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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Webster] | [TOKENS: 635] |
Contents Betty Louise Turtle Betty Louise Turtle (née Webster [also Webster in published works]) (20 May 1941 - 29 September 1990) was an Australian astronomer and physicist. In 1971, with her colleague Paul Murdin, she identified the powerful X-ray source Cygnus X-1 as the first clear candidate for a black hole. Career Turtle attended the University of Adelaide and continued studies as one of the first students at the graduate school of Mount Stromlo Observatory, outside Canberra where she was strongly influenced by the American astronomers Bart Bok and Priscilla Fairfield Bok. She gained a Ph.D. in 1967 on the subject of southern planetary nebulae while working with the Swedish astronomer Bengt Westerlund. She moved to the University of Wisconsin before taking up a position at the Royal Greenwich Observatory at Herstmonceux Castle, firstly as a Scientific Officer then Principal Scientific Officer. She worked with Richard Woolley, the Astronomer Royal, and then Paul Murdin, with whom she had been elected to the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time in 1963. Turtle and Murdin were careful about the language of the paper they submitted to the journal Nature describing their discovery, titled Cygnus X-1 — a Spectroscopic Binary with a Heavy Companion? with the final words, "...it might be a black hole." Their boss, Woolley, was more conservative as an astronomer and their cautiousness was mirrored by colleagues, though other astronomers (notably Charles Thomas Bolton) agreed with them. Her work in Sussex led directly to a posting at the South African Astronomical Observatory, where Woolley became director from 1972, and then the new 3.9-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope in a commissioning role before becoming staff astronomer there. In 1978, she found her final employment at the University of New South Wales in the physics faculty; in November that year she married Tony Turtle. While at the university, she was the driving force for the Automated Patrol Telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory, introduced a fourth-year course for astronomers, served on or chaired many committees and promoted astronomy very actively through the International Astronomical Union and the Astronomical Society of Australia. She died after a long illness at her home in Paddington, Sydney. Legacy The Bok Prize, awarded annually to undergraduates for excellence in research, was introduced largely at Turtle's instigation, and is sponsored by Astronomical Society of Australia and the Australian Academy of Science. In honour of her contribution to astronomy, the Louise Webster Prize has been awarded annually since 2009 by the Astronomical Society of Australia to reward outstanding postdoctoral research early in a scientist's career. In popular culture In October 2024, the ABC Science Show carried an interview by Robyn Williams with author Marcus Chown discussing Louise Webster's contribution to the discovery of black holes. Her and Paul Murdin's paper theorizing that the x-ray source Cygnus X-1 may be a black hole was discussed in the NOVA episode Black Hole Apocalypse. References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Platforms#cite_ref-258] | [TOKENS: 8626] |
Contents Meta Platforms Meta Platforms, Inc. (doing business as Meta) is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Meta owns and operates several prominent social media platforms and communication services, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Threads and Manus. The company also operates an advertising network for its own sites and third parties; as of 2023[update], advertising accounted for 97.8 percent of its total revenue. Meta has been described as a part of Big Tech, which refers to the largest six tech companies in the United States, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, and Nvidia, which are also the largest companies in the world by market capitalization. The company was originally established in 2004 as TheFacebook, Inc., and was renamed Facebook, Inc. in 2005. In 2021, it rebranded as Meta Platforms, Inc. to reflect a strategic shift toward developing the metaverse—an interconnected digital ecosystem spanning virtual and augmented reality technologies. In 2023, Meta was ranked 31st on the Forbes Global 2000 list of the world's largest public companies. As of 2022, it was the world's third-largest spender on research and development, with R&D expenses totaling US$35.3 billion. History Facebook filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on January 1, 2012. The preliminary prospectus stated that the company sought to raise $5 billion, had 845 million monthly active users, and a website accruing 2.7 billion likes and comments daily. After the IPO, Zuckerberg would retain 22% of the total shares and 57% of the total voting power in Facebook. Underwriters valued the shares at $38 each, valuing the company at $104 billion, the largest valuation yet for a newly public company. On May 16, one day before the IPO, Facebook announced it would sell 25% more shares than originally planned due to high demand. The IPO raised $16 billion, making it the third-largest in US history (slightly ahead of AT&T Mobility and behind only General Motors and Visa). The stock price left the company with a higher market capitalization than all but a few U.S. corporations—surpassing heavyweights such as Amazon, McDonald's, Disney, and Kraft Foods—and made Zuckerberg's stock worth $19 billion. The New York Times stated that the offering overcame questions about Facebook's difficulties in attracting advertisers to transform the company into a "must-own stock". Jimmy Lee of JPMorgan Chase described it as "the next great blue-chip". Writers at TechCrunch, on the other hand, expressed skepticism, stating, "That's a big multiple to live up to, and Facebook will likely need to add bold new revenue streams to justify the mammoth valuation." Trading in the stock, which began on May 18, was delayed that day due to technical problems with the Nasdaq exchange. The stock struggled to stay above the IPO price for most of the day, forcing underwriters to buy back shares to support the price. At the closing bell, shares were valued at $38.23, only $0.23 above the IPO price and down $3.82 from the opening bell value. The opening was widely described by the financial press as a disappointment. The stock set a new record for trading volume of an IPO. On May 25, 2012, the stock ended its first full week of trading at $31.91, a 16.5% decline. On May 22, 2012, regulators from Wall Street's Financial Industry Regulatory Authority announced that they had begun to investigate whether banks underwriting Facebook had improperly shared information only with select clients rather than the general public. Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin subpoenaed Morgan Stanley over the same issue. The allegations sparked "fury" among some investors and led to the immediate filing of several lawsuits, one of them a class action suit claiming more than $2.5 billion in losses due to the IPO. Bloomberg estimated that retail investors may have lost approximately $630 million on Facebook stock since its debut. S&P Global Ratings added Facebook to its S&P 500 index on December 21, 2013. On May 2, 2014, Zuckerberg announced that the company would be changing its internal motto from "Move fast and break things" to "Move fast with stable infrastructure". The earlier motto had been described as Zuckerberg's "prime directive to his developers and team" in a 2009 interview in Business Insider, in which he also said, "Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough." In November 2016, Facebook announced the Microsoft Windows client of gaming service Facebook Gameroom, formerly Facebook Games Arcade, at the Unity Technologies developers conference. The client allows Facebook users to play "native" games in addition to its web games. The service was closed in June 2021. Lasso was a short-video sharing app from Facebook similar to TikTok that was launched on iOS and Android in 2018 and was aimed at teenagers. On July 2, 2020, Facebook announced that Lasso would be shutting down on July 10. In 2018, the Oculus lead Jason Rubin sent his 50-page vision document titled "The Metaverse" to Facebook's leadership. In the document, Rubin acknowledged that Facebook's virtual reality business had not caught on as expected, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on content for early adopters. He also urged the company to execute fast and invest heavily in the vision, to shut out HTC, Apple, Google and other competitors in the VR space. Regarding other players' participation in the metaverse vision, he called for the company to build the "metaverse" to prevent their competitors from "being in the VR business in a meaningful way at all". In May 2019, Facebook founded Libra Networks, reportedly to develop their own stablecoin cryptocurrency. Later, it was reported that Libra was being supported by financial companies such as Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Uber. The consortium of companies was expected to pool in $10 million each to fund the launch of the cryptocurrency coin named Libra. Depending on when it would receive approval from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory authority to operate as a payments service, the Libra Association had planned to launch a limited format cryptocurrency in 2021. Libra was renamed Diem, before being shut down and sold in January 2022 after backlash from Swiss government regulators and the public. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of online services, including Facebook, grew globally. Zuckerberg predicted this would be a "permanent acceleration" that would continue after the pandemic. Facebook hired aggressively, growing from 48,268 employees in March 2020 to more than 87,000 by September 2022. Following a period of intense scrutiny and damaging whistleblower leaks, news started to emerge on October 21, 2021 about Facebook's plan to rebrand the company and change its name. In the Q3 2021 earnings call on October 25, Mark Zuckerberg discussed the ongoing criticism of the company's social services and the way it operates, and pointed to the pivoting efforts to building the metaverse – without mentioning the rebranding and the name change. The metaverse vision and the name change from Facebook, Inc. to Meta Platforms was introduced at Facebook Connect on October 28, 2021. Based on Facebook's PR campaign, the name change reflects the company's shifting long term focus of building the metaverse, a digital extension of the physical world by social media, virtual reality and augmented reality features. "Meta" had been registered as a trademark in the United States in 2018 (after an initial filing in 2015) for marketing, advertising, and computer services, by a Canadian company that provided big data analysis of scientific literature. This company was acquired in 2017 by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), a foundation established by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, and became one of their projects. Following the rebranding announcement, CZI announced that it had already decided to deprioritize the earlier Meta project, thus it would be transferring its rights to the name to Meta Platforms, and the previous project would end in 2022. Soon after the rebranding, in early February 2022, Meta reported a greater-than-expected decline in profits in the fourth quarter of 2021. It reported no growth in monthly users, and indicated it expected revenue growth to stall. It also expected measures taken by Apple Inc. to protect user privacy to cost it some $10 billion in advertisement revenue, an amount equal to roughly 8% of its revenue for 2021. In meeting with Meta staff the day after earnings were reported, Zuckerberg blamed competition for user attention, particularly from video-based apps such as TikTok. The 27% reduction in the company's share price which occurred in reaction to the news eliminated some $230 billion of value from Meta's market capitalization. Bloomberg described the decline as "an epic rout that, in its sheer scale, is unlike anything Wall Street or Silicon Valley has ever seen". Zuckerberg's net worth fell by as much as $31 billion. Zuckerberg owns 13% of Meta, and the holding makes up the bulk of his wealth. According to published reports by Bloomberg on March 30, 2022, Meta turned over data such as phone numbers, physical addresses, and IP addresses to hackers posing as law enforcement officials using forged documents. The law enforcement requests sometimes included forged signatures of real or fictional officials. When asked about the allegations, a Meta representative said, "We review every data request for legal sufficiency and use advanced systems and processes to validate law enforcement requests and detect abuse." In June 2022, Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of 14 years, announced she would step down that year. Zuckerberg said that Javier Olivan would replace Sandberg, though in a “more traditional” role. In March 2022, Meta (except Meta-owned WhatsApp) and Instagram were banned in Russia and added to the Russian list of terrorist and extremist organizations for alleged Russophobia and hate speech (up to genocidal calls) amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Meta appealed against the ban, but it was upheld by a Moscow court in June of the same year. Also in March 2022, Meta and Italian eyewear giant Luxottica released Ray-Ban Stories, a series of smartglasses which could play music and take pictures. Meta and Luxottica parent company EssilorLuxottica declined to disclose sales on the line of products as of September 2022, though Meta has expressed satisfaction with its customer feedback. In July 2022, Meta saw its first year-on-year revenue decline when its total revenue slipped by 1% to $28.8bn. Analysts and journalists accredited the loss to its advertising business, which has been limited by Apple's app tracking transparency feature and the number of people who have opted not to be tracked by Meta apps. Zuckerberg also accredited the decline to increasing competition from TikTok. On October 27, 2022, Meta's market value dropped to $268 billion, a loss of around $700 billion compared to 2021, and its shares fell by 24%. It lost its spot among the top 20 US companies by market cap, despite reaching the top 5 in the previous year. In November 2022, Meta laid off 11,000 employees, 13% of its workforce. Zuckerberg said the decision to aggressively increase Meta's investments had been a mistake, as he had wrongly predicted that the surge in e-commerce would last beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. He also attributed the decline to increased competition, a global economic downturn and "ads signal loss". Plans to lay off a further 10,000 employees began in April 2023. The layoffs were part of a general downturn in the technology industry, alongside layoffs by companies including Google, Amazon, Tesla, Snap, Twitter and Lyft. Starting from 2022, Meta scrambled to catch up to other tech companies in adopting specialized artificial intelligence hardware and software. It had been using less expensive CPUs instead of GPUs for AI work, but that approach turned out to be less efficient. The company gifted the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research $1.3 million to finance the Social Media Archive's aim to make their data available to social science research. In 2023, Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner imposed a record EUR 1.2 billion fine on Meta for transferring data from Europe to the United States without adequate protections for EU citizens.: 250 In March 2023, Meta announced a new round of layoffs that would cut 10,000 employees and close 5,000 open positions to make the company more efficient. Meta revenue surpassed analyst expectations for the first quarter of 2023 after announcing that it was increasing its focus on AI. On July 6, Meta launched a new app, Threads, a competitor to Twitter. Meta announced its artificial intelligence model Llama 2 in July 2023, available for commercial use via partnerships with major cloud providers like Microsoft. It was the first project to be unveiled out of Meta's generative AI group after it was set up in February. It would not charge access or usage but instead operate with an open-source model to allow Meta to ascertain what improvements need to be made. Prior to this announcement, Meta said it had no plans to release Llama 2 for commercial use. An earlier version of Llama was released to academics. In August 2023, Meta announced its permanent removal of news content from Facebook and Instagram in Canada due to the Online News Act, which requires Canadian news outlets to be compensated for content shared on its platform. The Online News Act was in effect by year-end, but Meta will not participate in the regulatory process. In October 2023, Zuckerberg said that AI would be Meta's biggest investment area in 2024. Meta finished 2023 as one of the best-performing technology stocks of the year, with its share price up 150 percent. Its stock reached an all-time high in January 2024, bringing Meta within 2% of achieving $1 trillion market capitalization. In November 2023 Meta Platforms launched an ad-free service in Europe, allowing subscribers to opt-out of personal data being collected for targeted advertising. A group of 28 European organizations, including Max Schrems' advocacy group NOYB, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Wikimedia Europe, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, signed a 2024 letter to the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) expressing concern that this subscriber model would undermine privacy protections, specifically GDPR data protection standards. Meta removed the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in February 2024, citing repeated violations of its Dangerous Organizations & Individuals policy. As of March, Meta was under investigation by the FDA for alleged use of their social media platforms to sell illegal drugs. On 16 May 2024, the European Commission began an investigation into Meta over concerns related to child safety. In May 2023, Iraqi social media influencer Esaa Ahmed-Adnan encountered a troubling issue when Instagram removed his posts, citing false copyright violations despite his content being original and free from copyrighted material. He discovered that extortionists were behind these takedowns, offering to restore his content for $3,000 or provide ongoing protection for $1,000 per month. This scam, exploiting Meta’s rights management tools, became widespread in the Middle East, revealing a gap in Meta’s enforcement in developing regions. An Iraqi nonprofit Tech4Peace’s founder, Aws al-Saadi helped Ahmed-Adnan and others, but the restoration process was slow, leading to significant financial losses for many victims, including prominent figures like Ammar al-Hakim. This situation highlighted Meta’s challenges in balancing global growth with effective content moderation and protection. On 16 September 2024, Meta announced it had banned Russian state media outlets from its platforms worldwide due to concerns about "foreign interference activity." This decision followed allegations that RT and its employees funneled $10 million through shell companies to secretly fund influence campaigns on various social media channels. Meta's actions were part of a broader effort to counter Russian covert influence operations, which had intensified since the invasion. At its 2024 Connect conference, Meta presented Orion, its first pair of augmented reality glasses. Though Orion was originally intended to be sold to consumers, the manufacturing process turned out to be too complex and expensive. Instead, the company pivoted to producing a small number of the glasses to be used internally. On 4 October 2024, Meta announced about its new AI model called Movie Gen, capable of generating realistic video and audio clips based on user prompts. Meta stated it would not release Movie Gen for open development, preferring to collaborate directly with content creators and integrate it into its products by the following year. The model was built using a combination of licensed and publicly available datasets. On October 31, 2024, ProPublica published an investigation into deceptive political advertisement scams that sometimes use hundreds of hijacked profiles and facebook pages run by organized networks of scammers. The authors cited spotty enforcement by Meta as a major reason for the extent of the issue. In November 2024, TechCrunch reported that Meta were considering building a $10bn global underwater cable spanning 25,000 miles. In the same month, Meta closed down 2 million accounts on Facebook and Instagram that were linked to scam centers in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates doing pig butchering scams. In December 2024, Meta announced that, beginning February 2025, they would require advertisers to run ads about financial services in Australia to verify information about who are the beneficiary and the payer in a bid to regulate scams. On December 4, 2024, Meta announced it will invest US$10 billion for its largest AI data center in northeast Louisiana, powered by natural gas facilities. On the 11th of that month, Meta experienced a global outage, impacting accounts on all of their social media and messaging applications. Outage reports from DownDetector reached 70,000+ and 100,000+ within minutes for Instagram and Facebook, respectively. In January 2025, Meta announced plans to roll back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, citing shifts in the "legal and policy landscape" in the United States following the 2024 presidential election. The decision followed reports that CEO Mark Zuckerberg sought to align the company more closely with the incoming Trump administration, including changes to content moderation policies and executive leadership. The new content moderation policies continued to bar insults about a person's intellect or mental illness, but made an exception to allow calling LGBTQ people mentally ill because they are gay or transgender. Later that month, Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit brought by Donald Trump for suspending his social media accounts after the January 6 riots. Changes to Meta's moderation policies were controversial among its oversight board, with a significant divide in opinion between the board's US conservatives and its global members. In June 2025, Meta Platforms Inc. has decided to make a multibillion-dollar investment into artificial intelligence startup Scale AI. The financing could exceed $10 billion in value which would make it one of the largest private company funding events of all time. In October 2025, it was announced that Meta would be laying off 600 employees in the artificial intelligence unit to perform better and simpler. They referred to their AI unit as "bloated" and are seeking to trim down the department. This mass layoff is going to impact Meta’s AI infrastructure units, Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research unit (FAIR) and other product-related positions. Mergers and acquisitions Meta has acquired multiple companies (often identified as talent acquisitions). One of its first major acquisitions was in April 2012, when it acquired Instagram for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock. In October 2013, Facebook, Inc. acquired Onavo, an Israeli mobile web analytics company. In February 2014, Facebook, Inc. announced it would buy mobile messaging company WhatsApp for US$19 billion in cash and stock. The acquisition was completed on October 6. Later that year, Facebook bought Oculus VR for $2.3 billion in cash and stock, which released its first consumer virtual reality headset in 2016. In late November 2019, Facebook, Inc. announced the acquisition of the game developer Beat Games, responsible for developing one of that year's most popular VR games, Beat Saber. In Late 2022, after Facebook Inc rebranded to Meta Platforms Inc, Oculus was rebranded to Meta Quest. In May 2020, Facebook, Inc. announced it had acquired Giphy for a reported cash price of $400 million. It will be integrated with the Instagram team. However, in August 2021, UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) stated that Facebook, Inc. might have to sell Giphy, after an investigation found that the deal between the two companies would harm competition in display advertising market. Facebook, Inc. was fined $70 million by CMA for deliberately failing to report all information regarding the acquisition and the ongoing antitrust investigation. In October 2022, the CMA ruled for a second time that Meta be required to divest Giphy, stating that Meta already controls half of the advertising in the UK. Meta agreed to the sale, though it stated that it disagrees with the decision itself. In May 2023, Giphy was divested to Shutterstock for $53 million. In November 2020, Facebook, Inc. announced that it planned to purchase the customer-service platform and chatbot specialist startup Kustomer to promote companies to use their platform for business. It has been reported that Kustomer valued at slightly over $1 billion. The deal was closed in February 2022 after regulatory approval. In September 2022, Meta acquired Lofelt, a Berlin-based haptic tech startup. In December 2025, it was announced Meta had acquired the AI-wearables startup, Limitless. In the same month, they also acquired another AI startup, Manus AI, for $2 billion. Manus announced in December that its platform had achieved $100mm in recurring revenue just 8 months after its launch and Meta said it will scale the platform to many other businesses. In January 2026, it was announced Meta proposed acquisition of Manus was undergoing preliminary scrutiny by Chinese regulators. The examination concerns the cross-border transfer of artificial intelligence technology developed in China. Lobbying In 2020, Facebook, Inc. spent $19.7 million on lobbying, hiring 79 lobbyists. In 2019, it had spent $16.7 million on lobbying and had a team of 71 lobbyists, up from $12.6 million and 51 lobbyists in 2018. Facebook was the largest spender of lobbying money among the Big Tech companies in 2020. The lobbying team includes top congressional aide John Branscome, who was hired in September 2021, to help the company fend off threats from Democratic lawmakers and the Biden administration. In December 2024, Meta donated $1 million to the inauguration fund for then-President-elect Donald Trump. In 2025, Meta was listed among the donors funding the construction of the White House State Ballroom. Partnerships February 2026, Meta announced a long-term partnership with Nvidia. Censorship In August 2024, Mark Zuckerberg sent a letter to Jim Jordan indicating that during the COVID-19 pandemic the Biden administration repeatedly asked Meta to limit certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, on Facebook and Instagram. In 2016 Meta hired Jordana Cutler, formerly an employee at the Israeli Embassy to the United States, as its policy chief for Israel and the Jewish Diaspora. In this role, Cutler pushed for the censorship of accounts belonging to Students for Justice in Palestine chapters in the United States. Critics have said that Cutler's position gives the Israeli government an undue influence over Meta policy, and that few countries have such high levels of contact with Meta policymakers. Following the election of Donald Trump in 2025, various sources noted possible censorship related to the Democratic Party on Instagram and other Meta platforms. In February 2025, a Meta rep flagged journalist Gil Duran's article and other "critiques of tech industry figures" as spam or sensitive content, limiting their reach. In March 2025, Meta attempted to block former employee Sarah Wynn-Williams from promoting or further distributing her memoir, Careless People, that includes allegations of unaddressed sexual harassment in the workplace by senior executives. The New York Times reports that the arbitration is among Meta's most forcible attempts to repudiate a former employee's account of workplace dynamics. Publisher Macmillan reacted to the ruling by the Emergency International Arbitral Tribunal by stating that it will ignore its provisions. As of 15 March 2025[update], hardback and digital versions of Careless People were being offered for sale by major online retailers. From October 2025, Meta began removing and restricting access for accounts related to LGBTQ, reproductive health and abortion information pages on its platforms. Martha Dimitratou, executive director of Repro Uncensored, called Meta's shadow-banning of these issues "One of the biggest waves of censorship we are seeing". Disinformation concerns Since its inception, Meta has been accused of being a host for fake news and misinformation. In the wake of the 2016 United States presidential election, Zuckerberg began to take steps to eliminate the prevalence of fake news, as the platform had been criticized for its potential influence on the outcome of the election. The company initially partnered with ABC News, the Associated Press, FactCheck.org, Snopes and PolitiFact for its fact-checking initiative; as of 2018, it had over 40 fact-checking partners across the world, including The Weekly Standard. A May 2017 review by The Guardian found that the platform's fact-checking initiatives of partnering with third-party fact-checkers and publicly flagging fake news were regularly ineffective, and appeared to be having minimal impact in some cases. In 2018, journalists working as fact-checkers for the company criticized the partnership, stating that it had produced minimal results and that the company had ignored their concerns. In 2024 Meta's decision to continue to disseminate a falsified video of US president Joe Biden, even after it had been proven to be fake, attracted criticism and concern. In January 2025, Meta ended its use of third-party fact-checkers in favor of a user-run community notes system similar to the one used on X. While Zuckerberg supported these changes, saying that the amount of censorship on the platform was excessive, the decision received criticism by fact-checking institutions, stating that the changes would make it more difficult for users to identify misinformation. Meta also faced criticism for weakening its policies on hate speech that were designed to protect minorities and LGBTQ+ individuals from bullying and discrimination. While moving its content review teams from California to Texas, Meta changed their hateful conduct policy to eliminate restrictions on anti-LGBT and anti-immigrant hate speech, as well as explicitly allowing users to accuse LGBT people of being mentally ill or abnormal based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. In January 2025, Meta faced significant criticism for its role in removing LGBTQ+ content from its platforms, amid its broader efforts to address anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech. The removal of LGBTQ+ themes was noted as part of the wider crackdown on content deemed to violate its community guidelines. Meta's content moderation policies, which were designed to combat harmful speech and protect users from discrimination, inadvertently led to the removal or restriction of LGBTQ+ content, particularly posts highlighting LGBTQ+ identities, support, or political issues. According to reports, LGBTQ+ posts, including those that simply celebrated pride or advocated for LGBTQ+ rights, were flagged and removed for reasons that some critics argue were vague or inconsistently applied. Many LGBTQ+ activists and users on Meta's platforms expressed concern that such actions stifled visibility and expression, potentially isolating LGBTQ+ individuals and communities, especially in spaces that were historically important for outreach and support. Lawsuits Numerous lawsuits have been filed against the company, both when it was known as Facebook, Inc., and as Meta Platforms. In March 2020, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) sued Facebook, for