NEW: Someone allegedly threw a molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's house then went to OpenAI headquarters to make threats at workers. @lmatsakis.bsky.social and Maxwell Zeff with the scoop: www.wired.com/story/sam-al...
Communication between characters as constitutionally different as Amodei and Hegseth was always going to be strained, but the breakdown was about more than "vibes and personalities." It was about an AI company and the Pentagon trying to account for disparate and extreme visions of tomorrow in clauses and provisions written for today. It was a collision between two movements that believe, in different and inherently incompatible ways, that they might be on the cusp of achieving absolute power, either for themselves or for the systems they're helping to build, and that current concessions will extrapolate into total failure.
Of course, Hegseth isn't really thinking about the singularity or ways in which today's Claude is still in ways unreliable (if AI supremacy is a core part of your national security philosophy, you don't hobble your country's leading lab over a procurement dispute). He's thinking about consolidating power, and his conception of the potential of AI is subordinate to that, and him, rather than a future superintelligence. This is why the situation escalated the way it did, with the government not just walking away but attempting to punish the company for asserting itself at all. If not for this retaliation, the government's narrow defense — that if a private company wants to contract with the military, it shouldn't expect to be able to micromanage how its tools are deployed and should reasonably expect to be implicated directly or through reputation if, for example, the military were to then bomb a school - would make sense on its own terms. But the Trump administration's belief in its right to total power, expressed by and in the belligerent figure of Hegseth, is central to both its "vision," such as it is, and to understanding the way it conducts itself here and elsewhere.
Arguments about AI aren't just about the future — they're trapped it in nymag.com/intelligence...
This week’s Made in China is exactly the kind of reporting I hoped to work on when I joined WIRED.
@zeyiyang.bsky.social talked to people in China caught up in the OpenClaw hype, and wrote a really smart story about what the saga says about the country’s AI market www.wired.com/story/china-...
Palantir has promoted using AI chatbots to generate suggestions for what troops should do next in the battlefield.
In one demo, an AI chatbot comes up with 5 options, including one titled "Support-by-Fire-Then-Penetration-Shock-and-Destruction"
SCOOP: The Pentagon/Anthropic feud has been all over the news, but few details about how the military actually uses AI chatbots have come out, until today
@carolinehaskins.bsky.social uncovered tons of specifics about how these tools are likely being deployed www.wired.com/story/palant...
happy Marnie day to all who celebrate
I unexpectedly love being a blue head
SCOOP from @zoeschiffer.bsky.social & @laurengoode.bsky.social Nvidia is planning to launch an open-source platform for AI agents, people familiar with the company’s plans tell WIRED: www.wired.com/story/nvidia...
SCOOP from @knibbs.bsky.social: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down.
Venture capitalist Toni Schneider will take over as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent replacement www.wired.com/story/bluesk...
if you're not already signed up for Made in China, pls smash the subscribe button here: www.wired.com/newsletter
So excited for @carolinehaskins.bsky.social to make her debut in Made in China this week!!
On TikTok, Chinese drone manufacturers are peddling tools of modern warfare but presenting them with the breezy cadence of consumer lifestyle advertising www.wired.com/story/pew-pe...
just had my debut Made in China guest appearance!! : ) got to collab with @lmatsakis.bsky.social on this piece about the Chinese companies selling anti-drone tech on TikTok, featuring the opening line "PEW, PEW, PEW!"
www.wired.com/story/pew-pe...
so the bots do make server costs more expensive, since they have to handle a higher volume of traffic. But they degrade the value of the properties in that it's harder for them to attract advertising
This is like seeing HQ kill the joke of 67. Chinese Embassy in the US has started a “becomingchinesechallenge” on Facebook. Now you have a four week window to become Chinese! Just kidding that’s the death time of this trend.
Here's your mystery of the week:
A blog about a small island off the coast of Canada, personal portfolio websites, weather forecast platforms, Shopify sites, and the US federal gov—a wide range of websites have reported being hit by a massive influx of bots tied to China and Singapore since 2025.
if you're not already signed up for Made in China, pls smash the subscribe button here: www.wired.com/newsletter/e...
really, really loved this week’s edition of Made in China.
such a fascinating and bizarre story, and @zeyiyang.bsky.social absolutely nailed it www.wired.com/story/made-i...
Leah is one of the best, most fearless reporters I've ever worked with and it's a privilege to be on her team
FYI subscribe as @wired.com under @katie-drummond.bsky.social is killing it
Chinese phones have more advanced features like folding screens, powerful cameras, and AI. But Apple is once again dominating in China. It turns out brand still beats hardware, @zeyiyang.bsky.social reports
For years, the consensus was that Huawei and Xiaomi would finally crush the iPhone in China. That’s not what happened www.wired.com/story/how-ip...
Wanna know why China is so good at manufacturing EVs? How are the products on Shein/Temu so cheap? What's going to happen to TikTok now that its been sold to US investors? We got you!
This is happening right now! Come to the comments on the article below and ask me and @zeyiyang.bsky.social any and all questions you have about China + tech
In Donghai, the “crystal capital of China,” the answers we found had little to do with top-down industrial policy and everything to do with how fast small players iterated, scaled, and competed
Last year, I set out to find a case study that could help explain what’s really behind China’s manufacturing success. We chose the most absurd industry we could find: crystals
I was at Davos when this came out, but the story meant a lot to me so I wanted to take a moment to share it now www.wired.com/story/china-...
NEW: ICE is asking companies to provide information about “commercial Big Data and Ad Tech” products that could “directly support investigations activities,” reports @carolinehaskins.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/ice-as...
this is a very good feature about how one town in China fully reoriented itself to become the dominant crystal supplier in the world. a microcosm of why china is so good at manufacturing things & has become the leader in cornering all sorts of niche markets:
www.wired.com/story/china-...
