy calls "slightly problematic" views of what it means to succeed that are actually holding them back.

Baby Steps is a failure-to-launch story with an Isekai twist, as Nate is transported from the safety of his parents’ basement couch to an unfamiliar land. In trailers for the game, it’s easy to see what Foddy means. Nate lacks any semblance of a so-called man’s man. He’s awkward, unkempt, and overweight. He fumbles his words and can barely even walk without falling over; players control Nate by literally moving one leg at a time, controls reminiscent of ragdoll runner QWOP, the game that put Foddy on the map. Baby Steps players will likely spend much of their time tumbling off cliffs or pratfalling down gentle hills.

From the start, Foddy says, Nate is offered help by someone who wants to teach him the ropes, give him a pair of shoes, maybe even a map. “And he can't accept that help,” Foddy says. “To me, that's a joke about a kind of symbolic masculine self-sufficiency and the limitations of that.” Foddy’s body of work has always been about difficulty and failure; Baby Steps is asking players to consider why they subject themselves to this sort of pain needlessly.

In video games, capital M masculinity has long been the standard for male leads: a (typically white) confident protagonist in good shape, demonstrating unusual strength in a hero role. The idea that games are made by men, for men, has been so pervasive in the history of video games that it’s prompted entire harassment campaigns targeting anyone who doesn’t fit that description. More extreme examples include pockets of online gaming culture where toxic communities persistently reject anyone they deem as “DEI”—women, people of color, marginalized communities—to uphold sexist and racist ideologies.

Illinois Tech digital humanities and media studies professor Carly Kocurek says that while masculine tropes aren’t inherently bad, “they can limit the types of stories that get told and the kinds of ideas that make it to market, which can really dampen creativity and innovation.”

“A lot of pop culture stories and media rely on a shared pool of influences,” says Kocurek. She points to movies like Star Wars that follow the hero’s journey, or fantasy characters like dwarves and elves that have been popularized by J.R.R. Tolkien and other writers. “We get certain ideas about what a hero is, what a man is, and we see them again and again.”

Consider iconic game characters like Halo’s Master Chief, Metal Gear’s Solid Snake, or even Nintendo’s mustachioed plumber, Mario. “Even Spider-Man is kind of represented as a jock in video games,” says Foddy.

Foddy, who developed Baby Steps alongside Ape Out developers Gabe Cuzzilo and Maxi Boch, says that most often, players adopt this role of a savior character—someone capable and self-sufficient who reflects a heroic ideal. Gender doesn’t always matter; Aloy, the heroine from the Horizon series, exhibits just as many masculine ideals as Nathan Drake of Uncharted. When it came to Baby Steps, the team wanted to go in the opposite direction: a character who’s trying to live up to those expectations but just isn’t capable of it.

Still, Foddy says the game is sympathetic to its lead. He’s up to the task and by the game’s end will have scaled an entire mountain; he just doesn’t begin his journey very well equipped.

“He's a nerd, as is everybody who made the game,” Foddy says. “We're also gamers, so you know, we're not out to get gamers.”

Part of Baby Steps involves Nate, who comes from a wealthy family with plenty of opportunity, grappling with his own troublesome behavior. “He's part of the privileged, white-male default group,” Foddy says. “That's making his situation more burdensome for him because it underscores that his failures to accomplish success are of his own making.” But the team was not interested in parroting stereotypical bootstrap advice. “We really wanted to resist the kind of boomer morality play of ‘what you really need to do is get a job and start meeting your responsibilities,’ and ‘you're just lazy and you're too oriented to pleasure.’”

In playing this character, Foddy hopes people might reflect more on their own motivations and behavior, the why of what they’re doing. During his time as a developer, Foddy has noticed that there is a certain subset of gamers who refuse to take help. They’re the stereotype of a guy who won’t ask for directions or, for example, skips every in-game tutorial.

Others, he says, are of the “git gud” mindset—a slang way to say that you suck at video games and should try harder. Discussions around difficulty and skill have haunted video games spaces for more than a decade, whether it was about playing in online spaces or challenging series like Dark Souls; arguments about player skill versus how hard a game should be are already taking place in the Silksong community, roughly a week after its launch. “Many games really lean into competition as the primary experience,” Kocurek says, “and there is a kind of feedback loop because you get games that embed certain ideals and values that attract certain players who like those.”

Foddy’s games often challenge what he calls “masculine pride” by repeatedly subjecting players to failure. Baby Steps is just a little more open about it in its narrative. Will the lesson land? Hard to say. The playtester determined to conquer the mudslide never did manage to brute-force it. “He started to feel like he was boring us after, you know, half an hour of it,” Foddy says.

Foddy can relate; he too has found himself climbing difficult areas with no reward in other games. “Did I do that for masculine pride,” he says. “Or did I do it because I was actually taking pleasure in the moment-to-moment play? I don't think we even know why we're doing it half the time.”

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/baby-steps-is-a-hiking-game-that-trolls-slightly-problematic-men/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

SECURITY | ANDY GREENBERG | SEP 16, 2025 AT 1:07 PM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

A DHS Data Hub Exposed Sensitive Intel to Thousands of Unauthorized Users

The Department of Homeland Security's mandate to carry out domestic surveillance has been a concern for privacy advocates since the organization was first created in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Now a data leak affecting the DHS's intelligence arm has shed light not just on how the department gathers and stores that sensitive information—including about its surveillance of Americans—but on how it once left that data exposed to thousands of government and private sector workers and even foreign nationals who were never authorized to see it.

An internal DHS memo obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and shared with WIRED reveals that from March to May of 2023, a DHS online platform used by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) to share sensitive but unclassified intelligence information and investigative leads among the DHS, the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center, local law enforcement, and intelligence fusion centers across the US was misconfigured, accidentally exposing restricted intelligence information to all users of the platform.

Access to the data, according to a DHS inquiry described in the memo, was meant to be limited to users of the Homeland Security Information Network's intelligence section, known as HSIN-Intel. Instead it was set to grant access to “everyone,” exposing the information to HSIN's tens of thousands of users. The unauthorized users who had access included US government workers focused on fields unrelated to intelligence or law enforcement such as disaster response, as well as private sector contractors and foreign government staff with access to HSIN.

“DHS advertises HSIN as secure and says the information it holds is sensitive, critical national security information,” says Spencer Reynolds, an attorney for the Brennan Center for Justice who obtained the memo via FOIA and shared it with WIRED. “But this incident raises questions about how seriously they take information security. Thousands and thousands of users gained access to information they were never supposed to have.”

HSIN-Intel's data includes everything from law enforcement leads and tips to reports on foreign hacking and disinformation campaigns, to analysis of domestic protest movements. The memo about the HSIN-Intel breach specifically mentions, for instance, a report discussing “protests relating to a police training facility in Atlanta”—likely the Stop Cop City protests opposing the creation of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center—noting that it focused on “media praising actions like throwing stones, fireworks and Molotov cocktails at police.”

In total, according to the memo about the DHS internal inquiry, 439 I&A “products” on the HSIN-Intel portion of the platform were improperly accessed 1,525 times. Of those unauthorized access instances, the report found that 518 were private sector users and another 46 were non-US citizens. The instances of foreign user accesses were “almost entirely” focused on cybersecurity information, the report notes, and 39 percent of all the improperly accessed intelligence products involved cybersecurity, such as foreign state-sponsored hacker groups and foreign targeting of government IT systems. The memo also noted that some of the unauthorized US users who viewed the information would have been eligible to have accessed the restricted information if they’d asked to be considered for authorization.

“When this coding error was discovered, I&A immediately fixed the problem and investigated any potential harm,” a DHS spokesperson told WIRED in a statement. “Following an extensive review, multiple oversight bodies determined there was no impactful or serious security breach. DHS takes all security and privacy measures seriously and is committed to ensuring its intelligence is shared with federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, and private sector partners to protect our homeland from the numerous adversarial threats we face."

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees US intelligence agencies, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Although the exposure occurred under the Biden administration, the memo highlights the risks of surveillance data collected on Americans that persists under the current administration, argues Jeramie Scott, the director of the Surveillance Oversight Program at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a digital rights nonprofit. In fact, he argues, the relative lack of transparency of the Trump administration and DHS's hostility to oversight measures suggests that if a similar data breach occurred now, the public might never know. As an example, he points to the effective shuttering of the 150-person DHS oversight arm known as the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. “If this was occurring then, is this type of thing going to be captured now?” Scott asks. "Everyone should be concerned about the fact that things like this happen, and oversight has only deteriorated since this incident occurred."

According to the memo about the DHS's inquiry into its intelligence exposure, the DHS Office of Privacy initially considered the breach to have had “minimal to low impact." But the author of the memo, whose name has been redacted in the form released under FOIA, determined that the Office of Privacy hadn't fully considered the personally identifiable information (PII) exposed in the breach, particularly that of Americans, contradicting that “low impact” assessment. The memo recommended as one finding of the inquiry that I&A retrain staff on the definitions of PII.

Two pieces of legislation currently before Congress seek to reform or restrict DHS's surveillance powers, one called the Strengthening Oversight of DHS Intelligence Act and another that would amend the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2026 to place new restrictions on funding for some DHS domestic surveillance programs. The Brennan Center's Reynolds notes, however, that the amendments have specific exceptions for DHS's sharing of intelligence with other government agencies or contractors, so likely wouldn't affect HSIN-Intel.

The memo about the DHS's inquiry into the HSIN-Intel data exposure, Reynolds also points out, doesn't assess the effects of the breach on all of the other organizations whose data was leaked in the incident, or even mention that other agencies' troves of sensitive data were impacted. “Given the volume of data, it's highly likely they would have been,” Reynolds says. “This should raise alarm bells for the agencies nationwide who trust the Office of Intelligence and Analysis with their information.”

More broadly, EPIC's Scott argues that the breach should concern not just the DHS or its partner agencies, but everyone who potentially falls under the DHS's surveillance remit—in other words, every American. “It affects everyone in the US because of the broadness of the surveillance and intelligence programs that they conduct," says Scott. “We're talking about an agency that's doing domestic intelligence. This implicates all of us.”

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/a-dhs-data-hub-exposed-sensitive-intel-to-thousands-of-unauthorized-users/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

SECURITY | LILY HAY NEWMAN | SEP 16, 2025 AT 11:44 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

How to Set Up and Use a Burner Phone

Obtaining and using a true burner phone is hard—but not impossible. Here are the steps you need to take to protect your mobile communications based on the risks you face.

Photo-Illustration: Wired Staff; Getty Images

Authorities around the world can use your cell phone to track your location and potentially access other sensitive private information about you. One possible protection from this data collection is a burner phone. As invasive state surveillance ramps up globally—including new initiatives in the United States to monitor travelers, protesters, and vulnerable populations—privacy tools that were formerly the domain of digital hermits and people involved in organized crime are now more and more appealing to everyone.

Burner phones, which are often “dumb” flip phones, can be loaded with prepaid minutes and offer anonymity when rotated frequently, purchased with cash, and siloed from any connections to you or your digital life. The idea is that cops, or other actors, are unlikely to be tracking a fresh burner phone in real time. But the crucial additional layer of protection that properly used burner phones offer is that even if they are—or they later tie communications from a burner phone to activity they are investigating—they can’t use digital ties to establish who was using it.

“Burner phones are used for a very specific, time-limited purpose and then discarded,” says Danacea Vo, founder of Cyberlixir, a cybersecurity provider for nonprofits and vulnerable communities. “They’re mostly used to separate your identity from the identity of the device. Anonymity is the goal.”

Using a burner phone may seem like overkill, and it takes money, time, and some know-how to actually use them effectively. But once you understand the concepts, you can apply them to your specific situation to make more informed choices about how to best protect yourself and your privacy. This guide talks about burner phones that meet the strict definition, as well as “alternative” phones, or altphones, that apply many of the same concepts of burner phones but don’t offer the same degree of anonymity.

Assessing Your Risks

Whether you should be using a burner phone depends on your risk model—the factors and concerns that are specific to you. Every one of us is exposed to a different set of risks that can vary depending on your nationality, citizenship, political views, profession, and much more. For example, lawyers, activists, and journalists may be at higher risk of being targeted by authoritarian governments than, say, an electrician or a stay-at-home mom.

Your risk level and tolerance changes over time—possibly even from one day to the next—and this influences how you communicate with people and the devices you use to do so. When considering using a burner device, think about who you are trying to keep from getting your data or communications.

“Use cases for burners may include: crossing borders, traveling to a risky environment, or participating in or documenting a protest,” says Mohammed Al-Maskati, digital security helpline director at the rights group Access Now. “People should make these decisions based on their risk profile and the threats they feasibly face.”

Even if you conclude that using a true burner phone is right for you in certain situations, keep in mind that you can, and should, still use your regular devices for the vast majority of your digital activity. Unless you are actively hiding your existence or residence, you likely do not need to regularly use burner phones. And that’s a good thing, because taking the precautions required to establish the anonymity needed to maintain a device as a true burner phone—even for just one day—is challenging.

“Burner phones are almost impossible to keep anonymous,” says Rebecca Williams, a senior strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union’s privacy and data governance unit, who recently organized a community burner phone workshop in Brooklyn, New York. “No burner phone is perfect.”

Setting Up a Burner Phone

The hardest—and arguably the most critical—aspect of setting up a burner phone is purchasing the device and corresponding prepaid service in a way that preserves your anonymity. It’s not a burner phone, for example, if you purchased it with your credit card, your best friend’s credit card, or your neighbor’s credit card.

So purchase your burner with cash or consider using a prepaid debit card that you previously purchased with cash. Depending on where you’re shopping for your burner phone, these transactions may blend in a bit more than a cash purchase. Keep in mind, though, that for the latter to work you also have to take steps to shield your identity when purchasing the debit card.

Ideally, authorities or other actors will never discover the activity of your burner phone; but realistically, you need to be operating under the assumption that they eventually will. That is the point at which the separation between your identity and the burner phone is tested. But even if you can’t perfectly shield yourself, you can make it more difficult to establish a connection.

Every step in traveling to and from the purchase requires the same forethought as buying the phone itself. First, leave your personal phone or any other devices that connect to Wi-Fi or cell service at home. Wear a hat, mask, and generic, unmarked clothing to travel and purchase the device. Make sure to cover identifying features like tattoos. Also, remember not to use a car connected to you or anyone you know to get there since license plate readers and data collected by a vehicle could reveal your travels. Paying for public transit with a credit card or taking a rideshare ride through your personal account could also create a link, particularly if you are planning to buy your device in a low-traffic area, so plan your travel carefully.

You should buy the device in a location where you don’t normally shop or visit. Keep in mind, too, that almost all mainstream electronics retailers and big box stores implement extensive surveillance that includes security cameras, but also potentially things like facial recognition scanning. Your mask and neutral clothing can help, but if you can find an independently owned store that sells prepaid phones and may not be monetizing customer data as aggressively as a big company, there may be fewer surveillance records capturing the transaction.

If you’re contemplating having someone else buy the burner device for you, consider a couple of things. First, having them purchase the phone for you potentially involves them in whatever you’re planning to do with the phone, even if they are otherwise completely unconnected to the activity. Relatedly, you may think that no one knows that you’re pals with, say, certain customers you see regularly at your job or an acquaintance from your gym—but if someone is going to all the trouble of tracking your burner phone in a massive haystack of cell phone data, they can potentially figure out your connections to your decoy.

“A good thing about burner phones is they can serve a purpose without compromising a wider network, for example your family. Using one reduces risk not just for the individual, but for the group,” says Cyberlixir’s Vo. “They reduce the risk of association.”

In the United States you do not need to show identification or any other documentation to purchase a prepaid phone or SIM card, though some other countries record identity information alongside purchases. Many prepaid cell phones do require activation and a certain amount of setup that salespeople may offer to help you with on the spot. Wait to do the setup later, though.

In books, movies, and television, burner phones are often depicted as old-school flip phones, and this type of phone is a convenient choice because their feature set is so limited, leaving less room for mistakes that could potentially expose your identity. A prepaid smartphone package or Wi-Fi-only device newly purchased with cash can also be a burner phone—but you should only log into purpose-made burner accounts and only use the burner phone on highly trafficked public Wi-Fi. Never join your home Wi-Fi or any other Wi-Fi that could reveal your everyday habits or movements, because this would leave digital breadcrumbs tied to your identity that are routinely used in law enforcement investigations.

Using a Burner Phone

Do not turn on the burner phone at all until you are about to use it for its limited duration purpose. Remember that the first time you turn on a cell phone and it connects to the network, the mobile provider starts getting location data based on which cell tower the phone is connected to.

“Do not power the phone on near your home, work, or usual hangouts,” Cyberlixir’s Vo says. “Activate and test the phone somewhere far away, preferably in a crowded or busy area where you blend in.”

Keep the phone off and ideally in a faraday bag whenever you are going about your daily life, preventing it from inadvertently generating data about your movements. Only use it for short stints and ideally for one to seven days max. No matter how careful you are, using a burner phone long term will eventually erode its anonymity, because anyone who cares to look could start to see patterns in the cell data over time.

Another important detail: Using a “dumb phone” as a burner phone almost always means that you will not have access to end-to-end encrypted communications software on the device. In other words, part of the necessity of rotating the phones regularly is that authorities would be able to access call records and text messages. Access to end-to-end encrypted communication apps is one potential advantage of taking on a prepaid smartphone as a burner, but you have to weigh the pros and cons for your scenario.

In either case, you should use your burner phone in an extremely, obsessively limited way for its intended purpose and absolutely nothing else. Write down phone numbers that you will contact using the burner phone rather than sending them or saving them in your regular personal devices, and never send your burner phone number to anyone from one of your everyday devices.

When you are done with the burner phone, make sure that you get rid of it in a thoughtful way as well. “At the end of the intended use, consider steps to eliminate information, remove SIM cards and/or memory cards, making sure not to leave a potential vulnerability after you,” says Access Now’s Al-Maskati.

Using an Alternative Phone

Depending on your risk model, it may not be appropriate or even the most practical to use a true burner phone. Instead, you may want to consider using an altphone to separate elements of your digital life.

“There is a lot of confusion, because ‘burner phone’ is a generic term,” says Matt Mitchell, CEO of the risk mitigation firm Safety Sync Group. “I usually try to group tactics and advice based on goals. It begins with why a normal phone isn't good for privacy and then a dial on how private you’re trying to get. The privacy goals are the dial—from safer hygiene, to more secure operating systems, to straight-up locked-down phones.”

For many people, an altphone or “lighter” burner phone is likely to be a smartphone that allows a wide range of communications and access to privacy-enhancing tools such as encrypted messaging apps like Signal, VPNs, online tracker blockers, and more. This way you can tune your personal privacy dial to keep certain web browsing, software use, media consumption, or communication more private and anonymous than it would be on your normal devices.

“What are you trying to protect? If you're just trying to obscure your phone number from somebody, you can do that in a much lighter way” than using a heavily anonymized device, the ACLU’s Williams says. “But if you're really trying to go off grid, you have to do all this other stuff.

An altphone may be a smartphone that you separate as much as possible from your identity, perhaps a phone that you only use for attending protests. Or it could be an old phone you repurpose and use for things like traveling. How you set the privacy dial depends on the use case.

“A repurposed phone can be used for an extended period of time,” Cyberlixir’s Vo says. “A repurposed phone already has your traces, even with factory reset. There might be a sales receipt, CCTV log, or someone taking a picture of you talking on the phone. So they are useful for compartmentalizing activities. Work versus personal phone is the most obvious example. Or one for international travel.” Reused devices also retain certain identifiers such as IMEI numbers over time.

Using a smartphone as a second device does have its own considerations. When it comes to mainstream devices, “smartphones do a terrible job at protecting people’s privacy and securing their communications,” says Access Now’s Al-Maskati. “If people obtain a smartphone to use as a burner, it’s best to reset to factory settings, never connect any real accounts (AppleID, Google, social media), and do not sync any other information, as well as disabling unnecessary location and other services.”

You should only use your altphone for its intended purpose—if it’s a phone you want to take to protests, for example, it shouldn’t be used for texting friends or online shopping. As with a true burner phone, you should avoid using it in the same location that you use other devices—in other words, avoid connecting to the same Wi-Fi networks. Don’t turn your altphone on alongside your day-to-day devices and, relatedly, don’t carry them all together unless your altphone is in a Faraday bag. Only provide contact information for the altphone to those who need it.

Whether you’re using a burner phone or an altphone, though, the bottom line is that there are no guarantees or perfect solutions. And if there is absolutely no room for error, go analogue and don’t bring or involve a phone in whatever you’re doing.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-set-up-use-burner-phone/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

CULTURE | MATTHA BUSBY | SEP 16, 2025 AT 6:30 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

Human Design Is Blowing Up. Following It Might Make You Leave Your Spouse

Travis Day regrets being so strict with his ex-partner about never sleeping in the same bed.

According to human design, the New Age “synthesis” of astrology, the I Ching book of Chinese wisdom, Kabbalah, and the chakra system, “everyone should sleep in their own bed at night” to preserve their auras, says the blond 38-year-old Los Angeles County–based surfer, who’s been following the practice rigidly for the past five years.

“She was not happy and really hated having to go back to her place,” says Day, now a human design coach with 11,000 followers on Instagram. He didn’t know how much the “auric distancing” bothered her, he says, “until she finally expressed it when we were breaking up.”

