Sam Spengler

College Campuses Are in Upheaval Over Faculty Ties to Epstein From small art schools to large public universities, the new DOJ release of emails reveals just how deep the financier’s influence in academia went. Students are demanding accountability.

The Epstein documents released weeks ago are full of university administrators, professors, and trustees. With students demanding transparency and accountability from their schools, academia faces a nationwide reckoning over how it courts and indulges deep-pocketed benefactors.

This guy gets it.

The Paramilitary ICE and CBP Units at the Center of Minnesota's Killings Two agents involved in the shooting deaths of US citizens in Minneapolis are reportedly part of highly militarized DHS units whose extreme tactics are generally reserved for war zones.

Many of the agents terrorizing Minneapolis—including officers who shot Good and Pretti—are from highly-specialized tactical units designated for war-like situations. And they are known for rampant civil rights abuses and violence. New from @awinston.bsky.social: www.wired.com/story/ice-cb...

ICE Pretends It’s a Military Force. Its Tactics Would Get Real Soldiers Killed WIRED asked an active military officer to break down immigration enforcement actions in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

"As we watch the least effective and most morally objectionable of our tactics come home and be used amongst and against us, we are left with a profound feeling of betrayal."

www.wired.com/story/ice-pr...

DHS Kept Chicago Police Records for Months in Violation of Domestic Espionage Rules The Department of Homeland Security collected data on Chicago residents accused of gang ties to test if police files could feed an FBI watchlist. Months passed before anyone noticed it wasn’t deleted.

NEW: DHS secretly obtained Chicago police data on 900 residents accused of gang ties. It was quietly deleted after intelligence officers violated rules against domestic spying.

The handoff came well after city inspectors formally announced CPD's gang data was deeply flawed and infected w/ bias.

Reinstatement now!

Stand with Condé Nast Union. Sign our petition.

Stand with Condé Nast Union  We’re calling on you to sign our petition telling management to reinstate the Fired Four, reverse the suspensions, and end the union busting. Use the link in bio to add your name.

Stand with Condé Nast Union 🚨 We’re calling on you to sign our petition telling management to reinstate the Fired Four, reverse the suspensions, and end the union busting.

Sign here: actionnetwork.org/petitions/te...

Statement from The NewsGuild of New York and Condé United on illegal firing of four union leaders who demanded answers about this week’s layoffs at Teen Vogue, other brands Late Wednesday night, Condé Nast’s VP of Labor Relations notified the Guild that the Company was immediately terminating four Condé United leaders for engaging in the protected concerted activity of gathering in their 1 World Trade Center office to demand answers on this week’s abrupt layoffs at multiple brands including WIRED and the consolidation at Teen Vogue. These egregious terminations are a flagrant breach of the Just Cause terms of our contract and an unprecedented violation of their federally protected rights as union members to participate in a collective action. Through these illegal terminations, Condé Nast management is attempting to intimidate and silence our members' advocacy for the courageous cultural and political journalism of Teen Vogue, as well as diverting attention away from the obvious lack of corporate leadership at the company. Condé United members illegally fired are: Alma Avalle: Writer, digital producer at Bon Appetit; NewsGuild of New York first vice president, trans activist, and union leader Jake Lahut: Wired senior reporter covering the Trump White House Jasper Lo: Senior fact checker at The New Yorker and US Army veteran: outgoing first vice chair of The New Yorker Union Ben Dewey: Videographer at Condé Nast Entertainment, former vice chair of the CNE unit “Management’s attempt at union-busting, using intimidation and grossly illegal tactics to try to suppress protected union activity, will not stand,” said Susan DeCarava, president of The NewsGuild of New York. “The NewsGuild of New York has zero tolerance for bad bosses who harass, target and disrespect our fellow Guild members. We represent nearly 6,000 media workers across the tri-state area and we stand firmly in solidarity, ready to fight for the rights of our members illegally fired from their jobs at …

Breaking News: Late last night Conde Nast illegally fired 4 union organizers who asked company execs to explain the downsizing of Teen Vogue and continued layoffs. We’ve filed a grievance.

Jake is a resourceful political reporter with deep access to the White House; he goes out of his way to befriend everyone in the newsroom; and he is tireless at promoting our work on TV.

WIRED will carry on politics reporting with his legacy, but he deserves a better employer and platform.

WIRED is focused on reporting the forces shaping the most terrifying administration in a generation already plagued by terror wars, financial ruin, and a global pandemic. The best way to help us keep doing that today is to stay reading. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

This is a really hard day and I want to just add as WIRED's politics editor -- WIRED's politics reporting isn't going anywhere. We are very much here and won't stop.

Please continue to read and support us - canceling your subscription to WIRED is not standing in solidarity with our journalists.

I was one of the four people who got canned.

In the interim, you can subscribe to my newsletter, Straight From The Hut. No paywall, but feel free to choose the pay to support model. I'm not going anywhere — the show goes on, and I'll be back on MSNBC Saturday night. straightfromthehut.substack.com

AI of a Thousand Faces What happens now that AI is everywhere and in everything? WIRED can’t tell the future, but we can try to make sense of it. Behold: 17 readings from the furthest reaches of the AI age.

🎇New package alert @wired.com! This one has been in the works for months. If WIRED was going to tackle AI -- something we cover daily -- we had to go big. So here are 17 different stories about the way AI is changing us, even as the technology itself keeps moving www.wired.com/ai-issue/

Ed Zitron Gets Paid to Love AI. He Also Gets Paid to Hate AI He’s one of the loudest voices of the AI haters—even as he does PR for AI companies. Either way, Ed Zitron has your attention.