significant and persistent infringements of the rule on privacy involving the Cambridge Analytica fiasco. Every violation of the Privacy Act is subject to a theoretical cumulative liability of $1.7 million. The OAIC estimated that a total of 311,127 Australians had been exposed. On December 8, 2020, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and 46 states (excluding Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and South Dakota), the District of Columbia and the territory of Guam, launched Federal Trade Commission v. Facebook as an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. The lawsuit concerns Facebook's acquisition of two competitors—Instagram and WhatsApp—and the ensuing monopolistic situation. FTC alleges that Facebook holds monopolistic power in the U.S. social networking market and seeks to force the company to divest from Instagram and WhatsApp to break up the conglomerate. William Kovacic, a former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, argued the case will be difficult to win as it would require the government to create a counterfactual argument of an internet where the Facebook-WhatsApp-Instagram entity did not exist, and prove that harmed competition or consumers. In November 2025, it was ruled that Meta did not violate antitrust laws and holds no monopoly in the market. On December 24, 2021, a court in Russia fined Meta for $27 million after the company declined to remove unspecified banned content. The fine was reportedly tied to the company's annual revenue in the country. In May 2022, a lawsuit was filed in Kenya against Meta and its local outsourcing company Sama. Allegedly, Meta has poor working conditions in Kenya for workers moderating Facebook posts. According to the lawsuit, 260 screeners were declared redundant with confusing reasoning. The lawsuit seeks financial compensation and an order that outsourced moderators be given the same health benefits and pay scale as Meta employees. In June 2022, 8 lawsuits were filed across the U.S. over the allege that excessive exposure to platforms including Facebook and Instagram has led to attempted or actual suicides, eating disorders and sleeplessness, among other issues. The litigation follows a former Facebook employee's testimony in Congress that the company refused to take responsibility. The company noted that tools have been developed for parents to keep track of their children's activity on Instagram and set time limits, in addition to Meta's "Take a break" reminders. In addition, the company is providing resources specific to eating disorders as well as developing AI to prevent children under the age of 13 signing up for Facebook or Instagram. In June 2022, Meta settled a lawsuit with the US Department of Justice. The lawsuit, which was filed in 2019, alleged that the company enabled housing discrimination through targeted advertising, as it allowed homeowners and landlords to run housing ads excluding people based on sex, race, religion, and other characteristics. The U.S. Department of Justice stated that this was in violation of the Fair Housing Act. Meta was handed a penalty of $115,054 and given until December 31, 2022, to shadow the algorithm tool. In January 2023, Meta was fined €390 million for violations of the European Union General Data Protection Regulation. In May 2023, the European Data Protection Board fined Meta a record €1.2 billion for breaching European Union data privacy laws by transferring personal data of Facebook users to servers in the U.S. In July 2024, Meta agreed to pay the state of Texas US$1.4 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accusing the company of collecting users' biometric data without consent, setting a record for the largest privacy-related settlement ever obtained by a state attorney general. In October 2024, Meta Platforms faced lawsuits in Japan from 30 plaintiffs who claimed they were defrauded by fake investment ads on Facebook and Instagram, featuring false celebrity endorsements. The plaintiffs are seeking approximately $2.8 million in damages. In April 2025, the Kenyan High Court ruled that a US$2.4 billion lawsuit in which three plaintiffs claim that Facebook inflamed civil violence in Ethiopia in 2021 could proceed. In April 2025, Meta was fined €200 million ($230 million) for breaking the Digital Markets Act, by imposing a “consent or pay” system that forces users to either allow their personal data to be used to target advertisements, or pay a subscription fee for advertising-free versions of Facebook and Instagram. In late April 2025, a case was filed against Meta in Ghana over the alleged psychological distress experienced by content moderators employed to take down disturbing social media content including depictions of murders, extreme violence and child sexual abuse. Meta moved the moderation service to the Ghanaian capital of Accra after legal issues in the previous location Kenya. The new moderation company is Teleperformance, a multinational corporation with a history of worker's rights violation. Reports suggests the conditions are worse here than in the previous Kenyan location, with many workers afraid of speaking out due to fear of returning to conflict zones. Workers reported developing mental illnesses, attempted suicides, and low pay. In 26 January 2026, a New Mexico state court case was filed, suggesting that Mark Zuckerberg approved allowing minors to access artificial intelligence chatbot companions that safety staffers warned were capable of sexual interactions. In 2020, the company UReputation, which had been involved in several cases concerning the management of digital armies[clarification needed], filed a lawsuit against Facebook, accusing it of unlawfully transmitting personal data to third parties. Legal actions were initiated in Tunisia, France, and the United States. In 2025, the United States District court for the Northern District of Georgia approved a discovery procedure, allowing UReputation to access documents and evidence held by Meta. Structure Meta's key management consists of: As of October 2022[update], Meta had 83,553 employees worldwide. As of June 2024[update], Meta's board consisted of the following directors; Meta Platforms is mainly owned by institutional investors, who hold around 80% of all shares. Insiders control the majority of voting shares. The three largest individual investors in 2024 were Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and Christopher K. Cox. The largest shareholders in late 2024/early 2025 were: Roger McNamee, an early Facebook investor and Zuckerberg's former mentor, said Facebook had "the most centralized decision-making structure I have ever encountered in a large company". Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has stated that chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has too much power, that the company is now a monopoly, and that, as a result, it should be split into multiple smaller companies. In an op-ed in The New York Times, Hughes said he was concerned that Zuckerberg had surrounded himself with a team that did not challenge him, and that it is the U.S. government's job to hold him accountable and curb his "unchecked power". He also said that "Mark's power is unprecedented and un-American." Several U.S. politicians agreed with Hughes. European Union Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager stated that splitting Facebook should be done only as "a remedy of the very last resort", and that it would not solve Facebook's underlying problems. Revenue Facebook ranked No. 34 in the 2020 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue, with almost $86 billion in revenue most of it coming from advertising. One analysis of 2017 data determined that the company earned US$20.21 per user from advertising. According to New York, since its rebranding, Meta has reportedly lost $500 billion as a result of new privacy measures put in place by companies such as Apple and Google which prevents Meta from gathering users' data. In February 2015, Facebook announced it had reached two million active advertisers, with most of the gain coming from small businesses. An active advertiser was defined as an entity that had advertised on the Facebook platform in the last 28 days. In March 2016, Facebook announced it had reached three million active advertisers with more than 70% from outside the United States. Prices for advertising follow a variable pricing model based on auctioning ad placements, and potential engagement levels of the advertisement itself. Similar to other online advertising platforms like Google and Twitter, targeting of advertisements is one of the chief merits of digital advertising compared to traditional media. Marketing on Meta is employed through two methods based on the viewing habits, likes and shares, and purchasing data of the audience, namely targeted audiences and "look alike" audiences. The U.S. IRS challenged the valuation Facebook used when it transferred IP from the U.S. to Facebook Ireland (now Meta Platforms Ireland) in 2010 (which Facebook Ireland then revalued higher before charging out), as it was building its double Irish tax structure. The case is ongoing and Meta faces a potential fine of $3–5bn. The U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 changed Facebook's global tax calculations. Meta Platforms Ireland is subject to the U.S. GILTI tax of 10.5% on global intangible profits (i.e. Irish profits). On the basis that Meta Platforms Ireland Limited is paying some tax, the effective minimum US tax for Facebook Ireland will be circa 11%. In contrast, Meta Platforms Inc. would incur a special IP tax rate of 13.125% (the FDII rate) if its Irish business relocated to the U.S. Tax relief in the U.S. (21% vs. Irish at the GILTI rate) and accelerated capital expensing, would make this effective U.S. rate around 12%. The insignificance of the U.S./Irish tax difference was demonstrated when Facebook moved 1.5bn non-EU accounts to the U.S. to limit exposure to GDPR. Facilities Users outside of the U.S. and Canada contract with Meta's Irish subsidiary, Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (formerly Facebook Ireland Limited), allowing Meta to avoid US taxes for all users in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and South America. Meta is making use of the Double Irish arrangement which allows it to pay 2–3% corporation tax on all international revenue. In 2010, Facebook opened its fourth office, in Hyderabad, India, which houses online advertising and developer support teams and provides support to users and advertisers. In India, Meta is registered as Facebook India Online Services Pvt Ltd. It also has offices or planned sites in Chittagong, Bangladesh; Dublin, Ireland; and Austin, Texas, among other cities. Facebook opened its London headquarters in 2017 in Fitzrovia in central London. Facebook opened an office in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2018. The offices were initially home to the "Connectivity Lab", a group focused on bringing Internet access to those who do not have access to the Internet. In April 2019, Facebook opened its Taiwan headquarters in Taipei. In March 2022, Meta opened new regional headquarters in Dubai. In September 2023, it was reported that Meta had paid £149m to British Land to break the lease on Triton Square London office. Meta reportedly had another 18 years left on its lease on the site. As of 2023, Facebook operated 21 data centers. It committed to purchase 100% renewable energy and to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 75% by 2020. Its data center technologies include Fabric Aggregator, a distributed network system that accommodates larger regions and varied traffic patterns. Reception US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded in a tweet to Zuckerberg's announcement about Meta, saying: "Meta as in 'we are a cancer to democracy metastasizing into a global surveillance and propaganda machine for boosting authoritarian regimes and destroying civil society ... for profit!'" Ex-Facebook employee Frances Haugen and whistleblower behind the Facebook Papers responded to the rebranding efforts by expressing doubts about the company's ability to improve while led by Mark Zuckerberg, and urged the chief executive officer to resign. In November 2021, a video published by Inspired by Iceland went viral, in which a Zuckerberg look-alike promoted the Icelandverse, a place of "enhanced actual reality without silly looking headsets". In a December 2021 interview, SpaceX and Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk said he could not see a compelling use-case for the VR-driven metaverse, adding: "I don't see someone strapping a frigging screen to their face all day." In January 2022, Louise Eccles of The Sunday Times logged into the metaverse with the intention of making a video guide. She wrote: Initially, my experience with the Oculus went well. I attended work meetings as an avatar and tried an exercise class set in the streets of Paris. The headset enabled me to feel the thrill of carving down mountains on a snowboard and the adrenaline rush of climbing a mountain without ropes. Yet switching to the social apps, where you mingle with strangers also using VR headsets, it was at times predatory and vile. Eccles described being sexually harassed by another user, as well as "accents from all over the world, American, Indian, English, Australian, using racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic language". She also encountered users as young as 7 years old on the platform, despite Oculus headsets being intended for users over 13. See also References External links 37°29′06″N 122°08′54″W / 37.48500°N 122.14833°W / 37.48500; -122.14833 |
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Contents Thirty-seventh government of Israel The thirty-seventh government of Israel is the current cabinet of Israel, formed on 29 December 2022, following the Knesset election the previous month. The coalition government currently consists of five parties — Likud, Shas, Otzma Yehudit, Religious Zionist Party and New Hope — and is led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who took office as the prime minister of Israel for the sixth time. The government is widely regarded as the most right-wing government in the country's history, and includes far-right politicians. Several of the government's policy proposals have led to controversies, both within Israel and abroad, with the government's attempts at reforming the judiciary leading to a wave of demonstrations across the country. Following the outbreak of the Gaza war, opposition leader Yair Lapid initiated discussions with Netanyahu on the formation of an emergency government. On 11 October 2023, National Unity MKs Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot, Gideon Sa'ar, Hili Tropper, and Yifat Shasha-Biton joined the Security Cabinet of Israel to form an emergency national unity government. Their accession to the Security Cabinet and to the government (as ministers without portfolio) was approved by the Knesset the following day. Gantz, Netanyahu, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant became part of the newly formed Israeli war cabinet, with Eisenkot and Ron Dermer serving as observers. National Unity left the government in June 2024. New Hope rejoined the government in September. Otzma Yehudit announced on 19 January 2025 that it had withdrawn from the government, which took effect on 21 January, following the cabinet's acceptance of the three-phase Gaza war ceasefire proposal, though it rejoined two months later. United Torah Judaism left the government in July 2025 over dissatisfaction with the government's draft conscription law. Shas left the government several days later, though it remains part of the coalition. Background The right-wing bloc of parties, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, known in Israel as the national camp, won 64 of the 120 seats in the elections for the Knesset, while the coalition led by the incumbent prime minister Yair Lapid won 51 seats. The new majority has been variously described as the most right-wing government in Israeli history, as well as Israel's most religious government. Shortly after the elections, Lapid conceded to Netanyahu, and congratulated him, wishing him luck "for the sake of the Israeli people". On 15 November, the swearing-in ceremony for the newly elected members of the 25th Knesset was held during the opening session. The vote to appoint a new Speaker of the Knesset, which is usually conducted at the opening session, as well as the swearing in of cabinet members were postponed since ongoing coalition negotiations had not yet resulted in agreement on these positions. Government formation Yair Lapid Yesh Atid Benjamin Netanyahu Likud On 3 November 2022, Netanyahu told his aide Yariv Levin to begin informal coalition talks with allied parties, after 97% of the vote was counted. The leader of the Shas party Aryeh Deri met with Yitzhak Goldknopf, the leader of United Torah Judaism and its Agudat Yisrael faction, on 4 November. The two parties agreed to cooperate as members of the next government. The Degel HaTorah faction of United Torah Judaism stated on 5 November that it will maintain its ideological stance about not seeking any ministerial posts, as per the instruction of its spiritual leader Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, but will seek other senior posts like Knesset committee chairmen and deputy ministers. Netanyahu himself started holding talks on 6 November. He first met with Moshe Gafni, the leader of Degel HaTorah, and then with Goldknopf. Meanwhile, the Religious Zionist Party leader Bezalel Smotrich and the leader of its Otzma Yehudit faction Itamar Ben-Gvir pledged that they would not enter the coalition without the other faction. Gafni later met with Smotrich for coalition talks. Smotrich then met with Netanyahu. On 7 November, Netanyahu met with Ben-Gvir who demanded the Ministry of Public Security with expanded powers for himself and the Ministry of Education or Transport and Road Safety for Yitzhak Wasserlauf. A major demand among all of Netanyahu's allies was that the Knesset be allowed to ignore the rulings of the Supreme Court. Netanyahu met with the Noam faction leader and its sole MK Avi Maoz on 8 November after he threatened to boycott the coalition. He demanded complete control of the Western Wall by the Haredi rabbinate and removal of what he considered as anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish content in schoolbooks. President Isaac Herzog began consultations with heads of all the political parties on 9 November after the election results were certified. During the consultations, he expressed his reservations about Ben-Gvir becoming a member in the next government. Shas met with Likud for coalition talks on 10 November. By 11 November, Netanyahu had secured recommendations from 64 MKs, which constituted a majority. He was given the mandate to form the thirty-seventh government of Israel by President Herzog on 13 November. Otzma Yehudit and Noam officially split from Religious Zionism on 20 November as per a pre-election agreement. On 25 November, Otzma Yehudit and Likud signed a coalition agreement, under which Ben-Gvir will assume the newly created position of National Security Minister, whose powers would be more expansive than that of the Minister of Public Security, including overseeing the Israel Police and the Israel Border Police in the West Bank, as well as giving powers to authorities to shoot thieves stealing from military bases. Yitzhak Wasserlauf was given the Ministry for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee with expanded powers to regulate new West Bank settlements, while separating it from the "Periphery" portfolio, which will be given to Shas. The deal also includes giving the Ministry of Heritage to Amihai Eliyahu, separating it from the "Jerusalem Affairs" portfolio, the chairmanship of the Knesset's Public Security Committee to Zvika Fogel and that of the Special Committee for the Israeli Citizens' Fund to Limor Son Har-Melech, the post of Deputy Economic Minister to Almog Cohen, establishment of a national guard, and expansion of mobilization of reservists in the Border Police. Netanyahu and Maoz signed a coalition agreement on 27 November, under which the latter would become a deputy minister, would head an agency on Jewish identity in the Prime Minister's Office, and would also head Nativ, which processes the aliyah from the former Soviet Union. The agency for Jewish identity would have authority over educational content taught outside the regular curriculum in schools, in addition to the department of the Ministry of Education overseeing external teaching and partnerships, which would bring nonofficial organisations permitted to teach and lecture at schools under its purview. Likud signed a coalition agreement with the Religious Zionist Party on 1 December. Under the deal, Smotrich would serve as the Minister of Finance in rotation with Aryeh Deri, and the party will receive the post of a minister within the Ministry of Defense with control over the departments administering settlement and open lands under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, in addition to another post of a deputy minister. The deal also includes giving the post of Minister of Aliyah and Integration to Ofir Sofer, the newly created National Missions Ministry to Orit Strook, and the chairmanship of the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee to Simcha Rothman. Likud and United Torah Judaism signed a coalition agreement on 6 December, to allow request for an extension to the deadline. Under it, the party would receive the Ministry of Construction and Housing, the chairmanship of the Knesset Finance Committee which will be given to Moshe Gafni, the Ministry of Jerusalem and Tradition (which would replace the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage), in addition to several posts of deputy ministers and chairmanships of Knesset committees. Likud also signed a deal with Shas by 8 December, securing interim coalition agreements with all of their allies. Under the deal, Deri will first serve as the Minister of Interior and Health, before rotating posts with Smotrich after two years. The party will also receive the Ministry of Religious Services and Welfare Ministries, as well as posts of deputy ministers in the Ministry of Education and Interior. The vote to replace then-incumbent Knesset speaker Mickey Levy was scheduled for 13 December, after Likud and its allies secured the necessary number of signatures for it. Yariv Levin of Likud was elected as an interim speaker by 64 votes, while his opponents Merav Ben-Ari of Yesh Atid and Ayman Odeh of Hadash received 45 and five votes respectively. Netanyahu asked Herzog for a 14-day extension after the agreement with Shas to finalise the roles his allied parties would play. Herzog on 9 December extended the deadline to 21 December. On that date, Netanyahu informed Herzog that he had succeeded in forming a coalition, with the new government expected to be sworn in by 2 January 2023. The government was sworn in on 29 December 2022. Timeline Israeli law stated that people convicted of crimes cannot serve in the government. An amendment to that law was made in late 2022, known colloquially as the Deri Law, to allow those who had been convicted without prison time to serve. This allowed Deri to be appointed to the cabinet. Shas leader Aryeh Deri was appointed to be Minister of Health, Minister of the Interior, and Vice Prime Minister in December 2022. He was fired in January 2023, following a Supreme Court decision that his appointment was unreasonable, since he had been convicted of fraud, and had promised not to seek government roles through a plea deal. In March 2023, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called on the government to delay legislation related to the judicial reform. Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that he had been dismissed from his position, leading to the continuation of mass protests across the country (which had started in January in Tel Aviv). Gallant continued to serve as a minister as he had not received formal notice of dismissal, and two weeks later it was announced that Netanyahu had reversed his decision. Public Safety Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit leader) and Minister of Justice Yariv Levin (Likud) both threatened to resign if the judicial reform was delayed.[better source needed] After the outbreak of the Gaza war, five members of the National Unity party joined the government as ministers without portfolio, with leader Benny Gantz being made a member of the new Israeli war cabinet (along with Netanyahu and Gallant). As the war progressed, minister of national security Itamar Ben-Gvir threatened to leave the government if the war was ended. A month later in mid December, he again threatened to leave if the war did not maintain "full strength". Gideon Sa'ar stated on 16 March that his New Hope party would resign from the government and join the opposition if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not appoint him to the Israeli war cabinet. Netanyahu did not do so, resulting in Sa'ar's New Hope party leaving the government nine days later, reducing the size of the coalition from 76 MKs to 72. Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, of the National Religious Party–Religious Zionism party, have indicated that they will withdraw their parties from the government if the January 2025 Gaza war ceasefire is adopted, which would bring down the government. Ben-Gvir announced on 5 June that the members of his party would be allowed to vote as they wish, though his party resumed support on 9 June. On 18 May, Gantz set an 8 June deadline for withdrawal from the coalition, which was delayed by a day following the 2024 Nuseirat rescue operation. Gantz and his party left the government on 9 June, giving the government 64 seats in the Knesset. Sa'ar and his New Hope party rejoined the Netanyahu government on 30 September, increasing the number of seats held by the government to 68. The High Court of Justice ruled on 28 March 2024 that yeshiva funds would no longer be available for students who are "eligible for enlistment", effectively allowing ultra-Orthodox Jews to be drafted into the IDF. Attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara indicated on 31 March that the conscription process must begin on 1 April. The court ruled on 25 June that the IDF must begin to draft yeshiva students. Likud announced on 7 July that it would not put forward any legislation after Shas and United Torah Judaism said that they would boycott the plenary session over the lack of legislation dealing with the Haredi draft. The Ultra-Orthodox boycott continued for a second day, with UTJ briefly ending its boycott on 9 July to unsuccessfully vote in favor of a bill which would have weakened the Law of Return. Yuli Edelstein, who was replaced by Boaz Bismuth on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in early August, published a draft version of the conscription law shortly before his ouster. Bismuth cancelled the work on the draft law in September 2025, which Edelstein called "a shame." Bismuth released the official version of the draft law in late November 2025. It weakened penalties for draft evaders, with Edelstein saying it was "the exact opposite" of the bill which he attempted to pass. Members of Otzma Yehudit resigned from the government on 19 January 2025 over the January 2025 Gaza war ceasefire, which took effect on 21 January. The members rejoined in March, following the "resumption" of the war in Gaza. Avi Maoz of the Noam party left the government in March 2025. On 4 June 2025, senior rabbis for United Torah Judaism Dov Lando and Moshe Hillel Hirsch instructed the party's MKs to pass a bill which would dissolve the Knesset. Yesh Atid, Yisrael Beytenu and The Democrats announced that they will "submit a bill" for dissolution on 11 June, with Yesh Atid tabling the bill on 4 June. There were also reports that Shas would vote in favor of Knesset dissolution amidst division within the governing coalition on Haredi conscription. This jeopardized the coalition's majority and would have triggered new elections if the bill passed. The following day, Agudat Yisrael, one of the United Torah Judaism factions, confirmed that it would submit a bill to dissolve the Knesset. Asher Medina, a Shas spokesman, indicated on 9 June that the party would vote in favor of a preliminary bill to dissolve the Knesset. The rabbis of Degel HaTorah instructed the parties' MKs on 12 June 2025 to oppose the dissolution of the Knesset, which was followed by Yuli Edelstein and the Shas and Degel HaTorah parties announcing that a deal had been reached, with "rabbinical leaders" telling their parties to delay the dissolution vote by a week. Shas and Degel HaTorah voted against the dissolution bill, which led to the bill failing its preliminary reading in a vote of 61 against and 53 in favor. MKs Ya'akov Tessler and Moshe Roth of Agudat Yisrael voted in favor of dissolution. Another dissolution bill will be unable to be brought forward for six months. If the bill had passed its preliminary reading, in addition to three more readings, an election would have been held in approximately three months; The Jerusalem Post posited it would have been held in October. Degel HaTorah announced on 14 July 2025 that it would leave the government because members of the party were dissatisfied after viewing the proposed draft bill by Yuli Edelstein regarding Haredi exemptions from the Israeli draft. Several hours later, Agudat Yisrael announced that it would also leave the government. Deputy Transportation Minister Uri Maklev, Moshe Gafni, the head of the Knesset Finance Committee, Ya'akov Asher, the head of the Knesset Interior and Environment Protection Committee and Jerusalem Affairs minister Meir Porush all submitted their resignations, with their resignations taking effect in 48 hours. Sports Minister Ya'akov Tessler and "Special Committee for Public Petitions Chair" Yitzhak Pindrus also submitted resignations. Yisrael Eichler submitted his resignation as the "head of the Knesset Labor and Welfare Committee" the same day. The resignations will leave Netanyahu's government with a 60-seat majority in the Knesset, as Avi Maoz, of the Noam party, left the government in March 2025. Despite Edelstein's ouster in August, a spokesman for UTJ head Yitzhak Goldknopf remarked that it would not change the faction's withdrawal from the government. The religious council for Shas, called the Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah, instructed the party on 16 July to leave the government, but stay in the coalition. The following day, various cabinet ministers submitted their resignations, including "Interior Minister Moshe Arbel, Social Affairs Minister Ya'akov Margi and Religious Services Minister Michael Malchieli." Malchieli reportedly has postponed his resignation so he could attend a 20 July meeting of the panel investigating whether attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara should be dismissed. Deputy Minister of Agriculture Moshe Abutbul, Minister of Health Uriel Buso and Haim Biton, a minister in the Education Ministry, also submitted their resignation letters, while Arbel retracted his resignation letter. The last cabinet member from the party to submit it was Labor Minister Yoav Ben-Tzur. The ministers who resigned will return to the Knesset, replacing MKs Moshe Roth, Yitzhak Pindrus and Eliyahu Baruchi. Members of government Listed below are the current ministers in the government: Principles and priorities According to the agreements signed between Likud and each of its coalition partners, and the incoming government's published guideline principles, its stated priorities are to combat the cost of living, further centralize Orthodox control over the state religious services, pass judicial reforms which include legislation to reduce judicial controls on executive and legislative power, expand settlements in the West Bank, and consider an annexation of the West Bank. Before the vote of confidence in his new government in the Knesset, Netanyahu presented three top priorities for the new government: internal security and governance, halting the nuclear program of Iran, and the development of infrastructure, with a focus on further connecting the center of the country with its periphery. Policies The government's flagship program, centered around reforms in the judicial branch, drew widespread criticism. Critics said it would have negative effects on the separation of powers, the office of the Attorney General, the economy, public health, women and minorities, workers' rights, scientific research, the overall strength of Israel's democracy and its foreign relations. After weeks of public protests on Israel's streets, joined by a growing number of military reservists, Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant spoke against the reform on 25 March, calling for a halt of the legislative process "for the sake of Israel's security". The next day, Netanyahu announced that he would be removed from his post, sparking another wave of protest across Israel and ultimately leading to Netanyahu agreeing to pause the legislation. On 10 April, Netanyahu announced that Gallant would keep his post. On 27 March 2023, after the public protests and general strikes, Netanyahu announced a pause in the reform process to allow for dialogue with opposition parties. However, negotiations aimed at reaching a compromise collapsed in June, and the government resumed its plans to unilaterally pass parts of the legislation. On 24 July 2023, the Knesset passed a bill that curbs the power of the Supreme Court to declare government decisions unreasonable; on 1 January 2024, the Supreme Court struck the bill down. The Knesset passed a "watered-down" version of the judicial reform package in late March 2025 which "changes the composition" of the judicial selection committee. In December 2022 Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir sought to amend the law that regulates the operations of the Israel Police, such that the ministry will have more direct control of its forces and policies, including its investigative priorities. