Attention to the Unseen

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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Sky News reports: One of Tesla’s earliest investors has told Sky News that Elon Musk should step aside as the carmaker’s chief executive unless he gives up his new government job. Ross Gerber said in an interview with Sky’s Business Live that the tycoon and adviser to Donald Trump had lost his focus given his widening interests and was now too “divisive”. He cited Musk’s post-election role at the helm of the Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)….

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The New York Times reports: A private equity investor who is one of Elon Musk’s closest confidants has taken a new role in the Social Security Administration, a development that could be politically combustible given the program’s popularity with voters and Mr. Musk’s apparent intent to make major changes at the agency. The investor, Antonio Gracias, who has served on the boards of Mr. Musk’s businesses Tesla and SpaceX, has started a job at the administration as part of the…

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Wired reports: Experts with decades of experience at the agency are now worried that DOGE operatives working across multiple agencies increases the risk of SSA data being shared outside of the agency, or that their inexperience will lead to them breaking systems entirely. In the SSA filing [in federal court in Maryland opposing a motion for a temporary restraining order filed by unions that would prevent DOGE from accessing SSA records], lawyers for the agency claim that the DOGE operatives…

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Wired reports: As America’s most decorated civil servants sipped cocktails in the presidential ballroom of the Capital Hilton, worrying about their table assignments and wondering where they fell in the pecking order between US senator and UAE ambassador, Elon Musk sat staring at his phone, laughing. Few of the guests at the Alfalfa Club banquet in Washington, DC, on January 25 knew what he knew: that a crew of senior executives and young Musk loyalists was preparing to occupy the…

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CNBC reports: Tesla’s selloff on Wall Street intensified on Monday, with shares of the electric vehicle maker plunging 15%, their worst day on the market since September 2020. On Friday, Tesla wrapped up a seventh straight week of losses, its longest losing streak since debuting on the Nasdaq in 2010. The stock has fallen every week since CEO Elon Musk went to Washington, D.C., to take on a major role in the second Trump White House. Since peaking at $479.86…

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Brian Barrett writes: The “deep state” is a top-tier conservative bogeyman, right up there with DEI and George Soros. But it seems fair to ask: If a bunch of shadowy, unelected figures, many with shared business interests and connections, took over government functions at the highest levels and directly contravened the will of Congress, what might you call that? How about … DOGE? After years of alarm over unelected bureaucrats pulling the strings, what better example can you find than…

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Isaac Stanley-Becker writes: On January 29, American Airlines Flight 5342 collided with a U.S. Army helicopter near Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport, killing 67 people, in the deadliest U.S. air disaster in recent history. That alone would have been a crisis for the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency charged with ensuring the safety of air passengers. But the next day, President Donald Trump deepened the FAA’s problems by blaming the disaster on diversity programs, a pronouncement that baffled many in…

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