Human design dictates that people inevitably fall into five archetypal personality categories: “manifestors,” generators, manifesting generators, reflectors, and projectors. The mystical, mechanical inner-discovery system turned Day’s life around when he spontaneously received a reading on a beach just outside of LA in August 2020. He was at a financial and emotional “rock bottom” amid the failure of his “beachproof” dog accessory brand, but that initial personality analysis represented “the first time someone actually saw me.”

Day was told that he was projector and that he shouldn’t hustle hard but instead follow the intuition of his spleen, the little-understood organ in the upper abdomen that is traditionally believed to be the seat of bad temper.

“For a long time I had depression and talked terribly to myself,” the California native tells me over a Zoom call. “But human design showed me that I actually hated not being me.”

Human design, a philosophy that spans from self-improvement to more extreme beliefs like life being predetermined, alien influence on Earth, and a coming planetary shift, is approaching a high-watermark cultural moment. It might not be long before the phrase, “that’s so mani-gen” is as common, in certain circles, as “that’s so Leo.” Some human design coaches have more than 100,000 followers on social media, offering people advice on everything from love lives to how to get rich.

There are coaching programs and entire centers dedicated to learning and teaching the practice as retreats are cropping up in wellness hot spots from Puerto Escondido, Mexico, to Sofia, Bulgaria. Readings can cost hundreds of dollars; TikTok creator Kendra Hilty, who went viral after documenting how she fell in love with her psychiatrist, received $3,000 for three months of weekly human design readings, according to The Cut. Even as I’m writing this article, I pass a bookstore in Vancouver, British Columbia, with a human design book prominently displayed in its front window.

The buzz around this radical system has led people to take life-changing decisions like ending their marriages or moving countries after single readings, which can also be conducted with ChatGPT. “You may realize you don’t love your partner, you hate your job, you can’t stand where you live, and you’re dying inside,” Day says. But he tells WIRED there are culty elements in the ecosystem of training connected to this “new astrology.”

In the new season of Love is Blind: UK, contestant Patrick Justus, a human design coach and “splenic projector,” like Day, propels the phrase “trust your spleen” into the zeitgeist; the show has used the slogan in its marketing ads next to Justus wearing an eye mask. “Listening to my spleen is the best way for me to find the love of my life,” he tells one of his first dates on the show.

After several promising dates with singer Aanu Adewole, Justus starts to doubt the message from his spleen, noting it is “silent.” He dumps Adewole after she appears reluctant to sing for him and confesses that if her mother vetoed him she would drop him. “I have to follow my spleen,” Justus tells her. “It breaks my heart to tell you I’m breaking up with you.” (It later emerged that another woman may have been pregnant with Justus’ child during the filming of the series and that he had omitted to mention it. In a statement Justus provided to the show for its reunion episode, he said: “2025 has been life-changing as I embrace the joy of becoming a father.”)

Justus’ seemingly strict adherence to his human design is not an anomaly. One coach tells WIRED she decided to divorce her husband after doing a reading on a flight to Hawaii, where they were due to start a new life together. To follow the teachings attached to one’s human design is to “decondition” from the societal influences that have molded people to be not their true selves. But Redditors report being scared to “decondition” and make the drastic lifestyle changes required to bring them into greater accordance with their design.

Others claim to have gone to extremes in attempts to live fully in accordance with the teachings and what Day describes as “not self-conditioning forces.” These supposedly show up when one is out of alignment with their design and can include frustration, anger, bitterness, or disappointment. The drastic measures some have taken to “self-harmonize” have included moving alone to remote areas. In an Instagram reel, one human design advocate promotes the consumption of “single-ingredient foods” such as polenta to live within their design.

Erin Claire Jones, a human design coach with 172,000 followers on Instagram, says the detail in human design assessments is also part of its appeal.

“I've seen the most skeptical people fall in love with it because it's practical, but it's also so specific,” she says, noting the rise of human design from the extreme fringes toward the mainstream in recent years reflects an increasing collective desire to “learn about ourselves,” warts and all.

Over the past decade Jones has sold 43,000 personalized design guides, mostly for $95 each, conducted sessions with 4,000 people, and trained another 1,500 in how to give readings, en route to publishing the book How Do You Choose? with publisher HarperCollins this year. “Human design is far more mechanical [than astrology] in terms of, ‘Hey, this is how you make decisions.’” Sometimes she observes people and guesses their designs at parties, but she admits to not always getting them right.

Jones, who has blond highlights and well-defined cheekbones, says she has worked with a host of startups and CEOs of small companies to help improve teamwork and boost productivity. She helps people use human design within their own families to help foster more harmonious relations, and also does so herself. “My daughters both have entirely different designs than mine. My husband does too,” she says, explaining that, like many over coaches, she is a projector. “It's been so useful to be like, ‘I'm not expecting either of my daughters to be anything like me.’”

Human design was born in 1987 when Canadian former advertising executive Robert Krakower, a rumored ketamine enthusiast who had been living like a hippie and residing in a dilapidated casita in Ibiza, claimed to have had an intense transcendental encounter with “the voice” over the course of eight days. As origin myths go, his makes Moses at the burning bush sound almost low-key.

Krakower, a bearded mufti headdress-wearer who worked part-time at a local school, was walking with his dog when it picked up a scent and approached an abandoned house, noticing a light beneath the door. He shouted at the door and demanded to know, “Who’s there?” he recalled once in a lecture in Germany. Once inside, the heavy smoker said he heard a voice he imagined to come from “a cigar-smoking 155-year-old woman.”

Then Krakower claimed he started gushing with sweat from head to toe. He went back to his nearby home and said “the voice” instructed him to place his Bible, Bhagavad Gita, and Stanford biology textbook together, along with a chessboard and a copper coil. He said he was told to burn a combination of herbs from the shelves and that a series of cosmic revelations ensued, spanning the big bang, the nature of being, the “crystals of consciousness,” and “rave cosmology,” a far-out prophecy he went on to make, predicting alien influence in a prophesied influx of disabled and mute children born in or after 2027.

All of this information would help Krakower—who soon renamed himself Ra Uru Hu, a play on his name Robert, a word from “the voice,” and the moment when he demanded to know who was behind the door—forge the pseudoscientific human design system and the bodygraphs which help uniquely define each person according to a series of numbers in his 1992 guide, The Black Book. “Madness is an interesting thing,” said Krakower, who was a “splenic manifestor” and died in 2011 of a heart attack at age 62. “I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Like, caught in this incredible, choiceless movie.”

In accordance with Krakower’s prophecy, Richard Beaumont, the director of Human Design UK, who worked closely with Krakower for years before his death, has already purchased the domain name Silentbabies.com. “There's going to be a new species coming in February 2027,” he says, sipping a glass of white wine in front of a human design chart over Zoom from his home in the west of England.

“They're not going to be human, but they will come through human women.” (The human design school Krakower founded, the Jovian Archive, sells an online course centered on the alien prophecy for $2,079, and the organization warns of “imitators and unlicensed black marketeers” across the global network of licenses, trademarks, and authorized teachers.) Human design is not a belief system, says Beaumont, who has 38,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel. “This is an endless knowledge … We're not here to interfere with who we are; we're here to decondition.”

Day—who recently founded a “projector only” online community dedicated to “deconditioning” and other activities like singles nights—claims that some leading figures in the movement can be incredibly prescriptive. Last year he won a raffle to attend a retreat hosted by certain high-profile teachers. There, he says, the cultic, controlling tendencies of parts of the community were laid bare.

“I had never seen so many unhappy, angry people,” he recalls. “People get really attached to making it into rules and then saying, ‘This is what you can do, and this is what you can't do based on your design.’” He saw people telling others such things as: “‘You're out of alignment,’ ‘you have an open throat chakra, and you're not supposed to do this.’” It's a “fucking Wild West,” Day says of the sprawling human design industry. “If you want to manipulate someone … The easiest thing to do is sell them on inspiration.”

At the same time, he admits that giving human design readings for $250 each has turned his fortunes around; he does at least three readings per week, in addition to offering other services.

Perhaps my fortunes will change, too, if I live more in accordance with whatever my design is, following a recent split which left me soul-searching.

I give Day my time and date of birth and the name of the city where I was born, just like with a Zodiac reading, and he inputs the information into a website that conjures a diamond-shaped “bodygraph” which, he says, reveals a distinct numeric genetic code underpinning my “manifesting generator” personality. “Your mind will say you always need to be looking for love and direction, [but] you’re super sensitive to others’ frequencies,” fellow singleton Day tells me. Therefore, it is extremely important that I sleep in my own bed each night to preserve my aura.

But I do hope to find love again, so maybe I'll allow a sleepover once in a while.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/human-design-is-blowing-up-following-it-might-make-you-leave-your-spouse/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

THE BIG STORY | BRENDAN I. KOERNER | SEP 16, 2025 AT 6:00 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

One Vigilante, 22 Cell Tower Fires, and a World of Conspiracies

As dawn spread over San Antonio on September 9, 2021, almond-colored smoke began to fill the sky above the city’s Far West Side. The plumes were whorling off the top of a 132-foot-tall cell tower that overshadows an office park just north of SeaWorld. At a hotel a mile away, a paramedic snapped a photo of the spectacle and posted it to the r/sanantonio subreddit. “Cell tower on fire around 1604 and Culebra,” he wrote.

In typical Reddit fashion, the comments section piled up with corny jokes. “Blazing 5G speeds,” quipped one user.

“I hope no one inhales those fumes, the Covid transmission via 5G will be a lot more potent that way,” wrote another, in a swipe at the conspiracy theorists who claim that radiation from 5G towers caused the Covid-19 pandemic.

The wisecracks went on: “Can you hear me now?”

“Free hotspot!”

“Great, some hero trying to save us from 5G.”

That self-styled hero was actually lurking in the comments. As he followed the thread on his phone, Sean Aaron Smith delighted in the sheer volume of attention the tower fire was receiving, even if most of it dripped with sarcasm. A lean, tattooed—and until recently, entirely apolitical—27-year-old, Smith had come to view 5G as the linchpin of a globalist plot to zombify humanity. To resist that supposed scheme, he’d spent the past five months setting Texas cell towers ablaze.

Smith’s crude and quixotic campaign against 5G was precisely the sort of security threat that was fast becoming one of the US government’s top concerns in 2021. Just two weeks after Smith’s fire popped up on Reddit, then FBI director Christopher Wray discussed the latest trends in political violence in a speech marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. “Today, the greatest terrorist threat we face here in the US is from what are, in effect, lone actors,” he said, describing these people as moving “quickly from radicalization to action, often using easily obtainable weapons against soft targets.” And an increasing number of these individuals, Wray stressed, were turning violent after marinating in bizarre conspiracy theories.

In the years since Wray first delivered that warning, political violence in the US has continued to evolve much as he foresaw. Numerous recent attacks have been launched by people whose media diets have conditioned them to believe that government oppressors, permissive liberals, or shadowy cabals must be stopped at all costs. “This conspiracy stuff, it’s not coming from HitlerLover4Chan88 on Twitter anymore,” says Jonathan Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. “It’s coming from a blue check, a gold check, a verified account—someone who, for a lot of people, has legitimacy.” He adds that some of those paranoid influencers are even operating in the halls of power. “You’ve got Groypers running Department of Homeland Security Twitter accounts,” Lewis says. “You’re getting legislative bills being passed about climate modification.”

Once convinced that violence is the only moral choice, lone actors are routinely carrying out hit-and-run attacks against pieces of the nation’s technological infrastructure, which remain lightly guarded despite their vast importance. The types of sites being targeted are as varied as the causes that motivate their attackers. In 2022, for example, someone shot up two electrical substations in North Carolina, in a possible far-right effort to disrupt a drag show. Two years later, a Tennessee man was arrested for allegedly plotting to use drones to bomb Nashville’s power grid in hopes of hastening a race war. This past July, a member of a militia group that trafficked in weather-manipulation conspiracy theories allegedly smashed up an Oklahoma radar station. And saboteurs with unknown motives have also been severing fiber-optic cables in both California and Missouri since the early summer. (Gauging the true number of infrastructure attacks has become more difficult since the DHS shuttered its Terrorism and Targeted Violence database in March.)

But Smith—who planned and executed his arsons by himself—appears to have been more prolific than any of these other extremists. The blaze north of SeaWorld was the seventh he’d set in 2021; in the seven months that followed, he would burn another 15. I spent the past year talking to Smith at length about the origin and details of his anti-5G crusade. I did so in the hope of learning how and why some desperate souls are being lured into destroying the guts of modern life.

Smith grew up in a three-bedroom trailer in northwest San Antonio, the only child of a carpenter and a nurse’s assistant. He entered high school with dreams of making a career in the military, but his life swerved when his father slipped into alcoholism after a construction accident. With his dad lost in the haze of drink and his mother rarely home due to her 12-hour work shifts, Smith searched elsewhere for belonging. He dropped out of high school in the 10th grade to devote himself to a new group of friends whose sole interests were drugs and petty crime. “The attention they gave me inspired a fierce loyalty,” he says. “There’s not much I wouldn’t do for them.” At the age of 18, he went to prison for burglarizing a house while blacked out on Xanax. He would spend the bulk of the next six years behind bars after blowing parole and picking up multiple drug and firearm charges; his father died of cancer while he was locked up.

When Smith was paroled from his third prison stint in November 2019, he resolved to make a break with his troubled past. He moved back into his mother’s trailer and landed a cooking job at Golden Corral. He also started a relationship with 18-year-old Coley Lane Dupre, a former elite gymnast who’d recently turned rebellious; she had moved next door to Smith after walking out of drug rehab. All was going smoothly until March 2020, when the pandemic shuttered Smith’s restaurant and the gymnastics studio where Dupre coached. Their new lives were forced into suspended animation, leaving the couple to fill the days with getting high and scrolling.

During one of those bleary sessions, a videoclip from episode 1,308 of The Joe Rogan Experience, which had originally aired in June 2019, popped up in Smith’s Instagram feed. The clip begins with Rogan pausing to light a joint, which gives his guest—Eddie Bravo, an anvil-headed jiujitsu master known for spouting conspiracies about 9/11 and a flat Earth—the opportunity to pose a question: “What do you think of, um, 5G and all that scare? You think that’s legit?” Rogan pronounces himself “terrified” of the wireless networking technology, which was then starting to become widespread in the US. “How much long-term testing have they done?” he asks, without specifying the potential effects he fears. “Zero?” Bravo then urges Rogan to visit a website that contains the government’s “400-page plan for the world,” a document that he says contains revelations about 5G that will “get your fucking head blown off.”

The clip was short on details, but it reminded Smith of a man he’d befriended in prison in 2014. This inmate had been an avid reader of books about magnets and electricity, and he’d often rambled about a sprawling communications “grid” that he said was being built for nefarious reasons. Smith had never paid much attention to these convoluted rants, but the two famous podcasters seemed to be echoing his friend’s concerns.

When he plugged queries about 5G into search bars, Smith quickly became alarmed. Social media was awash in posts asserting that 5G towers, which use higher electromagnetic frequencies than their 4G forerunners, had weakened human immune systems, leaving them unable to fend off the Covid-19 virus. (Several nations where 5G was not yet available in 2020, such as Iran, were among the most devastated by Covid.) Prominent figures like the actor Woody Harrelson claimed on Insta-gram (falsely) that China was dismantling its 5G towers to curb Covid’s spread. As Smith’s social-media algorithms adjusted to his affinity for these posts, he became aware that arsonists in the United Kingdom had set fire to more than 60 cell towers in the spring of 2020. This spate of violence had been inspired in part by the YouTube sermons of a British pastor and crypto consultant who preached that “the radio frequencies we are being exposed to are killing the people.” (The pastor gained legitimacy by claiming to be a former executive at Vodafone; he had in fact been a salesman for the telecommunications company for less than a year, well before the rollout of 5G.)

Smith’s suspicions only deepened when he noticed that his favorite 5G content often vanished within hours of being posted. “If you said anything connecting 5G with Covid, you were censored, Facebook is taking your post down, it was fact-checking you,” he says. “And I’m like, why are they so worried about censoring people on the subject? And that’s kind of what resonated with me.” Smith concluded that powerful forces were concealing the insidious truth about 5G.

With no shot at landing another restaurant gig in the midst of the pandemic, Smith backslid into selling drugs as the spring of 2020 wore on. He roamed San Antonio’s eerily deserted streets, delivering cannabis, cocaine, and other intoxicants to customers hunkered down in their homes. During his rounds, he noticed that 5G towers were some of the only structures still being built. He occasionally pulled over to ask construction workers why they were risking illness and death to expand the rollout of 5G. When they told him to scram, he considered their rudeness yet another red flag.

When Smith wasn’t out dealing, he was usually alone in the trailer with Dupre—his mother was working even crazier hours than usual at a hospital flooded with Covid patients. The couple would watch videos from InfoWars impresario Alex Jones and the British conspiracy theorist David Icke, the latter of whom is notorious for claiming the world is secretly controlled by reptilian humanoids. These sources were now espousing increasingly dark and elaborate stories about 5G that portrayed the technology as central to a scheme to enslave entire nations. One popular narrative held that governments had unleashed the Covid-19 virus to force people into isolation, thereby giving construction crews the time and space to build out 5G networks. When a vaccine was eventually developed, the radiation from 5G towers would interact with graphene oxide nanomaterials that were integrated into the injections. This would give governments the power to control how their citizens behave or even to annihilate them en masse if they ever revolted. “If 5G continues and reaches where they want to take it,” Icke warned in an April 2020 interview, “human life as we know it is over.”

This story, often peddled by people who sold garments or knickknacks that purported to repel 5G radiation, made perfect sense to Smith. He’d formerly never had a shred of interest in politics—“My mindset was always, oh, it has nothing to do with me,” he says—but the technophobic content he was now consuming had melted his apathy. “The way that China is right now with the technology and the surveillance, I saw America turning into the same thing eventually,” he says. “Our freedoms deleted, stuff like that.” He made Dupre similarly fearful by showing her several patents that employ the phrase “voice to skull,” which the couple interpreted as evidence that the government could use 5G to implant thoughts in an unsuspecting populace. (The patents in question do not make this claim.)

On the evening of Friday, July 17, Smith was en route to a customer’s house when the police pulled him over for a routine traffic stop. He was arrested for drug and firearm possession, two charges that seemed certain to result in the revocation of his parole and a return to prison. But Smith realized that he probably wouldn’t be cited for a parole violation until court reopened on Monday morning. So Dupre scraped together enough money to bail him out on Saturday, and the couple went on the run.

The grim realities of life on the lam complicated Smith and Dupre’s efforts to further their study of 5G. They mostly crashed in local drug houses, where Smith’s profession always made him a welcome presence at first. But something would inevitably go awry after a few days or weeks of rooming with mercurial meth abusers. Both were assaulted and robbed at gunpoint, and Smith and Dupre had to flee one toxic situation after another.

As the stress of being a fugitive chipped away at Smith’s psyche, he pondered how to recapture a sense of purpose. “I wanted to be a better person,” he says. “I’m still doing these things, I’m still in this lifestyle. But part of me was wanting to help people.” In late November, he decided to take a new step: Instead of passively absorbing information pushed to him by podcasters and algorithms, he would investigate a 5G tower in the wild.

Smith and Dupre spent a night combing San Antonio for a tower to explore. Most of the structures were inaccessible, protected by chain-link fences topped with razor wire. But the couple finally found an unsecured tower tucked away in a suburban neighborhood. As they approached the site, they were frightened by its loud and eerie hum. (The noise from 5G towers is generated by cooling fans and electrical components.) They believed they could detect sinister waves of energy wafting through the air. Dupre was so rattled by the tower’s aura that she couldn’t bring herself to touch it. “Babe, it feels ugly,” she said to Smith as she turned away.

Smith pressed forward, however, and laid hands on the tower’s cylindrical metal base. In that moment, he was overwhelmed by sadness at how many people were ignorant of these monstrosities in their midst. “That’s when I really made the decision,” he recalls. “I snapped. Like, man, I’m going to do something about this.”

Now that they’d resolved to swing into action, Smith and Dupre discussed how best to battle 5G. They toyed with the idea of launching their own podcast or educational website. But they settled on producing homemade batches of so-called orgonite crystals, which are touted in alternative-medicine circles as having the ability to dampen electromagnetic fields. In the cluttered kitchens of the drug houses where they were hiding, the couple filled muffin tins with tinted resins and snippets of whatever metal they could find—curls of steel wool, coils of copper wire. These would harden into translucent lumps that Smith and Dupre began placing next to San Antonio’s 5G towers, an act of subversion they called “gifting.” Dupre took to creating crystals shaped like hearts or flowers, which she handed out to strangers in the hopes of opening their eyes to the horrors of 5G.

But Smith quickly soured on gifting as too tepid an approach. He was becoming increasingly radicalized as he learned about individuals who’d made tremendous sacrifices to oppose mobile technology. He particularly admired John Robert Patterson, an Australian telecommunications technician who believed he’d suffered adverse health consequences from overexposure to electromagnetic fields. In 2007, Patterson infamously stole an armored personnel carrier and used it to ram seven mobile towers in Sydney before surrendering to police. The rampage did nothing to slow the growth of Australia’s wireless industry, but Smith liked how Patterson kept preaching about a massive cover-up of mobile technology’s hazards even after leaving prison.

