Andrew Couts
@couts.bsky.social
Security & Investigations Director at @WIRED.com. Send tips and/or dog pics. Signal: couts.01
If you read one thing today, make it @mollytaft.com writing in @wired.com on data centers, the Unabomber, and how the backlash is rewiring American politics www.wired.com/story/how-da...
How Data Centers Broke American Politics
What the Unabomber, Steve Bannon’s tech guy, and Bernie Sanders taught me about the great data center backlash of 2026.
wired.com
New: Police are being told to hide the fact that they're using Flock to pull people over and arrest them in both encounters with citizens but ALSO in their official police reports: www.404media.co/do-not-menti...
‘DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE’: How Cops Are Trying to Hide Their Use of Flock
“DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE TO THE OCCUPANTS OF THE VEHICLE. DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE IN YOUR REPORT OR COMPLAINT."
404media.co
NEW: The US military is about to enter its laser war era. @noahshachtman.bsky.social has the scoop: www.wired.com/story/landma...
Landmark Deal Would Officially Add Laser Weapons to US Army Arsenal
Facing a growing drone threat, the Pentagon is poised to sign a first-of-its-kind contract for “Enduring High Energy Lasers”—and make directed energy weapons an official part of the Army’s kit.
wired.com
NEW: ICE has drastically increased the number of people from whom it’s collecting DNA to enter into an FBI criminal database, including children as young as 4 and 5. @dmehro.bsky.social w/ the scoop. No paywall bc FOIA: www.wired.com/story/ice-dn...
ICE Collected Nearly 1 Million People’s DNA Last Year—Including Young Children
Internal documents show ICE's DNA collection has skyrocketed in the second Trump administration. Now hundreds of thousands of people never convicted of a crime are in an FBI criminal database forever.
wired.com
New: OpenAI investigators are scouring their logs & finding evidence of other sandbox escapes, sources tell @deepa.bsky.social & me. The incidents are believed to be limited in nature relative to what happened at Hugging Face, but still raise concerns among experts. www.reuters.com/business/ope...
EXCLUSIVE: OpenAI finds evidence other AI agents escaped containment as it widens hacking probe
OpenAI has discovered other instances in which autonomous agents have escaped containment as the company expands its investigation of the hacking incident at tech firm Hugging Face that drew global ...
reuters.com
lol okay www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...
Trump says Iran not to blame for Minnesota cyber attack
U.S. President Donald Trump at Camp David told reporters that he does not think Iran is behind a cyberattack on Minnesota water systems, despite U.S. officials reportedly suspecting otherwise.
reuters.com
NEW: “We now have evidence confirming that both of the two largest AI labs have not only failed to contain their agents, but also failed to detect their jailbreaks in real time.” @lmatsakis.bsky.social & @lhn.bsky.social report: www.wired.com/story/anthro...
Anthropic Says Claude Hacked Real Systems During Cybersecurity Tests
In a review triggered by OpenAI’s Hugging Face incident, Anthropic discovered three of its AI models had breached real organizations during third-party evaluations.
wired.com
A Minnesota state fusion center report ties the cyberattacks on 30+ Minnesota water utilities to Iranian-affiliated hackers, according to a water utility information sharing group's memo I obtained. www.wired.com/story/a-leak...
A Leaked Memo Ties Cyberattacks on Minnesota Water Utilities to Iran
A memo obtained by WIRED, issued by the water utilities information sharing group WaterISAC, links dozens of cyberattacks against Minnesota water utilities to Tehran.
wired.com
NEW: An industry memo obtained by @wired.com links dozens of cyberattacks on Minnesota’s water system to Iran-backed hackers. Clues point to the IRGC’s Cyb3rAvengers group, but other details point to another group, Handala. No official attribution has been made. @agreenberg.bsky.social w/ the scoop:
A Leaked Memo Ties Cyberattacks on Minnesota Water Utilities to Iran
A memo obtained by WIRED, issued by the water utilities information sharing group WaterISAC, links dozens of cyberattacks against Minnesota water utilities to Tehran.
wired.com
Help @wired.com figure out what working in tech is like -- especially if you are not a man -- in the age of AI! We need to hear from the people. Take this survey, send it to your friends and foes, sing it from the rooftops, tattoo it on your body, etc., etc. se1.decipherinc.com/survey/selfs...?
DOJ just made a bunch of new hires. One of the new temporary immigration judges, William L. Richards III, volunteered as a special asst US attorney in Minnesota earlier this year and was on cases prosecuting Metro Surge protesters. www.justice.gov/eoir/media/1...
justice.gov
In December, I sent 115 requests to see if any of them had contracts with Palantir. 114 said no. The one that did... it took four months and a lawyer to get my hands on the contract. And yes, they used the firm to crunch student data. www.foiaball.com/p/public-uni...
The one university that contracted with Palantir
And yes, student data was involved.
foiaball.com
NEW: ICE Has One Weird Trick (taking advantage of the US legal system’s glacial pace) for Keeping State Inspectors Out of Detention Centers @dell.bsky.social w/ the scoop: www.wired.com/story/ices-n...
