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Today:
What We Still Don’t Know About OpenAI’s Hugging Face Hack
NEWS | 27 August 2026
Hugging Face initially disclosed the incident on July 16 without naming the culprit; five days later, OpenAI acknowledged that its own agents were responsible. OpenAI’s postmortem has been eagerly awaited by AI researchers and policymakers hoping to prevent AI agents from causing similar kinds of real-world harm. After the Hugging Face hack was first disclosed, attorneys general from 15 states sent a letter to OpenAI asking it to preserve evidence about it. As part of OpenAI’s investigation, the company allowed two independent research groups, METR and Redwood Research, to audit the Hugging Face hack. Those groups also released their independent report on Wednesday, which found that more than 700 AI agents were part of the Hugging Face breach—far more than had previously been revealed.

Top Stories:
How Ikea Turned a Controller Thumbstick Into the Star of Its Xbox Gaming Range
NEWS | 27 August 2026
Ikea has taken another swing at a gaming gear collection, but this time it brought in a ringer: Xbox. The new nine-piece range, revealed at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, came about not through whiteboard marketing brainstorms, but a meeting between the Xbox and Ikea design teams at Milan Design Week in 2024. "We were exploring gaming, so we wanted to team up with experts who really understand how people play. But it also moves it forward by taking liberal inspiration from Xbox design cues. Overtly Xbox-inspired pieces include a green gaming D-pad cushion and a surprisingly elegant D-pad controller platter, originally designed as a stool.

World:
China Is Strapping ‘Digital Bombs’ to Civilian Infrastructure—Is the US Ready?
NEWS | 27 August 2026
WIRED’s Andy Greenberg got rare access to the closed-door war game and walked away with some disturbing conclusions. Article mentioned in this episode:You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett and Andy Greenberg on Bluesky at @agreenberg. WIRED senior correspondent Andy Greenberg got a rare invite to this closed-door war game; call it Dungeons & Dragons for a national security nightmare. Archival audio: This group that's known as Volt Typhoon, this is a state-sponsored Chinese hacking group. Archival audio: China has secretly stepped up its electronic warfare, deploying what is being called the Volt Typhoon malware throughout the US ecosystem.

Current Events:
Best Wi-Fi Routers (2026): My Honest Picks After Testing 50+
NEWS | 27 August 2026
It also sports a 2.5-Gbps WAN, a 2.5-Gbps LAN, three Gigabit LAN, and a USB 3.0 port. The Gold SE has two 2.5-Gbps ports and two gigabit ports and is suitable for folks with up to 2-gigabit connections. While I recommend buying a Wi-Fi 7 router if you’re upgrading, there are loads of Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 6 routers that will serve the average family well. A single 2.5-Gbps WAN/LAN port, five gigabit LAN ports, and a USB-C 3.0 port will be enough for most folks. The way the ban is described, it will likely apply to every new Wi-Fi router, because there are no companies manufacturing routers or the components they are assembled from in the US (except maybe some Starlink Wi-Fi routers).

News Flash:
The Best Early Labor Day Kitchen Deals to Ease You Back Into Fall (2026)
NEWS | 27 August 2026
If you're dusting off your pots, pans, and air fryers and thinking you could use an upgrade, Labor Day is a great time to score deals on appliances and cookware. Though the deals aren't quite as good as Prime Day's or Black Friday's, they're still substantial. These are the best early discounts I've found on gear the WIRED Reviews team has tested, loves, and uses in their own kitchens. Check out our other early Labor Day deals on tech gadgets, as well as our kitchen coverage. If you're looking to simplify your meal prep during the busy fall school-and-sports season, this is the way.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 27 August 2026
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here

Latest:
Democrats Just Might Win the Senate
NEWS | 27 August 2026
With primary elections in the key 2026 battleground states largely complete, Democrats have emerged with several open paths to take the majority in the US Senate. They currently hold 47 seats in the Senate, meaning they need to flip four Republican seats and hold their current ones, including in Michigan and Georgia, which President Donald Trump won in 2024. Cooper has consistently led in the North Carolina Senate race, sometimes by as much as double digits. This month, the Senate Republican campaign arm warned in a memo to top AI labs that voter opposition toward data centers is sinking incumbent senator Jon Husted. Senate Democratic leaders have been quietly optimistic about their prospects in traditionally red Texas, where Republicans nominated Ken Paxton, the state’s beleaguered attorney general, to run against James Talarico.

Breaking:
The Humanoids at China’s Robot Games Were Faster Than Usain Bolt—but I’m More Impressed by Their Tweezer Mastery
NEWS | 27 August 2026
If you’re anything like me, the World Humanoid Robot Games are a highlight of your sporting calendar. The opening ceremony showcased the sheer size of the event—the organizers say that more than 600 teams showed up with over 2,000 robots. There are more than 100 humanoid robot manufacturers in China alone, and participants also traveled in from 15 other countries. Humanoid robots are seen preparing for the opening ceremony of the World Humanoid Robot Games. Witness the Tiangong Ultra, developed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation ​Center, running the 100-meter dash in 8.86 seconds.