Smith also paid close attention to the December 25, 2020, bombing in downtown Nashville, during which a loner named Anthony Quinn Warner blew himself up in an RV. The FBI concluded that Warner was motivated by both suicidal desperation and an incoherent set of conspiracy theories, including his belief that the government has been covering up an alien invasion. But Smith focused only on the fact that Warner chose to detonate his vehicle in front of an AT&T network facility—proof, he thought, that 5G was the real intended target.

In February 2021, a massive ice storm knocked out much of the power in San Antonio for days. Smith took advantage of the blackout to trespass at several 5G towers, using bolt cutters to slice through their fences. He studied the fiber-optic cables that extended out of the facilities’ base stations and ran for yards in the open before snaking into the towers’ access hatches. He realized it would be easy to set those exposed cables on fire. He imagined the flames racing up the towers’ innards and consuming the antennas located a hundred feet or more above the ground, transforming them into torches that would mesmerize San Antonians. “I didn’t have any other way to try to get people’s attention,” he says. “I thought maybe, hey, if I burn this over here, maybe someone will see it and be like, ‘Hey, why is someone burning these down?’ And they’d look into it.”

On the morning of April 10, Smith pulled up to a 5G tower behind a discount eyeglass shop; he’d picked the location so he could make a quick getaway via I-410 across the street. He lit the fuse of a crudely assembled Molotov cocktail and tossed it over the fence. To his dismay, the makeshift bomb landed a bit wide of the cables, causing only minor damage after smashing apart on the ground. Smith fled the scene in such haste that he dropped his lime-green lighter. As he peeled out toward the freeway, he knew he’d have to hone his methods if he was serious about changing the world.

To become a better arsonist, Smith trekked into a barren corner of the South Texas countryside to run some tests. He tried out grenade-like devices filled with homemade napalm, which he made using a recipe he’d found on the internet. But he ultimately determined that he’d never achieve his desired results by throwing incendiary devices from a fence line—the failure rate would be too high, regardless of the bombs’ design. He instead needed to break into the tower sites so he could burn the cables up close. That would mean spending five minutes or more on the scene, thereby exposing himself to detection and arrest.

Smith came up with a simple yet effective modus operandi that would minimize his odds of getting caught. He would scout targets using Google Earth, zeroing in on towers next to wooded areas where he could retreat after setting a fire. He also obtained a wardrobe of costumes he could wear to make it seem like he belonged inside a tower’s perimeter—he stockpiled construction-worker outfits and security-guard uniforms, most of which he acquired in exchange for drugs. As long as he could get away with using his bolt cutters on the fences, no one was likely to question him as he knelt next to the towers and covertly stuffed their cable hatches with accelerant-soaked rags.

Smith became a rather busy arsonist starting that April: Over an initial six-week period, he hit one tower by a tattoo shop, another outside an upscale apartment complex, and a third at the end of a residential cul-de-sac. Dupre accompanied him on the last of these missions, but she couldn’t bring herself to shimmy through the hole in the fence that Smith had cut. Unlike her boyfriend, she was scared to dirty her hands with actual property destruction.

After this nerve-racking experience, Dupre pleaded with Smith to halt his arson spree. She did so in part because things were finally looking up for the couple: Thanks to a reference from a prominent San Antonio rapper he knew, Smith had landed an off-the-books job as a handyman at a small commercial building, and the landlord was letting him and Dupre stay in one of the vacant units. Dupre didn’t want Smith to ruin this semi-stable situation by bringing more heat on himself. But Smith was now too deep in the throes of anti-5G fervor. “It gave me meaning,” he says of the fires. “It gave my life more of a meaning, being able to fight against something.”

In late May, Smith set out to torch a tower in the neighborhood of Oak Hills. Perhaps overconfident after having eluded capture for so long, Smith lingered for a while before lighting the gasoline-soaked rags he’d stuffed in the cable hatch. When he finally flicked his lighter, he accidentally ignited the fumes that had built up in the enclosed space. The flames whooshed back into his face, burning off much of his hair and turning his flesh a cherry red.

Smith stumbled away in agony, knowing that he couldn’t go to an emergency room for help. In a panic he called Dupre, who was working the late shift at a 7-11. She grabbed several jugs of water, locked the store behind her, and sprinted back to the apartment to tend to her boyfriend’s wounds. The couple eventually felt they had no choice but to call Smith’s mother, who put herself in legal jeopardy by coming over to provide care.

For much of the summer, Smith feared that the physical damage he’d suffered was permanent. Yet even before his face regained its normal complexion and his eyebrows began to resprout, he felt compelled to get back to his arson campaign. Now more cognizant of the risk of self-immolation, he looked for safer ways to start his fires. He found good advice on the website for WarriorUp, a “research project” dedicated to sharing “techniques for sabotaging capitalist infrastructure and extractive industries.” Taking a cue from an article entitled “How to Destroy Cell Phone Towers,” Smith cut up an old tire so he could use the shards in lieu of rags—the rubber caught fire more slowly than cloth. (For the same reason, he also switched to using diesel as his preferred accelerant.)

During one of his attacks, Smith snagged a souvenir that caught his eye: a warning sign that read, “Radio frequency fields near some antennas may exceed the FCC occupational rules for human exposure.” The Federal Communications Commission mandates the posting of these signs for the benefit of maintenance workers who must occasionally climb to the peaks of towers. But Smith mistakenly thought this language amounted to a government confession that civilians within a wide radius of a tower are in constant danger. He delighted in showing off the sign when evangelizing to fellow miscreants about 5G’s role in transforming the US into a repressive dystopia. He could only hope his audiences were listening more intently to his lectures than he’d listened to his prison friend back in 2014.

Jesse Moncada, the lead arson investigator for the San Antonio Fire Department, wasn’t terribly concerned when he inspected the singed 5G tower behind My Econo’s $39.95 Optical on April 10, 2021. Whoever had started the fire that morning was clearly an amateur—their Molotov cocktail hadn’t packed much punch, and they’d foolishly dropped their lime-green lighter at the scene. His best guess was that the culprit was a vagrant bent on causing minor trouble.

“But then it happened again,” says Moncada, who joined the fire department in 2001. “And we started seeing the same pattern and same modes of burning.” Curious as to why someone would be fixated on destroying 5G towers, he contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for assistance. The agency told him about the cell-tower fires that had occurred in the UK in April 2020, a brief criminal epidemic that had made US federal authorities aware that conspiracy-driven terrorism would inevitably be on the rise. “We assess that violent extremists probably will target a range of telecommunications infrastructure,” the Department of Homeland Security had warned in a May 2020 memo. “More coordinated attacks by multiple individuals in adjacent areas could amplify these incidents.” The document also noted that these extremists were likely to be influenced by a hodgepodge of beliefs: Some would be white nationalists who’d been chattering online about their opposition to Covid restrictions, while others would be radical environmentalists who’d embraced the anti-technology manifesto of the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski.

Now aware that he was likely dealing with a form of terrorism rooted in online disinformation, Moncada had fingerprints lifted off the lighter he’d found at the first crime scene. They matched those of Smith, who had been wanted on a fugitive felony warrant since the previous July. At another burnt tower, Moncada also found a black glove that contained flecks of Smith’s DNA. But it was one thing to know the arsonist’s identity, quite another to find him: Smith was a ghost drifting through San Antonio’s underworld, leaving few if any traces as he cycled through an endless stream of prepaid phones.

Hoping to glean a license plate number or accomplice’s description that might help reveal Smith’s location, Moncada contacted the security teams at affected companies such as Verizon and T-Mobile. “But what made it difficult was they didn’t want anybody to know that their towers were being damaged,” he says. “I didn’t get enough help from them. So it was difficult for me to put everything together, because I didn’t have any video footage or witnesses.”

By the spring of 2022, the number of 5G arsons was nearing 20, and Moncada began collaborating with both the Texas Rangers and the FBI to solve the case. These larger agencies helped process more DNA evidence—at a tower that burned in March 2022, for example, Moncada recovered pubic hairs from a pair of boxer shorts that Smith used to start the fire. But there seemed little chance of stopping the attacks unless Smith made a mistake.

His ego inflated by his months of success, Smith took to thinking of himself as an “urban gray man,” capable of committing his arsons with supreme speed and stealth. He would often persuade an unwitting acquaintance to drive him to within a block or two of the tower he’d picked to torch. He’d hop out of the car and say he had to make a quick drug sale, then change into the reflective vest and hard hat that he kept in his backpack. He’d snip the fence, start the fire, and slip into the woods as the flames began to swell. He’d then strip off his construction-worker gear, pull a baseball cap low over his eyes, and circle back to the car as if nothing unusual had happened. As they pulled away, he’d peer out the window at the clouds of smoke now rising above the city.

Smith’s personal life was growing messy as he became ever more focused on leading the revolution against 5G. He lost his handyman job in early 2022, a development that forced him and Dupre to relocate to a friend’s apartment. The couple’s romance was also beginning to falter, in large part because Dupre had tired of centering her life around the use of Xanax and methamphetamine. “I was miserable,” she says. “I hated every second of it.” Smith, meanwhile, started seeing another woman named Callie Holland, who had recently moved down from Missouri with her daughter. On one of their dates, she watched him burn a 5G tower.

As he passed the one-year anniversary of his first arson, Smith was feeling nothing short of invincible. On April 29, 2022, he chose to deviate from his usual cautious approach and set fire to a tower next to a heavily trafficked Walmart Supercenter. When Moncada arrived on the scene to investigate, he reviewed the store’s security footage and spotted a red 2017 Chevrolet Cruze zooming out of the parking lot moments after the fire’s ignition. The car was registered to Holland, who had previously been arrested, though not charged, for a drug violation—precisely the sort of person who might run in the same sordid circles as Smith.

In the wee hours of May 13, the San Antonio police detained Holland as she left a Mexican restaurant. She admitted that she’d loaned her car to Smith two weeks earlier, and she spilled all she knew about her part-time lover’s crusade. “Holland advised that Smith stated the US government is out to get him and that the 5G towers give off radiation and control minds,” a Texas Ranger wrote in his report. “Holland stated that Smith watches a bunch of videos of 5G towers on YouTube.”

Most importantly, Holland provided the investigators with a phone number for Smith that was only a week old—a critical piece of information that Moncada had been seeking for months. By noon that day, Moncada had obtained a warrant to “ping” Smith’s phone—that is, to triangulate its location using the same towers that Smith reviled as tools of oppression.

A US Secret Service agent performed the ping, which indicated that Smith was at an apartment complex behind a Lowe’s home improvement store. A phalanx of police officers, Texas Rangers, and FBI agents immediately descended on the area in search of the arsonist who had set fire to 22 5G towers since April 2021.

At 1:20 pm that afternoon, Smith emerged from his apartment and hopped into a friend’s Cadillac CTS. As they rolled away from the curb, the car was surrounded by dozens of law enforcement agents with handguns and rifles drawn.

Smith had always known this day would come, and he’d often contemplated how he would react. He liked the idea of going down in a blaze of glory, of martyring himself for the anti-5G cause—there was romance in the concept of becoming a more extreme figure in technophobic lore than the Australian who’d bulldozed the Sydney towers. Given that he was armed with a loaded handgun, that outcome was certainly an option. But in the face of such an awesome amount of firepower pointed right at him, Smith froze.

“This is the happiest I’ve ever been.”

Smith could tell I looked quizzical when I heard him utter those words, and he quickly qualified his statement by adding, “I know that sounds crazy.” The place where we were meeting, the visiting room of a desolate south Texas prison, was entirely devoid of cheer. But Smith, whose forehead still bears scars from a long-ago pistol whipping, explained that despite his grim surroundings, he has never felt better. Drug-free for the first time in ages, he now spends his days studying college-level chemistry, reading the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and listening to political podcasts like Pod Save America. He counts himself blessed that he didn’t choose to commit suicide-by-cop. “I needed a wake-up call,” he says. “I needed to get away from everything and rethink everything and have a chance to sit down and reevaluate.”

He also considers himself fortunate to have a shot at leaving prison before his 40th birthday. After he pleaded guilty to six counts of arson in federal court, prosecutors were keen to turn him into an example and sought a 15-year sentence—far longer than recommended by the advisory guidelines. “The sentencing guidelines do not contemplate a 22-tower arson spree meant to shut down the cellphone system to follow a bizarre anti-government philosophy,” wrote the lead prosecutor, who specializes in counterterrorism cases. “The increased focus and attacks on this critical infrastructure by extremists and conspiracy theorists like the Defendant has the potential to wreak extensive societal damage and disruption.”

Frightened by the prospect of spending a decade and a half in prison, Smith sent handwritten requests for help to several organizations that he thought might be sympathetic to his plight. The recipients included Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; Smith knew that at an anti-vaccine rally in early 2022, Kennedy had declared that 5G was designed to “harvest our data and control our behavior.” No one ever replied to Smith’s entreaties, but the judge still cut him a break: He was sentenced to 78 months of federal time, to be served concurrently with a state sentence that’s currently projected to run until 2030. (When he was arrested in May 2022, the fugitive Smith was carrying a half-pound of cannabis in addition to his handgun; he will be eligible for parole on the state charges next year.)

Dupre was arrested for arson, too, after admitting to Moncada that she’d been with Smith when he torched a tower in May 2021. That case was eventually dismissed, however, and Dupre has transformed her life in the time since. Now clean and sober, she trained to become a substance-abuse counselor at San Antonio College and recently took a job at a recovery center. “I need to correct my karma and help other addicts,” she told me.

She has extricated herself from the darkness of her former life, but Dupre remains convinced that 5G poses an existential threat. She is far from unique in holding onto that belief. This past June, for example, arsonists set fire to six cell towers in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Other Covid-related conspiracy theories have endured and mutated, too. In June, a Minnesota man was charged with assassinating a state lawmaker and her husband, later saying he had meant to punish those who supported Covid vaccines; later in the summer, an Atlanta man who believed he’d been harmed by one of those vaccines opened fire on the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control, killing a police officer.

“I don’t know how to say this without sounding crazy, but I just don’t trust the technology,” Dupre says of 5G. “I don’t think that they’re just cell phone towers.” She also has sympathy for the choices made by Smith, with whom she maintains a close platonic friendship: “I support him 100 percent. I’m not saying what he did was right, but I’m not saying it was wrong.”

Smith maintains his vehement opposition to 5G, but the more pressing object of his concern these days is AI—the newest fixation among young extremists now sprouting from the same media ecosystem that radicalized Smith. “It’s clear to them that AI will be utilized in order for the government to maintain its control, to enhance its ability to surveil, to monitor, to track, to interfere with our privacy,” says Arie Perliger, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who studies domestic terrorism. Crude individual attacks against AI data centers seem inevitable as the technology increasingly upends the routines of American life. The question is whether such violence will elicit more public sympathy than Smith’s fires, even if perpetrated by militants who espouse outlandish political beliefs; the grain of truth in AI paranoia is many orders of magnitude larger than the one at the core of the anti-5G movement.

“If I had one message I could communicate about my beliefs, it would be, ‘Why would the most creative and imaginative beings on Earth wish to create something that would make us obsolete?’” Smith told me. Once an enthusiastic supporter of President Trump—he says he nearly went to Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021—he now worries the current administration is glad to let giant AI companies make humans subordinate to machines.

Smith dreams of launching a podcast about the dangers of technology, though he acknowledges that people will be reluctant to listen to someone with his unsavory background. He insisted to me that he deeply regrets setting his fires, because doing so harmed his ability to become a trusted political voice. Yet toward the end of our time together in Texas, Smith asked if I wanted to see something cool. After making sure no guards were watching, he rose from his seat and smiled as he hiked up the left pant-leg of his white prison jumpsuit. Splashed across his entire calf was a beautifully rendered tattoo that he’d recently had inked by a fellow inmate. It shows a 5G tower engulfed in flames.

Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at mail@wired.com.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/22-cell-towers-one-vigilante-world-of-conspiracies/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

BUSINESS | KATIE DRUMMOND | SEP 16, 2025 AT 6:00 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

Matthew Prince Wants AI Companies to Pay for Their Sins

Matthew Prince may not be a household name, but the world most certainly knows his work.

Prince is the cofounder and CEO of Cloudflare. Launched in 2010, the internet infrastructure company has found itself increasingly in the position of serving as the web’s bodyguard. It filters out bad traffic, keeps sites safe, and stops them from crashing when too many people visit. Its tools defend against DDoS attacks. In 2017, Cloudflare made headlines when it dropped white supremacist site The Daily Stormer. (Maybe Prince’s name is ringing a bell now?)

Cloudflare’s severing of ties with The Daily Stormer marked a momentous shift, one that came after years of claiming a neutral stance. Prince continues to evolve the way Cloudflare works. In July, the company rolled out a new tool tasked with blocking unauthorized AI scraping. It effectively creates a pay-per-crawl model requiring AI platforms to shell out money if they want access to a site’s content.

On this episode of The Big Interview, I talked to Prince about publishing, the old internet, and how his ideal version of the future web means that OpenAI just might become the Netflix of content.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

KATIE DRUMMOND: Good to have you here, Matthew.

MATTHEW PRINCE: Thanks for having me.

You should have been warned ahead of time, but you probably weren't. We always start these conversations with some rapid-fire questions. Think of it like a warmup.

Sort of like wind sprints or something.

Exactly. First, what's the most embarrassing thing that regularly shows up in your feeds?

Probably just all the political content. On X it’s pretty embarrassing.

What can you teach me to do in two minutes or less? You don't actually have to teach me anything, but you need to commit that you could do it if you had to.

I am pretty good at simple card tricks, so I could teach you a card trick to impress your friends.

Oh, I like that. I like impressing people. Fiction or nonfiction?

I tend to read more nonfiction, but I'm happier when I'm reading fiction. So I try to force myself to read fiction. The trashier the better.

Alright, trashy fiction. What do your haters say about you?

Oh God, people talk about neo-Nazis surprisingly a lot with me because we either kick or don't kick them off our platform. So I think [they say] I am responsible for all the bad things that appear somewhere on the internet.

Inbox zero or inbox chaos?

Zero.

Same. OK, let’s jump into it. Are you ready?

I am. Those were fun wind sprints. I enjoy that a lot more than, you know, high school PE.

We do our best. Now, I love to ask people a little bit about where they came from, how they got to where they are. So I’m going to do that before we really get into what’s going on with Cloudflare right now.

The original name of Cloudflare was the only thing worse than Cloudflare, because [those syllables] are really hard for English speakers to say. We were going to be Project Web Wall.

Let's go back to where it started. Park City, Utah, where you grew up. You got your first computer. My understanding is you were 7. Were you always drawn to technology, even as a toddler, or was that sort of a lucky accident as far as gifts go?

I got it from my grandmother, who was just with it. Apple had just released the Apple II. There wasn't a ton of access to technology in the way that kids have it today. So everyone else had an Atari. Everyone else had a VHS player. We had a Betamax player. But the computer was really the first time that I dove in and it was like a duck to water. I loved it.

You majored in English, and you minored in computer science. Then you went to law school. What did you think you would end up doing?

I thought I was gonna be the in-house counsel for some cool tech company.

Oh, I like that.

I was good at computers as a kid, and the University of Utah had this incredible computer science program, and they did these continuing education courses and my mom would sign up. And then I’d do all the homework, basically. So by the time I got to college, I thought I was gonna study computer science. I took computer science 101 and I was so bored that an arrogant 17-, 18-year-old me was like, “There's nothing I can learn from this.”

So I switched my major to English literature. This is like ’92 to ’96. This was right as the internet was taking off. And I knew enough about it that I got hired to be one of the student network administrators on our campus and help build what was one of the first thousand websites. I felt like I was sort of there, but I was also kind of burned out from the whole thing.

I wrote my college thesis on why the internet was a fad.

No.

Yeah. It was pretty embarrassing. I predicted that search engines were gonna become political, that there would be a conservative one and a liberal one. That hasn’t happened.

That's interesting considering what’s happened with Cloudflare.

When I got to the end, I was pretty good at standardized tests, so I took the LSAT. Didn't know how to really get a job, so I ended up applying to law school, and I went to law school and in ’96 being like, “Eh, this internet thing is a fad.”

Somewhere in between I took a year off to basically goof around and be a ski instructor. By the time I actually got to the first day of class, I realized two things: One, the internet was gonna be kind of a big deal. And the second thing was that within about three days of law school I was like, “I'm not sure I'm cut out for this.”

Oh.

I finally found a type of law that I thought was really interesting, which was securities law, basically taking companies public. I spent the summer of ’99 working at a law firm in San Francisco. I worked on six IPOs in one summer. It was the dotcom boom. I was like, “This is really fun.”

I bet.

I thought, “I’ll go, I’ll do this for five years. I’ll find a company that’s really great, I’ll help them get ready for their IPO, they’ll hire me as their counsel.” I went back to school thinking that was what was going to happen in March of 2000. Then the bubble burst. The law firm called and said, “Hey, good news, bad news. The good news is you still have a job. Bad news is we don’t need any more securities lawyers, but bankruptcy is basically the same thing …”

Oh no.

I just didn't want to do that. So I was crying in my beer with a young law-professor guy named Doug Liman, and he's like, “Hey, my brother's starting a B2B”—what we call a SaaS company today, although we didn't at the time, in the insurance industry, which I knew nothing about—“would you be interested? They'll match your salary and give you this thing called stock.” I was like, “Yeah, that sounds better than being a bankruptcy attorney.” So I did that, and it was a disaster.