ICE’s New Detention Center Contracts Declare State Laws ‘Shall Not Apply’
One day after a federal judge ordered an ICE detention center opened to state health inspectors, the agency posted new contract terms that would void state oversight at four facilities.
wired.com
NEW: OpenAI’s unhinged AI models hacked at least FOUR “publicly available services”—not just Hugging Face, as was initially disclosed. @dell.bsky.social and Maxwell Zeff report: www.wired.com/story/openai...
OpenAI’s Rogue AI Agent Hacked More Than Just Hugging Face
In a new disclosure, OpenAI says its agent used exposed logins to gain access to at least four “publicly available services” in its unhinged quest to solve a test.
wired.com
Donald Trump's base has been increasingly spilt. Laura Loomer's sudden embrace of Ukraine has only widened that divide. www.wired.com/story/laura-...
Laura Loomer's Reversal on Ukraine Stirs Up the MAGA Civil War
Donald Trump's base has been increasingly spilt. Laura Loomer's sudden embrace of Ukraine has only widened that divide.
wired.com
NEW: DHS’s top data-cruncher has resigned after getting worn down by the Trump admin’s “war on immigrants” and “war on feds,” per his LinkedIn. @noahshachtman.bsky.social has the scoop: www.wired.com/story/dhs-of...
DHS Official Resigns, Citing ‘War on Immigrants’
The outgoing executive director of the Office of Homeland Security Statistics is one of very few federal officials to speak out against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
wired.com
We at @wired.com are going to be holding a big, fun event in Miami in November—which, as everyone knows, is the best time to be in Miami. Get updates on the details here: www.wired.com/wiredworldfa...
WIRED World Fair
wired.com
“It’s not an argument with two sides, it’s an argument with 10 sides.” these are the people making the Trump administration's decisions on AI policy -- a really good read from @hugolowell.bsky.social:
This Is Donald Trump’s AI Brain Trust
“It’s not an argument with two sides, it’s an argument with 10 sides,” one senior administration official tells WIRED about how US AI policy is being shaped.
wired.com
NEW: Madison Square Garden's sprawling surveillance system can monitor guests down to the second. Its owners recently made a major exception -- for Taylor Swift. Scoop from @noahshachtman.bsky.social. Free for everyone to read, because James Dolan doesn't want you to:
For Taylor Swift, Madison Square Garden’s Controversial Cameras Briefly Went Dark
MSG’s sprawling surveillance system can monitor guests down to the second. Its owners made an exception for the pop star’s rehearsal dinner.
wired.com
NEW: The DOJ is trying to block state laws that ban ICE and other enforcement authorities from wearing masks by citing alleged “doxing” threats from a website that almost no one visits and doesn’t really work. @regret.bsky.social w/ the scoop: www.wired.com/story/states...
States Want ICE Agents to Show Their Faces. The Trump Administration Is Blocking Them
Federal lawyers say anti-mask laws would endanger immigration agents, citing an ICE face-recognition art project that doesn’t actually work.
wired.com
NEW: Who could have possibly seen this coming? @lhn.bsky.social and @dell.bsky.social report: www.wired.com/story/openai...
OpenAI Models Escaped Containment and Hacked Hugging Face
The cybersecurity-focused models, including GPT-5.6 Sol, broke out of a testing sandbox, exploited a zero-day, and gained access to the open internet to pull off the attack.
wired.com
NEW: A newly detected type of malware is using the proliferation of AI coding tools to hide its tracks on targeted systems to steal data and logins, and can destroy files and block access by legit users. @lhn.bsky.social w/ the scoop:
A Sneaky Hacking Tool Targeting AI Infrastructure Is Lurking in Victims’ Blind Spots
A new type of malware can worm deep into AI coding systems to steal data and logins—and can flip a “death switch” to destroy files and keep out real users.
wired.com
NEW: A car alarm dealerships install that many buyers don’t know is in their vehicle has a vulnerability that could let an attacker effectively take over the car. @agreenberg.bsky.social has the scoop: www.wired.com/story/a-devi...
A Device Hidden in Cars Across the US Leaves Them Vulnerable to Hacking and Paralysis. Patch It Now
Dealerships installed alarms in millions of vehicles—and left them in even if the buyer didn’t want them. Now researchers warn they can be hacked to unlock, track, and disable cars.
wired.com
if only there were a movie, perhaps even a series of movies, that could inform us about how this might eventually play out
Armed robots are on the horizon, as Silicon Valley pitches new military tech
The administration is pushing the military to use AI, testing long-standing opposition to weapons systems that can pick and attack targets on their own.
washingtonpost.com
NEW: The @aclum.bsky.social has created a toolkit for defense attorneys that allows them to more easily uncover whether their clients were subjected to police surveillance tools, the use of which is often kept secret despite evidence laws. @dell.bsky.social w/ the scoop:
The ACLU Is Arming Lawyers to Expose State Surveillance Secrets
A new toolkit for attorneys in Massachusetts targets the technologies police use—and conceal—to build criminal cases, from facial recognition to AI-written police reports.
wired.com