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara objected to the draft proposal, raising concerns that the law would enable the politicization of police work, and the draft was amended to partially address those concerns. Nevertheless, in March 2023 Deputy Attorney General Gil Limon stated that the Attorney General's fears had been realized, referring to several instances of ministerial involvement in the day-to-day work of the otherwise independent police force – statements that were repeated by the Attorney General herself two days later. Separately, Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai instructed Deputy Commissioners to avoid direct communication with the minister, later stating that "the Israel Police will remain apolitical, and act only according to law". Following appeals by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, the High Court of Justice instructed Ben-Gvir "to refrain from giving operational directions to the police... [especially] as regards to protests and demonstrations against the government." As talks of halting the judicial reform gained wind during March 2023, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir threatened to resign if the legislation implementing the changes was suspended. To appease Ben-Gvir, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that the government would promote the creation of a new National Guard, to be headed by Ben-Gvir. On 29 March, thousands of Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem against this decision. On 1 April, the New York Times quoted Gadeer Nicola, head of the Arab department at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, as saying "If this thing passes, it will be an imminent danger to the rights of Arab citizens in this country. This will create two separate systems of applying the law. The regular police which will operate against Jewish citizens — and a militarized militia to deal only with Arab citizens." The same day, while speaking on Israel's Channel 13 about those whom he'd like to see enlist in the National Guard, Ben-Gvir specifically mentioned La Familia, the far-right fan club of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team. On 2 April, Israel's cabinet approved the establishment of a law enforcement body that would operate independently of the police, under Ben-Gvir's authority. According to the decision, the Minister was to establish a committee chaired by the Director General of the Ministry of National Security, with representatives of the ministries of defense, justice and finance, as well as the police and the IDF, to outline the operations of the new organization. The committee's recommendations will be submitted to the government for consideration. Addressing a conference on 4 April, Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai said that he is not opposed to the establishment of a security body which would answer to the police, but "a separate body? Absolutely not." The police chief said he had warned Ben-Gvir that the establishment of a security body separate from the police is "unnecessary, with extremely high costs that may harm citizens' personal security." During a press conference on 10 April, Prime Minister Netanyahu said, in what has been seen by some news outlets as a concession to the protesters, that "This will not be anyone's militia, it will be a security body, orderly, professional, that will be subordinate to one of the [existing] security bodies." The committee established by the government recommended the government to order the establishment of the National Guard immediately while allocating budgets. The National Guard, under whose command will be a superintendent of the police, will not be subordinate to Ben-Gvir. It will be subordinate to the police commissioner and will be part of Israel Border Police. The Ministry of Defense and Finance opposed the conclusions. The Israeli National Security Council called for further discussion on this. The coalition's efforts to expand the purview of Rabbinical courts; force some organizations, such as hospitals, to enforce certain religious practices; amend the Law Prohibiting Discrimination to allow gender segregation and discrimination on the grounds of religious belief; expand funding for religious causes; and put into law the exemption of yeshiva and kolel students from conscription have drawn criticism. According to the Haaretz op-ed of 7 March 2023, "the current coalition is interested... in modifying the public space so it suits the religious lifestyle. The legal coup is meant to castrate anyone who can prevent it, most of all the HCJ." Several banks and institutional investors, including the Israel Discount Bank and AIG have committed to avoid investing in, or providing credit to any organization that will discriminate against others on ground of religion, race, gender or sexual orientation. A series of technology companies and investment firms including Wiz, Intel Israel, Salesforce and Microsoft Israel Research and Development, have criticized the proposed changes to the Law Prohibiting Discrimination, with Wiz stating that it will require its suppliers to commit to preventing discrimination. Over sixty prominent law firms pledged that they will neither represent, nor do business with discriminating individuals and organizations. Insight Partners, a major private equity fund operating in Israel, released a statement warning against intolerance and any attempt to harm personal liberties. Orit Lahav, chief executive of the women's rights organization Mavoi Satum ("Dead End"), said that "the Rabbinical courts are the most discriminatory institution in the State of Israel... Limiting the HCJ[d] while expanding the jurisdiction of the Rabbinical courts would... cause significant harm to women." Anat Thon Ashkenazy, Director of the Center for Democratic Values and Institutions at the Israel Democracy Institute, said that "almost every part of the reform could harm women... the meaning of an override clause is that even if the court says that the law on gender segregation is illegitimate, is harmful, the Knesset could say 'Okay, we say otherwise'". She added that "there is a very broad institutional framework here, after which there will come legislation that harms women's right and we will have no way of protecting or stopping it." During July 2023, 20 professional medical associations signed a letter of position warning against the ramifications to public health that would result from the exclusion of women from the public sphere. They cited, among others, a rise in prevalence of risk factors for cardiovascular disease, pregnancy-related ailments, psychological distress, and the risk of suicide. On 30 July the Knesset passed an amendment to penal law adding sexual offenses to those offenses whose penalty can be doubled if done on grounds of "nationalistic terrorism, racism or hostility towards a certain community". According to MK Limor Son Har-Melech, the bill is meant to penalize any individual who "[intends to] harm a woman sexually based on her Jewishness". The law was criticized by MK Gilad Kariv as "populist, nationalistic, and dangerous towards the Arab citizens of Israel", and by MK Ahmad Tibi as a "race law", and was objected to by legal advisors at the Ministry of Justice and the Knesset Committee on National Security. Activist Orit Kamir wrote that "the amendment... is neither feminist, equal, nor progressive, but the opposite: it subordinates women's sexuality to the nationalistic, racist patriarchy. It hijacks the Law for Prevention of Sexual Harassment to serve a world view that tags women as sexual objects that personify the nation's honor." Yael Sherer, director of the Lobby to Combat Sexual Violence, criticized the law as being informed by dated ideas about sexual assault, and proposed that MKs "dedicate a session... to give victims of sexual assault an opportunity to come out of the darkness... instead of [submitting] declarative bills that change nothing and are not meant but for grabbing headlines". In Israel, during 2022, 24 women "were murdered because they were women," which was an increase of 50% compared to 2021. A law permitting courts to order men subject to a restraining order following domestic violence offenses to wear electronic tags was drafted during the previous Knesset and had passed its first reading unanimously. On 22 March 2023, the Knesset voted to reject the bill. It had been urged to do so by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said that the bill was unfair to men. Earlier in the week, Ben-Gvir had blocked the measure from advancing in the ministerial legislative committee. The MKs voting against the bill included Prime Minister Netanyahu. The Association of Families of Murder Victims said that by rejecting the law, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir "brings joy to violent men and abandons the women threatened with murder… unsupervised restraining orders endanger women's lives even more. They give women the illusion of being protected, and then they are murdered." MK Pnina Tamano-Shata, chairwoman of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, said that "the coalition proved today that it despises women's lives." The NGO Amutat Bat Melech [he], which assists Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox women who suffer from domestic violence, said that: "Rejecting the electronic bracelet bill is disconnected from the terrible reality of seven femicides since the beginning of the year. This is an effective tool of the first degree that could have saved lives and reduced the threat to women suffering from domestic violence. This is a matter of life and death, whose whole purpose is to provide a solution to defend women." The agreement signed by the coalition parties includes the setting up of a committee to draft changes to the Law of Return. Israeli religious parties have long demanded that the "grandchild clause" of the Law of Return be cancelled. This clause grants citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent, as long as they do not practice another religion. If the grandchild clause were to be removed from the Law of Return then around 3 million people who are currently eligible for aliyah would no longer be eligible. The heads of the Jewish Agency, the Jewish Federations of North America, the World Zionist Organization and Keren Hayesod sent a joint letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu, expressing their "deep concern" about any changes to the Law of Return, adding that "Any change in the delicate and sensitive status quo on issues such as the Law of Return or conversion could threaten to unravel the ties between us and keep us away from each other." The Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Zionist Federation of Australia issued a joint statement saying "We… view with deep concern… proposals in relation to religious pluralism and the law of return that risk damaging Israel's… relationship with Diaspora Jewry." On 19 March 2023, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich spoke in Paris at a memorial service for a Likud activist. The lectern at which Smotrich spoke was covered with a flag depicting the 'Greater Land of Israel,' encompassing the whole of Mandatory Palestine, as well as Trans-Jordan. During his speech, Smotrich said that "there's no such thing as Palestinians because there's no such thing as a Palestinian people." He added that the Palestinian people are a fictitious nation invented only to fight the Zionist movement, asking "Is there a Palestinian history or culture? There isn't any." The event received widespread media coverage. On 21 March, a spokesman for the US State Department sharply criticized Smotrich's comments. "The comments, which were delivered at a podium adorned with an inaccurate and provocative map, are offensive, they are deeply concerning, and, candidly, they're dangerous. The Palestinians have a rich history and culture, and the United States greatly values our partnership with the Palestinian people," he said. The Jordanian Foreign Ministry also voiced disapproval: "The Israeli Minister of Finance's use, during his participation in an event held yesterday in Paris, of a map of Israel that includes the borders of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the occupied Palestinian territories represents a reckless inflammatory act, and a violation of international norms and the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty." Additionally, a map encompassing Mandatory Palestine and Trans-Jordan with a Jordanian flag on it was placed on a central lectern in the Jordanian Parliament. Jordan's parliament voted to expel the Israeli ambassador. Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a clarification relating to the matter, stating that "Israel is committed to the 1994 peace agreement with Jordan. There has been no change in the position of the State of Israel, which recognizes the territorial integrity of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan". Ahead of a Europe Day event due to take place on 9 May 2023, far-right wing National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was assigned as a representative of the government and a speaker at the event by the government secretariat, which deals with placing ministers at receptions on the occasion of the national days of the foreign embassies. The European Union requested that Ben-Gvir not attend, but the government did not make changes to the plan. On 8 May, the European delegation to Israel cancelled the reception, stating that: "The EU Delegation to Israel is looking forward to celebrating Europe Day on May 9, as it does every year. Regrettably, this year we have decided to cancel the diplomatic reception, as we do not want to offer a platform to someone whose views contradict the values the European Union stands for. However, the Europe Day cultural event for the Israeli public will be maintained to celebrate with our friends and partners in Israel the strong and constructive bilateral relationship". Israel's Opposition Leader Yair Lapid stated: "Sending Itamar Ben-Gvir to a gathering of EU ambassadors is a serious professional mistake. The government is embarrassing a large group of friendly countries, jeopardizing future votes in international institutions, and damaging our foreign relations. Last year, after a decade of efforts, we succeeded in signing an economic-political agreement with the European Union that will contribute to the Israeli economy and our foreign relations. Why risk it, and for what? Ben-Gvir is not a legitimate person in the international community (and not really in Israel either), and sometimes you have to be both wise and just and simply send someone else". On 23 February 2023, Defense Minister Gallant signed an agreement assigning governmental powers in the West Bank to a body to be headed by Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who will effectively become the governor of the West Bank, controlling almost all areas of life in the area, including planning, building and infrastructure. Israeli governments have hitherto been careful to keep the occupation as a military government. The temporary holding of power by an occupying military force, pending a negotiated settlement, is a principle of international law – an expression of the prohibition against obtaining sovereignty through conquest that was introduced in the wake of World War II. An editorial in Haaretz noted that the assignment of governmental powers in the West Bank to a civilian governor, alongside the plan to expand the dual justice system so that Israeli law will apply fully to settlers in the West Bank, constitutes de jure annexation of the West Bank. On 26 February 2023, following the 2023 Huwara shooting in which two Israelis were killed by an unidentified attacker, hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian town of Huwara and three nearby villages, setting alight hundreds of Palestinian homes (some with people in them), businesses, a school, and numerous vehicles, killing one Palestinian man and injuring 100 others. Bezalel Smotrich subsequently called on Twitter for Huwara to be "wiped out" by the Israeli government. Zvika Fogel MK, of the ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit, which forms part of the governing coalition, said that he "looks very favorably upon" the results of the rampage. Members of the coalition proposed an amendment to the Disengagement Law, which would allow Israelis to resettle settlements vacated during the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza and the northern West Bank. The evacuated settlements were considered illegal under international law, according to most countries. The proposal was approved for voting by the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on 9 March 2023, while the committee was still waiting for briefing materials from the NSS, IDF, MFA and Shin Bet, and was passed on 21 March. The US has requested clarification from Israeli ambassador Michael Herzog. A US State Department spokesman stated that "The U.S. strongly urges Israel to refrain from allowing the return of settlers to the area covered by the legislation, consistent with both former Prime Minister Sharon and the current Israeli Government's commitment to the United States," noting that the actions represent a clear violation of undertakings given by the Sharon government to the Bush administration in 2005 and Netanyahu's far-right coalition to the Biden administration the previous week. Minister of Communication Shlomo Karhi had initially intended to cut the funding of the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (also known by its blanket branding Kan) by 400 million shekels – roughly half of its total budget – closing several departments, and privatizing content creation. In response, the Director-General of the European Broadcasting Union, Noel Curran, sent two urgent letters to Netanyahu, expressing his concerns and calling on the Israeli government to "safeguard the independence of our Member KAN and ensure it is allowed to operate in a sustainable way, with funding that is both stable, adequate, fair, and transparent." On 25 January 2023, nine journalist organizations representing some of Kan's competitors issued a statement of concern, acknowledging the "important contribution of public broadcasting in creating a worthy, unbiased and non-prejudicial journalistic platform", and noting that "the existence of the [broadcasting] corporation as a substantial public broadcast organization strengthens media as a whole, adding to the competition in the market rather than weakening it." They also expressed their concern that the "real reason" for the proposal was actually "an attempt to silence voices from which... [the Minister] doesn't always draw satisfaction". The same day, hundreds of journalists, actors and filmmakers protested in Tel Aviv. The proposal was eventually put on hold. On 22 February 2023 it was reported that Prime Minister Netanyahu was attempting to appoint his close associate Yossi Shelley as the deputy to the National Statistician — a highly sensitive position in charge of providing accurate data for decision makers. The appointment of Shelley, who did not possess the required qualifications for the role, was withdrawn following publication. In its daily editorial, Haaretz tied this attempt with the judicial reform: "once they take control of the judiciary, law enforcement and public media, they wish to control the state's data base, the dry numerical data it uses to plan its future". Netanyahu also proposed Avi Simhon for the role, and eventually froze all appointments at the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. Also on 22 February 2023, it was revealed that Yoav Kish, the Minister of Education, was promoting a draft government decision change to the National Library of Israel board of directors which would grant him more power over the institution. In response, the Hebrew University — which owned the library until 2008 – announced that if the draft is accepted, it will withdraw its collections from the library. The university's collections, which according to the university constitute some 80% of the library's collection, include the Agnon archive, the original manuscript of Hatikvah, and the Rothschild Haggadah, the oldest known Haggadah. A group of 300 authors and poets signed an open letter against the move, further noting their objection against "political takeover" of public broadcasting, as well as "any legislation that will castrate the judiciary and damage the democratic foundations of the state of Israel". Several days later, it was reported that a series of donors decided to withhold their donations to the library, totaling some 80 million shekels. On 3 March a petition against the move by 1,500 academics, including Israel Prize laureates, was sent to Kish. The proposal has been seen by some as retribution against Shai Nitzan, the former State Attorney and the library's current rector. On 5 March it was reported that the Legal Advisor to the Ministry of Finance, Asi Messing, was withholding the proposal. According to Messing, the proposal – which was being promoted as part of the Economic Arrangements Law – "was not reviewed... by the qualified personnel in the Ministry of Finance, does not align with any of the common goals of the economic plan, was not agreed to by myself and was not approved by the Attorney General." As of February 2023, the government has been debating several proposals that will significantly weaken the Ministry of Environmental Protection, including reducing the environmental regulation of planning and development and electricity production. One of the main proposals, the transferal of a 3 billion shekel fund meant to finance waste management plants from the Ministry of Environmental Protection to the Ministry of the Interior, was eventually withdrawn. The Minister of Environmental Protection, Idit Silman, has been criticized for using for meeting with climate change denialists, for wasteful and personally-motivated travel on the ministry's expense, for politicizing the role, and for engaging in political activity on the ministry's time. The government has been noted for an unusually high number of dismissals and resignations of senior career civil servants, and for the frequent attempts to replace them with candidates with known political associations, who are often less competent. According to sources, Netanyahu and people in his vicinity are seeking out civil servants who were appointed by the previous government, intent on replacing them with people loyal to him. Governmental nominees for various positions have been criticized for lack of expertise. In addition to the nominee to the position of Deputy National Statistician (see above), the Director General of the Ministry of Finance, Shlomi Heisler; the Director General of the Ministry of Justice, Itamar Donenfeld; and the Director General of Ministry of Transport, Moshe Ben Zaken, have all been criticized for incompetence, lack of familiarity with their Ministries' subject matter, lack of interest in the job, or lack of experience in managing large organizations. It has been reported that in some ministries, senior officials were enacting slowdowns as a means for dealing with the new ministers and director generals. On 28 July the director general of the Ministry of Education resigned, citing as reason the societal "rift". Asaf Zalel, a retired Air Force Brigadier General, was appointed in January. When asked about attempts to appoint his personal friend and attorney to the board of directors of a state-owned company, Minister David Amsalem replied: "that is my job, due to my authority to appoint directors. I put forward people that I know and hold in esteem". Under Minister of Transport Miri Regev, the ministry has either dismissed or lost the heads of the National Public Transport Authority, Israel Airports Authority, National Road Safety Authority, Israel Railways, and several officials in Netivei Israel. The current chair of Netivei Israel is Likud member and Regev associate Yigal Amadi, and the legal counsel is Einav Abuhzira, daughter of a former Likud branch chair. Abuhzira was appointed instead of Elad Berdugo, nephew of Netanyahu surrogate Yaakov Bardugo, after he was disqualified for the role by the Israel Government Companies Authority. In July 2023 the Ministry of Communications, Shlomo Karhi, and the minister in charge of the Israel Government Companies Authority, Dudi Amsalem, deposed the chair of the Israel Postal Company, Michael Vaknin. The chair, who was hired to lead the company's financial recovery after years of operational loss and towards privatization, has gained the support of officials at the Authority and at the Ministry of Finance; nevertheless, the ministers claimed that his performance is inadequate, and nominated in his place Yiftah Ron-Tal, who has known ties to Netanyahu and Smotrich. They also nominated four new directors, two of which have known political associations, and a third who was a witness in Netanyahu's trial. The coalition is allowed to spend a portion of the state's budget on a discretionary basis, meant to coax member parties to reach an agreement on the budget. As of May 2023, the government was pushing an allocation of over 13 billion shekels over two years - almost seven times the amount allocated by the previous government. Most of the funds will be allocated for uses associated with the religious, orthodox and settler communities. The head of the Budget Department at the Ministry of Finance, Yoav Gardos, objected to the allocations, claiming they would exacerbate unemployment in the Orthodox community, which is projected to cost the economy a total of 6.7 trillion shekels in lost produce by 2065. At the onset of the Gaza war and the declaration of a state of national emergency, Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich instructed government agencies to continue with the planned distribution of discretionary funds. Corruption During March 2023, the government was promoting an amendment to the Law on Public Service (Gifts) that would allow Netanyahu to receive donations to fund his legal defense. The amendment follows a decision by the High Court of Justice (HCJ) that forced Netanyahu to refund US$270,000 given to him and his wife by his late cousin, Nathan Mileikowsky, for their legal defense. This is in contrast to past statements by Minister of Justice Yariv Levin, who spoke against the possible conflict of interests that can result from such transactions. The bill was opposed by the Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who stressed that it could "create a real opportunity for governmental corruption", and was eventually withdrawn at the end of March. As of March 2023, the coalition was promoting a bill that would prevent judicial review of ministerial appointments. The bill is intended to prevent the HCJ from reviewing the appointment of the twice-convicted chairman of Shas, Aryeh Deri (convicted of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust), to a ministerial position, after his previous appointment was annulled on grounds of unreasonableness. The bill follows on the heels of another amendment, that relaxed the ban on the appointment of convicted criminals, so that Deri - who was handed a suspended sentence after his second conviction - could be appointed. The bill is opposed by the Attorney General, as well as by the Knesset Legal Adviser, Sagit Afik. Israeli law allows for declaring a Prime Minister (as well as several other high-ranking public officials) to be temporarily or permanently incapacitated, but does not specify the conditions which can lead to a declaration of incapacitation. In the case of the Prime Minister, the authority to do so is given to the Attorney General. In March 2023, the coalition advanced a bill that passes this authority from the Attorney General to the government with the approval of the Knesset committee, and clarified that incapacitation can only result from medical or mental conditions. On 3 January 2024, the Supreme Court ruled by a majority of 6 out of 11 that the validity of the law will be postponed to the next Knesset because the bill in its immediate application is a personal law and is intended to serve a distinct personal purpose. Later, the court rejected a petition regarding the definition of Netanyahu as an incapacitated prime minister due to his ongoing trial and conflict of interests. Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://www.theverge.com/policy/882250/fcc-brendan-carr-pro-america-content-250-anniversary] | [TOKENS: 1469] |
PolicyClosePolicyPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PolicyNewsCloseNewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All NewsPoliticsClosePoliticsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PoliticsFCC calls on broadcasters to air ‘pro-America content’ for the country’s 250th anniversaryFCC Chair Brendan Carr says broadcasters could broadcast daily segments highlighting historical events, or start each day with the Pledge of the Allegiance.FCC Chair Brendan Carr says broadcasters could broadcast daily segments highlighting historical events, or start each day with the Pledge of the Allegiance.by Emma RothCloseEmma RothNews WriterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Emma RothFeb 20, 2026, 7:29 PM UTCLinkShareGiftImage: Cath Virginia / The VergeEmma RothCloseEmma RothPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Emma Roth is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is urging broadcasters to air “patriotic, pro-America content” in celebration of the US’s 250th anniversary. The initiative, called the “Pledge America Campaign,” encourages broadcasters to run public service announcements, short segments, or specials to promote “civic education, inspiring local stories, and American history.”Carr says broadcasters can “voluntarily choose to indicate their commitment” to the campaign by doing things like starting the day with the “Star Spangled Banner” or Pledge of Allegiance, broadcasting daily programming to highlight historical events, as well as showcasing historically significant sites during news segments, such as national parks.With any other administration, this may have been just a standard announcement. But President Donald Trump and his officials have made their view about what’s important in American history very clear. The Trump administration has already moved to erase portions of American history in a bid to end “radical indoctrination” in schools and remove “woke” exhibits from the Smithsonian.RelatedThe speech police came for ColbertThe FCC’s campaign stems from the Trump administration’s “Task Force 250,” which asks the federal, state, and local governments to participate in the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 2026. “I look forward to broadcasters showcasing its [America’s] inspiring history by taking the Pledge and fulfilling their public interest mandate to serve the needs and interests of their local communities.”Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Emma RothCloseEmma RothNews WriterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Emma RothNewsCloseNewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All NewsPolicyClosePolicyPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PolicyPoliticsClosePoliticsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PoliticsSpeechCloseSpeechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All SpeechMost PopularMost PopularXbox chief Phil Spencer is leaving MicrosoftRead Microsoft gaming CEO Asha Sharma’s first memo on the future of XboxThe RAM shortage is coming for everything you care aboutAmazon blames human employees for an AI coding agent’s mistakeWill Stancil, man of the people or just an annoying guy?The Verge DailyA free daily digest of the news that matters most.Email (required)Sign UpBy submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Advertiser Content FromThis is the title for the native ad Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Policy Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All News Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Politics FCC calls on broadcasters to air ‘pro-America content’ for the country’s 250th anniversary FCC Chair Brendan Carr says broadcasters could broadcast daily segments highlighting historical events, or start each day with the Pledge of the Allegiance. FCC Chair Brendan Carr says broadcasters could broadcast daily segments highlighting historical events, or start each day with the Pledge of the Allegiance. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Emma Roth Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Emma Roth Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is urging broadcasters to air “patriotic, pro-America content” in celebration of the US’s 250th anniversary. The initiative, called the “Pledge America Campaign,” encourages broadcasters to run public service announcements, short segments, or specials to promote “civic education, inspiring local stories, and American history.” Carr says broadcasters can “voluntarily choose to indicate their commitment” to the campaign by doing things like starting the day with the “Star Spangled Banner” or Pledge of Allegiance, broadcasting daily programming to highlight historical events, as well as showcasing historically significant sites during news segments, such as national parks. With any other administration, this may have been just a standard announcement. But President Donald Trump and his officials have made their view about what’s important in American history very clear. The Trump administration has already moved to erase portions of American history in a bid to end “radical indoctrination” in schools and remove “woke” exhibits from the Smithsonian. The FCC’s campaign stems from the Trump administration’s “Task Force 250,” which asks the federal, state, and local governments to participate in the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 2026. “I look forward to broadcasters showcasing its [America’s] inspiring history by taking the Pledge and fulfilling their public interest mandate to serve the needs and interests of their local communities.” Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Emma Roth Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All News Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Policy Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Politics Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Speech Most Popular The Verge Daily A free daily digest of the news that matters most. This is the title for the native ad More in Policy This is the title for the native ad Top Stories © 2026 Vox Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved |
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[SOURCE: https://www.theverge.com/tech/882211/two-former-google-employees-have-been-indicted-for-stealing-trade-secrets] | [TOKENS: 566] |
Posted Feb 20, 2026 at 7:14 PM UTCSExternal LinkStevie BonifieldTwo former Google employees have been indicted for stealing Tensor chip secrets.The ex-employees, along with one of their husbands, were arrested on Thursday after allegedly stealing trade secrets related to the Tensor chips in Google’s Pixel phones and sending them to Iran.They’re now facing 14 felony counts of conspiracy, theft of trade secrets, and destruction of evidence, Bloomberg reports.Ex-Googlers Charged With Stealing Phone Processor Secrets[Bloomberg]Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Stevie BonifieldCloseStevie BonifieldNews WriterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Stevie BonifieldGoogleCloseGooglePosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All GoogleNewsCloseNewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All NewsTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechCommentsLoading commentsGetting the conversation ready...Most PopularMost PopularXbox chief Phil Spencer is leaving MicrosoftRead Microsoft gaming CEO Asha Sharma’s first memo on the future of XboxThe RAM shortage is coming for everything you care aboutAmazon blames human employees for an AI coding agent’s mistakeWill Stancil, man of the people or just an annoying guy?The Verge DailyA free daily digest of the news that matters most.Email (required)Sign UpBy submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The ex-employees, along with one of their husbands, were arrested on Thursday after allegedly stealing trade secrets related to the Tensor chips in Google’s Pixel phones and sending them to Iran. They’re now facing 14 felony counts of conspiracy, theft of trade secrets, and destruction of evidence, Bloomberg reports. [Bloomberg] Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Stevie Bonifield Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Google Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All News Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech Most Popular The Verge Daily A free daily digest of the news that matters most. More in Tech This is the title for the native ad Top Stories © 2026 Vox Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_(console)#cite_ref-SCEE_2000—Key_Facts_and_Figures_169-0] | [TOKENS: 10728] |
Contents PlayStation (console) The PlayStation[a] (codenamed PSX, abbreviated as PS, and retroactively PS1 or PS one) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was released in Japan on 3 December 1994, followed by North America on 9 September 1995, Europe on 29 September 1995, and other regions following thereafter. As a fifth-generation console, the PlayStation primarily competed with the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn. Sony began developing the PlayStation after a failed venture with Nintendo to create a CD-ROM peripheral for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in the early 1990s. The console was primarily designed by Ken Kutaragi and Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan, while additional development was outsourced in the United Kingdom. An emphasis on 3D polygon graphics was placed at the forefront of the console's design. PlayStation game production was designed to be streamlined and inclusive, enticing the support of many third party developers. The console proved popular for its extensive game library, popular franchises, low retail price, and aggressive youth marketing which advertised it as the preferable console for adolescents and adults. Critically acclaimed games that defined the console include Gran Turismo, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Tekken 3, and Final Fantasy VII. Sony ceased production of the PlayStation on 23 March 2006—over eleven years after it had been released, and in the same year the PlayStation 3 debuted. More than 4,000 PlayStation games were released, with cumulative sales of 962 million units. The PlayStation signaled Sony's rise to power in the video game industry. It received acclaim and sold strongly; in less than a decade, it became the first computer entertainment platform to ship over 100 million units. Its use of compact discs heralded the game industry's transition from cartridges. The PlayStation's success led to a line of successors, beginning with the PlayStation 2 in 2000. In the same year, Sony released a smaller and cheaper model, the PS one. History The PlayStation was conceived by Ken Kutaragi, a Sony executive who managed a hardware engineering division and was later dubbed "the Father of the PlayStation". Kutaragi's interest in working with video games stemmed from seeing his daughter play games on Nintendo's Famicom. Kutaragi convinced Nintendo to use his SPC-700 sound processor in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) through a demonstration of the processor's capabilities. His willingness to work with Nintendo was derived from both his admiration of the Famicom and conviction in video game consoles becoming the main home-use entertainment systems. Although Kutaragi was nearly fired because he worked with Nintendo without Sony's knowledge, president Norio Ohga recognised the potential in Kutaragi's chip and decided to keep him as a protégé. The inception of the PlayStation dates back to a 1988 joint venture between Nintendo and Sony. Nintendo had produced floppy disk technology to complement cartridges in the form of the Family Computer Disk System, and wanted to continue this complementary storage strategy for the SNES. Since Sony was already contracted to produce the SPC-700 sound processor for the SNES, Nintendo contracted Sony to develop a CD-ROM add-on, tentatively titled the "Play Station" or "SNES-CD". The PlayStation name had already been trademarked by Yamaha, but Nobuyuki Idei liked it so much that he agreed to acquire it for an undisclosed sum rather than search for an alternative. Sony was keen to obtain a foothold in the rapidly expanding video game market. Having been the primary manufacturer of the MSX home computer format, Sony had wanted to use their experience in consumer electronics to produce their own video game hardware. Although the initial agreement between Nintendo and Sony was about producing a CD-ROM drive add-on, Sony had also planned to develop a SNES-compatible Sony-branded console. This iteration was intended to be more of a home entertainment system, playing both SNES cartridges and a new CD format named the "Super Disc", which Sony would design. Under the agreement, Sony would retain sole international rights to every Super Disc game, giving them a large degree of control despite Nintendo's leading position in the video game market. Furthermore, Sony would also be the sole benefactor of licensing related to music and film software that it had been aggressively pursuing as a secondary application. The Play Station was to be announced at the 1991 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. However, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi was wary of Sony's increasing leverage at this point and deemed the original 1988 contract unacceptable upon realising it essentially handed Sony control over all games written on the SNES CD-ROM format. Although Nintendo was dominant in the video game market, Sony possessed a superior research and development department. Wanting to protect Nintendo's existing licensing structure, Yamauchi cancelled all plans for the joint Nintendo–Sony SNES CD attachment without telling Sony. He sent Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa (his son-in-law) and chairman Howard Lincoln to Amsterdam to form a more favourable contract with Dutch conglomerate Philips, Sony's rival. This contract would give Nintendo total control over their licences on all Philips-produced machines. Kutaragi and Nobuyuki Idei, Sony's director of public relations at the time, learned of Nintendo's actions two days before the CES was due to begin. Kutaragi telephoned numerous contacts, including Philips, to no avail. On the first day of the CES, Sony announced their partnership with Nintendo and their new console, the Play Station. At 9 am on the next day, in what has been called "the greatest ever betrayal" in the industry, Howard Lincoln stepped onto the stage and revealed that Nintendo was now allied with Philips and would abandon their work with Sony. Incensed by Nintendo's renouncement, Ohga and Kutaragi decided that Sony would develop their own console. Nintendo's contract-breaking was met with consternation in the Japanese business community, as they had broken an "unwritten law" of native companies not turning against each other in favour of foreign ones. Sony's American branch considered allying with Sega to produce a CD-ROM-based machine called the Sega Multimedia Entertainment System, but the Sega board of directors in Tokyo vetoed the idea when Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske presented them the proposal. Kalinske recalled them saying: "That's a stupid idea, Sony doesn't know how to make hardware. They don't know how to make software either. Why would we want to do this?" Sony halted their research, but decided to develop what it had developed with Nintendo and Sega into a console based on the SNES. Despite the tumultuous events at the 1991 CES, negotiations between Nintendo and Sony were still ongoing. A deal was proposed: the Play Station would still have a port for SNES games, on the condition that it would still use Kutaragi's audio chip and that Nintendo would own the rights and receive the bulk of the profits. Roughly two hundred prototype machines were created, and some software entered development. Many within Sony were still opposed to their involvement in the video game industry, with some resenting Kutaragi for jeopardising the company. Kutaragi remained adamant that Sony not retreat from the growing industry and that a deal with Nintendo would never work. Knowing that they had to take decisive action, Sony severed all ties with Nintendo on 4 May 1992. To determine the fate of the PlayStation project, Ohga chaired a meeting in June 1992, consisting of Kutaragi and several senior Sony board members. Kutaragi unveiled a proprietary CD-ROM-based system he had been secretly working on which played games with immersive 3D graphics. Kutaragi was confident that his LSI chip could accommodate one million logic gates, which exceeded the capabilities of Sony's semiconductor division at the time. Despite gaining Ohga's enthusiasm, there remained opposition from a majority present at the meeting. Older Sony executives also opposed it, who saw Nintendo and Sega as "toy" manufacturers. The opposers felt the game industry was too culturally offbeat and asserted that Sony should remain a central player in the audiovisual industry, where companies were familiar with one another and could conduct "civili[s]ed" business negotiations. After Kutaragi reminded him of the humiliation he suffered from Nintendo, Ohga retained the project and became one of Kutaragi's most staunch supporters. Ohga shifted Kutaragi and nine of his team from Sony's main headquarters to Sony Music Entertainment Japan (SMEJ), a subsidiary of the main Sony group, so as to retain the project and maintain relationships with Philips for the MMCD development project. The involvement of SMEJ proved crucial to the PlayStation's early development as the process of manufacturing games on CD-ROM format was similar to that used for audio CDs, with which Sony's music division had considerable experience. While at SMEJ, Kutaragi worked with Epic/Sony Records founder Shigeo Maruyama and Akira Sato; both later became vice-presidents of the division that ran the PlayStation business. Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) was jointly established by Sony and SMEJ to handle the company's ventures into the video game industry. On 27 October 1993, Sony publicly announced that it was entering the game console market with the PlayStation. According to Maruyama, there was uncertainty over whether the console should primarily focus on 2D, sprite-based graphics or 3D polygon graphics. After Sony witnessed the success of Sega's Virtua Fighter (1993) in Japanese arcades, the direction of the PlayStation became "instantly clear" and 3D polygon graphics became the console's primary focus. SCE president Teruhisa Tokunaka expressed gratitude for Sega's timely release of Virtua Fighter as it proved "just at the right time" that making games with 3D imagery was possible. Maruyama claimed that Sony further wanted to emphasise the new console's ability to utilise redbook audio from the CD-ROM format in its games alongside high quality visuals and gameplay. Wishing to distance the project from the failed enterprise with Nintendo, Sony initially branded the PlayStation the "PlayStation X" (PSX). Sony formed their European division and North American division, known as Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) and Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), in January and May 1995. The divisions planned to market the new console under the alternative branding "PSX" following the negative feedback regarding "PlayStation" in focus group studies. Early advertising prior to the console's launch in North America referenced PSX, but the term was scrapped before launch. The console was not marketed with Sony's name in contrast to Nintendo's consoles. According to Phil Harrison, much of Sony's upper management feared that the Sony brand would be tarnished if associated with the console, which they considered a "toy". Since Sony had no experience in game development, it had to rely on the support of third-party game developers. This was in contrast to Sega and Nintendo, which had versatile and well-equipped in-house software divisions for their arcade games and could easily port successful games to their home consoles. Recent consoles like the Atari Jaguar and 3DO suffered low sales due to a lack of developer support, prompting Sony to redouble their efforts in gaining the endorsement of arcade-savvy developers. A team from Epic Sony visited more than a hundred companies throughout Japan in May 1993 in hopes of attracting game creators with the PlayStation's technological appeal. Sony found that many disliked Nintendo's practices, such as favouring their own games over others. Through a series of negotiations, Sony acquired initial support from Namco, Konami, and Williams Entertainment, as well as 250 other development teams in Japan alone. Namco in particular was interested in developing for PlayStation since Namco rivalled Sega in the arcade market. Attaining these companies secured influential games such as Ridge Racer (1993) and Mortal Kombat 3 (1995), Ridge Racer being one of the most popular arcade games at the time, and it was already confirmed behind closed doors that it would be the PlayStation's first game by December 1993, despite Namco being a longstanding Nintendo developer. Namco's research managing director Shegeichi Nakamura met with Kutaragi in 1993 to discuss the preliminary PlayStation specifications, with Namco subsequently basing the Namco System 11 arcade board on PlayStation hardware and developing Tekken to compete with Virtua Fighter. The System 11 launched in arcades several months before the PlayStation's release, with the arcade release of Tekken in September 1994. Despite securing the support of various Japanese studios, Sony had no developers of their own by the time the PlayStation was in development. This changed in 1993 when Sony acquired the Liverpudlian company Psygnosis (later renamed SCE Liverpool) for US$48 million, securing their first in-house development team. The acquisition meant that Sony could have more launch games ready for the PlayStation's release in Europe and North America. Ian Hetherington, Psygnosis' co-founder, was disappointed after receiving early builds of the PlayStation and recalled that the console "was not fit for purpose" until his team got involved with it. Hetherington frequently clashed with Sony executives over broader ideas; at one point it was suggested that a television with a built-in PlayStation be produced. In the months leading up to the PlayStation's launch, Psygnosis had around 500 full-time staff working on games and assisting with software development. The purchase of Psygnosis marked another turning point for the PlayStation as it played a vital role in creating the console's development kits. While Sony had provided MIPS R4000-based Sony NEWS workstations for PlayStation development, Psygnosis employees disliked the thought of developing on these expensive workstations and asked Bristol-based SN Systems to create an alternative PC-based development system. Andy Beveridge and Martin Day, owners of SN Systems, had previously supplied development hardware for other consoles such as the Mega Drive, Atari ST, and the SNES. When Psygnosis arranged an audience for SN Systems with Sony's Japanese executives at the January 1994 CES in Las Vegas, Beveridge and Day presented their prototype of the condensed development kit, which could run on an ordinary personal computer with two extension boards. Impressed, Sony decided to abandon their plans for a workstation-based development system in favour of SN Systems's, thus securing a cheaper and more efficient method for designing software. An order of over 600 systems followed, and SN Systems supplied Sony with additional software such as an assembler, linker, and a debugger. SN Systems produced development kits for future PlayStation systems, including the PlayStation 2 and was bought out by Sony in 2005. Sony strived to make game production as streamlined and inclusive as possible, in contrast to the relatively isolated approach of Sega and Nintendo. Phil Harrison, representative director of SCEE, believed that Sony's emphasis on developer assistance reduced most time-consuming aspects of development. As well as providing programming libraries, SCE headquarters in London, California, and Tokyo housed technical support teams that could work closely with third-party developers if needed. Sony did not favour their own over non-Sony products, unlike Nintendo; Peter Molyneux of Bullfrog Productions admired Sony's open-handed approach to software developers and lauded their decision to use PCs as a development platform, remarking that "[it was] like being released from jail in terms of the freedom you have". Another strategy that helped attract software developers was the PlayStation's use of the CD-ROM format instead of traditional cartridges. Nintendo cartridges were expensive to manufacture, and the company controlled all production, prioritising their own games, while inexpensive compact disc manufacturing occurred at dozens of locations around the world. The PlayStation's architecture and interconnectability with PCs was beneficial to many software developers. The use of the programming language C proved useful, as it safeguarded future compatibility of the machine should developers decide to make further hardware revisions. Despite the inherent flexibility, some developers found themselves restricted due to the console's lack of RAM. While working on beta builds of the PlayStation, Molyneux observed that its MIPS processor was not "quite as bullish" compared to that of a fast PC and said that it took his team two weeks to port their PC code to the PlayStation development kits and another fortnight to achieve a four-fold speed increase. An engineer from Ocean Software, one of Europe's largest game developers at the time, thought that allocating RAM was a challenging aspect given the 3.5 megabyte restriction. Kutaragi said that while it would have been easy to double the amount of RAM for the PlayStation, the development team refrained from doing so to keep the retail cost down. Kutaragi saw the biggest challenge in developing the system to be balancing the conflicting goals of high performance, low cost, and being easy to program for, and felt he and his team were successful in this regard. Its technical specifications were finalised in 1993 and its design during 1994. The PlayStation name and its final design were confirmed during a press conference on May 10, 1994, although the price and release dates had not been disclosed yet. Sony released the PlayStation in Japan on 3 December 1994, a week after the release of the Sega Saturn, at a price of ¥39,800. Sales in Japan began with a "stunning" success with long queues in shops. Ohga later recalled that he realised how important PlayStation had become for Sony when friends and relatives begged for consoles for their children. PlayStation sold 100,000 units on the first day and two million units within six months, although the Saturn outsold the PlayStation in the first few weeks due to the success of Virtua Fighter. By the end of 1994, 300,000 PlayStation units were sold in Japan compared to 500,000 Saturn units. A grey market emerged for PlayStations shipped from Japan to North America and Europe, with buyers of such consoles paying up to £700. "When September 1995 arrived and Sony's Playstation roared out of the gate, things immediately felt different than [sic] they did with the Saturn launch earlier that year. Sega dropped the Saturn $100 to match the Playstation's $299 debut price, but sales weren't even close—Playstations flew out the door as fast as we could get them in stock. Before the release in North America, Sega and Sony presented their consoles at the first Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles on 11 May 1995. At their keynote presentation, Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske revealed that their Saturn console would be released immediately to select retailers at a price of $399. Next came Sony's turn: Olaf Olafsson, the head of SCEA, summoned Steve Race, the head of development, to the conference stage, who said "$299" and left the audience with a round of applause. The attention to the Sony conference was further bolstered by the surprise appearance of Michael Jackson and the showcase of highly anticipated games, including Wipeout (1995), Ridge Racer and Tekken (1994). In addition, Sony announced that no games would be bundled with the console. Although the Saturn had released early in the United States to gain an advantage over the PlayStation, the surprise launch upset many retailers who were not informed in time, harming sales. Some retailers such as KB Toys responded by dropping the Saturn entirely. The PlayStation went on sale in North America on 9 September 1995. It sold more units within two days than the Saturn had in five months, with almost all of the initial shipment of 100,000 units sold in advance and shops across the country running out of consoles and accessories. The well-received Ridge Racer contributed to the PlayStation's early success, — with some critics considering it superior to Sega's arcade counterpart Daytona USA (1994) — as did Battle Arena Toshinden (1995). There were over 100,000 pre-orders placed and 17 games available on the market by the time of the PlayStation's American launch, in comparison to the Saturn's six launch games. The PlayStation released in Europe on 29 September 1995 and in Australia on 15 November 1995. By November it had already outsold the Saturn by three to one in the United Kingdom, where Sony had allocated a £20 million marketing budget during the Christmas season compared to Sega's £4 million. Sony found early success in the United Kingdom by securing listings with independent shop owners as well as prominent High Street chains such as Comet and Argos. Within its first year, the PlayStation secured over 20% of the entire American video game market. From September to the end of 1995, sales in the United States amounted to 800,000 units, giving the PlayStation a commanding lead over the other fifth-generation consoles,[b] though the SNES and Mega Drive from the fourth generation still outsold it. Sony reported that the attach rate of sold games and consoles was four to one. To meet increasing demand, Sony chartered jumbo jets and ramped up production in Europe and North America. By early 1996, the PlayStation had grossed $2 billion (equivalent to $4.106 billion 2025) from worldwide hardware and software sales. By late 1996, sales in Europe totalled 2.2 million units, including 700,000 in the UK. Approximately 400 PlayStation games were in development, compared to around 200 games being developed for the Saturn and 60 for the Nintendo 64. In India, the PlayStation was launched in test market during 1999–2000 across Sony showrooms, selling 100 units. Sony finally launched the console (PS One model) countrywide on 24 January 2002 with the price of Rs 7,990 and 26 games available from start. PlayStation was also doing well in markets where it was never officially released. For example, in Brazil, due to the registration of the trademark by a third company, the console could not be released, which was why the market was taken over by the officially distributed Sega Saturn during the first period, but as the Sega console withdraws, PlayStation imports and large piracy increased. In another market, China, the most popular 32-bit console was Sega Saturn, but after leaving the market, PlayStation grown with a base of 300,000 users until January 2000, although Sony China did not have plans to release it. The PlayStation was backed by a successful marketing campaign, allowing Sony to gain an early foothold in Europe and North America. Initially, PlayStation demographics were skewed towards adults, but the audience broadened after the first price drop. While the Saturn was positioned towards 18- to 34-year-olds, the PlayStation was initially marketed exclusively towards teenagers. Executives from both Sony and Sega reasoned that because younger players typically looked up to older, more experienced players, advertising targeted at teens and adults would draw them in too. Additionally, Sony found that adults reacted best to advertising aimed at teenagers; Lee Clow surmised that people who started to grow into adulthood regressed and became "17 again" when they played video games. The console was marketed with advertising slogans stylised as "LIVE IN YUR WRLD. PLY IN URS" (Live in Your World. Play in Ours.) and "U R NOT E" (red E). The four geometric shapes were derived from the symbols for the four buttons on the controller. Clow thought that by invoking such provocative statements, gamers would respond to the contrary and say "'Bullshit. Let me show you how ready I am.'" As the console's appeal enlarged, Sony's marketing efforts broadened from their earlier focus on mature players to specifically target younger children as well. Shortly after the PlayStation's release in Europe, Sony tasked marketing manager Geoff Glendenning with assessing the desires of a new target audience. Sceptical over Nintendo and Sega's reliance on television campaigns, Glendenning theorised that young adults transitioning from fourth-generation consoles would feel neglected by marketing directed at children and teenagers. Recognising the influence early 1990s underground clubbing and rave culture had on young people, especially in the United Kingdom, Glendenning felt that the culture had become mainstream enough to help cultivate PlayStation's emerging identity. Sony partnered with prominent nightclub owners such as Ministry of Sound and festival promoters to organise dedicated PlayStation areas where demonstrations of select games could be tested. Sheffield-based graphic design studio The Designers Republic was contracted by Sony to produce promotional materials aimed at a fashionable, club-going audience. Psygnosis' Wipeout in particular became