Politics

A Tennessee-based media network that produces shows for high-profile right-wing influencers such as Benny Johnson and Tim Pool was largely funded by Russian state-backed news network RT, according to a federal indictment against two RT employees that the US Department of Justice unsealed on Wednesday. The DOJ claims the US company—which WIRED, along with other news outlets, was able to identify as Tenet Media but goes unnamed in the indictment—posted hundreds of videos on social media that pushed Kremlin-approved talking points.

Soon after the arrest of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov, a warning that was viewed more than 85,000 times started circulating among Germany’s far right: “Back up your Telegram data as quickly as you can and clean your account.”

The message came from Kim Dotcom, the embattled German founder of the now-defunct digital piracy website Megaupload who is set to be extradited from New Zealand, and who knows a thing or two about facing penalties for illegal activity on the internet.

Recently, former president and convicted felon Donald Trump posted a series of photos that appeared to show fans of pop star Taylor Swift supporting his bid for the US presidency. The pictures looked AI-generated, and WIRED was able to confirm they probably were by running them through the nonprofit True Media’s detection tool to confirm that they showed “substantial evidence of manipulation.”

Things aren’t always that easy. The use of generative AI, including for political purposes, has become increasingly common, and WIRED has been tracking its use in elections around the world. But in much of the world outside the US and parts of Europe, detecting AI-generated content is difficult because of biases in the training of systems, leaving journalists and researchers with few resources to address the deluge of disinformation headed their way.

The day beforeRobert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the presidential contest, a pair of his most ardent supporters were circling the Democratic National Convention in an ancient RV repurposed into an unofficial campaign bus—a fact largely hidden by the explosion of red, white, and blue graphics and slogans like “Kennedy Across America” adorning its exterior.

Most of my time in Chicago was devoted to covering the influencers who were there, but I so deeply needed to get on that bus and find out why two dudes were dedicating all this time driving around the country in support of Kennedy. Luckily, my colleague Dhruv Mehrotra ran into them and had them pick me up.

When US senator JD Vance, an Ohio Republican, was rolled out as former president Donald Trump’s running mate last month, the move had several seeming aims. It was a nod to rich supporters like Vance’s patron, Peter Thiel; a way to present the electorate with a more youthful face than Trump’s; and a play for the working-class voters around whom Vance grew up, as he wrote about in his bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy.

Celeste Borys and Kira Lynch don’t leave the house much these days. When they do venture into their small Utah communities—to go grocery shopping, to take their kids to school or the playground—neighbors whisper and stare. “I’ve had people take pictures and videos of me, and I’ve had someone come up and yell at me,” Lynch says. “Someone at my daughter’s junior high told me to keep my mouth shut and called me some bad names. It’s terrifying.”

Kamala Harris’ meteoric rise to the top of the Democratic ticket was unexpected. Two months ago, no one could have predicted it.

Well, almost no one.

On June 6, 2023, astrologer Laurie Rivers, who goes by the name AstroLaurie on TikTok and hosts the Awake Space podcast, posted a video saying that Kamala Harris “has the best transits, but no one wants to talk about her.” It’s one of several videos where Rivers makes predictions about political events like the Republican National Convention, the US presidential election, and natural disasters. And on X, Amy Tripp, who posts under the username Starheal, reposted a prediction from August 2020 where she predicted Harris would run for president.

Today, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his withdrawal from the presidential race.

“I am not terminating my campaign, I am simply suspending it, not ending it,” said Kennedy. “My name will remain on the ballot in most states.”

But Kennedy said that after “deep prayer,” he had decided to throw his support behind former president Donald Trump and would be joining his campaign. He said his fervent concern about chronic disease, and Trump’s promises to address these issues if elected, ultimately shaped his decision.

Some of Donald Trump’s biggest and newest supporters from finance and Silicon Valley, including Elon Musk and Bill Ackman, have spent the past several weeks trying to whitewash comments the former president and current Republican presidential nominee made in relation to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.

In the past week, the Kamala Harris presidential campaign and President Joe Biden both highlighted Trump’s August 15, 2017 comment, when the former president said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the clashes that followed the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville.

Gabrielle Rifkind operates in the shadows, in the quiet, dark, back rooms of international politics. A bit paradoxically, the 71-ish Londoner strikes a sharp pose: outré pantsuits, dresses. Cool, kooky glasses. A white shock of bobbed hair. Upon meeting her, you really want to talk to her. Which is perhaps the point: The peacemaking organization Rifkind founded in 2016—the London-based Oxford Process—is all about facilitating dialog. Except they do this, as their website says, “far from the public gaze.”