Society

Elon Musk will not be fully exiting the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—and its activities are only intensifying. On Friday, President Donald Trump threw cold water on the idea that Musk would fully disappear from DOGE and the White House forever. “Elon’s really not leaving,” Trump said in a joint press conference with Musk…

For years, a mysterious figure who goes by the handle Stern led the Trickbot ransomware gang and evaded identification—even as other members of the group were outed in leaks and unmasked. This week German authorities revealed, without much fanfare, who they believe that enigmatic hacker kingpin to be: Vi­ta­ly Ni­ko­lae­vich Kovalev, a 36-year-old Russian man…

For weeks, White House officials and Republican operatives weren’t quite sure when, or if, Elon Musk would actually be leaving the government. Now, many Republicans are already looking to distance themselves from Musk’s team entirely. “Everybody is in a bit of a fucking pinch,” a Republican with knowledge of the situation tells WIRED. “You know,…

On May 16, 2023, Sam Altman appeared before a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary. The title of the hearing was “Oversight of AI.” The session was a lovefest, with both Altman and the senators celebrating what Altman called AI’s “printing press moment”—and acknowledging that the US needed strong laws to avoid its pitfalls. “We think…

For years, members of the Russian cybercrime cartel Trickbot unleashed a relentless hacking spree on the world. The group attacked thousands of victims, including businesses, schools, and hospitals. “Fuck clinics in the usa this week,” one member wrote in internal Trickbot messages in 2020 about a list of 428 hospitals to target. Orchestrated by an…

Hugh Ryan has two things to say. The first will be alarming, but the second might offer some comfort: “The future is so much stupider than I expected, but the past is so much smarter.” Ryan would know. As a queer historian and author, he’s used to talking about the state of queer affairs, past…

With Elon Musk and other leaders of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) purportedly on their way out, WIRED spoke with a fired DOGE staffer about his experience, how the group communicates, who appears to be in charge—and what might be coming next. Earlier this week, Sahil Lavingia published a blog post on his…

As part of a sweeping reorganization of the State Department, the Trump administration is creating an Office of Remigration. Remigration is an immigration policy embraced by extremists that calls for the removal of all migrants—including “non-assimilated” citizens—with the goal of creating white ethnostates in Western countries. The details of the plan are contained in a…

One of Elon Musk’s top allies at the General Services Administration (GSA), Nicole Hollander, appears to be scaling back her work for the agency, according to sources and documents obtained by WIRED. Since January, Hollander, who is affiliated with Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has been working on real estate projects related to…

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that the US plans to “aggressively revoke” the visas of Chinese students, including those working in critical fields or with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Experts warn the move—along with the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on international students—could drain American scientific labs of top STEM talent and…