associated with nightclub culture as it was widely featured in venues. By 1997, there were 52 nightclubs in the United Kingdom with dedicated PlayStation rooms. Glendenning recalled that he had discreetly used at least £100,000 a year in slush fund money to invest in impromptu marketing. In 1996, Sony expanded their CD production facilities in the United States due to the high demand for PlayStation games, increasing their monthly output from 4 million discs to 6.5 million discs. This was necessary because PlayStation sales were running at twice the rate of Saturn sales, and its lead dramatically increased when both consoles dropped in price to $199 that year. The PlayStation also outsold the Saturn at a similar ratio in Europe during 1996, with 2.2 million consoles sold in the region by the end of the year. Sales figures for PlayStation hardware and software only increased following the launch of the Nintendo 64. Tokunaka speculated that the Nintendo 64 launch had actually helped PlayStation sales by raising public awareness of the gaming market through Nintendo's added marketing efforts. Despite this, the PlayStation took longer to achieve dominance in Japan. Tokunaka said that, even after the PlayStation and Saturn had been on the market for nearly two years, the competition between them was still "very close", and neither console had led in sales for any meaningful length of time. By 1998, Sega, encouraged by their declining market share and significant financial losses, launched the Dreamcast as a last-ditch attempt to stay in the industry. Although its launch was successful, the technically superior 128-bit console was unable to subdue Sony's dominance in the industry. Sony still held 60% of the overall video game market share in North America at the end of 1999. Sega's initial confidence in their new console was undermined when Japanese sales were lower than expected, with disgruntled Japanese consumers reportedly returning their Dreamcasts in exchange for PlayStation software. On 2 March 1999, Sony officially revealed details of the PlayStation 2, which Kutaragi announced would feature a graphics processor designed to push more raw polygons than any console in history, effectively rivalling most supercomputers. The PlayStation continued to sell strongly at the turn of the new millennium: in June 2000, Sony released the PSOne, a smaller, redesigned variant which went on to outsell all other consoles in that year, including the PlayStation 2. In 2005, PlayStation became the first console to ship 100 million units with the PlayStation 2 later achieving this faster than its predecessor. The combined successes of both PlayStation consoles led to Sega retiring the Dreamcast in 2001, and abandoning the console business entirely. The PlayStation was eventually discontinued on 23 March 2006—over eleven years after its release, and less than a year before the debut of the PlayStation 3. Hardware The main microprocessor is a R3000 CPU made by LSI Logic operating at a clock rate of 33.8688 MHz and 30 MIPS. This 32-bit CPU relies heavily on the "cop2" 3D and matrix math coprocessor on the same die to provide the necessary speed to render complex 3D graphics. The role of the separate GPU chip is to draw 2D polygons and apply shading and textures to them: the rasterisation stage of the graphics pipeline. Sony's custom 16-bit sound chip supports ADPCM sources with up to 24 sound channels and offers a sampling rate of up to 44.1 kHz and music sequencing. It features 2 MB of main RAM, with an additional 1 MB of video RAM. The PlayStation has a maximum colour depth of 16.7 million true colours with 32 levels of transparency and unlimited colour look-up tables. The PlayStation can output composite, S-Video or RGB video signals through its AV Multi connector (with older models also having RCA connectors for composite), displaying resolutions from 256×224 to 640×480 pixels. Different games can use different resolutions. Earlier models also had proprietary parallel and serial ports that could be used to connect accessories or multiple consoles together; these were later removed due to a lack of usage. The PlayStation uses a proprietary video compression unit, MDEC, which is integrated into the CPU and allows for the presentation of full motion video at a higher quality than other consoles of its generation. Unusual for the time, the PlayStation lacks a dedicated 2D graphics processor; 2D elements are instead calculated as polygons by the Geometry Transfer Engine (GTE) so that they can be processed and displayed on screen by the GPU. While running, the GPU can also generate a total of 4,000 sprites and 180,000 polygons per second, in addition to 360,000 per second flat-shaded. The PlayStation went through a number of variants during its production run. Externally, the most notable change was the gradual reduction in the number of external connectors from the rear of the unit. This started with the original Japanese launch units; the SCPH-1000, released on 3 December 1994, was the only model that had an S-Video port, as it was removed from the next model. Subsequent models saw a reduction in number of parallel ports, with the final version only retaining one serial port. Sony marketed a development kit for amateur developers known as the Net Yaroze (meaning "Let's do it together" in Japanese). It was launched in June 1996 in Japan, and following public interest, was released the next year in other countries. The Net Yaroze allowed hobbyists to create their own games and upload them via an online forum run by Sony. The console was only available to buy through an ordering service and with the necessary documentation and software to program PlayStation games and applications through C programming compilers. On 7 July 2000, Sony released the PS One (stylised as "PS one" or "PSone"), a smaller, redesigned version of the original PlayStation. It was the highest-selling console through the end of the year, outselling all other consoles—including the PlayStation 2. In 2002, Sony released a 5-inch (130 mm) LCD screen add-on for the PS One, referred to as the "Combo pack". It also included a car cigarette lighter adaptor adding an extra layer of portability. Production of the LCD "Combo Pack" ceased in 2004, when the popularity of the PlayStation began to wane in markets outside Japan. A total of 28.15 million PS One units had been sold by the time it was discontinued in March 2006. Three iterations of the PlayStation's controller were released over the console's lifespan. The first controller, the PlayStation controller, was released alongside the PlayStation in December 1994. It features four individual directional buttons (as opposed to a conventional D-pad), a pair of shoulder buttons on both sides, Start and Select buttons in the centre, and four face buttons consisting of simple geometric shapes: a green triangle, red circle, blue cross, and a pink square (, , , ). Rather than depicting traditionally used letters or numbers onto its buttons, the PlayStation controller established a trademark which would be incorporated heavily into the PlayStation brand. Teiyu Goto, the designer of the original PlayStation controller, said that the circle and cross represent "yes" and "no", respectively (though this layout is reversed in Western versions); the triangle symbolises a point of view and the square is equated to a sheet of paper to be used to access menus. The European and North American models of the original PlayStation controllers are roughly 10% larger than its Japanese variant, to account for the fact the average person in those regions has larger hands than the average Japanese person. Sony's first analogue gamepad, the PlayStation Analog Joystick (often erroneously referred to as the "Sony Flightstick"), was first released in Japan in April 1996. Featuring two parallel joysticks, it uses potentiometer technology previously used on consoles such as the Vectrex; instead of relying on binary eight-way switches, the controller detects minute angular changes through the entire range of motion. The stick also features a thumb-operated digital hat switch on the right joystick, corresponding to the traditional D-pad, and used for instances when simple digital movements were necessary. The Analog Joystick sold poorly in Japan due to its high cost and cumbersome size. The increasing popularity of 3D games prompted Sony to add analogue sticks to its controller design to give users more freedom over their movements in virtual 3D environments. The first official analogue controller, the Dual Analog Controller, was revealed to the public in a small glass booth at the 1996 PlayStation Expo in Japan, and released in April 1997 to coincide with the Japanese releases of analogue-capable games Tobal 2 and Bushido Blade. In addition to the two analogue sticks (which also introduced two new buttons mapped to clicking in the analogue sticks), the Dual Analog controller features an "Analog" button and LED beneath the "Start" and "Select" buttons which toggles analogue functionality on or off. The controller also features rumble support, though Sony decided that haptic feedback would be removed from all overseas iterations before the United States release. A Sony spokesman stated that the feature was removed for "manufacturing reasons", although rumours circulated that Nintendo had attempted to legally block the release of the controller outside Japan due to similarities with the Nintendo 64 controller's Rumble Pak. However, a Nintendo spokesman denied that Nintendo took legal action. Next Generation's Chris Charla theorised that Sony dropped vibration feedback to keep the price of the controller down. In November 1997, Sony introduced the DualShock controller. Its name derives from its use of two (dual) vibration motors (shock). Unlike its predecessor, its analogue sticks feature textured rubber grips, longer handles, slightly different shoulder buttons and has rumble feedback included as standard on all versions. The DualShock later replaced its predecessors as the default controller. Sony released a series of peripherals to add extra layers of functionality to the PlayStation. Such peripherals include memory cards, the PlayStation Mouse, the PlayStation Link Cable, the Multiplayer Adapter (a four-player multitap), the Memory Drive (a disk drive for 3.5-inch floppy disks), the GunCon (a light gun), and the Glasstron (a monoscopic head-mounted display). Released exclusively in Japan, the PocketStation is a memory card peripheral which acts as a miniature personal digital assistant. The device features a monochrome liquid crystal display (LCD), infrared communication capability, a real-time clock, built-in flash memory, and sound capability. Sharing similarities with the Dreamcast's VMU peripheral, the PocketStation was typically distributed with certain PlayStation games, enhancing them with added features. The PocketStation proved popular in Japan, selling over five million units. Sony planned to release the peripheral outside Japan but the release was cancelled, despite receiving promotion in Europe and North America. In addition to playing games, most PlayStation models are equipped to play CD-Audio. The Asian model SCPH-5903 can also play Video CDs. Like most CD players, the PlayStation can play songs in a programmed order, shuffle the playback order of the disc and repeat one song or the entire disc. Later PlayStation models use a music visualisation function called SoundScope. This function, as well as a memory card manager, is accessed by starting the console without either inserting a game or closing the CD tray, thereby accessing a graphical user interface (GUI) for the PlayStation BIOS. The GUI for the PS One and PlayStation differ depending on the firmware version: the original PlayStation GUI had a dark blue background with rainbow graffiti used as buttons, while the early PAL PlayStation and PS One GUI had a grey blocked background with two icons in the middle. PlayStation emulation is versatile and can be run on numerous modern devices. Bleem! was a commercial emulator which was released for IBM-compatible PCs and the Dreamcast in 1999. It was notable for being aggressively marketed during the PlayStation's lifetime, and was the centre of multiple controversial lawsuits filed by Sony. Bleem! was programmed in assembly language, which allowed it to emulate PlayStation games with improved visual fidelity, enhanced resolutions, and filtered textures that was not possible on original hardware. Sony sued Bleem! two days after its release, citing copyright infringement and accusing the company of engaging in unfair competition and patent infringement by allowing use of PlayStation BIOSs on a Sega console. Bleem! were subsequently forced to shut down in November 2001. Sony was aware that using CDs for game distribution could have left games vulnerable to piracy, due to the growing popularity of CD-R and optical disc drives with burning capability. To preclude illegal copying, a proprietary process for PlayStation disc manufacturing was developed that, in conjunction with an augmented optical drive in Tiger H/E assembly, prevented burned copies of games from booting on an unmodified console. Specifically, all genuine PlayStation discs were printed with a small section of deliberate irregular data, which the PlayStation's optical pick-up was capable of detecting and decoding. Consoles would not boot game discs without a specific wobble frequency contained in the data of the disc pregap sector (the same system was also used to encode discs' regional lockouts). This signal was within Red Book CD tolerances, so PlayStation discs' actual content could still be read by a conventional disc drive; however, the disc drive could not detect the wobble frequency (therefore duplicating the discs omitting it), since the laser pick-up system of any optical disc drive would interpret this wobble as an oscillation of the disc surface and compensate for it in the reading process. Early PlayStations, particularly early 1000 models, experience skipping full-motion video or physical "ticking" noises from the unit. The problems stem from poorly placed vents leading to overheating in some environments, causing the plastic mouldings inside the console to warp slightly and create knock-on effects with the laser assembly. The solution is to sit the console on a surface which dissipates heat efficiently in a well vented area or raise the unit up slightly from its resting surface. Sony representatives also recommended unplugging the PlayStation when it is not in use, as the system draws in a small amount of power (and therefore heat) even when turned off. The first batch of PlayStations use a KSM-440AAM laser unit, whose case and movable parts are all built out of plastic. Over time, the plastic lens sled rail wears out—usually unevenly—due to friction. The placement of the laser unit close to the power supply accelerates wear, due to the additional heat, which makes the plastic more vulnerable to friction. Eventually, one side of the lens sled will become so worn that the laser can tilt, no longer pointing directly at the CD; after this, games will no longer load due to data read errors. Sony fixed the problem by making the sled out of die-cast metal and placing the laser unit further away from the power supply on later PlayStation models. Due to an engineering oversight, the PlayStation does not produce a proper signal on several older models of televisions, causing the display to flicker or bounce around the screen. Sony decided not to change the console design, since only a small percentage of PlayStation owners used such televisions, and instead gave consumers the option of sending their PlayStation unit to a Sony service centre to have an official modchip installed, allowing play on older televisions. Game library The PlayStation featured a diverse game library which grew to appeal to all types of players. Critically acclaimed PlayStation games included Final Fantasy VII (1997), Crash Bandicoot (1996), Spyro the Dragon (1998), Metal Gear Solid (1998), all of which became established franchises. Final Fantasy VII is credited with allowing role-playing games to gain mass-market appeal outside Japan, and is considered one of the most influential and greatest video games ever made. The PlayStation's bestselling game is Gran Turismo (1997), which sold 10.85 million units. After the PlayStation's discontinuation in 2006, the cumulative software shipment was 962 million units. Following its 1994 launch in Japan, early games included Ridge Racer, Crime Crackers, King's Field, Motor Toon Grand Prix, Toh Shin Den (i.e. Battle Arena Toshinden), and Kileak: The Blood. The first two games available at its later North American launch were Jumping Flash! (1995) and Ridge Racer, with Jumping Flash! heralded as an ancestor for 3D graphics in console gaming. Wipeout, Air Combat, Twisted Metal, Warhawk and Destruction Derby were among the popular first-year games, and the first to be reissued as part of Sony's Greatest Hits or Platinum range. At the time of the PlayStation's first Christmas season, Psygnosis had produced around 70% of its launch catalogue; their breakthrough racing game Wipeout was acclaimed for its techno soundtrack and helped raise awareness of Britain's underground music community. Eidos Interactive's action-adventure game Tomb Raider contributed substantially to the success of the console in 1996, with its main protagonist Lara Croft becoming an early gaming icon and garnering unprecedented media promotion. Licensed tie-in video games of popular films were also prevalent; Argonaut Games' 2001 adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone went on to sell over eight million copies late in the console's lifespan. Third-party developers committed largely to the console's wide-ranging game catalogue even after the launch of the PlayStation 2; some of the notable exclusives in this era include Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix, Syphon Filter 3, C-12: Final Resistance, Dance Dance Revolution Konamix and Digimon World 3.[c] Sony assisted with game reprints as late as 2008 with Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection, this being the last PlayStation game officially released and licensed by Sony. Initially, in the United States, PlayStation games were packaged in long cardboard boxes, similar to non-Japanese 3DO and Saturn games. Sony later switched to the jewel case format typically used for audio CDs and Japanese video games, as this format took up less retailer shelf space (which was at a premium due to the large number of PlayStation games being released), and focus testing showed that most consumers preferred this format. Reception The PlayStation was mostly well received upon release. Critics in the west generally welcomed the new console; the staff of Next Generation reviewed the PlayStation a few weeks after its North American launch, where they commented that, while the CPU is "fairly average", the supplementary custom hardware, such as the GPU and sound processor, is stunningly powerful. They praised the PlayStation's focus on 3D, and complemented the comfort of its controller and the convenience of its memory cards. Giving the system 41⁄2 out of 5 stars, they concluded, "To succeed in this extremely cut-throat market, you need a combination of great hardware, great games, and great marketing. Whether by skill, luck, or just deep pockets, Sony has scored three out of three in the first salvo of this war." Albert Kim from Entertainment Weekly praised the PlayStation as a technological marvel, rivalling that of Sega and Nintendo. Famicom Tsūshin scored the console a 19 out of 40, lower than the Saturn's 24 out of 40, in May 1995. In a 1997 year-end review, a team of five Electronic Gaming Monthly editors gave the PlayStation scores of 9.5, 8.5, 9.0, 9.0, and 9.5—for all five editors, the highest score they gave to any of the five consoles reviewed in the issue. They lauded the breadth and quality of the games library, saying it had vastly improved over previous years due to developers mastering the system's capabilities in addition to Sony revising their stance on 2D and role playing games. They also complimented the low price point of the games compared to the Nintendo 64's, and noted that it was the only console on the market that could be relied upon to deliver a solid stream of games for the coming year, primarily due to third party developers almost unanimously favouring it over its competitors. Legacy SCE was an upstart in the video game industry in late 1994, as the video game market in the early 1990s was dominated by Nintendo and Sega. Nintendo had been the clear leader in the industry since the introduction of the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985 and the Nintendo 64 was initially expected to maintain this position. The PlayStation's target audience included the generation which was the first to grow up with mainstream video games, along with 18- to 29-year-olds who were not the primary focus of Nintendo. By the late 1990s, Sony became a highly regarded console brand due to the PlayStation, with a significant lead over second-place Nintendo, while Sega was relegated to a distant third. The PlayStation became the first "computer entertainment platform" to ship over 100 million units worldwide, with many critics attributing the console's success to third-party developers. It remains the sixth best-selling console of all time as of 2025[update], with a total of 102.49 million units sold. Around 7,900 individual games were published for the console during its 11-year life span, the second-most games ever produced for a console. Its success resulted in a significant financial boon for Sony as profits from their video game division contributed to 23%. Sony's next-generation PlayStation 2, which is backward compatible with the PlayStation's DualShock controller and games, was announced in 1999 and launched in 2000. The PlayStation's lead in installed base and developer support paved the way for the success of its successor, which overcame the earlier launch of the Sega's Dreamcast and then fended off competition from Microsoft's newcomer Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube. The PlayStation 2's immense success and failure of the Dreamcast were among the main factors which led to Sega abandoning the console market. To date, five PlayStation home consoles have been released, which have continued the same numbering scheme, as well as two portable systems. The PlayStation 3 also maintained backward compatibility with original PlayStation discs. Hundreds of PlayStation games have been digitally re-released on the PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. The PlayStation has often ranked among the best video game consoles. In 2018, Retro Gamer named it the third best console, crediting its sophisticated 3D capabilities as one of its key factors in gaining mass success, and lauding it as a "game-changer in every sense possible". In 2009, IGN ranked the PlayStation the seventh best console in their list, noting its appeal towards older audiences to be a crucial factor in propelling the video game industry, as well as its assistance in transitioning game industry to use the CD-ROM format. Keith Stuart from The Guardian likewise named it as the seventh best console in 2020, declaring that its success was so profound it "ruled the 1990s". In January 2025, Lorentio Brodesco announced the nsOne project, attempting to reverse engineer PlayStation's motherboard. Brodesco stated that "detailed documentation on the original motherboard was either incomplete or entirely unavailable". The project was successfully crowdfunded via Kickstarter. In June, Brodesco manufactured the first working motherboard, promising to bring a fully rooted version with multilayer routing as well as documentation and design files in the near future. The success of the PlayStation contributed to the demise of cartridge-based home consoles. While not the first system to use an optical disc format, it was the first highly successful one, and ended up going head-to-head with the proprietary cartridge-relying Nintendo 64,[d] which the industry had expected to use CDs like PlayStation. After the demise of the Sega Saturn, Nintendo was left as Sony's main competitor in Western markets. Nintendo chose not to use CDs for the Nintendo 64; they were likely concerned with the proprietary cartridge format's ability to help enforce copy protection, given their substantial reliance on licensing and exclusive games for their revenue. Besides their larger capacity, CD-ROMs could be produced in bulk quantities at a much faster rate than ROM cartridges, a week compared to two to three months. Further, the cost of production per unit was far cheaper, allowing Sony to offer games about 40% lower cost to the user compared to ROM cartridges while still making the same amount of net revenue. In Japan, Sony published fewer copies of a wide variety of games for the PlayStation as a risk-limiting step, a model that had been used by Sony Music for CD audio discs. The production flexibility of CD-ROMs meant that Sony could produce larger volumes of popular games to get onto the market quickly, something that could not be done with cartridges due to their manufacturing lead time. The lower production costs of CD-ROMs also allowed publishers an additional source of profit: budget-priced reissues of games which had already recouped their development costs. Tokunaka remarked in 1996: Choosing CD-ROM is one of the most important decisions that we made. As I'm sure you understand, PlayStation could just as easily have worked with masked ROM [cartridges]. The 3D engine and everything—the whole PlayStation format—is independent of the media. But for various reasons (including the economies for the consumer, the ease of the manufacturing, inventory control for the trade, and also the software publishers) we deduced that CD-ROM would be the best media for PlayStation. The increasing complexity of developing games pushed cartridges to their storage limits and gradually discouraged some third-party developers. Part of the CD format's appeal to publishers was that they could be produced at a significantly lower cost and offered more production flexibility to meet demand. As a result, some third-party developers switched to the PlayStation, including Square and Enix, whose Final Fantasy VII and Dragon Quest VII respectively had been planned for the Nintendo 64 (both companies later merged to form Square Enix). Other developers released fewer games for the Nintendo 64 (Konami, releasing only thirteen N64 games but over fifty on the PlayStation). Nintendo 64 game releases were less frequent than the PlayStation's, with many being developed by either Nintendo themselves or second-parties such as Rare. The PlayStation Classic is a dedicated video game console made by Sony Interactive Entertainment that emulates PlayStation games. It was announced in September 2018 at the Tokyo Game Show, and released on 3 December 2018, the 24th anniversary of the release of the original console. As a dedicated console, the PlayStation Classic features 20 pre-installed games; the games run off the open source emulator PCSX. The console is bundled with two replica wired PlayStation controllers (those without analogue sticks), an HDMI cable, and a USB-Type A cable. Internally, the console uses a MediaTek MT8167a Quad A35 system on a chip with four central processing cores clocked at @ 1.5 GHz and a Power VR GE8300 graphics processing unit. It includes 16 GB of eMMC flash storage and 1 Gigabyte of DDR3 SDRAM. The PlayStation Classic is 45% smaller than the original console. The PlayStation Classic received negative reviews from critics and was compared unfavorably to Nintendo's rival Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition and Super Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition. Criticism was directed at its meagre game library, user interface, emulation quality, use of PAL versions for certain games, use of the original controller, and high retail price, though the console's design received praise. The console sold poorly. See also Notes References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachosia] | [TOKENS: 2181] |
Contents Arachosia Arachosia (/ærəˈkoʊsiə/; Ancient Greek: Ἀραχωσία, romanized: Arachōsíā), or Harauvatiš (Old Persian: 𐏃𐎼𐎢𐎺𐎫𐎡𐏁, romanized: Harauvatiš), was a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire. Mainly centred around the Arghandab River, a tributary of the Helmand River, it extended as far east as the Indus River. The satrapy's Persian-language name is the etymological equivalent of Sárasvatī in Vedic Sanskrit. In Greek, the satrapy's name was derived from Arachōtós, the Greek-language name for the Arghandab River. Around 330 BCE, Alexander the Great commissioned the building of Alexandria Arachosia as Arachosia's new capital city under the Macedonian Empire. It was built on top of an earlier Persian military fortress after Alexander's conquest of Persia. Etymology "Arachosia" is the Latinized form of Greek Ἀραχωσία (Arachōsíā). "The same region appears in the Avestan Vidēvdāt (1.12) under the indigenous dialect form 𐬵𐬀𐬭𐬀𐬓𐬀𐬌𐬙𐬍 Haraxvaitī- (whose -axva- is typical non-Avestan)." In Old Persian inscriptions, the region is referred to as 𐏃𐎼𐎢𐎺𐎫𐎡𐏁, written h(a)-r(a)-u-v(a)-t-i. This form is the "etymological equivalent" of Vedic Sanskrit Sarasvatī-, the name of a river literally meaning "rich in waters/lakes" and derived from sáras- "lake, pond." (cf. Aredvi Sura Anahita). "Arachosia" was named after the name of a river that runs through it. It was known in Ancient Greek as the Arachōtós and is now called the Arghandab River and is a left-bank tributary of the Helmand River. Geography Arachosia bordered on Drangiana to the west, on the Paropamisadae to the north, Hindush to the east and Gedrosia to the south. Isidore and Ptolemy (6.20.4-5) each provide a list of cities in Arachosia, among them (yet another) Alexandria, which lay on the river Arachotus. This city is frequently misidentified with present-day Kandahar in Afghanistan, the name of which was thought to be derived (via "Iskanderiya") from "Alexandria", reflecting a connection to Alexander the Great's visit to the city on his campaign towards India. However, a recent discovery of an inscription on a clay tablet has provided proof that 'Kandahar' was already a city that traded actively with Persia well before Alexander's time. Isidore, Strabo (11.8.9) and Pliny (6.61) also refer to the city as "metropolis of Arachosia".[citation needed] In his list, Ptolemy also refers to a city named Arachotus (English: Arachote /ˈærəkoʊt/; Greek: Ἀραχωτός) or Arachoti (acc. to Strabo), which was the earlier capital of the land. Pliny the Elder and Stephen of Byzantium mention that its original name was Cophen (Κωφήν). Hsuan Tsang refers to the name as Kaofu. The city is identified today with Arghandab, which lies northwest of present-day Kandahar. History The region is first referred to in the Achaemenid-era Elamite Persepolis fortification tablets. It appears again in the Old Persian, Akkadian and Aramaic inscriptions of Darius I and Xerxes I among lists of subject peoples and countries. It is subsequently also identified as the source of the ivory used in Darius' palace at Susa. In the Behistun inscription (DB 3.54-76), the King recounts that a Persian was thrice defeated by the Achaemenid governor of Arachosia, Vivana, who so ensured that the province remained under Darius' control. It has been suggested that this "strategically unintelligible engagement" was ventured by the rebel because "there were close relations between Persia and Arachosia concerning the Zoroastrian faith." The next reference to Arachosia comes from the Greeks and Romans, who record that under Darius III the Arachosians and Drangians were under the command of a governor who, together with the army of the Bactrian governor, contrived a plot of the Arachosians against Alexander (Curtius Rufus 8.13.3). Following Alexander's conquest of the Achaemenids, the Macedonian appointed his generals as governors (Arrian 3.28.1, 5.6.2; Curtius Rufus 7.3.5; Plutarch, Eumenes 19.3; Polyaenus 4.6.15; Diodorus 18.3.3; Orosius 3.23.1 3; Justin 13.4.22). In 316 BCE, Antigonus I Monophthalmus sent most of the elite Argyraspides, a veteran Macedonian corps with over forty years experience, to Arachosia to protect the eastern frontier with India. However, they were sent with the order to Sibyrtius, the Macedonian satrap of Arachosia, to dispatch them by small groups of two or three to dangerous missions so that their numbers would rapidly dwindle and remove them as a military threat to his power. Following the Wars of the Diadochi, the region became part of the Seleucid Empire, which traded it to the Mauryan Empire in 305 BCE as part of an alliance. The Shunga dynasty overthrew the Mauryans in 185 BC, but shortly afterwards lost Arachosia to the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. It then became part of the break-away Indo-Greek Kingdom in the mid 2nd century BCE. Indo-Scythians expelled the Indo-Greeks by the mid 1st century BCE, but lost the region to the Arsacids and Indo-Parthians. At what time (and in what form) Parthian rule over Arachosia was reestablished cannot be determined with any authenticity. From Isidore 19, it is certain that a part (perhaps only a little) of the region was under Arsacid rule in the 1st century CE, and that the Parthians called it Indikē Leukē, "White India." The Kushans captured Arachosia from the Indo-Parthians and ruled the region until around 230 CE, when they were defeated by the Sassanids, the second Persian Empire, after which the Kushans were replaced by Sassanid vassals known as the Kushanshas or Indo-Sassanids. In 420 CE the Kushanshas were driven out of present Afghanistan by the Chionites, who established the Kidarite Kingdom. The Kidarites were replaced in the 460s CE by the Hephthalites, who were defeated in 565 CE by a coalition of Persian and Turkish armies. Arachosia became part of the surviving Kushano-Hephthalite Kingdoms of Kapisa, then Kabul, before coming under attack from the Moslem Arabs. These kingdoms were at first vassals of Sassanids. Around 870 CE the Kushano-Hephthalites (aka Turkshahi Dynasty) was replaced by the Saffarids, then the Samanid Empire and Muslim Turkish Ghaznavids in the early 11th century CE. Arab geographers referred to the region (or parts of it) as 'Arokhaj', 'Rokhaj', 'Rohkaj' or simply 'Roh'. Inhabitants The inhabitants of Arachosia were Iranian peoples and were referred to as Arachosians or Arachoti. They were called Pactyans in reference to their individual ethnicity, a name that may have been in reference to the ethnic group known as the Pashtuns. Isidore of Charax, in his 1st-century CE "Parthian stations" itinerary, described an "Alexandropolis, the metropolis of Arachosia", which he said was still Greek even at such a late time: "Beyond is Arachosia. And the Parthians call this White India; there are the city of Biyt and the city of Pharsana and the city of Chorochoad and the city of Demetrias; then Alexandropolis, the metropolis of Arachosia; it is Greek, and by it flows the river Arachotus. As far as this place the land is under the rule of the Parthians." — Isidore of Charax, Parthians stations, 1st century CE. Original text in paragraph 19 of Parthian stations A theory of Croatian origin traces the origin of the Croats to the area of Arachosia. This connection was at first drawn because of the similarity of Croatian (Croatia – Croatian: Hrvatska, Croats – Croatian: Hrvati / Čakavian dialect: Harvati / Kajkavian dialect: Horvati) and Arachosian name, but other researches indicate that there are also linguistic, cultural, agrobiological and genetic ties. Since Croatia became an independent state in 1991, the Iranian theory gained more popularity, and many scientific papers and books have been published. See also Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://www.wired.com/story/public-health-workers-are-quitting-over-assignments-to-guantanamo/] | [TOKENS: 6593] |
