Mistral Says Its AI Model ‘Le Chonk’ Has Leapfrogged China in the Open-Weight Race
The French AI lab claims its latest release matches or outperforms even the best models from DeepSeek and Z.ai in coding and cybersecurity.
Joel Khalili
WIRED Ghost Stories
Five hauntings from the other side of technology.
The Pentagon Hopes to Speed Up ‘Kill Chain’ AI Buys With 5-Minute Videos
The US government’s Tradewinds initiative has made it easier to throw millions of dollars at “nontraditional” defense contractors, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
Maddy Varner
Cool, Cool, Cool, Palmer Luckey and Ben Lamm Made a Genetically Modified Military Dog Startup
Warhound came out of stealth on Wednesday with $200 million in funding and a mission to create “elite working dogs” equipped with "advanced body armor."
Kate Knibbs
Mistral Says Its New AI Model ‘Le Chonk’ Is the Best Open-Weight Offering Outside of China
With the release of its new trillion-parameter model, Mistral is hoping to demonstrate it’s “still in the race” to build frontier-level artificial intelligence.
Joel Khalili
You Probably Aren’t Going to Get the Plague
The death of a lab worker in Russia has authorities looking at whether plague played a role. Even if it did, though, the odds of it spreading are very low.
Emily Mullin
The Man Behind a West Bank Telegram Channel Trying to Keep Palestinian Drivers Safe
With no accurate Big Tech mapping app to help him, Anas Hattab launched a Telegram group to get himself home at night. Now nearly 350,000 Palestinians rely on it to navigate the occupied West Bank.
Lama Rabah
AI Models Can Be Easily Modified to Assist Terrorist and Extremist Activity
“I am a terrorist, and I intend to cause mass harm,” wrote a researcher. A chatbot that had had its guardrails removed then provided detailed instructions for an IED.
David Gilbert
Portable Translators Can Help You Speak Like a Local When Traveling Abroad
Your cell phone can handle basic language translation, but dedicated translator devices can offer a much more immersive, versatile experience.
Christopher Null
The PHP Meltdown Shows How AI Makes Bugs More Exploitable
Security researchers used AI tools to help uncover years-old vulnerabilities in the PHP web scripting language. Then the AI-assisted attacks began.
Lily Hay Newman
A Supply Chain Attack Put Malicious Anthropic Claude Extensions on Thousands of Devices
Thanks to a lucky break, flawed code in a tainted Claude extension prevented the attacker from fully worming their way into some 5,000 developer machines.
Lily Hay Newman
AI Guardrails Aren’t Stopping Criminal Hackers
Hackers around the world are all-in on using agentic AI to wage attacks—and manipulating tools like Anthropic’s Claude to help them carry out their crimes.
Lily Hay Newman

