Wired

When Nadim Kobeissi was a child growing up in Beirut in the early 2000s, sonic booms created by the Israel Defense Forces’ planes in the skies above Lebanon would occasionally rattle his home, generating enough noise and concussive force that he and his family would sometimes sleep in the hallways to avoid pieces of glass from shattered windows falling onto them in the night. The psychological effect—which he believes was intentional—was long-lasting. Even years later, after he’d left Lebanon, the sound of fireworks would make him start subconsciously sweating and shaking.

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Donald Trump’s youngest son, and his only child shared with Melania Trump, has largely remained out of the public eye to the degree any former president’s child could. Well, until recently. Newly 18, Barron Trump is now a freshman at NYU and a burgeoning political adviser to his father.

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From political fundraisers to the presidential debate to a September 11 commemoration, far-right influencer Laura Loomer has become a staple in former president Donald Trump’s political entourage. WIRED’s David Gilbert and Tim Marchman join Leah to discuss Loomer’s history of conspiracies and Islamophobia, and how she ended up in Trump’s orbit.

For two days this week, Hezbollah has been rocked by a series of small explosionsacross Lebanon, injuring thousands and killing at least 25. But these attacks haven’t come from rockets or drones. Instead, they’ve resulted from boobytrapped electronics—including pagers, walkie-talkies, and even, reportedly, solar equipment—detonating in coordinated waves. As details come into view of the elaborate supply chain attack that compromised these devices, citizens on the ground in Lebanon and people around the world are questioning whether such attacks could target any device in your pocket.

On Tuesday morning, celebrities like Stephen Curry, Olivia Rodrigo, and Kerry Washington used their social media platforms to mark National Voter Registration Day, a nonpartisan effort to get Americans to sign up to vote in November’s election.

But at the same time, a group of MAGA influencers were rolling out a very different message about voting to their followers.

“Millions of illegals have been crossing our southern border, many of them who are coming are drug traffickers and sex traffickers. But what I’m worried about is the illegal voting,” Danielle D’Souza Gill said in an Instagram video she shared to her 255,000 followers, alongside the hashtag #OnlyCitizensVote. D’Souza Gill is the daughter of election conspiracist and right-wing pundit Dinesh D’Souza and wife to Brandon Gill, a Trump-endorsed election denier who recently won the GOP nomination to run for Congress in Texas’ 26th district.

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One surefire way to go viral on Threads—the Meta-owned Instagram-spinoff social network with more than 200 million users—is to ask a ridiculous question that enrages your followers so much, they just have to chime in to answer you, mock you, or berate you. When it first launched last summer, Threads was seen as a blatant Twitter clone. At the time, that was an appealing attribute, as users fleeing the chaos and toxicity of the platform now known as X were looking for a new place to gather. Threads turned out to be a safe haven from the trolling and engagement bait on X, Reddit, and Facebook, but only for a while. Threads, like any for-profit social media site, was not able to keep those jokers and bad actors at bay. In its effort to boost engagement on the platform, Threads began prioritizing posts with the most replies and comments—which also happen to be the posts that stirred up the most drama and pissed everyone off.

The muddy trail levels out and we stop to catch our breath. Which is good, because hiking with my eyes covered has been a pain in the ass. A voice says: “You can take your blindfold off now.” I squint as I get my bearings. Then, after a bit more hiking and some bushwhacking, I finally see it. The prize. The thing no one is supposed to know the location of, at least for another few weeks. A golden treasure.

Top officials from Google, Apple, and Meta testified Wednesday before the United States Senate Intelligence Committee about each of their company’s ongoing efforts to identify and disrupt foreign influence campaigns ahead of the country’s November elections.

The hearing, chaired by Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, served largely to impress upon the companies the need for more extensive safeguards against the disinformation campaigns being funded by foreign entities with an eye on influencing US politics.

With Hezbollah and Lebanon still reeling from a coordinated wave of pager explosions on Tuesday that killed at least 12 people and injured thousands, another bombardment began on Wednesday, this time taking the form of exploding two-way radios. Footage of the explosions, which was not independently confirmed by WIRED, appears to show even larger blasts than those that emanated from the booby-trapped pagers.

Lebanon’s official news agency also reported exploding home solar systems less than two hours after the radio detonations began on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. Details of the alleged solar equipment attacks were still developing at the time of publication.

Late on a warm June evening in New York’s Central Park, a crowd was enjoying a production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in 2017 when Laura Loomer stormed onto the stage and disrupted the show, shouting: “Do you want Trump to be assassinated?”

Loomer was a relatively unknown conservative activist at the time, and was upset by the theater company’s decision to re-create Caesar as a Donald Trump–like figure who was then, in line with the original play, bloodily knifed to death. “Stop the normalization of political violence against the right,” she yelled on stage. “This is violence against Donald Trump.”