Attention to the Unseen

Wired reports: Top career officials at the Department of the Interior (DOI) were placed on administrative leave late last week after declining to immediately give affiliates of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) levels of access to a payroll system that would in theory allow them to, among other things, stop individual Supreme Court justices’ paychecks. The New York Times has reported that these officials include DOI’s chief information and information security officers; sources tell WIRED they also include…

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Wired reports: Over the weekend, thousands of people joined the “Tesla Takedown” protest movement at the company’s showrooms across the country. At the same time, a much smaller number of Elon Musk supporters turned out at Tesla locations for a counterprotest movement that some participants dubbed “Tesla Shield.” While the protest movement comprises people angered at Elon Musk’s role in the dismantling of federal government agencies, the counterprotest movement that showed up this weekend was peopled mostly by MAGA supporters….

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Wired reports: The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is starting to put together a team to migrate the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) computer systems entirely off one of its oldest programming languages in a matter of months, potentially putting the integrity of the system—and the benefits on which tens of millions of Americans rely—at risk. The project is being organized by Elon Musk lieutenant Steve Davis, multiple sources who were not given permission to talk to the media tell…

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  Elon Musk was born in 1971 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and raised in a wealthy family under the country’s racist apartheid laws. Musk’s family history reveals ties to apartheid and neo-Nazi politics. We speak with Chris McGreal, reporter for The Guardian, to understand how Musk’s upbringing shaped his worldview, as well as that of his South African-raised colleague Peter Thiel, a right-wing billionaire who co-founded PayPal alongside Musk. “Musk lived what can only be described as a neocolonial life,”…

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Der Spiegel reports: Private contact details of the most important security advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump can be found on the internet. DER SPIEGEL reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials. To do so, the reporters used commercial people search engines along with hacked customer data that has been published on the web. Those affected by the leaks include National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National…

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CBS News reports: President Trump’s Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he was included in a group chat with more than a dozen other top administration officials — and inadvertently, one journalist — on the messaging app Signal, a CBS News analysis of open-source flight information and Russian media reporting has revealed. Russia has repeatedly tried to compromise Signal, a popular commercial messaging platform that many were…

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NPR reports: Several days after top national security officials accidentally included a reporter in a Signal chat about bombing Houthi sites in Yemen, a Pentagon-wide advisory warned against using the messaging app, even for unclassified information. “A vulnerability has been identified in the Signal Messenger Application,” begins the department-wide email, dated March 18 and obtained by NPR. The memo continues, “Russian professional hacking groups are employing the ‘linked devices’ features to spy on encrypted conversations.” It notes that Google has…

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CBS News reports: The National Security Agency sent out an operational security special bulletin to its employees in February 2025 warning them of vulnerabilities in using the encrypted messaging application Signal, according to internal NSA documents obtained by CBS News. News of the NSA bulletin comes amid the continued fallout from an explosive article published Monday in The Atlantic. The publication’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, detailed how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth inadvertently disclosed war plans to him in an encrypted Signal…

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Politico reports: Tesla’s downward spiral is turning into a rout, with its share of European electric car sales falling by 58 percent in the first two months of this year, dropping from 18.4 percent in 2024 to 7.7 percent for the same period this year, according to data from JATO Dynamics, an auto consulting firm. To add insult to injury, Chinese EV brands sold nearly 20,000 vehicles in Europe last month, far outpacing Tesla’s 15,700 units. The American EV company…

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The Guardian reports: Tesla and Elon Musk are embroiled in a “brand tornado crisis moment” and the electric carmaker’s chief executive needs to cut back on his work for Donald Trump to stem the damage, one of the company’s biggest supporters has said. The warning came as Tesla announced a recall of 46,000 Cybertrucks in the US on Thursday to fix an exterior panel that could detach while driving. It came as protesters announced on Wednesday they were planning what…

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Wired reports: Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has spent the first six weeks of the new Trump administration turning the federal government upside down. It has moved from agency to agency, accessing sensitive data and payment systems, all on a supposed crusade to audit the government and stop fraud, waste, and abuse. DOGE has posted some of its “findings” on its website, many of which have been revealed to be errors. But two federal auditors with years…

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Wired reports: Several groups representing “startup nations”—tech hubs exempt from the taxes and regulations that apply to the countries where they are located—are drafting Congressional legislation to create “freedom cities” in the US that would be similarly free from certain federal laws, WIRED has learned. According to interviews and presentations viewed by WIRED, the goal of these cities would be to have places where anti-aging clinical trials, nuclear reactor startups, and building construction can proceed without having to get prior…

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