Brian Barrett

Palantir Demos Show How the Military Could Use AI Chatbots to Generate War Plans Software demos and Pentagon records detail how chatbots like Anthropic’s Claude could help the Pentagon analyze intelligence and suggest next steps.

Throughout this fight between Anthropic and the Pentagon you might have wondered what the military actually uses LLM chatbots for. @carolinehaskins.bsky.social has the best answer I've seen anywhere

John Solly Is the DOGE Operative Accused of Planning to Take Social Security Data to His New Job A whistleblower complaint alleges John Solly claimed to have stored highly sensitive Social Security data on a thumb drive. Solly and Leidos, his current employer, strongly deny the allegations.

SCOOP: John Solly Is the DOGE Operative Accused of Planning to Take Social Security Data to His New Job

w/ @telliotter.bsky.social

www.wired.com/story/john-s...

Oh, and look, here's that class action suit! That anyone with half a brain would have seen coming! From, like, a million miles away!

Just because you work in tech doesn't mean you're smart.

Meta Developed Four New Chips to Power Its AI and Recommendation Systems The MTIA processors are the tech giant’s latest attempt to build its own AI hardware, even as it continues spending billions on gear from industry leaders like Nvidia.

AI companies have all learned the lesson that smartphone companies learned almost a decade ago: Design your own chips. from @laurengoode.bsky.social

They Helped Plan the January 6 Rally. Now Their Events Company Is Raking in Millions in Government Contracts The Trump administration has awarded Event Strategies several contracts—including one that could be worth up to $100 million—with little competition, according to federal filings.

NEW: They Helped Plan the January 6 Rally. Now Their Events Company Is Raking in Millions in Government Contracts

The Trump administration has awarded Event Strategies several contracts—including one that could be worth up to $100 million—with little competition, according to federal filings.

NEW: More than 30 OpenAI and Google employees—including Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean —filed an amicus brief in support of Anthropic in its lawsuit against the US government.

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber Is Stepping Down Venture capitalist Toni Schneider will take over as interim CEO as Bluesky’s board of directors hunts for a permanent replacement.

Jay Graber will no longer be the CEO of Bluesky. scoop from @knibbs.bsky.social

Anthropic Sues Department of Defense Over Supply-Chain Risk Designation The Claude chatbot developer says the Trump administration overstepped by escalating a contract dispute into a federal ban on the company’s technology.

As promised, Anthropic is taking the Pentagon to court. from @peard33.bsky.social

From Ukraine to Iran, Hacking Security Cameras Is Now Part of War’s ‘Playbook’ New research shows hundreds of attempts by apparent Iranian state hackers to hijack consumer-grade cameras, timed to missile and drone strikes. Israel, Russia, and Ukraine have also adopted this trick...

Hacking internet-connected civilian security cameras for recon has become a standard operating procedure of modern warfare. First for Russia and Ukraine, now for Israel and Iran.

Your insecure internet-of-things surveillance system is now their targeting system.

www.wired.com/story/from-u...

A Possible US Government iPhone-Hacking Toolkit Is Now in the Hands of Foreign Spies and Criminals A highly sophisticated set of iPhone hijacking techniques has likely infected tens of thousands of phones or more. Clues suggest it was originally built for the US government.

A full iOS exploitation toolkit, "Coruna," has been found in the wild, hacking iPhones that visited infected websites, used by Russian spies targeting Ukrainians and thieves targeting Chinese crypto holders. And it may have been originally created for the US government. www.wired.com/story/coruna...

How Big Tech Is Powering Trump’s Immigration Crackdown A WIRED analysis shows that ICE and CBP have collectively spent at least $515 million on products from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Palantir in the last few years alone.

How much is Big Tech fueling the ICE crackdown? @carolinehaskins.bsky.social found at least $515 million worth of contracts from the last two years alone among Palantir, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

X Is Drowning in Disinformation Following US and Israel’s Attack on Iran WIRED has reviewed hundreds of posts on X that promote misleading claims about the locations and scale of the attack.

NEW

Within minutes of Trump announcing the launch of Operation Epic Fury, X was flooded with disinformation.

Almost all of the accounts sharing fake videos of the attack on Iran featured blue checkmarks, meaning X is profiting from this.

www.wired.com/story/x-is-d...

Airborne leaflet propaganda in 2026: hacked push alerts from a prayer timing app

www.wired.me/story/hacked...

