DOGE dominated the news this year as Elon Musk's operatives shook up several US government agencies. Since the beginning of the Trump administration, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the brainchild of billionaire Elon Musk, has gone through several iterations, leading periodically to claims-- most recently from the director of the Office of Personnel Management--that the group doesn't exist, or has vanished altogether. Many of its original members are in full-time roles at various government agencies, and the new National Design Studio (NDS) is headed by Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia, a close ally of Musk's. Even if DOGE doesn't survive another year, or until the US semiquincentennial--its original expiration date, per the executive order establishing it--the organization's larger project will continue. DOGE from its inception was used for two things, both of which have continued apace: the destruction of the administrative state and the wholesale consolidation of data in service of concentrating power in the executive branch.

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. Porn advertisers target California secretary of state's website The state of California's elections and business website appears to be hosting pornography and cash apps as seen through a web search on Dec. 4, 2025. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . The California secretary of state's website appears to have been compromised with advertisements for pornography and cash apps.

AI startup Anthropic's recent announcement that it detected the world's first artificial intelligence-led hacking campaign has prompted a multitude of responses from cybersecurity experts. In a report on Friday, Anthropic said its assistant Claude Code was manipulated to carry out 80-90 percent of a "large-scale" and "highly sophisticated" cyberattack, with human intervention required "only sporadically". Anthropic, the creator of the popular Claude chatbot, said the attack aimed to infiltrate government agencies, financial institutions, tech firms and chemical manufacturing companies, though the operation was only successful in a small number of cases. The San Francisco-based company, which attributed the attack to Chinese state-sponsored hackers, did not specify how it had uncovered the operation, nor identify the "roughly" 30 entities that it said had been targeted. Roman V Yampolskiy, an AI and cybersecurity expert at the University of Louisville, said there was no doubt that AI-assisted hacking posed a serious threat, though it was difficult to verify the precise details of Anthropic's account.

Anthropic says its coding tool, Claude Code, was manipulated to attack 30 entities. Anthropic says its coding tool, Claude Code, was manipulated to attack 30 entities. Anthropic says financial firms and government agencies were attacked'largely without human intervention' Fri 14 Nov 2025 11.27 ESTLast modified on Fri 14 Nov 2025 12.18 EST A leading artificial intelligence company claims to have stopped a China-backed "cyber espionage" campaign that was able to infiltrate financial firms and government agencies with almost no human oversight. The US-based Anthropic said its coding tool, Claude Code, was "manipulated" by a Chinese state-sponsored group to attack 30 entities around the world in September, achieving a "handful of successful intrusions". This was a "significant escalation" from previous AI-enabled attacks it monitored, it wrote in a blogpost on Thursday, because Claude acted largely independently: 80 to 90% of the operations involved in the attack were performed without a human in the loop.

Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME. Albania's new AI-generated minister Diella speaks during the parliamentary session for the voting of the new government of Albania, in Tirana, on September 18, 2025. Albania's new AI-generated minister Diella speaks during the parliamentary session for the voting of the new government of Albania, in Tirana, on September 18, 2025. Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME. In September, Albania appointed an AI system to a cabinet-level position--a world-first. Called Diella (Albanian for "sun"), the system was declared "Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence," and tasked by Albania's Prime Minister with addressing corruption in government contracting.

Every three months, participants in the Metaculus forecasting cup try to predict the future for a prize pot of about $5,000. Metaculus, a forecasting platform, poses questions of geopolitical importance such as " Will Thailand experience a military coup before September 2025?" and " Will Israel strike the Iranian military again before September 2025?" Forecasters estimate the probabilities of the events occurring--a more informative guess than a simple "yes" or "no"--weeks to months in advance, often with remarkable accuracy. Metaculus users correctly predicted the date of the Russian invasion of Ukraine two weeks in advance and put a 90 percent chance of Roe v. Wade being overturned almost two months before it happened. Still, one of the top 10 finishers in the Summer Cup, whose winners were announced Wednesday, was surprising even to the forecasters: an AI. "It's actually kind of mind blowing," says Toby Shevlane, CEO of Mantic, the recently-announced UK-based startup that developed the AI.

A series of corporate leaks show that Chinese technology companies function far more like their Western peers than one might imagine. A trove of internal documents leaked from a little-known Chinese company has pulled back the curtain on how digital censorship tools are being marketed and exported globally. Geedge Networks sells what amounts to a commercialized "Great Firewall" to at least four countries, including Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Myanmar. The groundbreaking leak shows in granular detail the capabilities this company has to monitor, intercept, and hack internet traffic. Researchers who examined the files described it as "digital authoritarianism as a service."

The White House appears to have instructed leaders at the General Services Administration (GSA) to add xAI's Grok chatbot to a list of approved vendors "ASAP," according to an email sent by agency leadership earlier this week, which WIRED obtained. "Team: Grok/xAI needs to go back on the schedule ASAP per the WH," states the email, sent by the commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service Josh Gruenbaum. "Can someone get with Carahsoft on this immediately and please confirm?" Carahsoft is a major government contractor that resells technology from third-party firms. "Should be all of their products we had previously (3 & 4)," the email continued, seemingly referring to Grok 3 and Grok 4. The subject line of the email was "xAI add Grok-4." Sources say Carahsoft's contract was modified to include xAI earlier this week.

OpenAI is partnering with the US government to make its leading frontier models available to federal employees. Under the agreement, federal agencies can access OpenAI's models for 1 for the next year, per a Wednesday announcement from the company and the General Services Administration (GSA). The partnership is the culmination of months of effort on the part of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other OpenAI executives, who have been cozying up to the Trump administration since before President Donald Trump retook the White House in January. Since at least May of this year, high-ranking OpenAI employees have been meeting with the GSA and other government agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration, to promote the company's tools, according to documents obtained by WIRED. On July 23, OpenAI chief operating officer Brad Lightcap and other OpenAI executives were invited to a private after-party hosted by the Hill and Valley Forum in Washington, DC.

President Donald Trump wants to ensure the US government only gives federal contracts to artificial intelligence developers whose systems are "free from ideological bias". But the new requirements could allow his administration to impose its own worldview on tech companies' AI models – and companies may face significant challenges and risks in trying to modify their models to comply. "The suggestion that government contracts should be structured to ensure AI systems are'objective' and'free from top-down ideological bias' prompts the question: objective according to whom?" says Becca Branum at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a public policy non-profit in Washington DC. The Trump White House's AI Action Plan, released on 23 July, recommends updating federal guidelines "to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model (LLM) developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias". Trump signed a related executive order titled "Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government" on the same day.