That is a journey. There's been a lot written about Cloudflare's origins. But just so that people have a basic understanding, how would you describe the company's original mission, and how has that evolved?

I was super lost. I was working as a bartender. And somewhat to run away from the sort of familial obligation of taking over my father's restaurant business, I applied to business school, and that's where I met my cofounder Michelle. What we saw back in 2009 was that all of the world of software was moving to the cloud. So inevitably that would mean that the security and networking tools, the firewalls of the world, would move to the cloud. So the original idea of Cloudflare was: How can you take a firewall and put it in the cloud?

Makes sense.

The problem that we had was we knew that in order to be a successful business, we'd eventually have to sell to really big banks and health care companies and governments and things like that.

Right.

In order to do that, we had to have something that was valuable in order to generate something that's valuable. We actually had to have data. So being plucky business students, we thought, “Well, what if we made a sort of stripped-down, light version of the service and gave it away for free?”

That would allow us to gather a bunch of data that would be valuable for the firewall, for the big banks and things like that. At some level the whole story of Cloudflare is: If you take a firewall in the cloud and make it free, you create so many different problems. But in the process of solving all of those problems you build what Cloudflare is today, which is more than just a firewall in the cloud.

Tell me how you describe the company today, and then I wanna jump into why you've been in the news so much recently.

If I'm at a dinner party and you come up and ask me, “What do you do?” And I say, “I work for Cloudflare.” And they ask, “What does Cloudflare do?” I don't really want to talk to you much more. I say, “It makes the internet faster and protects it from bad guys,” and everyone's response to that is, “Oh, that's really nice.” And then they walk.

They're like, “Oh, sounds great.”

Yeah, “Thank you for doing that.” If I want to actually engage with someone, what I would say is, “When we wrote all the protocols for the internet in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, we had no idea what the internet was gonna become.”

If you go back and read the original proposal for DNS or BGP or these fundamental kinds of technologies of the internet, like there's a section often on security, and it says, “This section is intentionally left blank.” Right? So no one has actually done the work to do that. And that's true in security. It's true in reliability, it's true in performance. And so now that we know how important this is, how do we go back and redesign all of those fundamental things about the internet?

That's what motivates everyone at Cloudflare; that's what defines our roadmap. When we say we're trying to help build a better internet, that's literally what we try to do every single day.

So let's talk about that better internet in the context of AI. A few months ago your company made major news, especially with people working in media or the creator class, around what you are doing with AI bots and their ability to scrape websites with impunity.

That’s how a lot of these AI models were trained in the first place, right? They scrape the internet, pull whatever content they want, and use it to train LLMs. Your company has now taken a major stand to stop that from happening without financial incentives for the creators of that content. Tell us a little bit about where that idea came from.

So, my cofounder Michelle hates history lessons. I, on the other hand, am a recovering adjunct law professor. So …

Oh boy.

Let's just talk about the history of the internet, where we've been, where we are, where we're going, and what the opportunities and what the challenges are. So, the first thing is that there's this sort of mistaken belief that the web has been free. The web has never been free. Somebody has always paid for the web, because journalists like yourself and other folks at Condé Nast, other folks at, you know, all of the different media companies, they deserve to eat.

Agreed.

You know, if you go to a restaurant, they kind of want you to pay your bill. So somehow there has to be money that goes back to the people that are creating stuff, whether it's news or entertainment or anything else.

For the last 25 years, the great patron of the internet has been Google. They created this incredible tool to let you search for things and then it gives you a treasure map and you can click on the links in that treasure map, and that will take you to content that Condé Nast or Meredith or whoever it is [created]. The key was that the traffic that their treasure maps generated then provided tools to turn that traffic into revenue, into dollars, that you could then pay creators with.

Yes.

Like, that’s an amazing thing. It has, at the same time, had some perverse effects [since] traffic has never been the best measure of quality in any kind of objective sense. You also had a bunch of publications like BuzzFeed that would literally A-B test headlines to figure out which ones generated the largest cortisol response, the largest stress response, because baiting you into clicking things—regardless of what the quality of the actual content was—was kind of the game.

It became all about SEO.

Again, I think Google has been a massive force for good in the world. The internet would not exist in the form that it is right now without Google's patronage. But that same sort of traffic-is-all-we-care-about [idea] is what led to Facebook, which was what led to TikTok. And we've kind of spiraled down this sort of attention-economy hole where I think all of us feel a little bit wistful for the internet of old, right? So that's kinda where we are today in terms of the content side.

Right.

What's been happening, though, is that the entire industry has moved away from search being the dominant interface of the web. You can actually see this at Google itself. Now, if you run a search it gives you back an answer at the top of the page. It doesn't give you a treasure map. Instead it provides you what they call an AI Overview, which has taken a whole bunch of content, smashed it together, summarized it in various ways, and synthesized it.

And Google is just one piece. Like if you look at Perplexity, if you look at OpenAI, if you look at Anthropic, they're not search engines, they're answer engines.

The difference is that if you just give someone the answer, then they don't generate traffic. They don't follow those links. We have the data on how much of that has changed. The short answer is that in Google's case it's about 10 times harder today, because of AI Overviews, to get traffic for the same amount of content than it was back when Google was just 10 blue links.

And I would say [Google] has been very resistant to the notion that AI Overviews have damaged traffic to publishers.

I think they've been very careful in saying that they're still sending a bunch of clicks to the web, but they've been very imprecise about what parts of the web are benefiting, what parts are hurting.

So what we see is that if you're an ecommerce shop, AI Overviews haven't hurt you as much because, again, people still have to buy the thing. So they're like, “OK, which digital camera is the best digital camera to buy?” And they get an AI Overview that answers that, but they still then have to go buy the digital camera. So they still go to one of the digital camera sellers that's out there, but they're not reading WIRED's description of what digital camera is the best directly.

Right.

I think they very much know that for things that are just purely information-based, the traffic to those things is just falling off of a cliff. But again, they couldn't generate that AI Overview if they hadn't slurped up the data from WIRED, and Ars Technica, and all the different companies out there that are actually doing the work to review the cameras.

I’m still waiting for my check from Google. When is that coming?

Google does send you a check, but they only send you a check—not personally, maybe—if a human has followed a link and then there's an ad that DoubleClick serves. So Google is still supporting the ecosystem, but that support is declining, declining, declining.

As we shift from search engines to answer engines, the future is going to look different than the past, and I think that there are three possible outcomes. The most nihilistic of all is you starve to death and die.

I personally, and other journalists, don’t want that.

And not just journalists. Academics, researchers, that whole group. It is terrifying to me how many people out there, sort of the AI maximalist camp, are like, “Why do we need journalists anymore? We have drones.” And I'm like, “You really have no earthly idea what good journalism is.”

Sure, the facts, you can do that. But the real color of someone saying, “Hey, your house just was swept away in the flood. How are you dealing with that?” That really is an incredibly important thing.

The reporting, the storytelling, the investigative work. It is human-led work.

So the nihilistic version is awful and I think unlikely to happen. The second possibility, which I think is frighteningly likely to happen, is what I would call the Black Mirror possibility, which is that journalists and academics and researchers don't go away, but we don't go back to the media of the 1980s. We go back to the media of the 1400s, where every journalist, every researcher, every academic is employed by one of five big families.

But it's not families anymore. It's AI companies. And it's not too crazy to imagine a world where Sam Altman says, “You know what? We're just gonna stand up our own Associated Press.” Right? “Lots of unemployed journalists out there. We're gonna hire them; we're gonna stand up bureaus all around the world.”

If they do that, then Anthropic has to do it, and everyone else has to do it. Then they’re feeding the machine that’s out there. If that happens, we get back to my college thesis, which [means] there will be a conservative one, and there will be a liberal one, and there’ll be a Chinese one, and there’ll be an Indian one. Europeans will try to create one and eventually just use the liberal US one.

That’s not crazy, but think about how backwards-moving that is. The internet has been this great information equalizer, democratizer. And in this world, all of a sudden, you subscribe to one of the five big AI companies and you get their perspective. It’s going to be very difficult if it’s thousands of dollars a month for your AI subscription. You’re not going to subscribe to two, very few people will. So information in that world gets incredibly siloed, but it’s not crazy.

OK. What’s the third possibility?

Right now everyone’s getting content for free. In the future, I think the AI companies will look less like science labs and look more like Netflix, where what differentiates them is whether or not they have access to unique content, and that unique content is something they will be willing to pay for. That’s the day in which not only Google but OpenAI and Perplexity and Anthropic and all the different AI companies—hopefully there are thousands of them—are sending you a check.

Well, I’m waiting. But Cloudflare is doing something very fundamental in helping ensure that third possibility becomes a reality. Tell us a little bit about how that works.

OK, so that third possibility is a market. The one thing that every market has in common is scarcity. You can't have a market if there's no scarcity. Like there’s no market for breathable air because in most places there’s plenty of breathable air.

Yeah, for now.

We’ve talked about a lot of dystopian futures, and we can talk about more if you want, but let’s just try to figure out …

… let’s stick to this one.

So the problem that we saw was that our customers who were publishers, and the entire publishing industry, wasn’t creating scarcity. A lot of that was that they didn't have the technical wherewithal to actually identify who the AI scrapers were and block them from taking their content.

We're really good at that. Like that's what we do every day. We built these tools to stop Chinese hackers or Iranian hackers or Russian hackers. But those same tools also identify “that’s the Perplexity bot” or “that’s the ByteDance bot.” We can give publishers the tools to do that.

If our mission is to help build a better internet, it makes total sense for us to not only build those tools, but then make them available for free to anyone who is creating content online and wants to say, “I don't want you to have my content unless there's some exchange of value.”

There’s always been an exchange of value in the search engine world. The exchange of value was that the search engine got your content and in exchange they sent you traffic and then helped you monetize that traffic. As the world moves toward answer engines, we have to figure out what that new exchange of value is, but step one is creating scarcity.

Have companies taken you up on that offer? What’s the response been like?

On the content creator, publisher side it has been extraordinary. Everyone from the Associated Press to Ziff Davis and every publisher in between has come to us and said, “We've been waiting for someone to come along.” The most common thing I’ve heard as I’ve talked to the CEOs of publishing houses is, “I’ve gone from being just depressed, like there’s nothing I can do, to actually being optimistic.”

I mean, I cannot overstate what a significant step this is.

The music industry on some level is an analogy. The day before Steve Jobs steps on stage and announces iTunes, 99 cents per song, the entire music industry is worth $8 billion. Not revenue, market cap. That’s a big number, but for the influence that it had in that world, it was actually relatively modest. Ninety-nine cents a song isn’t the business model that ended up winning. It ended up being something closer to Spotify, and there’s still record sales. There’s Spotify and Apple Music and Tidal and YouTube and TikTok. They’re all sending dollars to music creators. Spotify sent $10 billion. So they sent more in cash to music creators and that ecosystem in the last year than the entire industry was worth 18 years ago.

You've gotten a lot of really positive press for this. What's in it for Cloudflare beyond that?

I was my college newspaper editor. My wife and I bought our local hometown newspaper, but not because we're making any money off of it. Because we believe in local journalism. We need journalists, and we need academics, and we need researchers, and we can't have new technology just strangle the business model of that.

Personally, that's my motivation from a company perspective. Like this is an existential threat to us. If the internet stops existing, what's left for Cloudflare to do? So one of the things that is really important to us is a thriving and vibrant internet ecosystem. Even if it didn't contribute a single dollar in revenue to us.

But it's contributing revenue to us already because we're seeing folks like your parent company and others who are saying, “This is important, and we were using someone else and now we're shifting to Cloudflare.”

I want to ask you a little bit about a different aspect of what you guys do. So you have this massive network, right? One hundred and twenty-five countries. You released an outage summary on internet blockages or interruptions around the world and found that there were no government-directed outages in the first three months of this year, but the second three months were a different story. Can you talk a little bit about what you’re seeing?

It's interesting how there's a seasonality to this and that seasonality happens for what is a pretty silly reason in my estimation. There are a lot of countries in the world that believe access to the internet gives students an unfair advantage if they're taking standardized tests.

Oh, really?

So at the end of the school year, you'll see a massive uptick in the internet being turned off in those countries to deny access to students to be able to cheat on the tests. What's depressing about that? First, they've designed tests that you can cheat on so easily just by having access to the internet. Second, we see it being turned off in those countries in poor regions but left on in rich regions. Which is a way that powerful people are helping their own kids but punishing the poorer kids.

But what worries me the most is that it's normalizing the idea that it's OK for the government, for what is a relatively silly reason, to turn off the internet and that they have essentially built the tooling to be able to do that on the back of “we must protect the children.”

That same tooling—whenever there’s an election and they want to suppress any kind of other party that might kick them out of power, whenever there’s any sort of civil unrest or protests, they can use that same tooling.

That is fascinating. I have to ask, in the context of the US administration right now, have you seen any changes in the online environment since Trump took office?

No is the answer. We had a great relationship with the Obama administration. We had a great relationship with the first Trump administration. We had a great relationship with the Biden administration. We have, so far, had a great relationship with the second Trump administration.

It's in the US’s interest for there to be more global internet access. If there is a change, the one place where I think that there has been what we view as a positive change has been that some of the internet blocking or restrictions or what we saw out of the UK where they were trying to force back doors into encryption, some aspects of the Trump administration, the current State Department, have said that's actually a trade issue. So I actually think that the current Trump administration has been more aggressive at protecting the internet than we saw from the Biden administration.

When you think about everything that your company is across, what is it that's waking you up at 3 in the morning right now? What do you worry about?

The business model of the internet is breaking, and if content creators don't have an incentive to create content, if they can't get famous and they can't get rich, they're just going to stop creating content. That's an existential threat. That's the nightmare, the dream that wakes me up.

What makes you excited? What are you optimistic about?

So we, for the first time in human history, have a relatively good mathematical model. To describe the totality of human knowledge, it's not perfect. But if you take all the AI companies that are out there, they have these giant decision trees that they've created. It’s the best representation of human knowledge that we've ever had, and it tells us what we know, but it also tells us what we don't know. I analogize it to being like a giant block of Swiss cheese. There's a lot of cheese, but there's a bunch of holes in that cheese.

The thing that actually makes me super optimistic is that if we do this right, creating a set of incentives that reward content creators for filling in the holes, that is a lot better business model and a much healthier business model than the old traffic generation.

My evidence that we're onto something is we've seen a handful of content deals, and the company that has gotten the best deal by far is Reddit. We know from their public filings that last year they got close to $140 million a year from Google and OpenAI.

Hmm.

If you compare that with a similar deal that was done for The New York Times, they got about $20 million. So Reddit got seven times more than The New York Times. Why? Well, maybe it's crazy …

I think I know where you're going, and I'm gonna agree with you, but [$140 million compared to $20 million is] a wildly different number.

Yeah. But 20 minutes ago we both, I think, agreed that we're nostalgic for the quirky internet ...

Oh, I love Reddit.

… and there's nothing that represents that more than Reddit. The New York Times is amazing, but if you have data from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, like how much real difference is there? Basically the facts stay the same between those, whereas Reddit is this unique content, and so we already have some evidence that the business model of the AI-driven web is going to be one that rewards the Reddits of the world more.

All right. I gotta figure out what hole in the Swiss cheese I'm gonna fill.

You know, the scariest meeting I’ve had in the last little bit was coffee with Anna Wintour. My wife was like, “You have to wear a suit.” And I’m like, “I don’t have anything.”

Wait. This is really important. What did you wear, Matthew?

It was in New York and it was a hundred degrees outside, a hundred percent humidity. The only suit I had was this light blue, fall, relatively heavy suit. So, I wore the suit.

Oh boy.

Anna probably rolled her eyes at this. But I also was just a sweaty mess. So I think it was a pretty embarrassing meeting.

This is a shocking visual. I'm sure she thought it went great. The thing about my boss is that she's actually really, really nice. So there you go.

She was incredibly, incredibly lovely, and so thoughtful about the whole content and media industry. So I really appreciated the opportunity to get to pick her brain.

That's really funny.

Even though my sartorial sense is pretty …

Trust me, so is mine. I know the feeling.

Before we end, I wanna play a little game we came up with. It's called Control, Alt, Delete. What piece of tech would you love to control? What piece would you alt, so alter or change, and what would you delete? What would you vanquish from the Earth if given the opportunity?

So, delete. I'd probably say TikTok. Zero protein, very low-value content, I think, is really dangerous and damaging.

Um, control. I feel super privileged in terms of what we do at Cloudflare, so I would love to have significant influence in thinking through what the next business model of the web looks like. I don't necessarily wanna control it, but I would love to at least control making sure that we're rewarding filling the holes in the cheese.

Then, alt. I'm still longing for a home automation system that doesn't suck. Because I showed up at my house in Austin and the light switches didn't work and I couldn't turn the TV on. You know, a smart home that was a little bit smarter.

How to Listen

You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how:

If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for “uncanny valley.” We’re on Spotify too.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/big-interview-podcast-matthew-prince-cloudflare/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

BUSINESS | WILL KNIGHT | SEP 15, 2025 AT 5:54 PM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

How AI Is Upending Politics, Tech, the Media, and More

In an increasingly divided world, one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that artificial intelligence is a hugely disruptive—and sometimes downright destructive—phenomenon.

At WIRED’s AI Power Summit in New York on Monday, leaders from the worlds of tech, politics, and the media came together to discuss how AI is transforming their intertwined worlds. The Summit included voices from the AI industry, a current US senator, a former Trump administration official, and publishers including WIRED’s parent company, Condé Nast. You can view a livestream of the event in full below.

“In journalism, many of us have been excited and worried about AI in equal measure,” said Anna Wintour, Condé Nast’s chief content officer and the global editorial director of Vogue, in her opening remarks. “We worry about it replacing our work, and the work of those we write about.”

Leaders from the world of politics offered contrasting visions for ensuring AI has a positive impact overall. Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, said policymakers should learn from social media and figure out suitable guardrails around copyright infringement and other key issues before AI causes too much damage. “We want to deal with the perfect storm that is engulfing journalism,” he said in conversation with WIRED global editorial director Katie Drummond.

In a separate conversation, Dean Ball, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and one of the authors of the Trump administration's AI Action Plan, defended that policy blueprint’s vision for AI regulation. He claimed that it introduced more rules around AI risks than any other government has produced.

Figures from within the AI industry painted a rosy picture of AI’s impact, too, arguing that it will be a boon for economic growth and would not be deployed unchecked.

“We have this generational opportunity to reignite American scientific leadership and to renew America’s position as a leader in innovation around the globe,” said Markham C. Erickson, vice president of government affairs and public policy at Google, who mentioned his company’s work applying AI to modeling protein interactions and materials science as signs of such a renaissance.

Erickson downplayed Google’s role in undermining the media industry, even though publishers have seen traffic plummet thanks to tools like AI Overviews, which summarize content instead of sending traffic directly to websites. (AI Overviews still offer links to sources, but publishers have widely reported serious impacts to how many visitors Google sends to their sites since the rollout.) “We want a healthy ecosystem,” said Erickson. “But user preferences, and what users want is also changing.”

In a later panel, several media industry leaders argued that Erickson’s rosy analysis underplays a hugely destructive trend.

“The insinuation that AI Overview is not getting in the way of the 10 blue links and the traffic going back to creators and publishers is just 100 percent false,” said Mike Reed, CEO of Gannett | USA Today Network. “All of the information is out there about how reduced the flow of people is back to sites.” Vox Media cofounder, chair, and CEO Jim Bankoff and People, Inc. CEO Neil Vogel expressed similar sentiments. Reed also announced that Gannett has rolled out its own chatbot-like tool, called DeeperDive, to give its readers the answers they're looking for without having to go to an outside AI company.

Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch, who previously worked as CEO of Pandora, drew parallels between the situation that faces online publishers today and when the music industry first forged licensing deals with streaming companies.

“AI is having a dramatic impact on our industry,” said Lynch. “We are really talking about billions of dollars to compensate industries like ours for one of the most critical inputs for these models, which is the content.”

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/wired-ai-summit-tech-politics-media/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

POLITICS | ZOË SCHIFFER | SEP 15, 2025 AT 4:26 PM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

WIRED Roundup: How Charlie Kirk Changed Conservative Media

In today’s episode, our host Zoë Schiffer is joined by senior politics writer Jake Lahut to discuss Charlie Kirk's death and its aftermath, covering everything from how prominent right-wing voices have responded to the news to how Kirk helped shape conservative media influencers and US politics at large.

You can follow Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer and Jake Lahut on Bluesky at @jakelahut.writes.news. Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com.

Mentioned in this episode:

Right-Wing Activist Charlie Kirk Dead at 31 by Makena Kelly

‘War Is Here’: The Far-Right Responds to Charlie Kirk Shooting With Calls for Violence by David Gilbert

MAGA Influencers Take Their Victory Lap, With Big Tech Picking Up the Tab by Makena Kelly

How to Listen

You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how:

If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for “uncanny valley.” We’re on Spotify too.