Amy Maxmen, KFF Health NewsThe Big StoryFeb 6, 2026 6:00 AMPublic Health Workers Are Quitting Over Assignments to GuantánamoDoctors, nurses, and other officers are increasingly being deployed to ICE detention centers. Some have resigned in protest, while others offer a rare look into bleak conditions.US service members train to simulate the evacuation of a detainee from Naval Station Guantánamo Bay.PHOTOGRAPH: Staff Sergeant Aubree Owens/US Air ForceSave StorySave this storySave StorySave this storyRebekah Stewart, a nurse at the US Public Health Service, got a call last April that brought her to tears. She had been selected for deployment to the Trump administration’s new immigration detention operation at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. This posting combined Donald Trump’s longtime passion to use the offshore base to move “some bad dudes” out of the United States with a promise made shortly after his inauguration to hold thousands of noncitizens there. The naval base is known for the torture and inhumane treatment of men suspected of terrorism in the wake of 9/11.“Deployments are typically not something you can say no to,” Stewart said. She pleaded with the coordinating office, which found another nurse to go in her place.Other public health officers, who worked at Guantánamo in the past year, described conditions there for the detainees, some of whom first learned they were in Cuba from the nurses and doctors sent to care for them. They treated immigrants detained in a dark prison called Camp 6, where no sunlight filters in, said the officers who have been granted anonymity because they fear retaliation for speaking publicly. It previously held people with suspected ties to Al Qaeda. The officers said they were not briefed ahead of time on the details of their potential duties at the base.Although the Public Health Service is not a branch of the US military, its uniformed officers—roughly 5,000 doctors, nurses, and other health workers—act like stethoscope-wearing soldiers in emergencies. The government deploys them during hurricanes, wildfires, mass shootings, and measles outbreaks. In the interim, they fill gaps at an alphabet soup of government agencies.The Trump administration’s mass arrests to curb immigration have created a new type of health emergency as the number of people detained reaches record highs. About 71,000 immigrants are currently imprisoned, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, which shows that most have no criminal record.Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem has said: “President Donald Trump has been very clear: Guantánamo Bay will hold the worst of the worst.” However, several news organizations have reported that many of the men shipped to the base had no criminal convictions. As many as 90 percent of them were described as “low-risk” in a May progress report from a chaplain observing the detainees.In fits and starts, the Trump administration has sent about 780 noncitizens to Guantánamo Bay, according to The New York Times. Numbers fluctuate as new detainees arrive and others are returned to the US or deported.While some Public Health Service officers have provided medical care to detained immigrants in the past, this is the first time in American history that Guantánamo has been used to house immigrants who had been living in the US. Officers said ICE postings are getting more common. After dodging Guantánamo, Stewart was instructed to report to an ICE detention center in Texas.“Public health officers are being asked to facilitate a man-made humanitarian crisis,” she said.Seeing no option to refuse deployments that she found objectionable, Stewart resigned after a decade of service. She would give up the prospect of a pension offered after 20 years.“It was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make,” she said. “It was my dream job.”One of her PHS colleagues, nurse Dena Bushman, grappled with a similar moral dilemma when she got a notice to report to Guantánamo a few weeks after the shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August. Bushman, who was posted with the CDC, got a medical waiver delaying her deployment on account of stress and grief. She considered resigning, then did.“This may sound extreme,” Bushman said. “But when I was making this decision, I couldn’t help but think about how the people who fed those imprisoned in concentration camps were still part of the Nazi regime.”US Public Health Service members assigned to Joint Task Force Southern Guard listen to a briefing prior to a medical evacuation training at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay. PHOTOGRAPH: Staff Sergeant Aubree Owens/US Air ForceOthers have resigned, but many officers remain. Despite feeling alarmed by Trump’s tactics, detained people need care, said multiple PHS officers.“We do the best we can to provide care to people in this shit show,” said a PHS nurse who worked in detention facilities last year.“I respect people and treat them like humans,” she said. “I try to be a light in the darkness, the one person that makes someone smile in this horrible mess.”The PHS officers conceded that their power to protect people was limited in a detention system fraught with overcrowding, disorganization, and the psychological trauma of uncertainty, family separations, and sleep deprivation.“Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE,” said Tricia McLaughlin, chief spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, in an emailed statement to KFF Health News.Admiral Brian Christine, assistant secretary for Health at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Public Health Service, said in an email: “Our duty is clear: say ‘Yes Sir!’, salute smartly, and execute the mission: show up, provide humane care, and protect health.” As WIRED and others have reported, Christine is a recent appointee who, until recently, was a urologist specializing in testosterone and male fertility issues.“In pursuit of subjective morality or public displays of virtue,” he added, “we risk abandoning the very individuals we pledged to serve.”Going Into the UnknownIn the months before Stewart resigned, she reflected on her previous deployments, during Trump’s first term, to immigration processing centers run by Customs and Border Protection. Fifty women were held in a single concrete cell in Texas, she recalled.“The most impactful thing I could do was to convince the guards to allow the women, who had been in there for a week, to shower,” she said. “I witnessed suffering without having much ability to address it.”Stewart spoke with Bushman and other PHS officers who were embedded at the CDC last year. They assisted with the agency’s response to ongoing measles outbreaks, with sexually transmitted infection research, and more. Their roles became crucial last year as the Trump administration laid off droves of CDC staffers.Stewart, Bushman, and a few other PHS officers at the CDC said they met with middle managers to ask for details about the deployments: If they went to Guantánamo and ICE facilities, how much power would they have to provide what they considered medically necessary care? If they saw anything unethical, how could they report it? Would it be investigated? Would they be protected from reprisal?Stewart and Bushman said they were given a PHS office phone number they could call if they had a complaint while on assignment. Otherwise, they said, their questions went unanswered. They resigned before reporting to Guantánamo. But PHS officers who were deployed to the base said that they weren’t given details about their potential duties—or the standard operating procedure for medical care—before they arrived.US service members stand by to transport a simulated detainee patient during a medical evacuation training. PHOTOGRAPH: Staff Sergeant Aubree Owens/US Air ForceStephen Xenakis, a retired Army general and psychiatrist who has advised on medical care at Guantánamo for two decades, said that was troubling. Before health workers deploy, he said, they should understand what they’ll be expected to do.The consequences of going in blind can be severe. In 2014, the Navy threatened court martial against one of its nurses at Guantánamo who refused to force-feed prisoners on hunger strike, who were protesting inhumane treatment and indefinite detention. The protocol was brutal: A person was shackled to a five-point restraint chair as nurses shoved a tube for liquid food into their stomach through their nostrils.“He wasn’t given clear guidance in advance on how these procedures would be conducted at Guantánamo,” Xenakis said of the nurse. “Until he saw it, he didn’t understand how painful it was for detainees.”The American Nurses Association and the Physicians for Human Rights sided with the nurse, calling the procedure a violation of the ethical standards of medical professionals. After a year, the military dropped the charges.A uniformed doctor’s or nurse’s power tends to depend on their rank, their supervisor, and chains of command, Xenakis said. He helped put an end to some inhumane practices at Guantánamo more than a decade ago, when he and other retired generals and admirals publicly objected to a technique called "walling," in which interrogators slammed the heads of detainees suspected of terrorism against a wall, causing slight concussions. Xenakis argued that science didn’t support walling as an effective means of interrogation and that it was unethical, amounting to torture.Torture hasn’t been reported from Guantánamo’s immigration operation, but ICE shift reports obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the government watchdog group American Oversight note concerns about detainees resorting to hunger strikes and self-harm.“Welfare checks with potential hunger strike IA’s,” short for illegal aliens, says an April 30 note from a contractor working with ICE. “In case of a hunger strike or other emergencies,” the report adds, PHS and ICE are “coordinating policies and procedures.”“De-escalation of potential pod wide hunger strike/potential riot,” says an entry from last July. “Speak with alien on suicide watch regarding well being.”Inmates and investigations have reported delayed medical care at immigration detention facilities and dangerous conditions, including overcrowding and a lack of sanitation. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody in 2025, making it the deadliest year in two decades.“They are arresting and detaining more people than their facilities can support,” said one PHS officer. The most prevalent problem the officer saw among imprisoned immigrants was psychological. They worried about never seeing their families again or being sent back to a country where they feared they’d be killed. “People are scared out of their minds,” the officer said.US Navy Lieutenant Commander Chad R. Scott, Joint Task Force Southern Guard medical planner, discusses execution plans with Lieutenant Commander Bobby Kimbro prior to a medical evacuation training. PHOTOGRAPH: Staff Sergeant Aubree Owens/US Air ForceNo SunlightThe PHS officers who were at Guantánamo said that the men they saw were detained in either low-security barracks, with a handful of people per room, or in Camp 6, a dark, high-security facility without natural light. The ICE shift reports describe the two stations by their position on the island, Leeward for the barracks and Windward for Camp 6. About 50 Cuban men sent to Guantánamo in December and January have languished at Camp 6, according to The New York Times.A Navy hospital on the base mainly serves the military and other residents who aren’t locked up—and in any case, its capabilities are limited, the officers said. To reduce the chance of expensive medical evacuations back to the US to see specialists quickly, they said, the immigrants were screened before being shipped to Guantánamo. People over age 60 or who needed daily drugs to manage diabetes and high blood pressure, for example, had generally been excluded. Still, the officers said, some detainees have had to be evacuated back to Florida.PHS nurses and doctors said they screened immigrants again when they arrived and provided ongoing care, fielding complaints about gastrointestinal distress and depression. One observer's report says, “The USPHS psychologist started an exercise group” for detainees.Doctors’ requests for lab work were often turned down because of logistical hurdles, partly due to the number of agencies working together on the base, the officers said. Even a routine test, a complete blood cell count, took weeks to process versus hours in the US.DHS and the Department of Defense, which have coordinated on the Guantánamo immigration operation, did not respond to requests for comment about their work there.PHOTOGRAPH: Staff Sergeant Aubree Owens/US Air ForceOne PHS officer who helped medically screen new arrivals said the detainees were often surprised to learn they were at Guantánamo.“I’d tell them, I’m sorry you are here,” the officer said. “No one freaked out. It was like the 10-millionth time they had been transferred.” Some of the men had been detained in various facilities for five or six months and said they wanted to return to their home countries, according to the officer. Health workers had neither an answer nor a fix.Unlike ICE detention facilities in the US, Guantánamo hasn’t been overcrowded. “I have never been so not busy at work,” one officer said. A military base on a tropical island, Guantánamo offers activities like snorkeling, paddleboard yoga, and kickboxing to those who aren’t imprisoned. Even so, the officer said they would rather be home than on this assignment on the taxpayer’s dime.Transporting staff and supplies to the island and maintaining them on base is enormously expensive. The government paid an estimated $16,540 per day per detainee at Guantánamo to hold those accused of terrorism, according to a 2025 Washington Post analysis of DOD data. The average cost to detain immigrants in ICE facilities in the US is $157 per day.Even so, the funding has skyrocketed: Congress granted ICE a record $78 billion for fiscal year 2026, a staggering increase from $9.9 billion in 2024 and $6.5 billion nearly a decade ago. Last year, the Trump administration also diverted more than $2 billion from the national defense budget to immigration detention, according to a report from congressional Democrats. About $60 million of it went to Guantánamo.“Detaining noncitizens at Guantánamo is far more costly and logistically burdensome than holding them in ICE detention facilities within the United States,” wrote Deborah Fleischaker, a former assistant director at ICE, in a declaration submitted as part of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union early last year. In December, a federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s request to dismiss a separate ACLU case, questioning the legality of detaining immigrants outside of the country.Anne Schuchat, who served with the PHS for 30 years before retiring in 2018, said PHS deployments to detention centers may cost the nation in terms of security, too. “A key concern has always been to have enough of these officers available for public health emergencies,” she said. (Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson, said the immigration deployments don’t affect the Public Health Service’s potential response to other emergencies.)In the past, PHS officers have stood up medical shelters during hurricanes in Louisiana and Texas, rolled out Covid testing in the earliest months of the pandemic, and provided crisis support after the deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the Boston Marathon bombing.“It’s important for the public to be aware of how many government resources are being used so that the current administration can carry out this one agenda,” said Stewart, one of the nurses who resigned. “This one thing that’s probably turning us into the types of countries we have fought wars against.”KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at mail@wired.com. Public Health Workers Are Quitting Over Assignments to Guantánamo Rebekah Stewart, a nurse at the US Public Health Service, got a call last April that brought her to tears. She had been selected for deployment to the Trump administration’s new immigration detention operation at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. This posting combined Donald Trump’s longtime passion to use the offshore base to move “some bad dudes” out of the United States with a promise made shortly after his inauguration to hold thousands of noncitizens there. The naval base is known for the torture and inhumane treatment of men suspected of terrorism in the wake of 9/11. “Deployments are typically not something you can say no to,” Stewart said. She pleaded with the coordinating office, which found another nurse to go in her place. Other public health officers, who worked at Guantánamo in the past year, described conditions there for the detainees, some of whom first learned they were in Cuba from the nurses and doctors sent to care for them. They treated immigrants detained in a dark prison called Camp 6, where no sunlight filters in, said the officers who have been granted anonymity because they fear retaliation for speaking publicly. It previously held people with suspected ties to Al Qaeda. The officers said they were not briefed ahead of time on the details of their potential duties at the base. Although the Public Health Service is not a branch of the US military, its uniformed officers—roughly 5,000 doctors, nurses, and other health workers—act like stethoscope-wearing soldiers in emergencies. The government deploys them during hurricanes, wildfires, mass shootings, and measles outbreaks. In the interim, they fill gaps at an alphabet soup of government agencies. The Trump administration’s mass arrests to curb immigration have created a new type of health emergency as the number of people detained reaches record highs. About 71,000 immigrants are currently imprisoned, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, which shows that most have no criminal record. Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem has said: “President Donald Trump has been very clear: Guantánamo Bay will hold the worst of the worst.” However, several news organizations have reported that many of the men shipped to the base had no criminal convictions. As many as 90 percent of them were described as “low-risk” in a May progress report from a chaplain observing the detainees. In fits and starts, the Trump administration has sent about 780 noncitizens to Guantánamo Bay, according to The New York Times. Numbers fluctuate as new detainees arrive and others are returned to the US or deported. While some Public Health Service officers have provided medical care to detained immigrants in the past, this is the first time in American history that Guantánamo has been used to house immigrants who had been living in the US. Officers said ICE postings are getting more common. After dodging Guantánamo, Stewart was instructed to report to an ICE detention center in Texas. “Public health officers are being asked to facilitate a man-made humanitarian crisis,” she said. Seeing no option to refuse deployments that she found objectionable, Stewart resigned after a decade of service. She would give up the prospect of a pension offered after 20 years. “It was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make,” she said. “It was my dream job.” One of her PHS colleagues, nurse Dena Bushman, grappled with a similar moral dilemma when she got a notice to report to Guantánamo a few weeks after the shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August. Bushman, who was posted with the CDC, got a medical waiver delaying her deployment on account of stress and grief. She considered resigning, then did. “This may sound extreme,” Bushman said. “But when I was making this decision, I couldn’t help but think about how the people who fed those imprisoned in concentration camps were still part of the Nazi regime.” US Public Health Service members assigned to Joint Task Force Southern Guard listen to a briefing prior to a medical evacuation training at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay. Others have resigned, but many officers remain. Despite feeling alarmed by Trump’s tactics, detained people need care, said multiple PHS officers. “We do the best we can to provide care to people in this shit show,” said a PHS nurse who worked in detention facilities last year. “I respect people and treat them like humans,” she said. “I try to be a light in the darkness, the one person that makes someone smile in this horrible mess.” The PHS officers conceded that their power to protect people was limited in a detention system fraught with overcrowding, disorganization, and the psychological trauma of uncertainty, family separations, and sleep deprivation. “Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE,” said Tricia McLaughlin, chief spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, in an emailed statement to KFF Health News. Admiral Brian Christine, assistant secretary for Health at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Public Health Service, said in an email: “Our duty is clear: say ‘Yes Sir!’, salute smartly, and execute the mission: show up, provide humane care, and protect health.” As WIRED and others have reported, Christine is a recent appointee who, until recently, was a urologist specializing in testosterone and male fertility issues. “In pursuit of subjective morality or public displays of virtue,” he added, “we risk abandoning the very individuals we pledged to serve.” Going Into the Unknown In the months before Stewart resigned, she reflected on her previous deployments, during Trump’s first term, to immigration processing centers run by Customs and Border Protection. Fifty women were held in a single concrete cell in Texas, she recalled. “The most impactful thing I could do was to convince the guards to allow the women, who had been in there for a week, to shower,” she said. “I witnessed suffering without having much ability to address it.” Stewart spoke with Bushman and other PHS officers who were embedded at the CDC last year. They assisted with the agency’s response to ongoing measles outbreaks, with sexually transmitted infection research, and more. Their roles became crucial last year as the Trump administration laid off droves of CDC staffers. Stewart, Bushman, and a few other PHS officers at the CDC said they met with middle managers to ask for details about the deployments: If they went to Guantánamo and ICE facilities, how much power would they have to provide what they considered medically necessary care? If they saw anything unethical, how could they report it? Would it be investigated? Would they be protected from reprisal? Stewart and Bushman said they were given a PHS office phone number they could call if they had a complaint while on assignment. Otherwise, they said, their questions went unanswered. They resigned before reporting to Guantánamo. But PHS officers who were deployed to the base said that they weren’t given details about their potential duties—or the standard operating procedure for medical care—before they arrived. US service members stand by to transport a simulated detainee patient during a medical evacuation training. Stephen Xenakis, a retired Army general and psychiatrist who has advised on medical care at Guantánamo for two decades, said that was troubling. Before health workers deploy, he said, they should understand what they’ll be expected to do. The consequences of going in blind can be severe. In 2014, the Navy threatened court martial against one of its nurses at Guantánamo who refused to force-feed prisoners on hunger strike, who were protesting inhumane treatment and indefinite detention. The protocol was brutal: A person was shackled to a five-point restraint chair as nurses shoved a tube for liquid food into their stomach through their nostrils. “He wasn’t given clear guidance in advance on how these procedures would be conducted at Guantánamo,” Xenakis said of the nurse. “Until he saw it, he didn’t understand how painful it was for detainees.” The American Nurses Association and the Physicians for Human Rights sided with the nurse, calling the procedure a violation of the ethical standards of medical professionals. After a year, the military dropped the charges. A uniformed doctor’s or nurse’s power tends to depend on their rank, their supervisor, and chains of command, Xenakis said. He helped put an end to some inhumane practices at Guantánamo more than a decade ago, when he and other retired generals and admirals publicly objected to a technique called "walling," in which interrogators slammed the heads of detainees suspected of terrorism against a wall, causing slight concussions. Xenakis argued that science didn’t support walling as an effective means of interrogation and that it was unethical, amounting to torture. Torture hasn’t been reported from Guantánamo’s immigration operation, but ICE shift reports obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the government watchdog group American Oversight note concerns about detainees resorting to hunger strikes and self-harm. “Welfare checks with potential hunger strike IA’s,” short for illegal aliens, says an April 30 note from a contractor working with ICE. “In case of a hunger strike or other emergencies,” the report adds, PHS and ICE are “coordinating policies and procedures.” “De-escalation of potential pod wide hunger strike/potential riot,” says an entry from last July. “Speak with alien on suicide watch regarding well being.” Inmates and investigations have reported delayed medical care at immigration detention facilities and dangerous conditions, including overcrowding and a lack of sanitation. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody in 2025, making it the deadliest year in two decades. “They are arresting and detaining more people than their facilities can support,” said one PHS officer. The most prevalent problem the officer saw among imprisoned immigrants was psychological. They worried about never seeing their families again or being sent back to a country where they feared they’d be killed. “People are scared out of their minds,” the officer said. US Navy Lieutenant Commander Chad R. Scott, Joint Task Force Southern Guard medical planner, discusses execution plans with Lieutenant Commander Bobby Kimbro prior to a medical evacuation training. No Sunlight The PHS officers who were at Guantánamo said that the men they saw were detained in either low-security barracks, with a handful of people per room, or in Camp 6, a dark, high-security facility without natural light. The ICE shift reports describe the two stations by their position on the island, Leeward for the barracks and Windward for Camp 6. About 50 Cuban men sent to Guantánamo in December and January have languished at Camp 6, according to The New York Times. A Navy hospital on the base mainly serves the military and other residents who aren’t locked up—and in any case, its capabilities are limited, the officers said. To reduce the chance of expensive medical evacuations back to the US to see specialists quickly, they said, the immigrants were screened before being shipped to Guantánamo. People over age 60 or who needed daily drugs to manage diabetes and high blood pressure, for example, had generally been excluded. Still, the officers said, some detainees have had to be evacuated back to Florida. PHS nurses and doctors said they screened immigrants again when they arrived and provided ongoing care, fielding complaints about gastrointestinal distress and depression. One observer's report says, “The USPHS psychologist started an exercise group” for detainees. Doctors’ requests for lab work were often turned down because of logistical hurdles, partly due to the number of agencies working together on the base, the officers said. Even a routine test, a complete blood cell count, took weeks to process versus hours in the US. DHS and the Department of Defense, which have coordinated on the Guantánamo immigration operation, did not respond to requests for comment about their work there. One PHS officer who helped medically screen new arrivals said the detainees were often surprised to learn they were at Guantánamo. “I’d tell them, I’m sorry you are here,” the officer said. “No one freaked out. It was like the 10-millionth time they had been transferred.” Some of the men had been detained in various facilities for five or six months and said they wanted to return to their home countries, according to the officer. Health workers had neither an answer nor a fix. Unlike ICE detention facilities in the US, Guantánamo hasn’t been overcrowded. “I have never been so not busy at work,” one officer said. A military base on a tropical island, Guantánamo offers activities like snorkeling, paddleboard yoga, and kickboxing to those who aren’t imprisoned. Even so, the officer said they would rather be home than on this assignment on the taxpayer’s dime. Transporting staff and supplies to the island and maintaining them on base is enormously expensive. The government paid an estimated $16,540 per day per detainee at Guantánamo to hold those accused of terrorism, according to a 2025 Washington Post analysis of DOD data. The average cost to detain immigrants in ICE facilities in the US is $157 per day. Even so, the funding has skyrocketed: Congress granted ICE a record $78 billion for fiscal year 2026, a staggering increase from $9.9 billion in 2024 and $6.5 billion nearly a decade ago. Last year, the Trump administration also diverted more than $2 billion from the national defense budget to immigration detention, according to a report from congressional Democrats. About $60 million of it went to Guantánamo. “Detaining noncitizens at Guantánamo is far more costly and logistically burdensome than holding them in ICE detention facilities within the United States,” wrote Deborah Fleischaker, a former assistant director at ICE, in a declaration submitted as part of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union early last year. In December, a federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s request to dismiss a separate ACLU case, questioning the legality of detaining immigrants outside of the country. Anne Schuchat, who served with the PHS for 30 years before retiring in 2018, said PHS deployments to detention centers may cost the nation in terms of security, too. “A key concern has always been to have enough of these officers available for public health emergencies,” she said. (Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson, said the immigration deployments don’t affect the Public Health Service’s potential response to other emergencies.) In the past, PHS officers have stood up medical shelters during hurricanes in Louisiana and Texas, rolled out Covid testing in the earliest months of the pandemic, and provided crisis support after the deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the Boston Marathon bombing. “It’s important for the public to be aware of how many government resources are being used so that the current administration can carry out this one agenda,” said Stewart, one of the nurses who resigned. “This one thing that’s probably turning us into the types of countries we have fought wars against.” KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism. Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at mail@wired.com. You Might Also Like In your inbox: Upgrade your life with WIRED-tested gear A wave of unexplained bot traffic is sweeping the web Big Story: The women training for pregnancy like it’s a marathon Iran’s digital surveillance machine is almost complete Listen: Silicon Valley tech workers are trying to stop ICE © 2026 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. WIRED may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSP_(econometrics_software)] | [TOKENS: 183] |
