Plus: Gay bars in San Francisco using face scanners, France quits Palantir, Apple plans to change its private email, and more. Meta is testing face-recognition software built by the United States military and regional police department supplier Rank One, WIRED found in an investigation this week. Meta has been exploring the possibility of adding face recognition tech into its smart glasses, and WIRED previously reported that the app for the glasses contained code --now deleted--that would have enabled the company to activate face-recognition features on the devices. Anthropic is still negotiating with the Trump administration, after apparent White House concerns about the safety of new public model Claude Fable 5 resulted in Anthropic pulling the product off the market entirely. But security experts point out that AI models with advanced capabilities for discovering and exploiting software vulnerabilities--in other words, creating potentially dangerous hacking tools-- will be ubiquitous soon around the world .

Years after initial tests, researchers are now racing to see if a vaccine developed in 2011 can help fight the current Bundibugyo outbreak in Congo. Fever was the first symptom to grip the crab-eating macaques in their high-containment laboratory on an island off Texas after being infected with the newly discovered Bundibugyo strain of ebola . Then came the weight loss, the rectal bleeding and nosebleeds, while scientists in space suits drew blood to see how the monkeys' immune systems struggled to fight the aggressive virus. But the three monkeys that had received a newly developed vaccine to protect against the understudied strain showed no symptoms of the disease, which eventually killed two-thirds of their unvaccinated companions. It was 2011, and virologist Thomas Geisbert's work developing the vaccine was done.

Pump.Fun's Bounties Platform Is a Black Hole of Circular Grifting The crypto platform claims you can "pay anyone to do anything," from quitting a job on camera to getting a memecoin-themed tattoo. But it mostly seems like people trying to scam each other. Would you run into a crowded university lecture hall, fart into a megaphone, and bellow "fartcoin" at the top of your lungs? If so--and should you have the means to document this stunt on video, preferably capturing the audience's reaction--you may claim a reward of approximately $1,000 . The money, of course, will be dispensed in fartcoin, a meme cryptocurrency trading at a little over 10 cents at time of publication, with a total market capitalization hovering around $130 million. Such is the promise of Pump.Fun GO, a new feature on Pump.Fun, one of the fastest-growing crypto businesses of the past few years.

The biggest World Cup ever is pushing fans, players, and host cities to their limits--and experts say this is only the beginning. It's often said that bigger means better. This year's FIFA World Cup may put that to the test. By almost any metric, the 2026 tournament is the largest ever: the most host countries; the longest distances between stadiums; the most players, teams, and matches; and then there's the eye-watering ticket prices . The scale is a logistical nightmare for fans, teams, and host cities. Held across three countries-- Canada, Mexico, and the US--48 teams (up from the usual 32) will navigate 16 host cities separated by thousands of miles and four distinct time zones.

Prediction Market Philosophers Got What They Wanted. Getting the future right is now big business. But at a festival in the Bay Area, forecasters worry that sports markets could take the whole industry down. On June 11, Kalshi released a buzzy ad featuring noted New York Knicks fan Timothée Chalamet. It was a zeitgeist-capturing moment for prediction markets, akin to the 2022 Super Bowl, when seemingly every commercial featured a celebrity shilling crypto.

Leaked files show the invite-only network grades members by their money and fame, shaping who's in, who's out, and who pays. Dialog, the private network cofounded by Peter Thiel, grades its event attendees on a hidden scale, ranking them by wealth and fame, tracking their relationships, and using algorithms to help decide who they should meet, who they should sit with, and who no longer belongs, WIRED has learned. The records are part of a trove of internal data received by WIRED from a confidential source, containing the personal information of nearly 200 prominent people scheduled to attend the group's annual retreat this summer. The data includes home addresses, private phone numbers and email accounts, dates of birth, photos, and emergency contacts, as well as food allergies and the political leanings volunteered by some members. The records are distinct from a list of people affiliated with Dialog that was left exposed on the organization's website and has been circulating online since earlier this week--a looser directory that appears to include nonmembers, such as Maryland governor Wes Moore, a former event speaker, and other outside guests who passed through Dialog's orbit, in some cases years ago.

Anthropic still can't distribute Claude Mythos or Fable 5 after running afoul of the Trump administration. But no one can say exactly what the company did wrong. It's been nearly a week since the Trump administration sent an export control directive to Anthropic, forcing one of the world's leading AI labs to pull its most advanced models offline. After days of negotiations between Anthropic and the White House, the two still remain at odds about how to bring Claude Mythos and Fable 5 back. Well, it depends whom you ask.

On today's, we dive into the dysfunction in Meta's newly formed AI unit and why it's been driving already-low employee morale even further into the ground. This week on, our hosts discuss the meltdown that has been recently unfolding at Meta and what it says about the company's relentless ambitions in the AI race. They also dive into the leaked messages and names of an invite-only group cofounded by billionaire tech founder Peter Thiel, and how Sam Bankman-Fried is now actively seeking a pardon from the Trump administration. Plus, they share their impressions on SpaceX acquiring Cursor and the latest on the negotiations between Anthropic and the government. 'Tell Him He's a Piece of Shit': Meta's New AI Unit Is a Total Mess Write to us at [email protected] . You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link . Before we start, two quick things. If you've been enjoying listening to the show, we would appreciate it if you took a second to rate it in your podcast app of choice. It really helps us reach more people. And second, if you have any questions related to tech, privacy, or politics that you would like me, Zoë, and Leah to take on, now is the time to submit them to [email protected] . It doesn't matter how big or how small, we want to hear from you and get you answers. Today on the show, we're talking about the dysfunction in Meta's newly formed AI unit and why it's been driving employee morale, which was already very, very low, even further into the ground. We'll also break down the recent online leak that shed light on Peter Thiel's invite-only group, Dialog, more than 200 names of high profile people in government, tech, academia, beyond are listed in the documents as members and guests of this secretive society, not to mention a look at what they talk about behind closed doors.

"You would not believe the texts I got from these tech guys," NYT reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan quote Donald Trump as telling associates in an upcoming book. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos sought to ingratiate themselves with President Donald Trump after he won the 2024 election, and in return he mocked their efforts behind their backs, according to a new book by The New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Zuckerberg once texted Trump a photo of a letter written by one of his grade-school-age children, who wrote that they "looked forward to the golden age of America," a slogan Trump had repeated at rallies during the presidential campaign. And over dinner at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, Bezos denigrated The Washington Post to Trump and essentially described the newspaper as one of his worst financial investments, months before he unsuccessfully sought a business favor from the president. These episodes are detailed in the book, a copy of which WIRED obtained ahead of its release on June 23.

The software engineers filed a complaint with Seattle's civil rights office accusing Amazon of illegally retaliating against them for expressing their personal political beliefs. Earlier this month, five current Amazon employees publicly urged Seattle City Council to regulate data centers . It was an unprecedented act of advocacy by tech workers, and now three of the staffers say they are under internal investigation for what they understand to be allegedly representing themselves as spokespeople for the company without prior approval. "It's a totally ridiculous claim," says one of the affected employees, Patrick Schloesser. The three software engineers, who work in different divisions of Amazon and all live in Seattle, believe they are being unfairly targeted for expressing their political beliefs.