Wired

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.

Here’s a flash of Antony J. Blinken’s turn as US secretary of state: In his first year, he navigated America’s messy exit from Afghanistan. In his second, he tried to rally the world to Ukraine’s side following Russia’s invasion in February 2022. His third and, now fourth, have been defined by the Israel-Hamas conflict. In between, he has tried to box in rising Chinese aggression in Asia and slow Iran’s march toward a nuclear weapon, even as the Islamic republic has (repeatedly) plotted to assassinate his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, for his role in killing Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani. Don’t forget either about the normal mix of crises, coups, summits, treaties, global elections—more humans will vote in 2024 than in any year in world history—and, this summer, the biggest prisoner swap with Russia since the end of the Cold War.

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.

ten years ago, WIRED published a news story about how two little-known, slightly ramshackle encryption apps called RedPhone and TextSecure were merging to form something called Signal. Since that July in 2014, Signal has transformed from a cypherpunk curiosity—created by an anarchist coder, run by a scrappy team working in a single room in San Francisco, spread word-of-mouth by hackers competing for paranoia points—into a full-blown, mainstream, encrypted communications phenomenon. Hundreds of millions of people have now downloaded Signal. (Including Drake: “Cuban girl, her family grind coffee,” he rapped in his 2022 song “Major Distribution.” “Text me on the Signal, don’t call me.”) Billions more use Signal’s encryption protocols integrated into platforms like WhatsApp.

WIRED: Hey.

Katie: Hey … ?

WIRED: It’s us. The collective consciousness of the WIRED editorial staff, here to help you talk about The Big Interview series.

Katie: Is this AI?

WIRED: Katie, what’s a Big Interview?

Katie: Is it weird that I’m being interviewed by my own publication?

WIRED: Hey, you created this monster. Answer the question.

Katie: It’s a conversation with someone we—me, and you, who are apparently the collective consciousness of WIRED—care about, think is interesting, and who is in some way shaping our shared future. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a technology executive or a world-famous scientist; these conversations span everything WIRED covers.

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.