Trending:
The Unlikely Place at the Center of China’s AI Boom
NEWS | 27 August 2026
This vast, arid land has long been China’s capital of sheep farming and coal mining, but over the last few years, it has become the hottest place in the country to build an AI data center. DeepSeek is reportedly building a massive AI data center in Ulanqab, as are ByteDance, Alibaba, and Xiaohongshu. The Ulanqab data center boom signals that now they are finally starting to catch up. The BooniesInner Mongolia has been a data center hot spot for at least a decade, long before the current AI boom. Inner Mongolia is much closer to Beijing and other major metropolitan areas in China than any Western data center hub is.

This Just In:
Meta’s Big Reckoning Is Here
NEWS | 27 August 2026
My colleague Paresh Dave and I each spent a day in federal court in Oakland, California, this week, monitoring the latest Meta child safety trial. Now Meta is defending itself in a federal civil trial taking place in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Two specific Meta apps are in focus in this trial: Facebook and Instagram. Per usual, Meta was represented by an army of well-heeled lawyers, who quite ironically kept experiencing technical difficulties with the mic. Not to mention the amount of internal workplace dysfunction at Meta that’s been revealed through depositions, books, and news reports like these.

Today:
Silicon Valley Doesn't Get Why You Hate AI
NEWS | 27 August 2026
Silicon Valley is trying to make sense of the growing backlash against artificial intelligence, but so far, it’s not going that well. The two beverage brands teamed up with former Philadelphia Eagles football player and Taylor Swift brother-in-law Jason Kelce, who invited people to pee in bottles and send them to AI data centers. But other recent polling data shows that people have broader anxieties about the technology that go far beyond jobs and the data center boom. The tech industry often chalks up the AI backlash to a communication and branding problem, but it’s much deeper than that. Current polling suggests that the AI industry has yet to earn that trust.

Top Stories:
‘Darth Vader’ Wants You to Know He Definitely Supports Flock Surveillance
NEWS | 27 August 2026
At the San Diego City Council’s most recent budget meeting, Sith Lord Darth Vader had some points to make. Was this your first city council meeting? My first time attending a city council meeting was sometime last summer or last fall. The story back then was that the city council didn't exactly know what the technology was. I came to the following city council meeting, and I was one of maybe five people in the city council chambers, and there had been close to 300 just a couple of weeks prior.

World:
The Supreme Court’s Mail-In Ballot Ruling Is a Step Toward Chaos in the Midterms
NEWS | 27 August 2026
The US Supreme Court ruled on Monday that President Donald Trump’s executive order, imposing severe restrictions on voting by mail ahead of November’s midterms, can proceed. Experts and election officials have long warned that if implemented in full, the executive order would disenfranchise millions of voters. And experts worry that even if Trump’s executive order is eventually blocked, the decision will still have a direct impact on voter turnout in November by sowing doubts about the legitimacy of mail-in voting. “Voting rights organizations have experienced first-hand the significant confusion that President Trump’s executive order is causing right now,” the counsel and plaintiffs in a second lawsuit against Trump’s executive order wrote in a statement on Monday. But in March, Trump signed an executive order titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.” The order contains three distinct provisions.

Current Events:
A MAGA County’s Top Election Official Wants to Hire Election Denial Superstar Tina Peters
NEWS | 27 August 2026
Curtis told The Guardian that Peters would not have access to the county’s voting system but refused to specify what her duties would include. “This should be stopped immediately: Shasta County Registrar Clint Curtis is trying to hire election-denier Tina Peters to collude with the Trump administration’s election mischief,” US senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, wrote on Facebook. In 2025, when the previous Registrar of Voters in Shasta County, Thomas Toller. Since his appointment, Curtis has faced a string of accusations about his behavior from members of his staff. An internal investigation concluded that he had physically threatened, verbally abused, and retaliated against staff at the Shasta County Elections Office, while an external investigation found he had retaliated against them.

News Flash:
The County Prosecutors Who Became ICE Informants
NEWS | 27 August 2026
He was referring to the state’s 2017 TRUST Act, which was meant to keep local law enforcement out of federal deportation efforts. After a DUI arrest in Marion County last October, Samayoa said, he attended his hearings—a fact confirmed by court records. Since Trump took office for the second time, his administration has ramped up immigration enforcement, detention, and deportation, and ICE has visibly displayed its enforcement at worksites, front yards, and courthouses. In response, states including New York have joined Illinois and more than a dozen others in barring local police and sheriffs from helping with federal immigration enforcement. Dozens of Illinois county prosecutors, faced with the same federal pressure, claimed they had no record of contact with ICE, and at least one made a point of shutting it out—suggesting every act of collaboration was a choice.