The Curious Case of the World’s Loudest Whisperers A dispatch from the international noise floor They began as a humble American soccer club, the Seattle Sounders, but—like most things American—they refused to stay in their lane. Now, from Dakar to Dubai, the term “sounders” is being co-opted, repurposed, and weaponized by an odd alliance of…
The 27th Birthday of a Search Engine That Knows Too Much International Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Today, somewhere between a missile test in Pyongyang and the 347th cryptocurrency meltdown this fiscal quarter, Google turns twenty-seven—an age at which most humans are still figuring out what they want to be when they grow up. Google, however, already…
If the world were a Bond film, Peter Thiel would be the soft-spoken gentleman sipping a protein shake in the villain’s lair, quietly buying the volcano and re-branding it as a sovereign cloud-hosting zone. From Silicon Valley to Singapore, from Washington to Wellington, the German-born, New Zealand-naturalised, American billionaire drifts like a well-funded ghost—always present,…
ULA’s Latest Launch: A Firework Display for a Planet Already on Fire By [REDACTED], Senior Space Correspondent, somewhere between the Kármán line and the breakfast buffet CAPE CANAVERAL—Another Tuesday, another column of white-hot money clawing its way past Florida’s thinning ozone layer. United Launch Alliance—those Boeing-Lockheed love-children who bill taxpayers the way boutique hotels bill…
Google: The Planet’s Favorite Panopticon by D. Lockhart, filed from 37,000 feet above the Sea of Okhotsk Somewhere over Siberia, I watched a Russian oligarch two rows ahead frantically clear his search history before the flight attendant confiscated his phone for “landing safety.” He needn’t have bothered. Google already has his dacha’s floor plan, his…
Dallas, the city that gave the world both the TV soap opera and the grassy knoll, has once again elbowed its way onto the global bulletin board—this time not for another season of rich-people melodrama or fresh JFK conspiracy theories, but for a cascade of news headlines that, like Texas chili, are equal parts spice…
Physint: Kojima’s New Espionage Opera Proves the World Still Loves a Good Wiretap By Dave’s Locker International Desk If you were hoping 2024 would finally be the year humanity outgrew its addiction to clandestine snooping, Hideo Kojima has some unfortunate news. Fresh off Death Stranding’s existential parcel-delivery simulator—and Norman Reedus’s increasingly sentient beard—the Tokyo-based auteur…
Physint: The Planet-Spanning Game Nobody Asked For, Everybody’s Already Playing By the time you finish this sentence, three governments will have re-branded garden-variety espionage as “physint”—the ugly portmanteau now sliding across briefing folders from Brussels to Brasília. Short for “physical intelligence,” physint is what happens when the world’s spooks realize that hacking elections via Facebook…
**The New Panopticon: Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and the Global Theater of the Absurd** In a world where privacy has become as quaint as a rotary phone, Ray-Ban’s Meta smart glasses have arrived to ensure that no moment goes unrecorded, no indiscretion unarchived, and no dinner conversation undocumented by that guy at the next table…
PARIS — Somewhere between a croissant and a nervous breakdown, I found myself staring at a pair of Ray-Bans that can translate Mandarin in real time, tell me my blood sugar is spiking, and—because why not—live-stream my existential dread to a server in North Virginia. Meta’s newest “smart glasses” have landed on five continents at…
Spy Stock: When the World’s Second-Oldest Profession Meets Its Youngest Obsession By Our Man in Geneva, still waiting for his expense-account martini to arrive GENEVA – From the mirrored towers of La Défense to the dim sum parlors of Sheung Wan, a quiet consensus has emerged among the people who move real money: the only…
**The Global Cult of BBAI: When Surveillance Becomes the World’s Hottest Commodity** In a world where privacy has become as quaint as a rotary phone, BigBear.ai Holdings Inc. (BBAI) has emerged as the poster child for our collective surrender to the surveillance state. The Virginia-based company, whose name sounds suspiciously like a cuddly dystopian teddy…