Transcript

Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley. I'm WIRED's director of business and industry, Zoë Schiffer. Today on the show we're skipping our regular roundup to discuss the news that's gripped the nation since yesterday: the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. On Wednesday, Kirk was fatally shot at an event at Utah Valley University. It was the first appearance of what was supposed to be a nationwide tour aimed at “equipping students with the tools to push back against left-wing indoctrination in academia.” It was hosted by the nonprofit that Kirk founded called Turning Point USA. As of this recording, local and federal authorities are still looking for a suspect. We'll dive into who Kirk was and how he shaped a movement of right-wing digital influencers and commentators that has changed not just conservative media, but US politics at large. I'm joined today by senior politics writer Jake Lahut. Jake, welcome to Uncanny Valley.

Jake Lahut: Hey, Zoë. Good to be back.

Zoë Schiffer: So listeners probably have some idea of who Charlie Kirk was. He is obviously a right-wing activist and a major Trump ally. But take me back to how he became so influential in conservative circles.

Jake Lahut: So Charlie Kirk was basically a teenager and had been planning on going to college. Ends up getting noticed by this guy, Bill Montgomery, who is a conservative activist from Nebraska, and he basically convinces him, in a not-too-dissimilar fashion to a lot of the tech folks that we cover all the time here at WIRED, to say basically, "Hey, what if you drop out of school and do this full time?" And in pretty short order, he turned into an absolutely prolific fundraiser, he had very good oratory skills on the stump, and then he developed this brand that we all came to know him by when he became much more famous as the years went on, where he would go to college campuses and basically have a line of students form to debate him. And he basically is the originator of that Prove Me Wrong meme, because that was quite literally his shtick that he had started.

[Archival audio]: So would you say in some cases women with IUDs are murderers?

Charlie Kirk [archival audio]: Of course not. They're not murderers. We do not know-

[Archival audio]: So what's the difference between an IUD killing a conceived zygote and like a mother going into Planned Parenthood and killing the fetus in her womb?

Charlie Kirk [archival audio]: That was actually the best point somebody made.

Jake Lahut: So that's what Turning Point USA basically set out to do, was to upend the conventional wisdom that Democrats always had an upper hand on college campuses. And it took well over a decade, but they just slowly chipped away at it. And you look at it now, and these events have had huge crowds on college campuses, and Turning Point USA has become both a financial juggernaut and also just a huge grabber of attention for the Republican Party trying to reach young voters.

Zoë Schiffer: Got it. OK, so kind of a true free-speech advocate. The idea being that if you get in there and you debate students and really press them on their ideas, maybe you can change some minds.

Jake Lahut: Yeah, he was definitely after a form of persuasion. Now a lot of the ways he would get into it with students would often be to troll them or humiliate them, and those were certainly, in the attention economy and the way social media works, those are the clips that would often perform the best for him.

Charlie Kirk [archival audio]: Do you think men can give birth?

[Archival audio]: I think that-

Charlie Kirk [archival audio]: Yes or no question.

[Archival audio]: I think that a person who was assigned male at birth, I don't think they can give birth.

Charlie Kirk [archival audio]: Assigned male at birth? So people are not male at birth.

[Archival audio]: I think that a person-

Charlie Kirk [archival audio]: See, you’re evidence that college is a scam, my friend.

Jake Lahut: I met Kirk at the Republican Convention last year. He had previously invited me to come out to his studio and debate him. I don't really know what the debate would be about because I'm a reporter and didn't have any views I was trying to hash out with the guy. But I really hadn't corresponded with him a ton. And then his reputation did really check out when I met him, which was he had this disarmingly charming affect to him, and he just wanted to have a normal chat off the record. And I think the big thing that he was really known for, among both sources of mine who were friends with him, and the reason why I think a lot of people in the party liked what he had to offer, wasn't just that this is an appeal to younger college student voters or whatever, but he basically made politics more fun for younger conservatives in a way that I think kind of gets overlooked, especially if you're really learning about him only recently or you've only seen some of the more incendiary and hardcore things he said, which was totally part of his identity. But he really did live up to this in-person reputation as being a pretty reasonable guy who genuinely did, almost to a fault, love debating people who disagreed with them.

Zoë Schiffer: Talk to me about what was going on for you yesterday. You've met this person in real life, you've covered politics for a long time. Obviously stuff, to me, seems like it's getting more polarized, more intense, more violent. We're seeing more and more of these incidents. But what was your first impression when the news broke?

Jake Lahut: I immediately thought this was very bad. Someone was asking me, how would you explain this to someone who either just found out about who Charlie Kirk is or else doesn't really know who he is? And I would say, if you're familiar with Rush Limbaugh from his peak as the conservative talk radio host, it's sort of as if a millennial Rush Limbaugh got assassinated, and that the fallout from it and the conspiratorial thinking and the frankly rising tensions around a second civil war would get ramped up really quickly. And I think we have seen that in a lot of corners of the internet, and I know we'll talk about that more on this show, but I just thought, I hope I'm wrong, but it could be a major before-and-after event that we end up looking back on.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, yeah. I saw a lot of that rhetoric, particularly on X, like there's no going back. This is the turning point, not to overuse that term. But one thing that really stuck out to me was we immediately saw high-profile commentators on the left and right condemn the murder wholeheartedly, it felt like. But we also saw prominent right-wing voices that immediately started pointing fingers at the left saying their rhetoric was partly to blame. For example, Elon Musk posted on X that the left is “the party of murder.” What stuck out to you about that? Were you surprised at all?

Jake Lahut: No, a lot of this seemed like a more rapid-fire and sophisticated iteration of what we saw after the assassination attempt on Trump's life in Butler, Pennsylvania, last summer. And I really can't overstate, I think, how central this is to the modern Trump Republican Party and conservative movement that basically a decade of them being called Nazis and fascists and all this stuff has made life unbearable for them, even though they're in power. It's beyond a sense of being aggrieved. And I think that a lot of these folks legitimately think now that simply being a conservative, being identified as a conservative, saying conservative ideas, makes you a persecuted political class in America. That's genuinely what a lot of them believe. President Trump literally referred to him as a martyr in his remarks yesterday.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I saw that from a few different people, but Trump most notably. Given who Kirk was and the political reality that we currently live in, that incendiary calls for civil war are not completely shocking, but it's still a situation that has rattled people across the political spectrum. For example, I saw yesterday that Hasan Piker, the left-wing Twitch streamer, has canceled his upcoming appearance at Dartmouth College as a precaution. I'm curious what you make of that and what you'll be keeping an eye out for in the next few weeks.

Jake Lahut: Yeah, actually, Hasan was going to appear with Charlie Kirk at that event at Dartmouth. And this is where things I think could start to, I'm using the term spiral here in the sense of heightened security postures in a way that would effectively lead to less back and forth between voters and politicians, between reporters and politicians. And this is actually something that I'd reported on for us a couple of months back when the Speaker of the Minnesota House was assassinated, and I talked to democratic lawmakers and candidates who said that unfortunately they were looking at spending a lot more money on security and probably either holding none or fewer of the more accessible events at a county fair or somewhere where just regular voters can come up and just chat them up. And I think that we've already seen this trend. And now what I'm wondering is a two-fold thing of a continuation of that trend, and then also an early talking point we're seeing from some conservatives that would effectively designate the Democratic Party as a terrorist organization, and the ramifications of that and what that could have for freedom of elections and what actions that could justify from the administration. I really think it's hard to fathom just how far that could go when we're really only 24 hours out from this as of recording.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, yeah. Some of these ideas sound completely outlandish when you say them, but given the people who are talking about them, it's worth taking somewhat seriously. Coming up after the break, we'll dive into how Kirk shaped a new generation of right-wing figures and influencers who changed conservative media and US politics as we know it. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoë Schiffer and I'm joined today by Senior Politics Writer, Jake Lahut. Jake, we just went through what happened earlier this week in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's death and the responses from the right-wing and beyond. We also touched on how Kirk became renowned for his work with Turning Point USA. One of the main things that the organization has done is prop up and train right-wing influencers. So how much have they actually moved the needle in conservative politics?

Jake Lahut: They've moved the needle quite a bit. Beyond the point I was mentioning earlier about this really monumental effort they undertook to undercut the Democratic Party in terms of enthusiasm and resources deployed to getting college students to vote, they've started to actually scout and develop right-wing talent, and they have one of their blue chip prospects in Congress right now. Anna Paulina Luna from Florida, who I mentioned briefly earlier, got her start as a TPUSA contributor. They've recruited and trained at least 400 influencers since 2019, and it's something akin to a Silicon Valley incubator almost in that sense. And these are names you might've heard of: Alex Clark, Benny Johnson, Candace Owens, and then you have Kirk's prowess as a fundraiser where he was bringing in more than $85 million in the 2024 cycle alone, and that's according to tax records. So I really don't think it can be emphasized enough just how much this strategy has helped Republicans. It culminated in 2024, but it's really better understood as a decade-plus arc that they've been on with making inroads with younger voters.

Zoë Schiffer: So where does that leave traditional right-wing media, like Fox News, for example? Is this a replacement of that or is it working in tandem?

Jake Lahut: I think it's more in tandem. Fox's programming was dominated by Kirk's assassination last night. I think that for a lot of the mainstay Fox personalities, people like Charlie Kirk, and I guess in the Turning Point USA broader cinematic universe, these younger figures are really important, actually, for I think a lot of the more established conservative media TV hosts to build that audience and start to introduce themselves to people who are not throwing on the old-school tube on the couch at home every night. And this is also just something interesting, because Democrats have been trying to do versions of this for a while, and like we mentioned earlier, the conventional wisdom had held that Democrats would always have this advantage of younger voters. So I think it's very interesting to see what Turning Point USA is going to become after this; and then to what extent this door that he opened could be taken up by just a figure with a different kind of profile, a different kind of charisma, maybe more extreme on some issues. So there is a very legitimate, almost a power vacuum that is opened here because he was such a singular figure in this aspect of conservative politics.

Zoë Schiffer: Absolutely. So creating a new branch of right-wing media geared toward a younger audience is definitely a key part of Kirk's legacy. And there's also the legacy that he left in politics at large, like his rhetoric toward trans people, immigrants, his rhetoric on abortion rights. These things really stick out to me. Talk to me about that, that imprint that he might've left.

Jake Lahut: Yeah, I think the imprint has some contradictions that we're seeing in the aftermath of this horrific incident. There's certainly this almost saintly way that he's being painted after his death, and I think part of that is that he was an organizer and not a candidate, so he never got the kind of scrutiny or had to really make hard choices on policy. He was always more in the attention economy realm, the fundraising realm, and the voter turnout area. So I think right now he's being mostly remembered for his genuine commitment to freedom of debate and wanting to actually have uncomfortable in-person interactions with people who may otherwise never talk to each other or disagree about politics. But then you have a lot of the things that he said about gun control, for example, that effectively it is worth having some amount of gun deaths, to paraphrase what he said here, in order to protect the Second Amendment. He was asked one time if one of his daughters, who at the time was 10 years old, that if she were sexually assaulted and became pregnant, would he want her to carry the pregnancy to term? And he basically said yes, that there would have to be a baby there. The other area where I think he may have made the biggest impact, to add real quickly, is that his view of what college and what young adulthood is for, very different than what we've generally heard from younger people involved in politics. He painted a positive vision of going to college for young people. Now, that vision was effectively for women, like you should go to college just to find a husband, and that's pretty much it. But he was offering this view of like, "Hey, actually you're told in America that your career and hustling and grinding is most important. I'm actually here to tell you that just have a family and have kids." And we've seen polling that came out recently from NBC News where Gen Z men ranked having children as their number one priority, and no other demographic did. Whereas Gen Z women listed a litany of other issues ahead of that in terms of having a stable career, mental well-being, all those things. So that's a thread of his legacy that I think is worth keeping track of, because he really was just this one man sensation on the college campuses. And I don't think anyone's going to replace that role right away, but if we want to understand how he really changed our politics beyond looking at one election or a series of quotes he gave, I would look to that, that there are a lot of young people who really admire this guy, who you may know a lot of them, but you just haven't heard from them about it until this happened, and that could very well end up being what the long-term memory of Charlie Kirk is.

Zoë Schiffer: Jake, thank you so much for joining me today.

Jake Lahut: Zoë, thanks so much.

Zoë Schiffer: That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. Amar Lal at Macrosound mixed this episode. Kate Osborn is our executive producer. Condé Nast head of global audio is Chris Bannon, and Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/uncanny-valley-podcast-wired-roundup-how-charlie-kirk-changed-conservative-media/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

GEAR | LUKE LARSEN | SEP 15, 2025 AT 4:22 PM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

The Top New Features in Apple’s MacOS Tahoe 26

MacOS Tahoe 26 brings a slew of new features, from a dedicated Games app to a revamped Spotlight function. You can now try them out for yourself.

Courtesy of Apple

I haven’t been excited about a macOS update in a long time, but with macOS Tahoe 26, we're finally getting a significant overhaul. Between the visual redesign (Liquid Glass) and some exciting pro features, there's something for everyone to try out in macOS Tahoe 26, including one feature that Mac nerds will love. I've been using the beta for months, and now that the official release has rolled out, it's time for the wider world to get in on the software changes.

Updated September 2025: MacOS 26 Tahoe is officially here. We've included info on what to expect from the update and how to download it.

Is Your Mac Compatible With MacOS Tahoe?

If it's from the past few years, yes. All the Apple Silicon Macs, including the M1 models from 2020, are compatible. However, with macOS Tahoe 26, Apple announced that it is the last update for some Intel-powered Macs.

The final supported Intel-based Macs that will receive macOS Tahoe include the following models: MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019), MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Four Thunderbolt 3 ports), iMac (27-inch, 2020), and Mac Pro (2019). So, if you have one of those, you're good to go. You won't be able to try out any of the Apple Intelligence features, as they are still limited to only Apple Silicon.

How to Install MacOS Tahoe 26

Now that Tahoe is officially here, you can upgrade to the latest version right now. As with any software update, use the following steps to get macOS 26 up and going. You'll want to set aside a half hour or so to complete the update.

1. Click on the Apple logo in the top-left corner of the Menu Bar and find System Settings from the drop-down menu.

2. Click on Software Update, which will bring you to a page that shows you if a macOS software update is available. You may have an older macOS Sequoia update if you haven't been keeping up to date. But if macOS Tahoe is available, it will be listed, along with a brief synopsis of the changes and the amount of storage you'll need to install it. In this case, it's 10.74 GB, which you'll need to have free to complete the update.

3. If you're ready to start the update, click Upgrade Now. This will start the download, which took me about five minutes to complete.

4. After the download, your Mac will restart, which takes another 20 minutes or so. Once the system is restarted, however, you'll be welcomed by the transparent, frosted glass vibes of macOS Tahoe.

Liquid Glass

Photograph: Luke Larsen

It's been a while since we've had a good Apple design controversy. Liquid Glass is the latest cause for outrage, and Apple's aware of it this time. The “visual motif,” as Apple calls it, is the primary change in this year's updates to the company's operating systems, and it's already come under some intense scrutiny since the announcement.

Transparency is nothing new; in fact, there was already plenty of it in macOS. But Tahoe turns up the transparency to another level, in a way that makes it feel decidedly bold. The current “flat” design of macOS first rolled out back in 2014 with Yosemite, which had an anti-button approach to menus, instead favoring simple text and shapes in the user interface. With Liquid Glass, the tides have turned again, bringing back buttons to help objects stand out from the very low opacity of menus and interfaces. These buttons and outlines are all highlighted by the glass-like borders, which give it a slight 3D effect. That part I like.

The best demonstration of this is in the Menu Bar and Control Center. Control Center was already a bit of a mess, so I appreciate the new, simpler look, which swaps out the layers of segmentation into a series of circular buttons. And yes, the transparency is very notable, relying heavily on the frosted glass effect to maintain any kind of legibility. The entire Menu Bar across the top now disappears entirely, which is what Apple is referring to when it says it makes the screen feel bigger. I have to agree there, so long as you have a relatively simple wallpaper that doesn't obscure the text. The widgets have the same effect, though interestingly, when I changed the wallpaper, it filled in the background and removed the transparency. It's a necessary concession.

Unfortunately, applications like Spotlight and Apps are transparent, and depending on what you have open underneath, it can look really distracting and ugly. I happened to have my Google Calendar open in dark mode, and the result was a sloppy mess. I can't imagine a reason why you'd want these to be transparent. I also don't like that apps with sidebars like Messages or Finder allow elements to be transparent underneath the Exit, Minimize, and Fullscreen buttons. This looks fine in some apps, like the new Games app, but in apps that are primarily text, it just looks cluttered.

Photograph: Luke Larsen

If you use a Mac every day like I do, though, a lot of the smaller changes are what give it its distinctly fresh feeling. The icons are what you'll notice first, which is right where the controversy begins. The iconic (heh) Finder icon has, indeed, been tampered with—though they haven't been flipped like in the original concept. The colors are slightly different, though, and there's a nice, modern border around it to match the other icons.

The corner radius on nearly everything from buttons to windows has enlarged, giving everything a stronger cohesion and sense of unity. It'll take some getting used to in Finder, but I like how the redesigned Safari looks with its floating search bar at the top. There's even a new cursor for resizing windows.

All in all, the aesthetic changes to macOS haven't had quite as big an impact as on iOS, where Liquid Glass has proved to be a bit more problematic already, so much so that Apple dialed it back a bit. There will inevitably be areas where Apple may need to improve visibility, but I think the implementation in macOS Tahoe is relatively benign.

Courtesy of Apple

There are a few smaller design changes, such as the ability to change the color of folders or add an emoji to them. Control Center, located up top in the Menu Bar, has also been made completely transparent. More importantly, Apple has added tons more customization so you can add more quick settings to change. You can even add specific settings in commonly used apps such as Zoom.

MacOS Tahoe also brings over a design tweak that came to iPhones last year: tint for icons, which applies a unified look to all your icons at once. Honestly, I'm surprised this came to macOS, because it wasn't well-received by reviewers. The setting for this can be found under Appearance in System Settings, and giving it a try myself, it didn't change my mind. It's as tacky as it was on iOS.

Major Spotlight Update

This is the feature I've been most excited to try out since it was announced, and admittedly, there's a lot to it. The Spotlight search tool has always been one of my favorite features in macOS, and I've been waiting for Apple to take it to the next level. In Tahoe, it borrows from the popular Mac app, Alfred, but goes above and beyond in terms of integration. It's smarter on just about every level, quickly offering up apps, documents, or even your clipboard history, which has to be the most practical use case so far, even if it's not quite as full-featured as Alfred.

Spotlight can even now perform system actions and in-app actions, such as playing a podcast or starting a recording. You can fill out parameters such as who you're sending an email to—again, right in Spotlight! I still need to explore what I would depend on this for. But I can feel the potential.

Spotlight gets greatly enhanced in Tahoe.

Courtesy of Apple

Hundreds of actions can now be triggered from Spotlight, like sending an email, creating a note, or playing a podcast.

Courtesy of Apple

But wait, there's more. There are even Quick Keys you can use to speed things up further. Type “sm” to send a message or “ar” to create a reminder. Think next-level key commands with these. You can set up your own Quick Keys, too, really expanding the capabilities and customization. For example, you can set up Quick Keys to take actions within an app that you're using, letting you quickly set up a task all from the keyboard. It's for the Mac nerds out there who already know every other key command.

Interestingly, as part of the emphasis on Spotlight, Apple has replaced Launchpad with a new Apps shortcut in the dock. This is a change I like. Launchpad was a full-screen takeover, which felt a bit overcooked. That's why I often found myself using Spotlight to open apps much more often. Based on this change in macOS Tahoe, I'm guessing I'm not the only one. If only it weren't transparent.

AI-Powered Shortcuts

Shortcuts can be a really powerful way of automating tasks on your Mac. With macOS Tahoe, these are upgraded by Apple Intelligence, letting you set up shortcuts like summarizing text or generating images. You can even tap into ChatGPT (or the on-device Neural Engine) if necessary, setting up chains of actions that could potentially be extremely useful. For example, you might create a Shortcut that compares notes from text in Notes from a lecture to an audio transcription, and then summarizes the differences using Apple Intelligence.

The new actions in Shortcuts.

Courtesy of Apple

Bonus points—you can now access these AI-powered shortcuts through the aforementioned Spotlight update.

More Continuity Features

As part of its ever-growing suite of Continuity features, the Phone app is now on Macs. Why put a Phone app on a device that doesn't have a cellular modem? It doesn't make a lot of sense on the surface, but remember, you can take calls from your iPhone directly to your Mac.

The app has all the same features on iOS 26, such as live translation in calls, new backgrounds for contacts, and automatically screened calls. Not surprisingly, all the changes to group chats are coming to the Mac Messages app.

The inclusion of the Phone app could point us in the direction of 5G MacBooks in the future, something Apple has resisted for a long time. While cellular laptops aren't exactly common these days, it feels more possible now that the Phone app is here. So who knows? Maybe the M6 MacBook Pros, whenever they launch, will have a surprise option for cellular connectivity to better make use of the Phone app (maybe with Apple's C1X modem). Microsoft announced a Surface Laptop 5G just a few months ago.

Live Activities from an iPhone will appear in the Mac's menu bar.

Courtesy of Apple

Apple is also introducing Live Activities to the Mac, which will hand off an ongoing task from your iPhone, such as an Uber Eats order, and give you updates right in the Menu Bar on your Mac.

