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The Venture-Capital Populist

The Atlantic - Technology

This story appears in the June 2026 print edition. While some stories from this issue are not yet available to read online, you can explore more from the magazine . Get our editors' guide to what matters in the world, delivered to your inbox every weekday. The courtship between Silicon Valley and MAGA was consummated on June 6, 2024, in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood, on a street known as "Billionaires' Row," at the 22,000-square-foot, $45 million French-limestone mansion of a venture capitalist named David Sacks. Along with Chamath Palihapitiya, a fellow venture capitalist and a colleague on the podcast, Sacks hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump. He knew that other technology titans were coming around to the ex-president but remained in the closet. "And I think that this event is going to break the ice on that," Sacks said on the podcast the week before the fundraiser. "And maybe it'll create a preference cascade, where all of a sudden it becomes acceptable to acknowledge the truth." Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. A few years earlier, Sacks had described the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol as an "insurrection" and pronounced Trump "disqualified" from ever again holding national office. "What Trump did was absolutely outrageous, and I think it brought him to an ignominious end in American politics," he said on the podcast a few days after the event. "He will pay for it in the history books, if not in a court of law." Palihapitiya was more colloquial, calling Trump "a complete piece-of-shit fucking scumbag." These might seem like tricky positions to climb down from--but the path that leads from scathing denunciation through gradual accommodation to sycophantic embrace of Trump is a well-worn pilgrimage trail. The journey is less wearisome for self-mortifiers who never considered democracy (a word seldom spoken on the podcast) all that important in the first place.


You Found Satoshi? Let's See the Receipts

WIRED

Two new projects, including one from a Pulitzer-winning reporter, claim they've solved the mystery of Bitcoin's creator. So why does the hunt continue? In December 2024, at the suggestion of a mutual friend, I met with a professional investigator named Tyler Maroney. He told me he was on a quest to discover the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin, and he felt that he had cracked the case. My first thought was, join the club. Literally dozens of journalists and investigators have spent months or even years trying to uncover the mysterious creator of the most popular cryptocurrency, who ended his (or her or their) online presence in 2011 and amassed around $83 billion in Bitcoin.


How Florida retiree lost 200K in fake PayPal refund scam

FOX News

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset . Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions . Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG . Toyota's CUE7 robot shoots hoops using AI You don't need an SSN to open a credit card: Scammers know that Mexico's climate supercomputer could change forecasting Michael Easter and Gary Brecka discuss the'choice' to live to be 100 'CyberGuy' warns of creepy privacy clauses in smart devices Brian Oliver of Gainesville, Florida, spoke with Kurt CyberGuy Knutsson about losing money to scammers claiming to be with PayPal. NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles! Brian Oliver is retired, sharp and financially savvy enough to have a stock-and-bond portfolio worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. He is not the type of person you picture getting scammed.


Ben McKenzie Says Crypto Has a Secret Ingredient: Male Loneliness

WIRED

The actor-director discussed his least favorite currency and read a series of mean tweets--about us!--at our inaugural WIRED@Night event. Ben McKenzie had a question: "When did WIRED die?" Specifically, the actor-director wanted to know when did WIRED "'DIE,' all caps." McKenzie wasn't asking for himself; he was engaging in the time-honored celebrity tradition of reading mean tweets . McKenzie, who famously played Ryan on before becoming a leading voice of crypto skepticism, was sharing the stage with WIRED senior correspondent Andy Greenberg for the first of what will hopefully be a series of smaller events that we are calling WIRED@Night. On April 16, about 100 people gathered at event partner Ace Hotel Brooklyn to sip drinks from Aplos, Faccia Brutto, The Sorting Table, and Manojo and ponder the future of cryptocurrency.


The first quantum computer to break encryption is now shockingly close

New Scientist

A quantum computer capable of breaking the encryption that secures the internet now seems to be just around the corner. Stunning revelations from two research teams outline how it could happen, with one suggesting that the current largest quantum machine is already more than halfway towards the size needed. The two studies concern an encryption technique built around the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP). The particulars of how this mathematical problem is solved made it a good candidate for encrypting data and led to its widespread adoption for securing lots of internet communication, including bank transactions, and nearly every major cryptocurrency, including bitcoin. It is extremely difficult for conventional computers to crack ECDLP-based encryption, but since the 1990s researchers have known that quantum computers wouldn't have the same trouble.


How debit card fraud can happen without using the card

FOX News

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset . Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions . Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG .


AI scams drove UK reports of fraud to record 444,000 last year

The Guardian

Most of the account takeover scams reported last year were for mobiles, online shopping and credit cards, Cifas said. Most of the account takeover scams reported last year were for mobiles, online shopping and credit cards, Cifas said. Criminals are increasingly exploiting AI technology to take over people's mobile, banking and online shopping accounts, the UK's leading anti-fraud body has warned. Last year, a record number of scams were reported to the national fraud database, fuelled by AI, which allows for large-scale deception on "industrialised" levels, according to Cifas, the fraud prevention organisation. Its report showed 444,000 cases of fraud were reported by its members last year - a 6% increase on 2024.


What was really behind Jack Dorsey laying off nearly half of Block's staff?

The Guardian

Jack Dorsey leaves the Élysée Palace in Paris, France, on 7 June 2019. Jack Dorsey leaves the Élysée Palace in Paris, France, on 7 June 2019. What was really behind Jack Dorsey laying off nearly half of Block's staff? Jack Dorsey cited AI as the driving force behind cutting 40% of his company's employees, but other factors such as a weak crypto market, overstaffing and a declining stock price may also have motivated the move. Last week, the financial technology company Block announced that it would lay off 4,000 of its 10,000 workers.