The White House’s Aliens.gov Site Brags That ICE Arrested More Than 700 US Citizens

The website, which compares human beings to extraterrestrials, touts arrest numbers from the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown. But some of its details are really out there...

Chilling Effects

Younger Americans have soured on the second Donald Trump presidency, but they are not protesting it. Despite an unpopular Iran war and an even more unpopular Trump administration, college campus protests nationwide have gone silent. And at many schools, student activism is virtually nonexistent...

The Instant Smear Campaign Against Border Patrol Shooting Victim Alex Pretti

Within minutes of the shooting, the Trump administration and right-wing influencers began disparaging the man shot by a federal immigration officer on Saturday in Minneapolis...

Are We Ready to Be Governed by Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence AI overlords are a common trope in science-fiction dystopias, but the reality looks much more prosaic. The technologies of artificial intelligence are already pervading many aspects of democratic government, affecting our lives in ways both large and small. This has occurr...

Against the Federal Moratorium on State-Level Regulation of AI

Cast your mind back to May of this year: Congress was in the throes of debate over the massive budget bill. Amidst the many seismic provisions, Senator Ted Cruz dropped a ticking time bomb of tech policy: a ten-year moratorium on the ability of states to regulate artificial intelligence. To many,...

An Anarchist’s Conviction Offers a Grim Foreshadowing of Trump’s War on the ‘Left’

As the Trump administration ramps up its targeting of left-leaning people and groups, the prosecution and harsh sentencing of Casey Goonan may provide a glimpse of things to come...

AI in the 2026 Midterm Elections

We are nearly one year out from the 2026 midterm elections, and it's far too early to predict the outcomes. But it's a safe bet that artificial intelligence technologies will once again be a major storyline. The widespread fear that AI would be used to manipulate the 2024 US election seems rather...

6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties

The White House has undertaken initiatives to crack down on immigration, suppress speech, and curtail US public health efforts. These online tools are tracking the rapidly changing US landscape...

A Swedish MMA Tournament Spotlights the Trump Administration's Handling of Far-Right Terrorism

A member of a California-based fight club seems to have attended an event hosted by groups with ties to an organization the US government labeled a terrorist group. Will the Trump administration care?...

How the Signal Knockoff App TeleMessage Got Hacked in 20 Minutes

The company behind the Signal clone used by at least one Trump administration official was breached earlier this month. The hacker says they got in thanks to a basic misconfiguration...

US Customs and Border Protection Plans to Photograph Everyone Exiting the US by Car

A CBP spokesperson tells WIRED that the agency plans to expand its program for real-time face recognition at the border, potentially aiding Trump administration efforts to track people who self-deport...

The Trump Administration Sure Is Having Trouble Keeping Its Comms Private

In the wake of SignalGate, a knockoff version of Signal used by a high-ranking member of the Trump administration was hacked. Today on Uncanny Valley, we discuss the platforms used for government communications...

Chat App Used by Trump Admin Suspends Operation Amid Hack

TM SGNL, a chat app by US-Israeli firm TeleMessage used by Trump officials, halts operations after a breach…...

Here’s What Happened to Those SignalGate Messages

A lawsuit over the Trump administration’s infamous Houthi Signal group chat has revealed what steps departments took to preserve the messages—and how little they actually saved...

Trump Revenge Tour Targets Cyber Leaders, Elections

President Trump last week revoked security clearances for Chris Krebs , the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA who was fired by Trump after declaring the 2020 election the most secure in U.S. history. The White House memo, which also suspended clearances...

Spyware Maker NSO Group Is Paving a Path Back Into Trump’s America

The Israeli spyware maker, still on the US Commerce Department’s “blacklist,” has hired a new lobbying firm with direct ties to the Trump administration, a WIRED investigation has found...

DIRNSA Fired

In "Secrets and Lies" 2000, I wrote: It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state. It's something a bunch of us were saying at the time, in reference to the vast NSA's surveillance capabilities. I have been thinking of that quote a lot as I read ne...

How Each Pillar of the 1st Amendment is Under Attack

" Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." -U.S. Constitution,...

SignalGate Is Driving the Most US Downloads of Signal Ever

Scandal surrounding the Trump administration’s Signal group chat has led to a landmark week for the encrypted messaging app’s adoption—its “largest US growth moment by a massive margin.”...

‘People Are Scared’: Inside CISA as It Reels From Trump’s Purge

Employees at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency tell WIRED they’re struggling to protect the US while the administration dismisses their colleagues and poisons their partnerships...