Other MacOS Tahoe Features

There are a couple of other features worth mentioning. One is improvements to gaming, with a dedicated Games app, similar to what will be in iPadOS 26 and iOS 26. It's perhaps the most useful here on the Mac, though, since the question of which games are available on Mac often comes up. It also allows Apple to highlight some of the bigger titles, like Cyberpunk 2077 or Assassin's Creed: Shadows.

The new Apple Games app.

Courtesy of Apple

It's pretty, I have to admit, even if it's not entirely useful as is. But it puts all your games in one place, from across your device, and centers the large, glorious game art. The more exciting part is the new Game Overlay, something that PC gamers usually have access to. The overlay lets you chat with friends, adjust settings, and more without having to exit the game. It should be noted that the transparent menus look particularly nice in this scenario.

Game Overlay lets players adjust their settings, chat, or invite new players.

Courtesy of Apple

Some smaller changes include the ability to capture audio recordings within the Notes app, the Journal app coming to the Mac for the first time, and a new Magnifier feature that zooms in with your connected webcam or camera.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/macos-26-tahoe-top-features/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

GEAR | ADRIENNE SO | SEP 15, 2025 AT 4:00 PM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

The Top New Features in Apple’s WatchOS 26

Apple’s new additions this year include a wrist-flick gesture to dismiss a call and a personalized Workout Buddy to tell you when you “crushed it.”

Courtesy of Apple

Apple introduced a rather drastic change to its operating-system naming conventions this year. What would've been watchOS 12 is now watchOS 26, since the company decided to stop labeling its operating systems sequentially and instead name them according to the fiscal year they are released. Every OS now, from iOS 26 to macOS 26, also has a new, overhauled display aesthetic called Liquid Glass, which makes certain apps, icons, buttons, and pop-ups look like frosted glass and other features look like raindrops.

WatchOS 26 has new Apple Intelligence features, which are small and measured rather than big and sweeping—but for Apple Watch fans, the fact that there is now Apple Intelligence on your wrist at all might be enough. Here, I'll walk through some of the new tips and tricks you can now see on your Apple Watch. (If you want to read about it straight from Apple, you can do so here.)

Updated September 15, 2025: WatchOS 26 is now out. We tweaked the language in this story to reflect that, added details on how to download it, and added more info on new features.

Is Your Apple Watch Compatible?

Apple's watchOS 26 is available for Apple Watches starting from the Series 6 or later. This includes the second-gen Apple Watch SE and all Apple Watch Ultra models. You must also have an iPhone 11 or later that can run iOS 26. If you want the Apple Intelligence features, you need to have an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone, which includes the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, all iPhone 16 models, and the latest iPhone 17 models.

How to Install WatchOS 26

First, check that your phone and watch are fully charged and connected to Wi-Fi. Go to the Watch app on your iPhone and click Settings > General > Software Update. Select watchOS 26 (if it hasn't already automatically updated!). You're done!

The Top WatchOS 26 Features

Liquid Glass

Courtesy of Apple

Most of the Liquid Glass redesigns have been optimized for the bigger screens of the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. But hey, look, the numerals on the clock face now have a translucent frost! You can also see slight specular highlights around the edges of the buttons when you look closely. Smart Stack—Apple's layered widget system—will also utilize Liquid Glass so as not to obscure the screen.

Workout Buddy

Courtesy of Apple

Workout Buddy uses all the exercise data accumulated by the Apple Watch—heart rate, pace, distance, etc.—and uses it to offer personalized, upbeat encouragement (“you crushed it!”) during your exercise session. Apple Intelligence analyzes your data to provide these insights and to use voice encouragement derived from Fitness+ trainers. It can also mark key moments, like running a mile particularly fast. It's available for just a few exercises, like indoor and outdoor walking or running, outdoor cycling, functional and traditional strength training, and HIIT—and yes, you can turn it off if the idea of a cheerleader in your ear is hell for you, too.

The Workout app itself has also undergone a redesign, with four buttons in the four corners of the watch face to make it easier to tap on each feature. Users can set up music and podcasts within the Workout app, and Apple Music can either select music or provide suggestions for an appropriate playlist.

Sleep Score and Hypertension

Courtesy of Apple

WatchOS 26 now offers two new health features. The first is a new Sleep Score, which takes into account the time you went to bed, the duration of your sleep, and the number of interruptions to classify your sleep on a five-point scale—either Excellent, High, OK, Low, or Very Low. When you click on Sleep Score in the Health app, you can also see your heart rate and respiratory rate while sleeping.

The update also adds the ability to track possible signs of hypertension. Undiagnosed hypertension, or high blood pressure, affects around one-third of all adults and can cause kidney disease, heart attacks, or stroke. The Watch now uses data from the optical heart rate monitor to check your data over 30 days for possible signs of hypertension and will notify the user. The studies were developed with studies of over 100,000 people, and the feature is now FDA-cleared.

Smart Stack

Courtesy of Apple

Smart Stack now incorporates more contextual data, like location and the user's routine, to provide more helpful tips. For example, if you arrive at the gym at your usual time, your Apple Watch may mark your location and slide a workout routine to the top of your Smart Stack.

Messages and Notifications

Courtesy of Apple

If you own a Watch Series 9, Watch Series 10, or Apple Watch Ultra 2, you will now be able to use a new wrist-flick gesture (much like Double Tap) to dismiss notifications or incoming calls, silence timers, and return to the clock face. A machine-learning model uses data from the accelerometer and gyroscope to catch the user's wrist movement.

The Apple Watch now also supports Live Translation in Messages (again, you will need an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone). If your language is set to English, the watch will offer prompts in Messages, like suggesting Apple Cash if the user is asked for a donation. Call Screening and Hold Assist will also come to the phone app on the watch, letting users decide whether to take or decline calls or ask for more information.

New Watch Faces

Courtesy of Apple

There are new watch faces to choose from. Flow is the new watch face that takes advantage of Liquid Glass, with blobs of color that swirl through the clear glass numerals. Exactograph looks a bit like the Waypoint face that has been available on Apple Watch Ultra for some time, but is actually a reinterpretation of a traditional clock face. It separates the hours, minutes, and seconds, and you will also be able to see the ticking second hand on other watch faces.

Finally, you will be able to use the Notes app on the watch, which may be more important to some of us than others.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/top-new-features-in-watchos-26/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

SECURITY | JAVIER CARBAJAL | SEP 15, 2025 AT 1:49 PM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

Russia Tests Hypersonic Missile at NATO’s Doorstep—and Shares the Video

Russian military exercises near NATO borders follow the recent incursion of Russian drones into the airspace of Poland and Romania, further stoking tensions with the West.

Photograph: AP Images

On Sunday, Russia released images of its launch of a 3M22 Zircon hypersonic missile from a frigate in the Barents Sea, in the Arctic Ocean, near NATO borders. The launch comes against a backdrop of rising tensions with the West, just days after several Russian drones violated the airspace of North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries Poland and Romania.

The Zircon test is part of the Zapad 2025 joint maneuvers with Belarus, a week of military exercises aimed at assessing defensive and coordination capabilities between the two allied countries. It also serves to show that Russia's military force has not lost its strength, despite heavy losses more than three years after the start of the invasion of Ukraine.

In the video originally shared on Telegram, the crew aboard the frigate Admiral Golovko fires the Zircon at a target in the Barents Sea, an area bounded to the west by the Norwegian Sea. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the target was destroyed in a direct hit by its hypersonic missile, which can reach a distance of up to 1,000 kilometers and travel at Mach 9—nine times the speed of sound.

The images also show exercises with Sukoi Su-34 supersonic fighter-bombers, a two-seater fighter-bomber that can carry up to eight tons of armament and can fly up to 2,485 miles (4,000 kilometers) without refueling (or more than 4,350 miles, or 7,000 km, with external tanks).

There is evidence that Russia has employed hypersonic missiles against civilian targets in Ukraine, such as the Zircon or Kinzhal, which are virtually impossible to intercept. This is not only because of their speed, but also because of their maneuvering capabilities, allowing them to change course mid-flight to evade defense systems (albeit in a limited way).

Remnants of a Russian Zircon hypersonic missile, after it hit a five-story residential building in Kyiv during an aerial bombardment, November 17, 2024.

SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images

Deliberate Provocation or Accident?

This week, NATO set off international alarms due to a series of Russian drone incursions into Polish and Romanian airspace, a violation that had not been recorded so far in the Russia-Ukraine war, at least not on this scale. On September 10, at least 19 drones from Russia invaded Polish airspace, being intercepted and shot down by NATO fighters with no major damage on the ground. The incident was described by the Polish government as an "unprecedented violation" and a “large-scale provocation,” expressions shared by Mark Rutte, NATO's secretary general.

Poland then invoked Article 4 of the NATO Charter, which establishes a mechanism for consultation between NATO members “to exchange views and information and discuss issues before reaching agreement and taking action.” Following this debate among member countries, they launched Operation Eastern Sentinel, a military initiative to strengthen the defensive posture on the alliance's eastern flank through the deployment of advanced fighters and defense systems, among other measures, to counter missile and drone threats.

The alerts were triggered again on September 13, when Romania detected a drone, allegedly from Russia, in its airspace. Russian drone incursions into NATO airspace generated widespread international condemnation. The United States expressed support for the affected countries. “We consider this an unacceptable, regrettable and dangerous event,” said Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state. “No doubt the drones were intentionally launched. The question is whether they were intended to enter Poland.” The Russian government claimed it was not targeting Poland, while Belarus suggested the drones deviated from their initial trajectory.

Notwithstanding the attempts to offer explanations, the joint Zapad 2025 military exercises between Russia and Belarus do little to reduce tensions in Eastern Europe. Although both nations insist that the exercises are defensive in nature, the proximity of the exercises to NATO borders, as well as tests of hypersonic missiles in the Arctic, raise new concerns among Atlantic Alliance member countries.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/russia-hypersonic-missile-test-nato-borders/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

BUSINESS | VARSHA BANSAL | SEP 15, 2025 AT 12:42 PM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

Hundreds of Google AI Workers Were Fired Amid Fight Over Working Conditions

Over 200 contractors who work on improving Google’s AI products, including Gemini and AI Overviews, have been laid off, sources say. It’s the latest development in a conflict over pay and alleged poor working conditions.

Photograph: Justin Sullivan; Getty Images

More than 200 contractors who worked on evaluating and improving Google’s AI products have been laid off without warning in at least two rounds of layoffs last month. The move comes amid an ongoing fight over pay and working conditions, according to workers who spoke to WIRED.

In the past few years, Google has outsourced its AI rating work—which includes evaluating, editing, or rewriting the Gemini chatbot’s response to make it sound more human and “intelligent”—to thousands of contractors employed by Hitachi-owned GlobalLogic and other outsourcing companies. Most raters working at GlobalLogic are based in the US and deal with English-language content. Just as content moderators help purge and classify content on social media, these workers use their expertise, skill, and judgment to teach chatbots and other AI products, including Google’s search summaries feature called AI Overviews—the right responses on a wide range of subjects. Workers allege that the latest cuts come amid attempts to quash their protests over issues including pay and job insecurity.

These workers, who often are hired because of their specialist knowledge, had to have either a master’s or a PhD to join the super rater program, and typically include writers, teachers, and people from creative fields.

“I was just cut off,” says Andrew Lauzon, who received an email with the news of his termination on August 15. “I asked for a reason, and they said ramp-down on the project—whatever that means.” He joined GlobalLogic in March 2024, where his work ranged from rating AI outputs to coming up with a variety of prompts to feed into the model.

Lauzon says this move by the company shows the precarity of such content moderation jobs. He alleges that GlobalLogic started regularly laying off its workers this year. “How are we supposed to feel secure in this employment when we know that we could go at any moment?” he added.

Workers still at the company claim they are increasingly concerned that they are being set up to replace themselves. According to internal documents viewed by WIRED, GlobalLogic seems to be using these human raters to train the Google AI system that could automatically rate the responses, with the aim of replacing them with AI.

At the same time, the company is also finding ways to get rid of current employees as it continues to hire new workers. In July, GlobalLogic made it mandatory for its workers in Austin, Texas, to return to office, according to a notice seen by WIRED. This has directly impacted several workers who either cannot afford to travel to the office due to financial constraints or cannot go to work due to disabilities or caregiving responsibilities.

Despite handling work they describe as skilled and high-stakes, eight workers who spoke to WIRED say they are being underpaid and suffer from lack of job security and unfavorable working conditions. These alleged conditions have impacted worker morale and challenged the ability for people to execute their jobs well, sources say. Some contractors attempted to unionize earlier this year but claim those efforts were quashed. Now they allege that the company has retaliated against them. Two workers have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging they were unfairly fired, one due to bringing up wage transparency issues, and the other for advocating for himself and his coworkers.

“These individuals are employees of GlobalLogic or their subcontractors, not Alphabet," Courtenay Mencini, a Google spokesperson, said in a statement. "As the employers, GlobalLogic and their subcontractors are responsible for the employment and working conditions of their employees. We take our supplier relations seriously and audit the companies we work with against our Supplier Code of Conduct.” GlobalLogic declined to comment.

For a decade, software company GlobalLogic had a team of “generalist raters” who would help rate Google’s search results. In the spring of 2023, Google asked GlobalLogic to assemble a team of “super raters” to evaluate its AI products, starting with AI Overviews.

Ricardo Levario, a teacher from Texas, was hired among the first batch of super raters. Back then he worked on Google’s “search generative experience,” where the search results would display an AI generated summary—now renamed AI Overviews. His job was to determine how well the model performed and rewrite its responses to make sure it was grounded and made better use of sources.

“After the success [of this pilot], we learned that Google was interested in growing the program, and they were going to bring on cohorts of 20 people every week,” says Levario, adding that the company eventually ended up hiring as many as 2,000 super raters to work on Google’s AI. But problems began when GlobalLogic started using third-party contractors to ramp up hiring, Levario claims—because while GlobalLogic super raters’ pay ranged from $28 to $32 an hour, the super raters brought in via third-party contractors were paid $18 to $22 an hour for the same work. The company also has a few hundred “generalist raters” for its AI products who don’t necessarily have a higher degree like the super raters. One such generalist rater, Alex, who was hired in 2023 to rate the bot’s output based on the guidelines provided—which included “fluffier” questions like asking about the closest restaurant but also “not as savory” ones. She says that she hasn’t received a “notable pay increase” despite being pulled into “more demanding” projects. (Alex requested that WIRED identify her by first name only due to privacy concerns).

“We as raters play an incredibly vital role, because the engineers between messing with the code and everything, they're not going to have the time to fine tune and get the feedback they need for the bot,” says Alex. “We’re like the lifeguards on the beach—we’re there to make sure nothing bad happens.” Alex was eventually able to secure a full time position with GlobalLogic, but she alleges that roughly 80 percent of her project folks continue to be on contract, without any benefits or paid time off.

At the end of 2023, workers created a WhatsApp group named Super Secret Secondary Location with around 80 members where some of them started discussing ways to organize. In the spring of 2024, some of these workers got together with the Alphabet Workers Union to discuss ways to create a GlobalLogic chapter for the AI raters to be able to demand better pay and working conditions. “We started building the movement underground,” says Levario. “We were essentially laying down the foundation for our union, developing our systems.” By December 2024, their chapter had 18 members.

Around that time, workplace frustrations were only growing. Alex, along with several other workers, was pulled into a project a few months prior which she initially thought would lead to promotions. But, instead it led to intensified workplace stress. Alex says that in this project, their task timers were set at five minutes, raising concerns amongst her and her coworkers that they are “sacrificing quality at this point.” “I don't even keep count of how many I do in a day,” says Alex. “I just focus more on the timer than anything else—it's gone from mentally stimulating work to mind-numbing.” She added that she often does not reach that metric of completing each task within five minutes and that the company has been “threatening many of us with losing our job or the project in general if we don't get these numbers down.”

In January when a worker quit and left messages on their social channels and via email asking the workers to organize, things started to spiral. It “opened the floodgates,” and workers started having conversations about working conditions and wage parity on these social channels. “GlobalLogic’s reaction was to suppress the conversation, so they began deleting threads,” claims Levario. “One team lead even told us that we were violating company policies, which wasn't true—there was no company policy around that.” Later that month, to channel this worker agitation into action, Levario—who was one of the more vocal organizers—shared a pay and condition survey in the social channels. This worked, and the union membership grew from 18 to 60 by February.

After this incident, however, things unraveled quickly. In the first week of February, many workers received an email saying that the company’s social channels—which was a way for all the remote workers to connect and forge friendships—were banned from use during work hours. These internal chat spaces on Google Chat for all sorts of groups and interests—ranging from queer and gay people to video gamers and writers. “The social spaces helped us to feel less robotic and more human,” says Faith Frontera, about the company eliminating the use of social channels. “It’s important especially in a remote environment where you don’t get to see your coworkers face-to-face.” Frontera joined GlobalLogic as a generalist rater to annotate, proofread, and write responses for Gemini and Magi, which is Google’s new project to integrate AI in search.

Many workers believe that the banning of social spaces was a direct result of workers discussing the pay parity. “I believe that [because] the union was happening, people were discussing their pay and stuff, painting a bad picture” of GlobalLogic, claims a super rater who joined the company two years ago, requesting anonymity to speak freely. “And so they did it as a means to stop us from communicating with one another and that’s what made the environment hostile.”

Even as the company restricted the use of the social spaces, Levario continued to engage on the social channels, following which he was called into a meeting to warn him from using these spaces. Levario then filed a whistleblower complaint with Hitachi. Four days later, Levario received a response to his complaint and a calendar invite. During the five minute call, Levario was fired. They told him they were terminating his contract “for violating the social spaces policy.”

Labor researchers allege this is how it typically plays out around the world with contracting agencies and workers. “This is the playbook,” says Mila Miceli, a research lead at DAIR Institute, an organization that works with AI data workers around the globe. “We have seen this in other places, almost every outsourcing company doing data work where workers have tried to collectivize and organize—this has been difficult. They have suffered retaliation.”

Globally, other AI contract workers are fighting back and organizing for better treatment and pay. Earlier this year, a group of Kenyan AI data labelers formed the Data Labelers Association in a bid to fight for better pay and working conditions and mental health support. At the same time, content moderators from around the world, who have faced and continue to deal with similar issues, formed the global trade union alliance in April. The Global Trade Union Alliance of Content Moderators includes workers from Kenya, Turkey, and Colombia.

Those that remain working at GlobalLogic say they are afraid to speak up because they may lose their jobs. “It's just been kind of [an] oppressive atmosphere,” says Alex. “We can't really organize—we're afraid that if we talk we're going to get fired or laid off.”

Update: 9/17/2025, 2:10 PM EDT: Wired has clarified the internal chat functions used by GlobalLogic.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/hundreds-of-google-ai-workers-were-fired-amid-fight-over-working-conditions/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

BUSINESS | WILL KNIGHT | SEP 15, 2025 AT 12:01 PM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

USA Today Enters Its Gen AI Era With a Chatbot

DeeperDive, a new tool that converses with readers, is an effort to beat the AI industry at its own game.

Photograph: Gil C/ Shutterstock

The publishing company behind USA Today and 220 other publications is today rolling out a chatbot-like tool called DeeperDive that can converse with readers, summarize insights from its journalism, and suggest new content from across its sites.

“Visitors now have a trusted AI answer engine on our platform for anything they want to engage with, anything they want to ask,” said Mike Reed, CEO of Gannett and the USA Today Network, at the WIRED AI Power Summit in New York, an event that brought together voices from the tech industry, politics, and the world of media, “and it is performing really great.”

Most publishers have a fraught relationship with AI, as the chatbots that trained on their content are now summarizing it and eating the traffic that search engines used to send them.

Reed said that Google’s AI Overview feature has dramatically cut traffic to publishers across the industry. “We are watching the same movie as everyone else is watching,” Reed said ahead of today’s announcement. “We can see some risk in the future to any content distribution model that is based primarily on SEO optimization.”

Like other publishers, Gannett has signed some deals with AI companies, including Amazon and Perplexity, to license its content. The company actively blocks the web scrapers that crawl websites in order to steal content.

DeeperDive represents a bet that harnessing the same generative artificial intelligence technology could help publishers capture readers attention by engaging with them in new ways.

The tool replaces a conventional search box and automatically suggests questions that readers might want to ask. For example, today it offers as one prompt, “How does Trump’s Fed policy affect the economy?”

DeeperDive generates a short answer to the query along with relevant stories from across the USA Today network. Reed says it is crucial that DeeperDive bases its output on factually correct information and does not draw from opinion pieces. “We only look at our real journalism,” he says.

The interface of DeeperDive on the homepage of USA Today

Photograph: USA Today

Reed adds that his company hopes that the tool will also reveal more about readers’ interests. “That can help us from a revenue standpoint,” he said.

DeeperDive was developed by the advertising company Taboola. Adam Singolda, Taboola’s CEO, says his firm developed DeeperDive by fine-tuning several open source models.

Singolda says DeeperDive benefits from data gathered from across its own network of more than 600 million daily readers across around 11,000 publishers. He says the tool “grounds every answer in articles retrieved from our publisher partners and requires sentence-level citations to those sources” and will avoid generating an output if information from two sources seems to conflict.