Contents TSP (econometrics software) TSP is a programming language for the estimation and simulation of econometric models. TSP stands for "Time Series Processor", although it is also commonly used with cross section and panel data. The program was initially developed by Robert Hall during his graduate studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1960s. The company behind the program is TSP International which was founded in 1978 by Bronwyn H. Hall, Robert Hall's wife. After their divorce in April 1983, the asset of TSP was split into two versions, and subsequently the two versions have diverged in terms of interface and types of subroutines included. One version is TSP, still developed by TSP International. The other version, initially named MicroTSP, is now named EViews, developed by Quantitative Micro Software. Supported data formats References Further reading External links |
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3 הרוגים בתאונת דרכים קטלנית ליד סכנין בתאונה בצומת ליד סכנין נהרגו 3 בני אדם, ואחד נוסף נפצע באורח קשה ופונה כשהוא מחוסר הכרה לבית החולים. הלילה נהרגו שני תושבי יקנעם בתאונה בכביש 6. צוות מד"א תיאר את הזירה הקשה: "הרכב היה מרוסק לחלוטין ובתוכו היו שני גברים מחוסרי הכרה, במרחק של כ-15 מטרים, מעבר למעקה היה גבר נוסף" |
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[SOURCE: https://www.theverge.com/transportation/882221/donut-labs-promises-proof-its-solid-state-battery-is-real] | [TOKENS: 549] |
Posted Feb 20, 2026 at 7:13 PM UTCAYoutubeAndrew J. HawkinsDonut Labs promises proof its solid-state battery is realThe EV tech startup rocked the auto industry with its CES announcement of a production-ready solid-state battery. Since then, there’s been a lot of skepticism and some out-right denials that the battery is even real. Now, Donut Labs is pushing back with a cleverly titled new video series, “I Donut Believe,” and independent test results that verify its claims. The first report is expected to drop next week.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Andrew J. HawkinsCloseAndrew J. HawkinsTransportation editorPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Andrew J. HawkinsElectric CarsCloseElectric CarsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Electric CarsTransportationCloseTransportationPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TransportationCommentsLoading commentsGetting the conversation ready...Most PopularMost PopularXbox chief Phil Spencer is leaving MicrosoftRead Microsoft gaming CEO Asha Sharma’s first memo on the future of XboxThe RAM shortage is coming for everything you care aboutAmazon blames human employees for an AI coding agent’s mistakeWill Stancil, man of the people or just an annoying guy?The Verge DailyA free daily digest of the news that matters most.Email (required)Sign UpBy submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The EV tech startup rocked the auto industry with its CES announcement of a production-ready solid-state battery. Since then, there’s been a lot of skepticism and some out-right denials that the battery is even real. Now, Donut Labs is pushing back with a cleverly titled new video series, “I Donut Believe,” and independent test results that verify its claims. The first report is expected to drop next week. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Andrew J. Hawkins Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Electric Cars Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Transportation Most Popular The Verge Daily A free daily digest of the news that matters most. More in Transportation This is the title for the native ad Top Stories © 2026 Vox Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved |
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[SOURCE: https://www.mako.co.il/culture-feed/2026-m02_w03/shorts-26a03a5857b7c91027.htm] | [TOKENS: 101] |
We are sorry... ...but your activity and behavior on this website made us think that you are a bot. Please solve this CAPTCHA in helping us understand your behavior to grant access You reached this page when trying to access https://www.mako.co.il/culture-feed/2026-m02_w03/shorts-26a03a5857b7c91027.htm from 79.181.162.231 on February 21 2026, 10:55:29 UTC |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_United_States_state_prisons] | [TOKENS: 46] |
Contents Lists of United States state prisons This is a list of lists of U.S. state prisons (2010) (not including federal prisons or county jails in the United States or prisons in U.S. territories): See also Notes |
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[SOURCE: https://www.mako.co.il/music-feed/2026-m02_w03/shorts-9b3629a865b7c91027.htm] | [TOKENS: 269] |
טיפקס במופע מיוחד 360 בבארבי מבצעים את "ברית עולם" לזכרו של מתי כספיטיפקס במופע מיוחד 360 בבארבי מבצעים את "ברית עולם" לזכרו של מתי כספי20.02.2026 טיפקס במופע מיוחד 360 בבארבי מבצעים את "ברית עולם" לזכרו של מתי כספי טיפקס במופע מיוחד 360 בבארבי מבצעים את "ברית עולם" לזכרו של מתי כספי |
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[SOURCE: https://www.wired.com/story/he-leaked-the-secrets-southeast-asian-scam-compound-then-had-to-get-out-alive/] | [TOKENS: 24986] |
Andy GreenbergThe Big StoryJan 27, 2026 6:00 AMHe Leaked the Secrets of a Southeast Asian Scam Compound. Then He Had to Get Out AliveA source trapped inside an industrial-scale scamming operation contacted me, determined to expose his captors’ crimes—and then escape. This is his story.Play/Pause ButtonPauseMotion Graphics: Theo Tagholm; ShutterstockSave StorySave this storySave StorySave this storyIt was a perfect June evening in New York when I received my first email from the source who would ask me to call him Red Bull. He was writing from hell, 8,000 miles away.A summer shower had left a rainbow over my Brooklyn neighborhood, and my two children were playing in a kiddie pool on the roof of our apartment building. Now the sun was setting, while I—in typical 21st-century parenting fashion, forgive me—compulsively scrolled through every app on my phone.The message had no subject line and came from an address on the encrypted email service Proton Mail: “vaultwhistle@proton.me.” I opened it.“Hello. I’m currently working inside a major crypto romance scam operation based in the Golden Triangle,” it began. “I am a computer engineer being forced to work here under a contract.”“I’ve collected internal evidence of how the scam works—step by step,” the message continued. “I am still inside the compound, so I cannot risk direct exposure. But I want to help shut this down.”I knew only vaguely that the Golden Triangle was a lawless jungle region in Southeast Asia. But as a reporter who has covered cryptocurrency crime for the past decade and a half, I understood that crypto scamming—specifically the version of it that’s come to be known as “pig butchering,” in which victims are lured with promises of romance and lucrative investments, only to be tricked into handing over their life savings—has become the most profitable form of cybercrime in the world, pulling in tens of billions of dollars annually.This sprawling scam industry is, today, staffed by hundreds of thousands of forced laborers in compounds across Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. They’re trafficked there from the poorest regions of Asia and Africa and pressed into the service of Chinese organized crime groups. The result is a self-perpetuating, constantly growing, globe-spanning money funnel that destroys lives on both ends—bankrupting one kind of victim, enslaving another.I had read harrowing reports of scam compounds where laborers are beaten, tortured with electric shock batons, starved, and even murdered by their captors. Those stories have mostly come from the rare survivors who have escaped or been rescued by law enforcement. Never before, though, had I heard of someone currently working within a scam compound offering to act as a whistleblower—an actual source on the inside.I had no idea, still, if this purported source was real. But I wrote back anyway, asking them to switch over from email to the encrypted messaging app Signal and turn on disappearing messages to better cover their tracks.The source wrote back immediately and told me to expect to hear from them in two hours.That night, after my kids were asleep, the Signal messages began to light up my phone. First, the source sent carefully prepared documents: a flowchart and then a written guide that described the scam processes of the compound in northern Laos. (I’d come to learn that the Golden Triangle—once the American nickname for a vast hotbed of opium and heroin production—now mainly refers to a city-size Laotian “special economic zone” bordering Myanmar and Thailand and largely controlled by Chinese business interests.) The two write-ups described every step in the compound’s work: creating fake Facebook and Instagram profiles; using hired models and AI deepfake tools to complete the illusion of a real romantic prospect; tricking victims into “investing” in fake trading platforms they recommended. It even detailed the small gong that would be struck in the office when someone pulled off a successful scam.I had barely had time to skim these detailed descriptions—this was not how I’d planned to spend a Saturday evening with my wife—when my phone rang, just after midnight.I picked up the Signal call. A polite Indian-accented voice said, “Hello.”“What do I call you?” I asked.“You can call me any name, brother, no matter,” the voice said with a shy laugh.I insisted that I’d need a name for him, even if he just wanted to make one up on the spot.“You can call me Red Bull,” he said. Months later, he would tell me that he’d been looking at an empty can of the energy drink as we spoke.Red Bull explained that he’d tried reaching out to US and Indian law enforcement agencies and Interpol, as well as the tip lines for a few news outlets, but no one had responded other than me. He asked me to tell him more about myself—and then cut me off as soon as I’d said two sentences about my work covering crypto crime.“So you are the person I share everything with,” he said hurriedly. “And you will help me to expose this, right?”Thrown off, I told him he’d have to first tell me who he was.For the next few minutes, Red Bull warily answered my questions. He didn’t tell me his real name but said he was from India—that most of the compound’s forced laborers were from India, Pakistan, or Ethiopia.He was in his early twenties and had a diploma in computer engineering, he said. Like most of his coworkers, Red Bull had been tricked by a fake job offer—in his case, to work as an IT manager for an office in Laos. Then his passport had been taken from him by his Chinese bosses. He was forced to sleep in a dormitory room with five other men and work 15 hours at a time on a nocturnal schedule designed to sync with the daytime of the Indian Americans they targeted for scamming. (That system—matching scammers with victims of their own ethnicity to build rapport and avoid language issues—is common, I’d later learn.)Red Bull’s situation was not precisely the brutal modern slavery I had read about elsewhere. It was more like a grotesque parody of a corporate sales floor. In theory, the staffers were incentivized with commissions designed to create the illusion that they could get rich from hard work. In reality, they were kept in perpetual debt and servitude. Red Bull told me he was paid a base salary of 3,500 Chinese yuan a month, close to $500, but the money was almost entirely taken from him by daily fines for various infractions, most often not meeting his quota of initial conversations with victims. The result was that he had virtually no income and subsisted off the food in the cafeteria, mostly rice and vegetables that he said tasted of strange chemicals.He was bound into this system by a one-year contract, and believed when that time was over—in about six more months—he’d be allowed to leave. So far, he told me, he hadn’t successfully scammed anyone, only skated by with the minimum number of plausible attempts. That meant he was still essentially captive unless he escaped, served out his time, or paid off his contract with thousands of dollars he didn’t have.A city-sized “special economic zone” just inside Laos, the Golden Triangle is controlled largely by Chinese business interests—often illegal ones. This map shows the office and dormitory where Red Bull was kept. Red Bull told me he’d heard of people who were beaten and electrocuted for breaking rules, a female staffer who he believes was sold into sexual slavery, and other coworkers who mysteriously disappeared. “If they knew I was talking to you or doing something wrong to them, they would directly kill me,” he said. “But I promised myself that whether I stay alive or not, I will stop this scam.”Then Red Bull launched into the immediate purpose of his call: There was a scam in progress he knew about, targeting an Indian American man who had already been scammed at least once, but remained in the thrall of one of Red Bull’s colleagues. The man’s crypto wallet service appeared to have frozen his account on the suspicion that he was being defrauded. So for the next payment, a courier was being sent to pick up a six-figure sum in cash.The pickup was set to happen in three or four days. The victim lived just a few hours away from me. If I acted quickly, Red Bull explained, I could alert law enforcement and help set up a sting operation to capture the courier. Beyond this tip, he wanted me to find him an FBI agent to be his handler going forward, while continuing to work with me as a source. We’d spoken for just over 10 minutes.Red Bull impatiently said that he’d write me the details on Signal and hung up. Within seconds, he was sending screenshots of the compound’s internal chat logs, his colleagues’ conversations with victims, and more details on the sting operation he wanted me to arrange.With my mind reeling, I paused for a moment. Then I called Red Bull back on Signal without warning—with video enabled. I wanted to see who I was talking to.The view from the hotel room where Red Bull first spoke to WIRED, as seen over a Signal video call. Courtesy of Red BullRed Bull picked up. He was slim and handsome, with slightly shaggy hair and a trim beard. He gave me a half smile, seemingly unconcerned about revealing his face. I asked him to show me his surroundings, and he flipped the video to display a bare hotel room—he explained that he’d risked booking a room in the hotel next to his office to have somewhere to talk to me—and the view out the window of ugly concrete buildings and parking lots, construction sites, and a few palm trees. At my request, he walked outside and showed me the Chinese-language sign on the front of the building. I didn’t know much about the Golden Triangle, but this appeared to be it.Finally, Red Bull showed me his work ID, with a Chinese name the compound had given him: Machao. (None of the workers in the office, he explained, knew each other’s real name.)I began to believe Red Bull was what he said: a real whistleblower in a Laos scam compound. I told him I’d consider everything he’d asked for, but that I wanted to work with him patiently and carefully to minimize his risk.“I am with you and whatever I do, I do under your guidance,” he wrote back at 1:33 am. “Have a nice night ahead.”At 4 am, I was still lying awake in bed, considering what to do with the eager new source who seemed determined to put his life in my hands.After a few hours’ sleep, I texted Erin West, a California prosecutor—or, as I would learn in our phone call later that day, a former prosecutor. Toward the end of 2024, West became so fed up with the US government’s failure to do anything about the pig butchering epidemic that she’d retired early from her position as a deputy district attorney and was now focused full-time on running her own anti-scam organization, called Operation Shamrock.I asked West for advice about who in law enforcement could help arrange the sting that Red Bull had requested. West, to my surprise, was far more excited about the story that Red Bull wanted me to write. “This is a major, major deal,” West said. “Here’s someone on the inside who’s willing to share this information and tell us everything about how this whole operation runs.”But she quickly shot down the idea of a sting. No time to arrange it, she said. Nor did she think that arresting a lowly money mule would be the major win that Red Bull believed it to be. Most couriers of this kind, she said, were freelancers even further down the hierarchy of a scam operation than Red Bull himself and would know nothing of value.More important, a sting—or any effort to warn the victim myself by asking Red Bull for his contact and reaching out—could also create suspicion of a leak inside the scam compound that might be traced to Red Bull and put his life in jeopardy. Preventing one case of fraud, or taking down one courier, hardly seemed worth that risk of exposure.I had been talking to Red Bull for less than 24 hours. Already I was making the decision to stand by as a potential six-figure scam took place, as a cost of protecting him.Beyond this question of a sting, West told me, she wasn’t sure that handing Red Bull over to the FBI was the right approach. If he were to become a law enforcement source, she said, the FBI or Interpol would almost certainly tell him to stop talking to me or any other journalist. And the result of whatever he shared with the feds would likely fall far short of his expectations: criminal charges, in absentia, for low-level bosses at best. “If he thinks that the FBI and Interpol are going to march into Laos and take this place down, that’s never going to happen. The cavalry is not coming.”Far more valuable than building a case against this single operation, she argued, would be to use whatever Red Bull could share to tell the larger story: the high-resolution reality of pig butchering compounds, their operational details, the scale of their work. Some of this had been described before by survivors of the compounds, but never, to West’s knowledge, by an insider source leaking documents and evidence in real time.The role of human trafficking in scam compounds’ operations has only become harder to measure, West told me, with the Trump administration’s destruction of USAID, which funded humanitarian organizations in the region. “The Trump presidency has taken away any of the eyes on the ground that we had,” West said.All of that has enabled Chinese-origin gangs to continue stealing “a generation’s worth of our wealth” through a system of slavery that’s increasingly come to control an entire region of the world, as West described it. “The story here is how we allowed these criminals to embed themselves in Southeast Asia like a festering cancer,” West said. “And how it’s disrupting our ability to trust people.”I told Red Bull that we couldn’t arrange a sting operation without risking his life. I also made the case that if he wanted to be a source for me, he’d likely have to wait to talk to law enforcement. He accepted all this with surprising decisiveness. “OK, done,” he said.Red Bull and I soon settled into a routine of speaking on Signal every morning New York time, around 10 pm in Laos, as he walked around outside his dormitory in the half hour after he woke up and before he went into the cafeteria for a meal. (This “dinner” preceded his approximately 15-hour workday, which included two breaks to eat.)He spent much of our first conversations pitching a series of increasingly high-risk evidence-gathering methods: He wanted to wear a hidden camera or microphone. He suggested setting up remote desktop software so I could see in real time everything on his screen. He offered to install spyware on the computer of his team leader, another Indian worker with aviator glasses and a short beard who went by the name “Amani.” He even proposed to hack into the laptop of Amani’s supervisor, 50k, a short Chinese man with a paunch, tight pants, and a tattoo on his chest that Red Bull could never quite make out. Maybe that spyware would help us gather intel on 50k’s communications with his own boss, “Alang,” whom Red Bull never saw in person.For every one of these brazen ideas, I consulted with colleagues and experts who told me, one after another, how hidden-camera evidence-gathering required training, how the software Red Bull wanted to install on the office computers left behind detectable artifacts—why, in other words, all these ideas were likely to get him caught and killed.We settled on a far simpler approach: He would use Signal on his work computer to send me messages and materials throughout his work hours, using Signal’s disappearing messages feature set to a five-minute countdown timer to cover his tracks. At times he started calling me “Uncle” to bolster the cover story that he was just speaking to a relative, in case he was caught.We adopted a protocol in which one of us would start a conversation by saying “Red.” The other would respond “Bull.” This exchange would verify no one had taken over his account. It was Red Bull’s idea to change the name and icon of the Signal app on his computer to make it look like a desktop shortcut for its hard drive.Motion Graphics: Theo Tagholm; Getty ImagesHe began to send me a steady stream of pictures, screenshots, and videos: a spreadsheet and photos of a whiteboard on which his team’s work was tracked, with scam totals in the thousands of dollars next to many of the group’s nicknames. A photo of a Chinese ceremonial drum on a stand that stood in the office, ready to be struck to celebrate big wins of $100,000 or more. Pages and pages of chat logs, posted to the office WhatsApp group, documented the scamming wins of Red Bull’s colleagues and the tragic responses from victims: “Always had a dream of having a girlfriend then wife like you” … “U stopped talking to me” … “I will continue praying for your Mom” … “Please help me withdraw my money OK?” … “??????” … “😭” One video showed a victim crying in his car after losing a six-figure sum; the mark had sent the clip to his scammer to elicit guilt, perhaps, but it was instead being passed around the office for laughs.Every member of the team was required to post daily updates—how many “first chats” they’d started, how many “deep chats” they’d had, the kind that might lead to successful scams. Their group chat used euphemisms like “opening a new customer,” for hooking a new mark, and “recharges,” for repeat victims. Each team had a quota, typically around a million dollars a month. If they met it, they’d be rewarded with weekends off, the freedom to have snacks in the office, even parties at a nearby club. (Their bosses, Red Bull said, would spend those parties in a private room separated by a curtain.) Miss the target, and they’d be berated, fined, and forced to work seven nights a week.A whiteboard in the office tracked scam successes, listed alongside workers’ pseudonyms and team names. Courtesy of Red BullEvery worker also posted a mandatory daily schedule—not of their own nocturnal life sitting at a desk in a fluorescent-lit office and sending Facebook and Instagram messages, but the schedule of the rich, single woman they were pretending to be: 7 am “peaceful yoga and meditation,” 9:30 am “self-care and vacation planning,” 2:30 pm “dentist visit,” 6 pm “dinner and talking with mother.”Sometimes during our voice calls, Red Bull would tell me to enable video and record my screen. Then he would walk into the cafeteria and surreptitiously film his surroundings while pretending to talk to his “uncle.” I got a tour through the bright lights of the building’s lobby and stairwells, the lines of depressed-looking South Asian and African men lining up for food. Once he even showed me the inside of the office, a large, beige room where I could see clusters of desks with red, yellow, and green flags on them that connoted each team’s scamming performance.A video surreptitiously recorded via a Signal call shows the inside of the Boshang scam compound’s office. After a few days, Red Bull and I tried upgrading our cover story, and I became a secret girlfriend he was texting with—a better explanation for his use of Signal should it be detected. We peppered our conversation with heart emojis, referred to each other as “dear,” and signed off with “miss you,” until our chat logs started to look almost like the fraud romances his team carried on daily. But we soon found the pretense too embarrassing and gave it up.On another occasion, as I was heading to sleep, Red Bull wrote a surprisingly sensitive farewell message: “Good night! 🌙 Rest easy—you’ve done enough for today. Let your mind reset, and let tomorrow come with fresh clarity and quiet strength.”As stilted as the language felt, I admit to being moved by the unusually thoughtful note—I had, in fact, gotten very little sleep over the several stressful days since we’d first started communicating.Then, during our call the following morning, Red Bull began explaining to me the role that AI chat tools like ChatGPT and DeepSeek play in the compound’s work: how they’re trained to use them to clean up their language, find just the right sentiment, never run out of inviting turns of phrase.His goodnight message the previous evening, he told me without hesitation, had been copied directly from ChatGPT. “Everyone does this here; they teach us this,” he said.Funny, I thought, how easy it is to be taken in by a bit of sympathetic text sent by a new acquaintance on the other side of the world.In the few minutes I had with Red Bull every day between the dormitory and the office, amid our other conversations about his safety and evidence-gathering tactics, I asked how he’d come to be trapped in the compound and why he had become so singularly motivated to expose it. In answering, in hurried snippets of conversation and then later in longer texts, he told me the 23-year story of his life.Red Bull grew up, he told me, as one of eight children in a Muslim family in a mountainous village in Jammu and Kashmir, a disputed territory on the India–Pakistan border. His father was a schoolteacher but also sometimes worked as a construction laborer and, along with Red Bull’s mother, raised dairy cattle and sold ghee—clarified butter—to survive.When Red Bull was a young child in the mid-2000s, the family would often leave their village for areas in northern Kashmir to escape the intermittent conflicts between the Indian Army and Pakistani-supported guerrillas. Muslim men in the region had sometimes been conscripted to fight or carry supplies for Pakistani-backed forces, then branded as terrorists and killed by India’s military.When the conflict died down, Red Bull’s parents sent him to live with his grandparents in the city of Rajouri, a four-hour bus ride away, where they hoped their unusually bright and inquisitive child could get a better education. His grandparents were harsh guardians, he told me. They forced him to chop wood and fetch water when he wasn’t studying, and his school was a 6-mile walk away. He wore out his shoes, blistered his feet, and attended classes with a rope tied around his pants for a belt.Even then, he says, he maintained a kind of defiant optimism. “I kept thinking: If not today then tomorrow things will get better,” he wrote to me.When he was 15, Red Bull’s grandparents sent him to live with the family of a pair of his teachers, who made him work as a servant in exchange for paying his school fees. He would wake up early every morning to clean the house before breakfast, then wash the dishes before going to school—including the separate set they required him to use.One day in that house, he remembers watching, entranced, as the family’s eldest son played the latest FIFA game on his PC, the first time Red Bull had ever seen a computer. He was told to get back to work. This became the beginning of his computer fixation. “I felt ashamed and disrespected because I was not even allowed to touch it,” Red Bull wrote. “I told myself that one day I would become the master of this machine.”Motion Graphics: Theo Tagholm; Getty ImagesAfter a particularly humiliating scolding, Red Bull decided to run away. He left the next morning before the family was awake and traveled to the city, where he found odd jobs cleaning houses, doing construction work, cutting rice. For a time he went door-to-door selling Ayurvedic medicines. At night he would study alone in the room he rented. In 2021, he was accepted into the computer science program at Kashmir Government Polytechnic College in Srinagar, the region’s biggest city.At the university, he slept in a room without proper bedding through the freezing Kashmiri winters, and often went hungry. A friend taught him how to make Facebook pages for businesses, or buy and sell them like a real estate developer flipping properties. Working on the school’s PCs, he soon made the equivalent of $200, enough to buy his own used Dell laptop—a prized, life-changing possession.After three years of studying, working, and sending money home to his family, he graduated with a diploma in computer engineering—the first time, he says, that anyone from his village had ever attained that level of technical education. He’d also developed a stubborn, even angry determination to chart his own path through the world.