Will Oremus

NEW: CBS will eliminate its century-old CBS News Radio service and cut more newsroom jobs as new top editor Bari Weiss's rocky tenure gets rockier.

That Vanity Fair profile of Amodei has accomplished something rare and remarkable: pissing off the pro-AI crowd and the anti-AI crowd in equal measure in a single story.

What if the metaverse wasn’t a failure but a brilliant 5-year long con to win an antitrust case

Simply wild — and troubling story — from @WillOremus. "A journalist reported a missile strike. Then came the death threats." washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

If the journalist complied with the demand to change his story, he’d get a cut of the profits. Refuse, the bettor said, and we’ll “finish you.” My story today on how online gamblers allegedly tried to extort a war reporter so they could win a bet: wapo.st/4lI6Pon

A journalist filed a brief live blog entry on an apparent Iranian missile strike that hit no one and caused no serious damage. Next thing he knew, angry Polymarket users were demanding he change the story—and threatening his life and family if he refused. (story link in reply)

1998, 2012, 2026

Scoop: The Pentagon barred press photographers from briefings on the ongoing U.S.-Israeli military conflict with Iran after they published photos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that his staff deemed "unflattering." washingtonpost.com/business/2026/…

A DOGE software engineer is alleged to have taken records on more than 500 million living and dead Americans, including Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents’ names. washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/…

@matthew_petti The point of the story is that people's real suspicions about the Epstein Files and Trump's motives have created an opening that pro-Iranian propaganda bots are capitalizing on. washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

sf dorks feeling seen by this one

Iranian state propaganda rarely resonates in the West. But Iran-aligned X accounts are finding serious traction with conspiratorial content that taps into preexisting suspicions about Trump's motives for war. Gift link to my story today: wapo.st/4aYw9mo

New: Verified "news" accounts on X have gained over 10m views with a fake video of Trump with young girls. Turns out they're part of a pro-Iran propaganda network, which is successfully exploiting the Epstein Files to erode public support for the war.

Interesting: Anthropic's Claude, the AI tool that the Pentagon famously banned last week, continues to play a crucial role in the U.S. military campaign in Iran, three people familiar with the situation told the @washingtonpost: washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

“I think to them it feels legitimately like a betrayal on a fundamental tenet of Trumpism,” said Matthew Dallek, a professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management. @WillOremus washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

Trump is facing a MAGA influencer mutiny over Iran. His response: "MAGA is Trump." wapo.st/4aN3oJj

At the 184-year-old Cleveland Plain Dealer, a top editor’s push to let AI draft news articles is boosting traffic — and spooking staffers. My latest with @WillOremus: washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

Cleveland's top newspaper is "removing writing from some reporters' workloads" by using AI to draft articles. We dove into what drove the paper to do that, how it's going and what its human reporters think about it. wapo.st/4aX44e1 w/ @ScottNover