Gannett’s CEO Reed said ahead of today’s event that, together with Taboola, his firm is interested in exploring agentic tools for readers’ shopping decisions. “Our audiences have a higher intent to purchase to begin with,” he says. “That's really the next step here.”

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/usa-today-enters-its-gen-ai-era-with-a-chatbot/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

GEAR | BOUTAYNA CHOKRANE | SEP 15, 2025 AT 7:30 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

Do You Need a DEXA Scan?

DEXA scans measure your bone density, lean muscle, and adipose visceral tissue. But unless you’re an athlete or approaching menopause, you probably don’t need a detailed full-body scan.

Courtesy of Canyon Ranch

Earlier this summer, I found myself lying flat on a padded table in Tucson, Arizona. A mechanical arm hovered above me, scanning my body from head to toe while I tried to remain still. Fifteen-ish minutes later, a clinician handed me a thick packet of results, which included details on bone density, lean muscle mass, body fat percentage, and color-coded visuals showing exactly where each of these metrics was located within my body.

This was a DEXA scan, short for dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. Since the late 1980s, hospitals have used this method to diagnose osteoporosis, and it remains the gold-standard test for bone health. In recent years, however, it has been rebranded as a wellness service, promoted by longevity influencers like Peter Attia and Bryan Johnson, and is now offered at boutique clinics and luxury retreats. At Canyon Ranch, where I was attending the Longevity8 program, the DEXA scan was presented as a crucial snapshot of what might be diminishing my healthspan.

The appeal of the DEXA scan is clear. In a culture that is obsessed with optimization and biometric data, these scans promise hard numbers. But does all this information genuinely help you live longer, or does it simply provide expensive figures to obsess over?

Table of Contents

Your Body, QuantifiedThe Price of KnowledgeShould You Get One?Final TakeawaysMeet the Experts

Your Body, Quantified

Photograph: Boutayna Chokrane

DEXA BD (bone density) scans were introduced into clinical practice in 1987 for measuring bone mineral density in the spine and hip. Current medical guidelines recommend that women over the age of 65, as well as younger women with risk factors, should be screened for osteoporosis. Though by this age, it’s often too late.

“We suggest earlier screening, especially during periomenopause, when women can lose up to 20 percent of their bone mass,” says Jennifer Wagner, chief health and performance officer at Canyon Ranch.

According to Wagner, the risks of osteoporotic fractures are high. “One in three women will experience one, and half of those have significant complications,” she says. “Prevention ideally starts 20 to 30 years before fracture risk peaks.”

What catapulted DEXA into the wellness world is its ability to measure more than bone. A DEXA BC (body composition) scan can also distinguish fat from lean muscle, providing a clearer picture of cardiovascular risk, metabolic health, and stroke risk.

“It gives a greater understanding of where fat is located, how much there is, and adds to our ability to stratify risk,” explains Josh Cheema, medical director of Northwestern Medicine’s Human Longevity Clinic. “It hasn’t made it into screening guidelines, but it’s important. The most common way we currently screen for obesity is BMI, but BMI can be misleading, especially for people with high muscle mass, athletes, or younger individuals.”

DEXA also measures visceral adipose tissue, which is the inflammatory fat around the internal organs. According to internist and performance specialist Pooja Gidwani, high visceral fat increases insulin resistance and chronic disease risk. “Visceral fat is one of the most important metrics,” she says. “Knowing these numbers guides how you eat, exercise, and whether you need medications.”

The granularity of DEXA is compelling for athletes, but it’s also increasingly popular with people on GLP-1 medications like Ozempic or Mounjaro. These drugs accelerate fat loss but can also erode muscle and bone density. “DEXA helps us see the quality of weight loss, how much is fat versus muscle,” Gidwani says.

Gidwani likens the scan to a financial audit: “Muscle and bone are your assets; fat is your liability.” Wagner offers a gentler take: “Think of it like a savings account,” she says. “Knowing your starting balance helps you plan before decline sets in.”

The Price of Knowledge

Courtesy of Canyon Ranch

In hospitals, bone density scans may be covered by insurance if you meet the osteoporosis screening criteria. At luxury retreats like Canyon Ranch, they’re bundled into a $20,000 program fee. Stand-alone scans typically run $300 or more, though some university labs sometimes offer cheaper options for research volunteers.

The bigger cost is the repetition. Experts agree that the value lies in tracking trends over time. “For patients on a fitness or body recomposition journey, I recommend repeating a DEXA every one to three months,” Gidwani says.

For most people, though, “if results are strong, maybe you don’t need another scan for five years,” says Wagner. “If they’re lower, lifestyle interventions can help, and you may want to recheck in a year.”

Radiation exposure is negligible, less than a chest x-ray. But the psychological impact can be more complicated. For some, the numbers motivate: “When I did a body composition test at 36, I had way more body fat than I expected,” Cheema says. “That pushed me to change my workouts and eating patterns in ways that improved my health—something BMI alone wouldn’t have prompted.”

For others, especially those with histories of disordered eating or body image issues, it can be destabilizing and overwhelming. Numbers can become another metric to obsess over rather than a tool for health. “It can be overwhelming if you don’t have a clinician to interpret the results,” Gidwani says. “That’s why I review all of my patients’ scans with them.”

Cheema agrees: “Too much detail without guidance risks overwhelming people with information that isn’t clinically actionable.”

“I don’t think DEXA gives too much information compared to, say, a whole-body MRI, which can reveal incidental findings that can cause anxiety and lead to unnecessary interventions,” says Gidwani. “Its data points are actionable: decrease body fat, reduce visceral fat, increase muscle.”

Experts emphasize that actionability is key. “The most important metrics are visceral adipose tissue and total body fat percentage, especially when tracked over time,” Cheema says. “But DEXA also breaks things down by arms, legs, trunk, etc. That can veer into aesthetics rather than health.

Should You Get One?

If you’re 65 or older, or at risk for osteoporosis, your doctor may already recommend a DEXA scan for bone health. For women in perimenopause, when bone density can drop by as much as 20 percent, an early baseline scan could flag risks years before they become urgent.

DEXA also detects sarcopenic obesity, where muscle loss occurs alongside high body fat. “Someone may look normal weight on a scale, but a DEXA can reveal poor muscle-to-fat balance,” Gidwani says.

Beyond those groups, the use case narrows. Athletes, bodybuilders, and people on GLP-1 medications may find the data genuinely useful. For generally healthy adults who exercise, eat decently, and check in with a doctor, many clinicians are indifferent.

“For a healthy individual, I wouldn’t universally recommend it,” Cheema says. “Lifestyle changes and basic care may matter more than getting a DEXA.” There are alternatives—bioimpedance scales, Bod Pods, and AI-enabled wearables—but none are as accurate as DEXA. For now, it remains the most precise, if expensive, tool available.

Final Takeaways

My DEXA results were somewhat humbling. Despite near-daily workouts and a decent diet, the scan flagged more body fat than I expected and the beginnings of osteopenia in my spine. The bright side was an “excellent” visceral fat score, something I’ll be bragging about indefinitely.

Catching early bone loss feels actionable; I can tweak my workouts to prioritize strength and mobility. But the body fat percentages have lived in my brain rent-free ever since, without offering much in return. I don’t plan to shell out a few hundred dollars for another scan anytime soon, so I may never know if my adjustments are actually working.

That’s the paradox of DEXA. For those with medical risks, it can be invaluable. For athletes chasing marginal gains, it’s another knob to turn. But for the rest of us, it’s a reminder that data is only as useful as what you’re willing or able to do with it. In the end, DEXA doesn’t promise longevity so much as it promises numbers, and numbers alone don’t add years to your life.

Meet the Experts

Jennifer Wagner, MD, MS, chief health and performance officer, Canyon Ranch in Tucson, Arizona.Josh Cheema, MD, medical director of Northwestern Medicine Human Longevity Clinic in Chicago, Illinois.Pooja Gidwani, MD, MBA, board-certified physician in internal medicine and obesity medicine in Los Angeles, California.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/do-you-need-a-dexa-scan/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

SCIENCE | ROB REDDICK | SEP 15, 2025 AT 7:00 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

Whole-Genome Sequencing Will Change Pregnancy

At WIRED Health 2025, Orchid CEO Noor Siddiqui and genomics pioneer George Church laid out their view of the future of genetic screening.

PHOTOGRAPGH: VAIL FUCCI

The world of pregnancy is going to radically change, predicts Noor Siddiqui. “I think that the default way people are going to choose to have kids is via IVF and embryo screening,” she said at the WIRED Health summit last week. “There’s just a massive amount of risk that you can take off of the table.”

Siddiqui is the founder and CEO of Orchid, a biotech company that offers whole-genome screening of embryos for IVF. By analyzing the DNA of different embryos before selecting which one to implant, Orchid says, parents can lower the risk their children grow up affected by conditions with a genetic basis. Siddiqui was speaking with George Church—a pioneer in genomics and a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School—at the summit in Boston, exploring the promise and potential of whole-genome sequencing.

An estimated 4 percent of people worldwide have a disease that’s caused by a single genetic mutation. With embryo screening, “these monogenic diseases can be just completely avoided,” Siddiqui said. On top of this, roughly half the world’s population suffers from a chronic disease with at least some genetic basis. Analyze five embryos ahead of implanting one, Siddiqui said, and “you can now mitigate the genetic component of that risk by these double-digit numbers. You’re talking about in the worst case 30 percent and in the best case up to 80 percent.” (You can watch the session in the video below; there is an issue at the start with Noor Siddiqui’s mic, which is fixed around the 6-minute mark.)

Orchid’s website, which references statistical analysis on how much risk reduction can be achieved through embryo screening, explains that the exact reduction in relative risk will depend on a number of factors. These include, among others, how prevalent the disease is, the number of embryos analyzed, and how much influence the genetic variants screened for have on the likelihood of developing the disease.

Church is an investor in Orchid, and believes the type of embryo screening it offers is among the most cost-effective medical technologies ever created. The Human Genome Project, the first effort to map all human genes, cost $3 billion, but since then, the cost of sequencing a genome has fallen dramatically. Orchid’s whole-genome sequencing costs several thousand dollars per embryo. That’s “maybe a 10-fold return on investment,” Church believes. “A huge fraction of our health care costs, psychological problems, and family issues could be solved by this method.”

Siddiqui has used the technology to screen her own embryos. She shared the story of her mother, who experienced adult-onset blindness as a result of a genetic variation in her genome. “Fortunately, all embryos are negative for that,” she said. “But the other thing that’s quite common in most South Asian families is an incredibly high risk for heart disease and diabetes. So that’s really the other thing that we’re prioritizing based on.”

The blindness that Siddiqui described is monogenic, meaning it was caused by just a single genetic variation. Of the single-gene diseases that are known, “95 percent have no treatment, much less of a cure,” Siddiqui said. But many other conditions—such as schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, or heart disease—are polygenic, driven by the cumulative impact of many genetic variants. For these, genetic risk scores can quantify the risk of potentially developing a disease, and they can be calculated both for adults and embryos. Orchid’s embryo tests look for both disease types.

“In the average IVF cycle, you can get anywhere from a 30 to 80 percent risk reduction with models that are around today,” Siddiqui said of polygenic conditions. “Even if you restrict to the worst case, so two parents who are both high-risk, then you drop from that 80 percent ceiling to maybe 55 percent.” This can be a greater reduction than can be achieved by having at-risk patients take drugs, she added.

But critics argue that using genetic risk scores to select embryos raises significant ethical concerns, by potentially stigmatizing diseases that can potentially be avoided and representing a form of eugenics. They are also, for now, an expensive technology only available to the few.

In almost all situations, whole-genome sequencing provides information, but also uncertainty. Church has had his genome sequenced, and shared that he has dyslexia, narcolepsy, and cholesterol issues. “Some of them were evident in my genome, and some still aren’t quite clear,” he said. For adults thinking about getting their genome sequenced, the prospect of what they might discover can be unnerving—but not everything that is discovered has to be divulged.

“You can have a contract with your physician, which basically says don’t tell me certain things I don’t want to know,” Church said. “You can categorize the things that don’t have cures.” You could even, he suggested, ask to have withheld information shared with you if previously untreatable diseases become treatable.

But there was one group Church was cool on having their genomes sequenced: newborns. “It’s kind of too late for really early onset [diseases], and it’s way too early for late onset.” The latter conditions, he noted, have very few cures. “It’s kind of a recipe for anxiety more than anything else.”

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/whole-genome-sequencing-will-change-pregnancy/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

GEAR | CRAIG GRANNELL | SEP 15, 2025 AT 6:00 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

Liquid Glass Could Be One of Apple's Most Divisive System Designs Yet

As Apple’s radical redesign rolls out across all of its platforms today, designers and app creators are still unconvinced it delivers the “greater focus” it promises.

COURTESY OF APPLE

Apple revealed Liquid Glass as part of its WWDC announcement this June, with all the pomp usually reserved for shiny new gear. The press release promised a “delightful and elegant new software design” that “reflects and refracts its surroundings while dynamically transforming to bring greater focus to content.” Today it launches globally onto compatible Apple devices.

If you haven’t encountered it yet, brace yourself. Inspired by visionOS—the software powering the Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset—Liquid Glass infuses every Apple platform with a layered glass aesthetic. This is paired with gloopy animations and a fixation on hiding interface components when possible—and showing content through them when it isn’t.

The reaction during the summer’s public beta program was divisive. And while some people just hate change, Liquid Glass does invite criticism. Instead of sharpening focus, it too often muddies it due to legibility issues and distracting visual effects. On Mac, controls are overly prominent, yet on iPhone, they are relentlessly eager to disappear into a new Apple take on hamburger menus, denying users the chance to build effective muscle memory.

At times, Apple even verges on parody. Its press release talked of “establishing greater harmony between hardware, software, and content,” which in practice often means further blurring the line between interface and content and slapping huge rounded corners that echo the iPad’s screen onto every Mac and iPad window. The result: chopped-off content and a baffling disregard for more conventional rectangles, the most efficient shape in the history of multi-window computing.

Apple’s own press images champion a desktop devoid of color, making it tricky to distinguish between a row of “etched glass” icons.

COURTESY OF APPLE

Style Over Substance?

Jonas Downey, designer of Hello Weather, doesn’t entirely buy Apple’s pitch: “I dig Apple and weird flashy stuff and am impressed with a lot of execution details in the glass concept. But the new interfaces feel complicated and overbearing, with Apple imposing its own aesthetic ideas on everyone else. I could get on board if there was an obvious benefit,” he adds, “but I haven’t seen one beyond the old adage that user interfaces should get out of the way of content. That’s a fine principle, but Liquid Glass too often does the opposite.”

He reels off a list of issues. Translucent components causing distraction. Low contrast making it harder to differentiate elements. Excess shading and dimension on buttons and tabs making them pop more than the content beneath them. This, he says, can result in friction rather than focus. “Liquid Glass splits the difference between flat and skeuomorphic design, landing in a fragile middle space,” he concludes. “By trying to become more floaty and deconstructed, the system ends up more visually complex.”

For Ben McCarthy, creator of Obscura Camera, there’s at least promise in the “Liquid” part of the equation: “Dynamic Island was praised for its fluidity—how it expanded and contracted like viscous ink. Liquid Glass seems born of similar thinking, in that animations should be fun, dynamic, and rooted in material behaviors—and that aspect is hugely successful.”

The “Glass” part, though? Not so much. “Apple’s goal is to blend interface and content to reduce distraction, but I think Liquid Glass achieves the opposite,” McCarthy says. “It creates distortions that catch your eye as content scrolls. There are fundamental legibility issues, because Liquid Glass can’t control what passes behind it. And as the system tries to adapt, flipping between light and dark to stay readable, that only further adds to the distraction.”

The iPad menu’s glassy blurred backgrounds often make text hard to read.

Craig Grannell

Tension at the Core

Not everyone is down on Liquid Glass, though, and there has been excitement about the existence of a fresh, new design. Gregory de Jonckheere, creator of Quiche Browser, echoes McCarthy in being “particularly drawn to the exquisitely organic animations that build on what Apple started with Dynamic Island.” But he adds, “Even if these don’t directly improve usability, a Dieter Rams principle is that good design is aesthetic. Liquid Glass makes iOS feel more alive than ever. Apple raising the bar on visual delight pushes me to do the same in my own apps.”

He also reckons many of the loudest critics are “old-timer Apple developers from the pre-iPhone era,” rooted in nostalgia and resistant to change. He suggests Liquid Glass should be considered an opportunity: Users will see their devices refreshed, and creators infusing their output with new life may convince people to reconsider their go-to apps.

Guillaume Ardaud of Héliographe spent eight years at Apple and is less convinced. He identifies the deeper problem: Liquid Glass can’t decide what it wants to be. “There are real tensions between stated goals—separating interface and content layers, and then elevating the latter—and the reality of elements partially obscuring content and creating a swirl of distracting, constantly shifting colors as you scroll,” he says.

For Ardaud, though, this aspect of Liquid Glass merely reflects a wider trend in tech. Early computing emphasized usability because hardware was limited. Now that such constraints are gone, aesthetics are free to dominate, even when they may undercut information hierarchy and discoverability. Still, he retains optimism: “Apple has a history of course correction. Many of its people care deeply about usability, consistency, and accessibility. If we don’t see improvements over time, that’s when we’ll have to start worrying.”

Beta the Devil You Know

To be fair, some change has already happened. Liquid Glass isn’t quite the same beast it was in June. As the operating systems featuring it roll out on September 15, they’ll have replaced transparent glass with surfaces that appear more frosted. Aspects of design have been honed. Text on iPhone buttons has evolved from impossible-to-read to sometimes merely being indistinct. Progress. And that’s what a public beta is for: iteration in the open.

In June, Apple Music had unreadable UI (left). Things improved by late August (right), but legibility remained a concern.

Craig Grannell

Still, the degree to which we saw the sausage being made was unusual. Apple likes to present designs as if they sprang forth fully formed. Even when the company feels compelled to make rapid alerations—Safari’s controversial iOS 15 redesign, for example—the fallout doesn’t usually impact entire operating systems. And regardless of any improvements, this year’s changes will still be seismic for everyday users who don’t follow Apple’s every move. “I’m curious to see the reactions of people who’ve never heard of Liquid Glass before updating their devices,” says Ardaud. “Some people dislike sudden change, particularly on gear they use for hours every day. Drastic redesigns can cause negative reactions, not least when they discard hard-earned lessons.”

App creators may also struggle. Instead of building new features, they’re now stuck supporting Liquid Glass alongside legacy interfaces. “It’s extra overhead,” says Ardaud. His fix: Use Liquid Glass sparingly, “only where it makes sense,” rather than plastering it everywhere. And he suspects companies with their own design systems may ignore it entirely.

Nobody Asked, but Apple Answered

All of which raises a larger question: Should we just move beyond wholesale redesigns that are heavily driven by aesthetic novelty? Downey believes so: “Devices like the iPhone and the Mac are no longer rapidly evolving technologies that demand constant reinvention. They’ve matured into essential tools that power global communication and commerce. They’re infrastructure, and they need to be stable.”

So why risk it? Why throw everything into upheaval when nobody needs Liquid Glass? Because Apple needs it. Design changes aren’t only about usability—they’re about marketing. Shiny visuals help keynote demos pop and screenshots look fresh. A feature called Liquid Glass sounds sexier than “refinements to Safari’s tab bar.” A whole new look plays better with potential customers than more of the same.

It’s also strategic. Rendering Liquid Glass is computationally expensive, creating what Ardaud calls a “design moat” around Apple. The effects run smoothly on recent Apple gear but would choke lower-spec devices common in the Android world. In short, Liquid Glass is Apple’s alone—and tricky to steal.

But who’d even want to? Some critics argue Android’s current aesthetic looks and feels sharper than Apple’s. And while Apple’s previous bout of major wheel reinvention, iOS 7, had copycats, it arguably aligned with prevailing simplification trends of the time. Skeuomorphism was done. Everyone needed something new. In 2025, though, who is clamoring for interfaces that recall the shapeshifting “big bad” from Terminator 2?

Control Center now has a transparent background, showing any distracting animated content behind it.

Craig Grannell

Liquid Gloss

If Apple is doing this primarily for itself, that’s a real problem. Steve Jobs once said, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” By that measure, Liquid Glass falls short. As it stands, it often objectively doesn’t work, at least not well. Ideally, form should follow function. Good design should be informed by function, or it’s just gloss.

For its part, Apple clearly disagrees. It’s proud of Liquid Glass. And it even used the Jobs quote to headline its September 2025 event that featured new iPhones with Liquid Glass—much to the chagrin of many Apple followers.

Yet it apparently also took until a public beta for Apple to spot fundamental flaws like unreadable text in the first place. This led some to question whether anyone sufficiently senior at Apple now has the taste and authority to kill such bad design decisions? Sure, those aforementioned tweaks have since come. However, as McCarthy points out, “Apple spent the summer tweaking the behaviors of Liquid Glass, but a design that still has to lean either toward illegibility or constant flickering is fundamentally flawed.”

There may be one final angle. Alan Dye, Apple’s VP of human interface design, called Liquid Glass “the foundation for new experiences in the future.” Translation: Don’t judge it too harshly today—it’ll make sense on hardware you can’t yet buy. Foldables, maybe, or a “bezel-less” iPad. But Liquid Glass isn’t launching on hypothetical gadgets. It’s arriving on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac imminently. And instead of elevating content, it frequently obscures or dominates it.