This might be the most slacked-about story so far: a profile of @edzitron.com, who has become the pre-eminent AI skeptic. @tcraggs22.bsky.social takes on what this specific role entails www.wired.com/story/ai-pr-...

AI of a Thousand Faces What happens now that AI is everywhere and in everything? WIRED can’t tell the future, but we can try to make sense of it. Behold: 17 readings from the furthest reaches of the AI age.

A @wired.com AI package needs to clear an impossibly high bar.

And by god, I think we've done it. Hours of sensational, thought-provoking, fun reading, and the design is simply dazzling.

WIRED can't predict the future, but we can try to make sense of it. And that's exactly what we're doing here:

Inside the Contentious World of Luigi Mangione Supporters As Luigi Mangione is being tried legally and in the court of public opinion, tensions are growing between his supporters pushing health care reform and those who believe he is innocent.

New deep dive into the world of feuding Luigi Mangione supporters. Some are using alleged crime to push health care reform; others find that offensive, as they believe he's completely innocent. And most of them hate the media's fixation on the "thirsters": www.wired.com/story/inside...

The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. They’ve been a road map for the billionaire ever since.

Taking a brief break from sporadically posting photos of my pitbull to shout this into the void:

I’ve spent the last seven months thinking about the Antichrist, and now those thoughts are published over at @wired.com.

www.wired.com/story/the-re...

I Thought I Knew Silicon Valley. I Was Wrong Tech got what it wanted by electing Trump. A year later, it looks more like a suicide pact.

Incredible work here, subscribe to Wired www.wired.com/story/silico...

Politics cover wired

ayo @wired.com

Why are we taking our latest politics cover to the streets?

We wanted you to see what we saw, over many months of covering DOGE, ICE, and the rest of it. Tech leaders got what they wanted—a seat at the table with a would-be king, and a chance to haggle over the rules that govern their businesses.

Palantir Wants to Be a Lifestyle Brand Defense tech giant Palantir is selling T-shirts and tote bags as part of a bid to encourage fans to publicly endorse it.

You may know the software company Palantir as a contractor for ICE + the military. But in recent months, it's relaunched its merch store & said it wants to be a "lifestyle brand."

What does it mean for Palantir to be a lifestyle brand...? I unpacked it here:
www.wired.com/story/palant...

Elon Musk Is Out to Rule Space. Can Anyone Stop Him? With SpaceX and Starlink, Elon Musk controls more than half the world’s rocket launches and thousands of internet satellites. That amounts to immense geopolitical power.

Is Elon's Mars talk overblown? Total B.S.? Maybe even a deliberate distraction?

That's what one Musk admirer — and well-regarded space analyst — told me for my new feature for @wired.com.

Let me explain. (1/x)

www.wired.com/story/elon-m...

The tech industry’s embrace of President Trump has left many of us asking the same question: What the hell happened to Silicon Valley? On Sept. 23 at 11 AM, our WIRED experts get into it. wrd.cm/4mslR0k

Have questions? Drop them below 👇🏼

WIRED's The Politics Issue

Big Tech's embrace of President Trump has left many of us wondering: What the hell happened to Silicon Valley?

In our new politics issue, we're getting into it.

Also, we're taking this cover across the US in billboards, posters and a mural. Clues to find us in the 🧵: www.wired.com/politics-iss...

And many more where that came from! Subscribe to WIRED and never miss breaking news and cutting-edge reporting from a truly unparalleled team.
www.wired.com/v2/offers/wi...

My Couples Retreat With 3 AI Chatbots and the Humans Who Love Them I found people in serious relationships with AI partners and planned a weekend getaway for them at a remote Airbnb. We barely survived.

I didn’t work on this story myself, but it’s one of my favorites from this year. Nothing encapsulates our era—and WIRED’s subject matter expertise–better than this gem from ‪@sam-apple.bsky.social. See what happens when six strangers and their chatbot partners get together for a couples’ retreat:

‘They're Not Breathing’: Inside the Chaos of ICE Detention Center 911 Calls Records of hundreds of emergency calls from ICE detention centers obtained by WIRED—including audio recordings—show a system inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowdin...

From investigating the surveillance tech used against protestors, to parsing the Epstein clips' metadata, the work of @dmehro.bsky.social and @dell.bsky.social is unmatched. In June, the pair reviewed hundreds of 911 calls placed from immigration detention centers—revealing an inundated system.

Your Favorite New Coworker Is an AI-Enhanced Operative From North Korea For years, North Korea has been secretly placing young IT workers inside Western companies. With AI, their schemes are now more devious—and effective—than ever.

In May, IT workers learned that the colleague they collab with via Teams each day could actually be a North Korean national. That was thanks to reporter Bobbie Johnson, who exposed a North Korean government sponsored operation that defrauds western companies out of millions in salary and benefits.

Inside Google’s Two-Year Frenzy to Catch Up With OpenAI The search giant should’ve been first to the chatbot revolution. It wasn’t. So it punched back with late nights, layoffs—and lowering some guardrails.

WIRED reporters are a cut above when it being inside the conference rooms and research labs of AI giants like OpenAI, Google, Meta and Microsoft. In March @peard33.bsky.social and @arielle.bluesky.social expertly captured the year-long panic inside Google that began with the launch of ChatGPT-3.5.

The King of Ozempic Is Scared as Hell Now that Novo Nordisk is the world’s weight-loss juggernaut, will it have to betray its first patients—type 1 diabetics?

In the thick of Ozempic mania, master wordsmith @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social visited the Novo Nordisk factories that make insulin and GLP-1 agonists. She got to the bottom of drugmaker’s deepest fears about the weight loss drug market, all while examining the culture that created “Ozempic face.”