2026 will be the year when US dollar dilution—the quiet erosion of its global dominance as countries trade and pay in alternatives—starts to build momentum. The more Washington uses the dollar as a weapon, the more the world builds ways to circumvent it.America’s share of global trade has fallen from one-third in 2000 to just one-quarter today. As emerging economies trade more with each other, the dollar is less central to the flow of goods. Indian and Russian trade now settles in rupees, dirhams, and yuan. More than half of China’s trade now moves through CIPS, China’s own cross-border payment…
What a weird time to be Elon Musk.This year opened with the businessman turned political operator throwing what appeared, to Nazis at least, to be a Sieg heil.This spring, activists frequently congregated outside the showrooms of his automaker, Tesla, to protest his foray into the US federal government and cozy…
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, that was another executive order that came out. I think it was literally titled something around eliminating data silos. Another thing that on its surface sounds good: data silos, inefficient, sounds bad, but there’s a really good reason to keep a lot of this information separate. You…
Earlier this year, WIRED said that AMD CEO Lisa Su was “out for Nvidia’s blood.” The American chipmaker is still small compared to the juggernaut that is Nvidia—their market caps are $353 billion and $4.4 trillion, respectively—but Su’s company is gaining steam. Today, when Su took the stage at WIRED’s…
When OpenAI declared a “code red” this month to refocus its teams on competing with Google, I couldn’t help but think back to December three years ago when the companies’ roles were reversed. Google was the one blasting the sirens to catch up to OpenAI. What followed the next month,…
A New York Times spokesperson told WIRED in a statement that Brooks “regularly attends events to speak with noted and important business leaders to inform his columns” and that Brooks had no contact with Epstein before or after attending the 2011 dinner where the photo was taken.A representative for the…
OpenAI has quietly reversed a major change to how hundreds of millions of people use ChatGPT.On a low-profile blog that tracks product changes, the company said that it rolled back ChatGPT’s model router—an automated system that sends complicated user questions to more advanced “reasoning” models—for users on its Free and…
South Korean crypto entrepreneur and prosecuted fraudster Do Kwon was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a US federal judge in the Southern District of New York on Thursday.Kwon cut a solemn figure as he was escorted into the courtroom by US Marshals, his head bowed, his cheeks sunken…
SpaceX is planning to raise tens of billions of dollars through an initial public offering next year, multiple outlets have reported, and Ars can confirm. This represents a major change in thinking from the world’s leading space company and its founder, Elon Musk.The Wall Street Journal and The Information first…
President Donald Trump signed a highly anticipated executive order on Thursday that sets in motion a plan to establish a national regulatory framework for artificial intelligence while undercutting states’ abilities to enact their own rules.The order, titled “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence,” creates an AI litigation task…
A Virginia startup calling itself Operation Bluebird announced this week that it has filed a formal petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office, asking the federal agency to cancel X Corporation’s trademarks of the words “Twitter” and “tweet” since X has allegedly abandoned them.“The TWITTER and TWEET brands have…
Julie Bornstein thought it would be a cinch to implement her idea for an AI startup. Her résumé in digital commerce is impeccable: VP of ecommerce at Nordstrom, COO of the startup Stitch Fix, and founder of a personalized shopping platform acquired by Pinterest. Fashion has been her obsession since…
OpenAI has introduced GPT-5.2, its smartest artificial intelligence model yet, with performance gains across writing, coding, and reasoning benchmarks. The launch comes just days after CEO Sam Altman internally declared a “code red,” a company-wide push to improve ChatGPT amid intense competition from rivals.“We announced this code red to really…
Putting a plant into a planter, placing snacks in containers, and sorting laundry successfully doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to have a humanoid robot in your home next year. But the dream of offloading home cleaning, maintenance and maybe even cooking is getting a little more real as Google DeepMind…
Alex Komoroske has always been at odds with Big Tech’s darker side. Though he cut his product-management teeth at Google and Stripe, he was never comfortable with the industry’s increasing prioritization of profits over people. Once during his time at Google, he extolled the societal benefits of a project only…
Spotlight
In the battle of the competitive mid-range handsets, Google’s Pixel 9a was…
It all began, as many things do, with Elon Musk. In the…
Well, well, well. It’s already the end of November. I hope all…
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I think that one thing that everyone can agree…