Naturally, Apple won’t talk about future plans. It wouldn’t even comment on the record to WIRED about the present state of Liquid Glass. So we’re left to guess about the why. Future hardware? Marketing? Rousing apathetic customers? Apple’s design team chasing a sci-fi aesthetic that dazzles in Avengers movies but breaks down in actual use?

Layered glass works when you’re supposed to focus on an actor. But in the real world, Liquid Glass too often doesn’t help you focus attention on what matters most—your content. It demands attention for itself.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/liquid-glass-could-be-one-of-apples-most-divisive-system-designs-yet/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

BUSINESS | WILL KNIGHT | SEP 15, 2025 AT 6:00 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

OpenAI Ramps Up Robotics Work in Race Toward AGI

OpenAI appears to be ramping up its efforts in robotics, hiring researchers who work on humanoid systems as it explores new ways to advance artificial intelligence.

The company has recently recruited a number of researchers with expertise in developing AI algorithms for controlling humanoid and other types of robots. Job listings show that the company is putting together a team capable of creating systems that can be trained through teleoperation and simulation.

Sources with knowledge of the company’s efforts also say OpenAI is recruiting people to work specifically on humanoid robots, or robots with a partial or full human form. One source who works in cutting-edge robotics says the company has begun training AI algorithms that are better able to make sense of the physical world and that could empower robots to navigate and perform tasks.

A number of recent hires suggest that OpenAI’s robot efforts are now accelerating. For instance, Chengshu Li joined OpenAI in June 2025 from Stanford University, where he worked on a number of robotics projects, including the development of a benchmark designed to measure the abilities of humanoid robots capable of performing a wide range of household chores. Li’s dissertation concerns the development of benchmarks and focuses on robots with a partly humanoid form, which has two arms but wheels instead of legs.

Two other researchers from another robotics lab have already joined the company according to their LinkedIn profiles. One professor at a third robotics lab that does humanoid work says one of their students was also recently recruited.

OpenAI declined to comment on its recruitment efforts or robot research plans. However, OpenAI has recently posted a number of revealing job listings related to robotics research on its site. One opening requires expertise in teleoperation and simulation. Teleoperation is a crucial part of training partial or fully humanoid robots: A human operator performs chores and controls the limbs of the robot, while an algorithm learns how to mimic their actions. The role also calls for expertise in simulation tools including Nvidia Isaac, which is widely used to train humanoids by having an algorithm learning inside a virtual physical environment.

It remains unclear whether OpenAI intends to build its own robots, use off-the-shelf hardware, or partner with a robotics company. However, another job posted in the past few weeks called for a mechanical engineer with expertise in prototyping and building robot systems with sensors for touch and motion. One roboticist says this could mean that OpenAI plans to build its own robot or that it is developing teleoperation systems for robot training. The job also calls for “experience designing mechanical systems intended for high volume (1M+), problem-solving on assembly lines,” which suggests systems that would be mass-produced or that might even be deployed in manufacturing.

All of OpenAI’s robot job openings say that the company’s robotics team “is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings.”

Got a Tip?

Do you work at OpenAI? Are you working on humanoid projects? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the writer Will Knight on will_knight@wired.com or on Signal: wak.01.

A renewed focus on robots would suggest that OpenAI believes reaching artificial general intelligence (AGI)—AI that exceeds human intelligence—may require developing algorithms that are capable of interacting with the physical world.

OpenAI did notable robotics research in its early years, including developing an algorithm capable of solving a Rubik's cube using a humanlike hand in 2019. The company shuttered its robotics effort in 2021, however, to focus on algorithms including the large language models that have driven recent breakthroughs such as ChatGPT. OpenAI restarted work on robots last year, and The Information reported in December 2024 that the company was considering developing its own humanoid robots.

Stefanie Tellex, a roboticist at Brown University, says that building more effective robots will involve designing and training AI models capable of “processing high-frame-rate, high-dimensional perceptual input, and producing high-frame-rate, high-dimensional physical outputs”—meaning models that can see and act with high fidelity. Tellex is not familiar with OpenAI’s plans specifically, however.

Despite already having industry-leading models for conversation, reasoning, coding, and image and video generation, OpenAI will be racing a series of strong competitors as it seeks to develop the algorithms for more capable humanoid robots. A handful of humanoid startups, including Figure, Agility, and Apptronik, have emerged over the past few years, and some major AI companies, including Tesla and Google, are also investing in developing and testing humanoids. “I don’t see them having any magical advantage over anyone else,” says Tellex.

Humanoids are becoming increasingly popular as the hardware and software needed to build functioning prototypes becomes more common. While humanoids are still expensive and difficult to develop, new kinds of motors and other components have made it cheaper and easier to put together functioning systems. Software such as Nvidia’s Isaac robot development platform have also made it simpler to write the code needed to control and train humanoid systems.

Humanoid hype is also building. Venture capitalists have invested more than $5 billion in humanoid startups since the start of 2024. Morgan Stanley reckons that the humanoid industry could be worth $5 trillion by 2050.

While humanoids can perform impressive feats like dancing, they still lack the intelligence required to operate in complex and unpredictable, or “unstructured,” environments. To acquire this, they will need algorithms that go beyond a large language model’s understanding of the physical world. These systems must be able to control limbs and grippers in order to walk and manipulate physical items. Some research groups are starting to demonstrate progress in developing more generally capable AI models for robots.

At the same time, it is becoming increasingly clear that new ideas may be needed to push AI forward. The recent disappointment of OpenAI’s GPT-5 is part of a broader realization that reaching humanlike intelligence will require new avenues of research.

“They've asymptoted on GPT-5,” says Tellex. “They need to move towards the physical world.”

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/openai-ramps-up-robotics-work-in-race-toward-agi/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

Science

- WIRED Health Recap: Cancer Vaccines, Crispr Breakthroughs, and More

- The Next Era of Gene Editing Will Be Disease Agnostic

- MAHA Wants Action on Pesticides. It’s Not Going to Get It From Trump’s Corporate-Friendly EPA

SCIENCE | WIRED STAFF | SEP 15, 2025 AT 5:30 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

WIRED Health Recap: Cancer Vaccines, Crispr Breakthroughs, and More

This year’s WIRED Health summit in Boston featured Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel, CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, and a day’s worth of insights and provocative conversations.

PHOTOGRAPH: VAIL FUCCI

At the WIRED Health summit in Boston on September 9, we hosted some of the leading experts in Crispr, whole-genome sequencing, vaccines, and more for a series of eye-opening conversations and keynotes. If you weren’t able to join us in person, no worries; you can watch them all right here.

From 2025 Breakthrough Prize winner David Liu to Moderna CEO Stepháne Bancel, WIRED Health speakers gave deep insights into what’s next for gene-editing, cancer treatment, and a host of other cutting-edge topics. We were also joined by neurosurgeon and CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, who discussed chronic pain and his new book, It Doesn’t Have to Hurt: Your Smart Guide to a Pain-Free Life.

The next WIRED Health event will take place April 17 in London. In the meantime, get caught up on our Boston summit below.

Correcting Genetic Errors with Crispr

Treatment for genetic diseases like sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia are hard to design, but ongoing Crispr clinical trials offer new hope for patients. WIRED managing editor Hemal Jhaveri spoke with 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences winner David Liu to discuss how new genetic-editing tools can fix the pathogenic gene mutations that cause thousands of diseases.

Creating a Brain in a Computer

In the past two decades, MIT neuroscientist Ed Boyden has invented novel tools to map and control the brain. Now, he’s building the world’s first computer simulation of one. In this WIRED Health keynote, he spoke about how that invention can revolutionize AI, unlock new treatments for neurodiseases, and even help better understand the human condition.

The Rise of AgeTech

From digital brain training to at-home screening devices, technology is transforming how and where people aged 50 and over live while managing conditions like dementia and chronic diseases. AARP CEO Myechia Minter-Jordan spoke with WIRED executive editor Brian Barrett about the promise of AgeTech, the booming longevity economy, and how startups are innovating to help us thrive as we age.

The Promise of Whole-Genome Sequencing

Nationwide whole-genome sequencing projects are being launched by governments around the world, from the United Kingdom to the United Arab Emirates. Harvard geneticist George Church and Orchid founder and CEO Noor Siddiqui spoke with WIRED staff writer Emily Mullin about how whole-genome sequencing is being used to prevent genetic diseases.

Using Light to Treat Cancers, Mental Diseases, and Much More

In this keynote, former Google and Facebook technical executive Mary Lou Jepsen—now chairman and founder of Openwater—shared an exclusive preview of her new invention: a portable modular device designed to combine ultrasound, holography, and cutting-edge physics to kill cancer tumors and other diseases with precision.

Winning the War on Cancer

Cancer care still relies on slow, expensive procedures developed decades ago. Liquid biopsies are changing that—replacing CT scans and surgical biopsies with a single blood test that can detect cancers at an early stage and accelerate treatments. The cofounder and CEO of Guardant Health, Helmy Eltoukhy, sat down with WIRED Health curator João Medeiros to discuss how precision oncology is reshaping the cancer patient experience, and how liquid biopsies will soon be part of routine health care.

The Cancer Vaccine Revolution

What’s next for the company that developed a Covid-19 mRNA vaccine in record time? Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel spoke with WIRED’s Brian Barrett about the biotech company’s exciting work on individualized mRNA cancer therapies and other promising cancer treatments under development. Bancel also responded to the Trump administration’s recent anti-mRNA rhetoric.

It Doesn’t Have to Hurt: A Conversation with Sanjay Gupta

More than 52 million people worldwide suffer from daily chronic pain. CNN chief medical correspondent and Emmy Award-winning neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta joined WIRED Health curator João Medeiros to talk about his new book and the best science-backed methods to treat pain.

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/wired-health-recap-cancer-vaccines-crispr-breakthroughs-and-more/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

SCIENCE | SEP 15, 2025 AT 5:30 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

The Next Era of Gene Editing Will Be Disease Agnostic

At the WIRED Health summit last week, Harvard biochemist and gene-editing pioneer David Liu said that later this year his lab plans to report on a single gene-editing strategy that could treat many unrelated diseases. He calls it disease-agnostic therapeutic gene editing.

“It sounds sort of crazy, but there’s actually a very good molecular biology reason why this could be possible,” he told the audience in Boston, stopping short of details.

Gene-editing treatments are currently being developed for several rare and inherited genetic diseases. One gene-editing treatment, called Casgevy, is approved and available commercially to treat sickle cell disease and a related blood disorder called beta thalassemia. Earlier this year, KJ Muldoon, a baby boy born with an often fatal genetic disease that causes ammonia to build up in his blood, was saved with a customized gene-editing treatment—a medical first.

These treatments work by targeting specific mutations related to those diseases. But they can be costly to develop and must be designed for specific patient populations. Sometimes those patient populations can be very small, as in the case of baby KJ. His condition, called CPS1 deficiency, affects just one in 1.3 million live births.

Liu envisions a future in which one gene-editing approach could be used on multiple different diseases, regardless of what organ or tissue they affect or their genetic cause. He says this kind of streamlined strategy is needed because collectively, there are so many rare diseases, and it would be impractical to design treatments for each one. Global Genes, a rare disease advocacy organization, estimates that there are at least 10,000 rare diseases that affect more than 400 million people worldwide.

PHOTOGRAPH: VAIL FUCCI

“Genetic disease as a whole is not so rare. It’s actually many times more prevalent than cancer or HIV/AIDS,” Liu said. “We urgently need these ways to directly treat the root cause of these genetic diseases.”

Liu’s lab has developed two such ways to tackle rare diseases: base editing and prime editing. These next-generation versions of Crispr are already being used in around two dozen clinical trials around the world.

Base editing involves lab-made proteins that can change one DNA base, or “letter,” in a DNA sequence to another, such as changing a C to a T. They are akin to pencils that can correct single-letter misspellings. Baby KJ’s treatment used a base editor to treat his disease.

Prime editing, meanwhile, functions like a search-and-replace system for DNA. While traditional Crispr gene editing creates a double-stranded break in the DNA, prime editing allows for precise additions, deletions, or swaps without making that break. A prime editor, he explained, synthesizes a new segment of DNA and orchestrates repair processes in the cell, so that that new piece of DNA replaces the original sequence. Essentially, it’s a DNA word processor.

At WIRED Health, Liu teased that his lab has found a way to use prime editing in a disease-agnostic manner.

“Taking advantage of the ability of prime editing to do search-and-replace gene editing raises the possibility that a single composition of matter—potentially, a single drug—might benefit many, many more patients than going after diseases one mutation at a time,” Liu said. “That kind of future for gene editing, I think, will amplify, many-fold its impact and, most importantly, its access to the patients who need these treatments.”

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/the-next-era-of-gene-editing-will-be-disease-agnostic/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

SCIENCE | MOLLY TAFT | SEP 15, 2025 AT 5:00 AM EDT | VIEW ON WIRED

MAHA Wants Action on Pesticides. It’s Not Going to Get It From Trump’s Corporate-Friendly EPA

When Jean-Marie Kauth first read the Make America Healthy Again commission report, released by the White House in May, she was “thrilled about some of the things they identified,” she says. “They clearly called out industry as a pernicious influence on why EPA has not been very successful in regulating chemicals, especially pesticides.”

Kauth’s daughter died of leukemia at age 8 after, Kauth says, she was exposed to the insecticide chlorpyrifos, which the EPA banned in 2021. (That ban was overturned by a court order in 2023.) Kauth, a professor at Benedictine University in Illinois, now serves as a member of the EPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee (CHPAC), a group of outside experts who advise the agency on children’s health issues.

In late August, the committee met to discuss a new document: a draft strategy road map written as a follow-up to the May MAHA report, intended to execute its agenda. But Kauth’s optimism about parts of MAHA’s potential mission was undercut when EPA leadership—some of whom previously worked for and with the chemical and agricultural industries—had few answers for CHPAC about how the agency’s numerous recent regulatory rollbacks around chemicals would help to protect children’s health.

“By what mechanism are they going to actually accomplish anything when they’ve rolled back the meager protections we had at EPA?” Kauth says.

The final MAHA strategy report, with input from multiple agencies, was released from the White House on Tuesday. Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, said in a statement that the strategy outlined in the document would “ensure our kids and our environment are protected.” But critics—including some in the MAHA movement—are questioning how the EPA can truly protect public health when it is so friendly to corporate interests.

Zen Honeycutt is the executive director of Moms Across America, a grassroots advocacy group at the core of the MAHA movement. (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr is on the board of advisers.) Honeycutt says she has been overall “very encouraged by the collaborative initiatives of this administration to welcome bipartisan experts.” But she had harsh criticisms for how the new strategy document handled the issue of pesticides. The new report, she says, is “blatant pandering to the pesticide companies.”

The May MAHA commission report called out two popular pesticides—glyphosate and atrazine—by name as potentially harmful to human health. (As other outlets have asserted that the report possibly used AI to create false research, WIRED checked the footnotes in the sections on these two chemicals; all of the studies cited exist.) While multiple international bodies, including the EPA, have deemed these pesticides safe for use, some research has linked exposure to these chemicals to a variety of health issues, including cancer.

The MAHA movement has largely united around the need to keep pesticides out of the food supply, with many, including Honeycutt, naming these two pesticides as a particular problem. RFK Jr, the MAHA movement’s leader and current secretary of health and human services, has a long history with glyphosate in particular. In 2018, Kennedy was part of a team of lawyers who successfully won a suit against agribusiness giant Monsanto on behalf of a terminally ill man who claimed exposure to Roundup, a weed killer whose main ingredient is glyphosate, caused his cancer.

The May report garnered criticism from multiple industry groups, including powerful farmers’ and growers’ groups, who called out the inclusion of pesticides in the report. The White House invited nearly 50 farm and food groups to discuss the report over the summer.

The new strategy report, released this week, steps back from its previous explicit takes on pesticides by not mentioning glyphosate and atrazine by name, and only makes a few mentions of concrete actions on pesticides. The report says that the EPA will “work to ensure that the public has awareness and confidence in EPA’s pesticide robust review procedures”—a promise that doesn’t pass muster with Honeycutt.

“A few words on a website explaining the pesticide review process to the American people is not going to reduce my children’s allergies, or their autoimmune issues, or their mental health issues,” Honeycutt says. “The only thing that would reduce our children’s chronic health issues and mental health issues would be if they reduced the exposure to our children of those pesticides.”

Honeycutt’s critiques are echoed by David Murphy, who worked on Kennedy’s presidential campaign. He called the strategy report “a major missed opportunity for the Trump administration,” telling Politico that “the pesticide industry are firmly embedded in the White House and intentionally short-circuiting Trump’s campaign promise to the millions of MAHA voters who helped him return to power.” (“The Trump administration is committed to continuing to work with our stakeholders to deliver more MAHA wins for the American people,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told WIRED.)

The final report may actually signal the opposite of what MAHA wants. Under a section titled “Process Efficiencies and Deregulation,” the strategy document says that the agency will “work to reform the approval process” for both chemical and biological pesticides. However, Zeldin has said that under his supervision, the agency has new “expedited review processes” for pesticides and chemicals.

“It looks like they’re actually trying to speed up the approval process,” says Betsy Southerland, a 33-year veteran of the EPA who became a whistleblower during the first Trump administration. “But that’s not what MAHA supporters were thinking they were going to do. They were thinking they were actually going to do more health protection through the review of these pesticides, not just speed it up and put more ones out there.”

The EPA did not respond to a question as to whether or not it intends to initiate new reforms based on the MAHA agenda, and directed questions on the strategy document to the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House. HHS did not reply to specific questions about the strategy. “HHS is advancing bold reforms to make America healthy again,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon told WIRED. “We won’t be swayed by partisan critics. Our focus is on transparency, science, and delivering results for the American people.”

Three of the key people currently leading the EPA’s chemical work have extensive ties to the chemicals and pesticides industry. The New York Times reported in May that the leader of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, Nancy Beck, pushed behind the scenes to exclude pesticides from the original MAHA commission report.

“President Trump made a fantastic choice in selecting Dr. Beck, who has never been a lobbyist in her life, by the way—no lamestream media outlet has reported that correctly,” EPA press secretary Bridget Hirsch told WIRED in a statement. Beck and her colleagues, Hirsch said, “remain committed to being led by the science, unlike Biden EPA appointees with major ethical issues that were beholden to radical groups.”

Zeldin’s public calendar shows that he has met at least six times over the past seven months with chemical and plastics companies and lobbying groups—including a meeting in June with Bayer AG, which bought Monsanto in 2018.

“It’s a disservice to your readers to cherry-pick six of Administrator Zeldin’s many meetings over the last nine months from his very full calendar to paint an inaccurate picture and bolster your false narrative,” Hirsch said. “Administrator Zeldin is committed to protecting human health and the environment 100 percent—any implication otherwise is your opinion and nothing more.”

Brian Leake, the director of external communications for Bayer, said in an email that the company was “pleased to see feedback provided by the agriculture industry—in particular, farmers—was solicited and received by the commission, helping inform the report.

“Bayer stands behind the safety of our glyphosate-based products, which have been tested extensively, approved by regulators, and used around the globe for 50 years,” Leake said. “The EPA has an extremely rigorous review process which spans multiple years, considers thousands of studies, and involves many independent risk assessment experts at the EPA.”

As of May, 3,000 employees had already left the agency. That month, EPA leadership announced its intent to dissolve the Office of Research and Development, its independent scientific arm that employed more than 1,000 scientists at the start of the year, redistributing some to other areas of the agency while laying others off. That reorganization began in July. (Hirsch said that the reorganization will “improve the effectiveness and efficiency of EPA operations and align core statutory requirements with its organizational structure.”)

These crises, employees say, may be affecting the agency’s work with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), colloquially called forever chemicals, which are another area of concern for the MAHA movement. A growing body of research has linked these chemicals, which don’t degrade in the environment, to a variety of health concerns. The strategy document released this week says that the EPA and National Institutes of Health will help the CDC “update recommendations” regarding the health risks of PFAS in water.

It’s unclear how robust such a review will be. In 2024, the Biden administration put limits on six PFAS chemicals in drinking water. In May, the EPA announced that it would be reconsidering limits on four of those.

Two EPA employees working on PFAS issues told WIRED that thanks to shake-ups at the agency, they are struggling to procure supplies, hire lab techs, and do their work. These employees spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to speak to the press. (“We are confident EPA has the resources needed to accomplish the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment, fulfill all statutory obligations, and make the best-informed decisions based on the gold standard of science,” Hirsch, the EPA press secretary, told WIRED.)

“I’ve been here for several years,” one employee told WIRED. “It is the least productive period for me, including Covid, and it seems like everyone else is in the same boat.”

This article was downloaded from https://www.wired.com/story/the-epas-closeness-to-industry-stands-in-the-way-of-it-helping-maha/ on Sep 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

Table of Contents

Wired Daily Edition: 2025 Sep 17

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Liquid Glass Could Be One of Apple's Most Divisive System Designs Yet

OpenAI Ramps Up Robotics Work in Race Toward AGI

Science

WIRED Health Recap: Cancer Vaccines, Crispr Breakthroughs, and More

The Next Era of Gene Editing Will Be Disease Agnostic

MAHA Wants Action on Pesticides. It’s Not Going to Get It From Trump’s Corporate-Friendly EPA