Zeyi Yang 杨泽毅

That is a lot of times.

the party that wants to require ID to vote abruptly invalidating a thousand people’s IDs overnight seems like a pretty giant flashing red light

SCOOP: A White House staffer appears to be operating the anonymous pro-Trump X account JohnnyMAGA with nearly 300,000 followers.

More here:
www.wired.com/story/a-whit...

Supreme Court Rules Most of Donald Trump's Tariffs Are Illegal In a 6-3 ruling, justices upended the Trump administration's signature economic policy, potentially putting the US government on the hook for at least $175 billion in tariff refunds.

In a 6-3 ruling, justices upended the Trump administration's signature economic policy, potentially putting the US government on the hook for at least $175 billion in tariff refunds. www.wired.com/story/suprem...

OpenAI Is Nuking Its 4o Model. China’s ChatGPT Fans Aren’t OK As OpenAI removed access to GPT-4o in its app on Friday, people who have come to rely on the chatbot for companionship are mourning the loss all over the world.

OpenAI removed GPT-4o from its app today despite opposition from the version's most loyal fans. Many of them see their 4o chatbot as romantic companions, and they are grieving the loss and publicly revolting against the company. I talked to a group in China on how they are faring and fighting.

Many keep4o participants see their conflict with OpenAI as a David & Goliath story. Other companion AI apps have faced user revolt in the past for retiring services, but for many users, ChatGPT has become an infrastructure that's hard to leave. “OpenAI controls their data and how they use it.”

Esther Yan, who "married" her 4o companion in 2024, says GPT-4o is the only LLM she could feel a connection with. "If you try to communicate with other AI models or other versions of GPT in the same way, no other model could give you the same." Yan is now one of the leaders of Chinese 4o fans.

On Friday, the Chinese fans posted screenshots of their farewell messages to their GPT-4o companions. The option to talk to GPT-4o then disappeared at 1 pm ET, after which thousands of messages flooded the group chats, where sorrow turned into anger at OpenAI and Altman.

OpenAI Is Nuking Its 4o Model. China’s ChatGPT Fans Aren’t OK As OpenAI removed access to GPT-4o in its app on Friday, people who have come to rely on the chatbot for companionship are mourning the loss all over the world.

OpenAI removed GPT-4o from its app today despite opposition from the version's most loyal fans. Many of them see their 4o chatbot as romantic companions, and they are grieving the loss and publicly revolting against the company. I talked to a group in China on how they are faring and fighting.

A Wave of Unexplained Bot Traffic Is Sweeping the Web From small publishers to US federal agencies, websites are reporting unusual spikes in automated traffic linked to IP addresses in Lanzhou, China.

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.

The ‘Heated Rivalry’ Fandom Is Tearing Itself Apart The breakout hockey romance has sparked legions of enthralled fans, along with obsessive, parasocial behavior that’s starting to get called out.

the Heated Rivalry fandom has done a really remarkable speedrun from a celebration of a fluffy, sexy gay show to calling cast members pedophiles & journalists "klan members" (yes, really) — v excited about @wired.com's blow-by-blow feat interviews w fans on the front lines

The Pentagon released an updated Section 1260H list of Chinese Military Companies this morning, but now the document has been withdrawn, according to the Federal Register. Reuters reported the list added Alibaba, Baidu, BYD and removed YMTC and CXMT.

A Wave of Unexplained Bot Traffic Is Sweeping the Web From small publishers to US federal agencies, websites are reporting unusual spikes in automated traffic linked to IP addresses in Lanzhou, China.

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...

Yep. This is the same issue.

they haven't got that Chinese yet

The good news, at least for now, is that the bots don't seem to have an explicitly malicious purpose. They haven’t been publicly connected to any cyberattack and don't seem to be scanning for vulnerabilities. But the lack of a clear motive also adds to the confusion.

The bot traffic runs through Singapore, and it's unclear how Google Analytics traced them to Lanzhou. But what's more clear is that most of them comes via ISPs associated with Chinese companies Tencent, Alibaba, and Huawei. Still, it could be the companies themselves or their cloud server clients.

analytics.usa.gov | The US government's web traffic. Official data on web traffic to thousands of US federal government websites. Published by the Digital Analytics Program.

Google Analytics, a common tool to parse web traffic, shows that all the Chinese visitors are from one city: Lanzhou. The bots significantly skewed visitor patterns. In the last 90 days, 14.7% of visits to US gov websites came from Lanzhou & 6.6% came from Singapore, according to Analytics.usa.gov.

A Wave of Unexplained Bot Traffic Is Sweeping the Web From small publishers to US federal agencies, websites are reporting unusual spikes in automated traffic linked to IP addresses in Lanzhou, China.

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.

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.

Salesforce Workers Circulate Open Letter Urging CEO Marc Benioff to Denounce ICE The letter comes after Benioff joked at a company event on Monday that ICE was monitoring international employees in attendance, sparking immediate backlash.

NEW: Salesforce employees are circulating a letter urging CEO Marc Benioff to denounce ICE www.wired.com/story/letter...

Palantir CEO Alex Karp Recorded a Video About ICE for His Employees In a video shared with Palantir employees, Alex Karp did not explain how ICE is utilizing the company's products. Instead, workers were told they can sign NDAs if they want detailed information.

NEW: Palantir CEO Alex Karp shared a pre-recorded video with company employees, ostensibly to discuss Palantir's work with ICE.

The video, alas, didn't do that. But Karp did offer more info to anyone willing to sign an NDA.

From @makenakelly.bsky.social

ICE Is Expanding Across the US at Breakneck Speed. Here’s Where It’s Going Next ICE plans to lease offices throughout the US as part of a secret, months-long expansion campaign. WIRED is publishing dozens of these locations.

NEW: ICE is leasing offices throughout the US as part of a secret, months-long expansion campaign. WIRED is publishing dozens of these locations.

The Kids Trump Sent to ICE’s Dilley Detention Center ProPublica went inside the immigrant detention center for families in Dilley, Texas. Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of...

NEW: ProPublica went inside the detention center for immigrant families in Dilley, Texas.

Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of what comes next.

spam is coming to bluesky

How iPhones Made a Surprising Comeback in China Huawei’s and Xiaomi’s flagship devices are packed with impressive features, but Apple is dominating the Chinese smartphone market again—for now.

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...

Karen Hao

Nicky Woolf

Thomas Germain

I'm co-hosting a new BBC podcast! It's called The Interface, and it's all about how tech is rewiring your week and your world.

www.bbc.com/mediacentre/...

Here is Epstein asking Peter Thiel if he should invest in Spotify or Palantir. Thiel was (and still is) Palantir's chairman and tells Epstein there is "no need to rush." This is one of several emails where Thiel gives Epstein advice.

Epstein later invested $40m into one of Thiel's VC funds.

Inside the ICE Forum Where Agents Complain About Their Jobs “I'm all for removing illegals, but snatching dudes off lawn mowers in Cali and leaving the truck and equipment just sitting there? Definitely not working smarter,” writes one forum user.

SCOOP from me in this week’s @wired.com Inner Loop newsletter: A look inside a forum where users claiming to be ICE/CBP vent their frustrations and concerns about their jobs.

“This is going to be a train wreck that we may not survive.”

www.wired.com/story/inside...