Anthropic Hits Back After US Military Labels It a 'Supply Chain Risk' Anthropic says it would be “legally unsound” for the Pentagon to blacklist its technology after talks over military use of its artificial intelligence models broke down.

"This is the most shocking, damaging, and over-reaching thing I have ever seen the United States government do," said one former Trump administration AI policy adviser. The DoD has created an impossible mess:

OpenAI Fires an Employee for Prediction Market Insider Trading Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi are big business, and some Big Tech employees are testing boundaries by making trades based on insider knowledge.

OpenAI fired an employee for insider trading on prediction markets. from @knibbs.bsky.social

Wall Street Has AI Psychosis A “thought experiment” about the impacts of AI sent stocks tumbling earlier this week. It’s probably going to keep happening.

Here's why the market has a hair-trigger response to anything it hears about AI disruption--including speculative fiction from obscure sources. www.wired.com/story/wall-s...

Ryan Coogler's deal to regain ownership of SINNERS after 25 years was always smart but now it is extra extremely indispensably smart.

I'm so proud of the entire @wired.com team for four ASME nominations, including General Excellence. The most nominations for WIRED in at least a decade! Everyone here earned all of this and more, so today we brag!

Pentagon v. ‘Woke’ Anthropic; Agentic v. Mimetic; Trump v. the State of the Union Podcast Episode · Uncanny Valley | WIRED · February 26 · 31m

new Uncanny Valley pod out today (every thursday!) from me, @brbarrett.bsky.social, and @zoeschiffer.bsky.social! we talk about many important things and also perhaps the most important thing of all (survivor 50's premier and the season I'd most like zoe to watch)

Everyone Speaks Incel Now After migrating from misogynist forums to social media feeds, terms like “looksmaxxing” and “mogged” are now impossible to avoid.

Incel slang is now so ingrained in the mainstream discourse that its origins have been obscured. How did we get here?

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...

Kalshi Suspended a California Politician and a YouTuber for Insider Trading Leading prediction market Kalshi has revealed details of two recent insider trading cases it flagged to authorities, giving a rare look at how the platform enforces its policies.

NEW: Kalshi announces details into two insider trading investigations. WIRED confirms that one suspended account belongs to California congressional candidate Kyle Langford: www.wired.com/story/kalshi...

The Mighty Milkshake Ducks

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.

The Righteous EV Owners Who Won’t Let Their Broken Cars Die Fisker went out of business in 2024, but its biggest fans want to bring the “right to repair” to the masses.

On the plight of Fisker Ocean owners, who discovered when the EV manufacturer that made their software-stuffed cars went bankrupt that they maybe never owned them at all

Now a group of very dedicated owners are fighting to take their EVs back

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

‘Narco-Submarine’ Carrying 4 Tons of Cocaine Captured by Mexico's Navy Following increased surveillance and patrols of routes used by transnational drug-trafficking networks, Mexican authorities have seized approximately 10 tons of cocaine in the past week alone.

sometimes you just have to write a headline with “4 tons of cocaine” in it www.wired.com/story/narco-...

DHS Wants a Single Search Engine to Flag Faces and Fingerprints Across Agencies Homeland Security aims to combine its face and fingerprint systems into one big biometric platform—after dismantling centralized privacy reviews and key limits on face recognition.

NEW: Homeland Security officials are asking companies to help them combine all of their face and fingerprint systems together into one giant biometric platform.

Buttttttt it's unclear how workable this really is since DHS uses a wide mishmash of proprietary algos.

Metadata Exposes Authors of ICE’s ‘Mega’ Detention Center Plans Comments and other data left on a PDF detailing Homeland Security's proposal to build “mega” detention and processing centers reveal the personnel involved in its creation.

NEW: A Homeland Security PDF uploaded to the New Hampshire governor's website included notes and metadata that revealed the DHS personnel involved in its creation. @regret.bsky.social has the scoop: www.wired.com/story/metada...

Trump’s Commerce Secretary Loves Tariffs. His Former Investment Bank Is Taking Bets Against Them A subsidiary of Cantor Fitzgerald, which is run by the sons of US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, is letting clients essentially bet that President Donald Trump’s tariffs will be struck down in cou...

Big day for Howard Lutnick's large adult sons

The War Over Prediction Markets Is Just Getting Started Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket are booming, and so is a fight among regulators, lawmakers, and advocates over their legality.

The war over prediction markets pits Mormons and casinos against Democratic lobbyists and Donald Trump, Jr. from @knibbs.bsky.social