“My mom and dad always advised me to have patience and to stay strong, and their advice gave me some inner strength, but the fight itself I always carried alone,” he wrote. “It is very hard for anyone to truly understand me, but I never stopped fighting my circumstances.”Not long after Red Bull graduated, he was making a livable wage creating Facebook pages and websites, earning as much as a thousand dollars a month. But he had bigger ambitions. He dreamed of working in artificial intelligence, in the biomedical field, or in cybersecurity as a whitehat hacker. (The TV show Mr. Robot had long been one of his favorites.) He wanted to study abroad but couldn’t afford it, and was rejected when he sought student loans.He resigned himself to working for a year or two to save money. A friend from college told him of someone in Laos who seemed to be able to find people good work. Red Bull began talking to that thirdhand contact, called Ajaz, who said he knew an agent who could get him hired as an office IT manager making around $1,700 a month. For Red Bull, that alluring salary would mean he might only have to work for a single year before returning to school.Ajaz told Red Bull to fly to Bangkok and then call the recruiting agent from the airport. He boarded the plane without even knowing what industry his employer might be in—only that he would help manage its computers. He remembers the excitement of traveling abroad for the first time, dreaming of his future throughout the red-eye flight across the Indian Ocean.The next morning in Bangkok, he called the agent, an East African man who summarily told him to take a 12-hour bus ride to Chiang Mai, and then a taxi to the border with Laos. When Red Bull arrived there, he was to take a selfie showing that he was outside the immigration office, and text it to the agent. A few minutes after Red Bull did as instructed, an immigration official came outside, flashed the selfie he’d evidently received from the agent, and demanded 500 Thai baht—about $15. Red Bull paid, the official stamped his passport, and he was sent down to a boat waiting on the Mekong River below. The ferry crossed the river just south of the point where the three borders of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet in a single nexus: the Golden Triangle.After the boat had crossed into Laos, a young Chinese man waiting on the opposite river bank showed Red Bull the same selfie. He took Red Bull’s passport without explanation and gave it to immigration officials along with some Chinese currency. It came back with a visa.The Chinese man pocketed the passport and told Red Bull to wait for the East African agent. Then he left, taking Red Bull’s passport with him.An hour later, the agent arrived and drove him in a white van to a hotel in northern Laos, where he would spend the night. Lying in the bed of that bare hotel room, he remained entirely focused on the anxiety and excitement of his first real job interview, scheduled for the next day. He still suspected nothing.The next morning, he was brought to an office, a gray tower of concrete surrounded by other drab buildings amid the lush green mountains of northern Laos. Red Bull sat nervously at a desk as a Chinese man and a translator administered a typing test and an English language test, both of which he breezed through. They told him he’d passed, and they began asking him about his familiarity with social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.Red Bull eagerly answered their questions. Finally they asked him whether he understood the job he’d be starting. “As an IT manager?” he asked. No, they said, for once speaking without euphemism: He would be a “scammer.”As the reality of his situation finally became clear, Red Bull spiraled into panic. The Chinese boss told him he’d be starting immediately. Trying to buy time, he begged to instead return to the hotel to rest for one night before beginning work. The boss agreed.That night in the hotel room, Red Bull frantically searched the internet for information about scam operations in the Golden Triangle. Only then did he see the dimensions of the trap that had sprung around him: Too late, he read about the thousands of Indians deceived and ensnared just as he had been, with no passport or means of escape. In the midst of this sickening epiphany, his parents video-called him to ask if he’d gotten the IT manager job. Burying his shame and regret, he said he had, smiled, and accepted their congratulations.The colored flags in each team’s work area indicate whether it’s been meeting scam revenue quotas. Courtesy of Red BullA Chinese ceremonial drum stands ready to be struck by any worker who achieves a scam of $100,000 or more. Courtesy of Red BullOver the next days, with little in the way of orientation, he was pulled into the machinery of the scamming organization he’d come to know as the Boshang compound: He was trained to create fake profiles, given scam scripts, and then set to work on a nocturnal schedule, manually spamming out hundreds of introductory messages every night to lure new victims. At the end of his shifts, he would return to the top bunk of his six-man dorm room—little bigger than the hotel room he’d occupied those first nights—with a toilet in the corner.Yet from the very beginning, he says, he was determined to again defy his circumstances. It struck him that he knew more about computers than most of his coworkers, or even his bosses, who seemed to understand only how to use social media, AI tools, and cryptocurrency. Within days, he began daydreaming of using his technical skills to quietly gather information on the compound and, somehow, expose it.There was, Red Bull came to believe, little to prevent him from leaking the compound’s secrets. Team leaders took employees’ personal phones and put them in a box when they began their shifts, and they were strictly prohibited from taking work devices out of the office. But otherwise, the surveillance of staffers and their own phones seemed surprisingly loose.Bosses seemed to depend largely on the fear and despair of Red Bull’s fellow trafficking victims—most of whom had, it seemed to him, lost all hope of resistance. “They tell themselves survival is the only goal, and they shut down anything that feels human,” Red Bull wrote to me. “Empathy, guilt, even memories of who they were before.”He kept his own hope alive in part with a sense that he was different. “Most people don’t have the skills, or the tools, or even the mental strength to fight from the inside,” he wrote. “I can move through the system. I can observe. I can gather evidence, names, scripts, patterns, connections.”At times, though, I still struggled to understand what had given Red Bull the conviction to reach out to me, to risk his life rather than merely serve out his time. “Maybe it’s justice, or maybe it’s conscience,” he responded. “If there’s a God, I hope he sees what I’m doing. If there isn’t, then at least I’ll know I stayed human in a place that tries to turn people into monsters.”As time passed and the collection of materials Red Bull sent to me mounted, I was also getting the sense that the walls were closing in on him. One day, Red Bull told me, his team leader Amani asked him with menacing calm why he was spending so much time outside—referring, most likely, to the walks when Red Bull would talk to me on Signal—and generating so few new “clients.” Maybe, Amani suggested, a beating or some electric shocks would increase his productivity.Around the same time, Red Bull told me that new surveillance cameras had been installed in the office, including on the ceiling both behind and in front of his desk. I told him he should immediately stop communicating with me from the office—it was now far too risky. My editors came to a more severe conclusion: I should shut down my reporting with Red Bull altogether until he was free.Red Bull had, by this point, sent me a collection of 25 scam scripts and guides in English and Chinese. The documents displayed the anatomy of scamming at a level of resolution I’d never seen before: lists of conversation starters; tutorials on what to do when a target asks for a video call and how to delay until a deepfake model is ready to speak with them; tips on how to complain about overcautious financial institutions so victims don’t get spooked by their own bank’s warnings.Maybe what he’d given me was already enough. Following my editors’ lead, I told Red Bull that it was time to stop. “OK, done,” he said, with his usual quick pivot.A video secretly recorded over a Signal call shows the inside of the Boshang compound’s cafeteria. Red Bull says the food tasted of strange chemicals. Access to the cafeteria was frequently denied to workers for violations as basic as showing up late to a shift or not being in their dorm rooms at check-in time. Now, I told him, he should focus on completing the remaining six months of his contract as safely as possible, and we’d talk again when he was free. But Red Bull, once again, was already several thoughts ahead. If our reporting process was finished, he told me, he wanted to leave now.He told me about a plan he’d been concocting to get home: He’d forge an Indian police letter stating that he was under investigation back in Jammu and Kashmir. If he didn’t go back, he’d tell his supervisor, it would cause serious trouble for him, his family, and ultimately the compound. He would plead to take a two-week trip home, deal with the situation, and return. Maybe, he said, his bosses would buy this story and let him leave.I didn’t think it would work, and I told him as much: I warned that his overseers might detect the forgery and punish him. But after all the risky schemes I had already talked Red Bull out of, he seemed more stubbornly intent on this one. I asked him to please wait, and I told him I’d try to find him someone in the region who was more familiar with scam compound escape tactics. I was in touch, for instance, with a Southeast Asian activist who asked to be identified only as “W,” who had experience helping political refugees escape from the region.Red Bull suddenly switched into cover story mode as he entered the office lobby. “No problem uncle, you stay relaxed,” he said as he walked by the security guard. “Things will be better soon, OK?” Then he ended the call.At another point in those daily conversations, Red Bull brought up another potential path to freedom: If only he could pay the equivalent of $3,400, he could buy out his contract and go home. He just needed to get the money somehow.In a matter of seconds, a fleet of thoughts ran through my mind. First, a flash of hope for Red Bull and a desire to pay off his debt. Then the realization that, of course, WIRED couldn’t possibly give money to a source in this way, much less reward an organized crime group for human trafficking. The idea violated journalistic ethics—payments to sources are generally considered a corrupting conflict of interest—and would set an unforgivable precedent. I said as much to Red Bull, and he quickly responded that he understood “completely” and that he had never asked me or WIRED to pay.Even so, the mere mention of that payment option also planted in my mind a different, darker thought that I now couldn’t shake: What if Red Bull was scamming me? I had set aside my initial skepticism of Red Bull once I’d seen enough proof that he was who he said he was: a real person trapped in a grim compound in Laos. Now, almost two weeks into our relationship, the troubling possibility nagged at me: What if he truly was a scam compound insider, but this had been the scam all along? The mere thought felt like a betrayal of all the trust he seemed to have placed in me.I decided to compartmentalize my suspicions, keeping the possibility of an ulterior motive in my mind next to the more likely probability that his intentions were genuine.A couple of days later, meanwhile, he mentioned his forged document idea again, and I again suggested he wait for help from someone like W and not risk the scheme. But with every day, I could tell that he was increasingly set on his plan. “I have no other options,” he said. “Let’s see what happens.”Just a few days later, on a Saturday afternoon, I was surprised to get an email from the same Proton Mail account that Red Bull had first reached out from but hadn’t used since we’d switched to Signal. Just like that first email, it had no subject line.I opened the message and my mind instantly went blank with dread.“they people cath me and now they get my phone everything,” it read. “they beaten me andn ow may be they kill me”Red Bull had tried his forged-police-document deception. Now, it seemed, the worst possible outcome had come to pass.I suppressed panic as my mind spun through options. I texted my editors and W, in the hopes they might have some idea of how to help. Fifteen minutes after that first email came another, more coherent message from Red Bull: “I’m trapped. I have no way to get out. They have my personal phone and my ID card,” this one read. “If there’s anything you can do, please help me.”In the meantime, W responded to me on Signal. Over the phone, we hurriedly talked through what we could possibly do to increase Red Bull’s chances of survival. I didn’t know how Red Bull was emailing me, but W cautioned that it would be dangerous to respond. His bosses knew he’d lied to them to try to escape. It still seemed they didn’t know he was talking to a journalist and leaking their secrets.If they found out, there was little doubt they would kill him. “Brutally,” W said. “There’s no way he’d get out of this area alive.” He advised that I wait to hear more from Red Bull about his situation and how to safely communicate.Twenty-four excruciating hours passed before I received another email from Red Bull—a long, stream-of-consciousness block of frantic text.Motion Graphics: Theo Tagholm; Getty Images“Last night those people beat me I am still hungry I have not eaten anything they disconnected my card my personal phone and everything today they will decide what to do with me the Indian team leader and everyone sat in front of me and said do you know who we are and they beat me again and then made me sit back in the office today I have to accept that whatever I did was fake and I have to accept my mistake I cannot run away from here I have no money and I cannot even go outside the gate I am contacting you from the system PC if you have any way then send me an email I will check it and tell W to talk to me on my email and those people are telling me to give them 20k yuan they said if I give it they will leave me without doing anything more please tell W to reply to my email whenever they torture me and bring me back to the office I am only on the system PC have a nice evening ahead”Before I could respond to this email, I got a Signal message: “Red.”“Bull,” I wrote back.He wrote quickly, this time with the short version: He’d been put in a room and told again to find someone to pay 20,000 yuan for his release, the equivalent of around $2,800.In the midst of this life-or-death crisis, I couldn’t help but think that this might just as easily be the endgame of the scam I’d suspected in the back of my mind: Hook a journalist’s attention, lure him in, give him responsibility for a source’s safety, and now require a payment to save his life.Regardless, my editors had made clear to me that neither WIRED nor I could pay Red Bull or his captors. They were, in fact, warier than ever that he might be scamming me. But the more likely truth, I still felt, was that this nightmare was all entirely real.Red Bull seemed to have his phone back—likely to allow him to find someone to pay his ransom—but it felt too risky to call him. I texted him, suggesting he instead try to speak to W about who might be able to help him escape. W was far more experienced in these situations—and if Red Bull were monitored, he’d at least be caught speaking to an activist rather than a reporter.I also told Red Bull that, as terrible as I felt that he was going through this hell, I wouldn’t be able to pay his ransom, any more than I’d been able to pay out his contract.“Okay,” Red Bull wrote. “I understand.” He asked me to tell W to get in touch, and I told him I would.I watched as he set Signal’s disappearing message feature to delete messages after only five seconds, a sign of how closely he feared he was being watched.He posted a thumbs-up emoji. Then it was gone.Over the next few days, I spoke with one person after another who I hoped might be able to help Red Bull, perhaps even by paying his ransom: Erin West, W, W’s boss at the nonprofit he worked for. One by one, each of them backed away—either from concerns about rewarding a scam compound’s human trafficking, suspicion that Red Bull’s story might itself be a scam, or some combination of the two.West, despite her enormous enthusiasm when Red Bull first came forward, now said it sounded like a human trafficking racket she’d heard of elsewhere, in which fake victims solicit fake ransoms. W got as far as speaking to Red Bull on multiple Signal voice calls but was overwhelmed by his panicked energy and thought his desperate pleas for the ransom payment—and promises to pay W back in the future—were dubious. “It sounded like ‘Send me one bitcoin and I’ll send you two,’” W told me afterward.But I still felt I owed it to Red Bull to take his situation at face value and—assuming it was all true—do whatever I could within the bounds of journalistic ethics to get him out.Three days had passed since he was first held ransom. It was becoming clearer that he was no longer being closely monitored, perhaps because his captors were growing bored with him. I decided to risk a call. “Things are not going good,” he told me with typical understatement, speaking softly, close to the phone’s microphone. He told me he had a fever, that he’d been beaten several times, slapped and kicked and made to confess that he’d forged the Indian police document. On one occasion the bosses put a white powder into a cup of water and told him to drink it. He found that it made him unnaturally talkative and confident but then gave him a rash of raised red bumps on his skin. He was sometimes sent back to his dormitory to sleep, he told me, but hadn’t eaten in days and was deprived of water for long stretches.He’d written to various Indian embassies and consulates across Southeast Asia, but none had responded. “No one is going to help me. I don’t know why,” he said a few minutes into our call, his voice finally breaking into a muffled sob, the first time I’d ever heard him express self-pity.Then he quickly controlled himself with a single breath. “I want to cry,” he said. “But let’s see.”Four days after he’d first been caught trying to escape and held for ransom, Red Bull texted me to say that something had changed in the compound. Everything was strangely quiet, and no one had summoned him to the office. When he asked some of his coworkers, they told him there were rumors the Laotian police were planning a raid. Their Chinese bosses had gotten a tip from someone on the inside and were laying low.The next day, with rumors of a raid still circulating through the compound, Red Bull got a hopeful message from the Indian embassy in Laos. “Please share your passport copy, company ID,” it read. “Embassy will take necessary action to rescue you.”Salvation seemed to be on the horizon. But then more days passed, and—nothing. The embassy stopped responding to Red Bull’s messages. Late one night, I managed to get an Indian embassy official on the phone after several tries. He seemed confused about which person we were talking about, then repeated the government’s vague assurance that it would rescue him, and hung up.As the days went by—with no more clarity from the Indian government, no police raid, and no one willing to pay for his freedom—Red Bull seemed to be sinking into fatalism. One day I woke up to a series of messages offering up a confession, as if he feared he might die in the room where he was being held and wanted to absolve himself of sin.“I want to say something honestly. When I first talked to you I said I never scammed anyone. That was not fully true,” he wrote. “The truth is the Chinese bosses forced me to bring two people into the scam. I did not do it by choice. I feel guilty about it every day. That is why I want to tell the full truth now.”He later told me more details of those two victims. From one, he’d taken $504. From the other, around $11,000. He gave me both of their names. I tried contacting them but couldn’t find one, and the other never responded. For the larger of those two sums, Red Bull should have received a commission based on the scam compound’s incentive structure. But he says he was never paid any reward beyond his meager base salary.I’d later look back at the picture of the office whiteboard Red Bull had shared early on. On it I could see, quite clearly, the Chinese name the compound had given him, “Machao,” next to the sum of $504. I had entirely missed this, though he’d made no attempt to hide it.“I am trusting you with my real story,” Red Bull concluded his confession. “This is the truth.”After 10 days in limbo, Red Bull told me that he and his coworkers had been ordered to pack their things. The office computers had been boxed up and stored in the dormitory. The entire staff was moving to a new building a few hundred feet away, and the workers were told they’d have to continue their work from these temporary dorm rooms rather than the office. According to the rumors, a raid was finally coming.Throughout this time, Red Bull was treated more or less like a dog, as he described it, a pariah set apart from the other workers: He had no bedding; sometimes he slept on the floor and was fed only when someone remembered to give him food, often spoiled leftovers. He lost weight and suffered from body aches, fever, and what felt like the flu.Yet somehow, even then, Red Bull was still motivated to keep digging.During this hiatus from the office, work devices were now allowed into the dormitory—a loosening of security that Red Bull realized could offer him an opportunity. One day when one of his roommates was asleep, he found the man’s work phone.He had seen the man enter his passcode over his shoulder, and now quickly unlocked it. Red Bull then connected his own personal phone to the man’s WhatsApp using the app’s “linked device” feature, allowing him to read the scam compound’s internal messaging. He used that access to make screen recordings, meticulously scrolling through months of the compound’s internal conversations, as well as all the screenshots of chat logs with victims his colleagues had posted.Another day, he found his own work phone left unattended in a different dorm room—he hadn’t had access to it since he was first caught trying to escape—and repeated the WhatsApp linking trick so that he could access that device’s messages, too, from his personal phone. Then he made another screen recording of scrolling through its chats. Together, the videos added up to a detailed record of three months of the compound’s day-to-day operations. Red Bull sent me samples of these recordings, but the full videos ran to nearly 10 gigabytes, far more than he could text me from his phone’s data plan.A raid by Laotian police targeted the building that housed the Boshang compound offices, but Red Bull’s bosses had already moved their operation on a tip. So the raid appeared to round up forced laborers in other offices. Courtesy of Red BullCourtesy of Red BullCourtesy of Red BullA week later, after he and his coworkers had moved to the new building, Red Bull sent me a very different, more dramatic series of short clips: One showed dozens of South Asian men standing outside of a high-rise building, being lined up by what appeared to be Laotian police in khaki and black uniforms. Another showed a similar-looking crowd sitting in rows in a lobby. The raids, Red Bull told me, had arrived, sweeping the scam operations that hadn’t taken the precaution of vacating the old building, as his bosses had. Now these videos were circulating among workers who had only narrowly missed the crackdown.As the rest of the compound’s operations struggled to adapt to their new makeshift workspace, Red Bull, of course, had already been stuck in purgatory for weeks. He pleaded with his bosses to be released, arguing that he was no use to them. He had no money, and clearly there was no one willing to pay his ransom. He was dead weight, taking up space when they were already crowded into their temporary building.Shockingly, his bosses agreed. Rather than kill him, they told him he could go.To scrape together enough money for a return journey, Red Bull borrowed a few hundred dollars from his brother. Then he wrote to an Indian acquaintance who had a position in a scam compound nearby, telling him that he needed to go home to see his family but would soon return. If the acquaintance could send enough money to buy plane tickets, Red Bull proposed, he’d let the man take the recruitment fee when he returned. Soon he had several hundred more dollars in his account. Red Bull had scammed a scammer, and he’d found a path home.In late July, Red Bull’s team leader, Amani, intercepted him outside the dormitory, handed him his passport, and told him it was time to leave. Red Bull explained that most of his things, including his shoes, were in his room. He was wearing only a pair of flip-flops.Amani told him he didn’t care. 50k himself was waiting in an Audi to drive Red Bull to the border of the Golden Triangle region. From there, he’d be on his own. He got in the back of the car in his flip-flops and left.Later, when Red Bull had finally escaped, he would marvel at this last slight, as if it were somehow worse than all the slaps, kicks, drugging, and starvation he’d endured. “I never expected this from them,” he wrote to me, punctuating his text with crying emojis. “They didn’t even allow me to wear my shoes.”A few days after that drive to the border, near the end of a journey that involved buses, a train, and a dirt-cheap plane itinerary with no fewer than five layovers, Red Bull was finally back in India. During a stopover on the way to his home village, he began sending me the WhatsApp screen-recording videos he’d smuggled out of the compound on his phone.Revealed: Leaked Chats Expose the Daily Life of a Scam Compound’s Enslaved WorkforceFor an analysis of the thousands of pages of materials that Red Bull leaked to WIRED, click here. By Andy Greenberg, Lily Hay Newman, and Matt BurgessThese files would turn out to be the most significant and unique material he provided me. A team of reporters at WIRED would later convert them into a 4,200-page PDF of screenshots and share them with scam compound experts. The document, we’d discover, offers a detailed diary of life inside the compound, cataloging every successful scam it achieved during those months and laying out the scale and hierarchy of the operation. It also reveals the mundane minute-by-minute life of the forced laborers carrying out those scams, from their daily schedules to the fines and punishments they received to the Orwellian language their bosses used to manipulate, cajole, and discipline them—some of which is included in the text interspersed throughout this story.Ultimately, no one had given Red Bull the help he needed to escape—not the human rights groups I tried to connect him with, not the Indian government (which never rescued him as promised), and not WIRED. Red Bull had rescued himself. Now, despite that complete lack of incentive or aid, amid the most desperate circumstances, he had obtained and given me the biggest data prize yet.Red Bull, back in his home country of India. Photograph: Saumya KhandelwalRed Bull’s hands weren’t clean. He had admitted to me that, under duress, he’d scammed two innocent people. But despite my fears and those of the others I’d tried to connect him with, his motivation to act as a whistleblower had proven to be pure.Now there could finally be no doubt: Red Bull was real.On a quiet backstreet of a city somewhere in India, I wait alone—surrounded by several dozen macaque monkeys lounging, grooming each other, and parkouring off the neighborhood’s balconies and electrical wires. Then the monkey troop disperses into the trees and onto rooftops, and a white SUV emerges around a corner, drives up the street, and stops in front of me.A door opens, and out steps Red Bull, displaying the same shy smile he had on his face when he picked up my first Signal video call. He looks smaller than I imagined, very thin, but more put together than he did on my phone screen, with a button-up flannel shirt and a fresh haircut. As he walks toward me, he breaks into a bigger, less restrained grin, and I shake his hand.Now that he’s finally free, Red Bull has given me permission to reveal his real name: Mohammad Muzahir.Mohammad Muzahir, aka Red Bull, in a car in India after his first in-person meeting with a WIRED reporter. Motion Graphics: Theo Tagholm“I’m feeling very, very happy to meet with you. I’ve been waiting a long time to meet with you and share everything, face-to-face,” Muzahir says after we’ve checked him into his hotel and we’re riding in the SUV to mine. “I have no words to express it right now.”The three months between Muzahir’s escape and this in-person meeting have been far from easy. He’s virtually broke, but he can’t bring himself to focus on building websites and Facebook pages as he has done in the past, nor does he even have a laptop. Instead he has worked as a waiter and taken construction jobs to survive. When Muzahir isn’t working or applying to jobs and universities abroad—so far without success—he obsessively researches scam operations on his phone, which is cracked on both front and back, with glitching lines across its damaged screen.In that research, Muzahir has come to believe that almost all of the men rounded up in the raids that displaced his compound were later released back into the Golden Triangle. He assumes the police action was all just for show and barely disrupted the scam operations there. He has also learned that the Boshang operation that indentured him has since relocated to Cambodia, taking many of his former coworkers with it.Muzahir is haunted by the coworkers he left behind in the compound—which has since relocated to Cambodia—and racked with guilt over the two people he scammed. Photograph: Saumya KhandelwalMuzahir sleeps as little as three hours a night, he tells me after we sit down in an empty lounge in the basement of my hotel. He’s haunted, he says, by the fact that the scam compound he escaped, and dozens like it, are still operating and even expanding across lawless zones in Southeast Asia, and now other parts of the world. He thinks compulsively about the colleagues he left behind. He feels crushing guilt, too, about the two people he scammed, even while telling himself it was a necessary precursor to his actions as a whistleblower. He dreams of earning enough to somehow pay the two men back. “Honestly this is not a happy ending to the story,” he says.After experiencing so many personal betrayals—and working for an operation where industrialized betrayal was, in fact, the business model—Muzahir’s more fundamental problem is that he has trouble putting faith in anyone. He’s reluctant to engage with even the human-rights NGOs and survivor groups I’ve tried to introduce him to. “These people are just wasting time and giving false hope,” he wrote to me at one point. “I’m not trusting too much in people.”Somehow I’ve become an exception to that near-universal mistrust. But now that we’re finally meeting in person, I feel compelled to confess to Muzahir that there were times when I didn’t trust him—that even when he most needed my help, I still feared, incorrectly, that he might be scamming me.To my relief, he just grins at this. “You did good,” Muzahir says. If I had paid off his contract or even paid his ransom, he points out, he would have left the compound before he had a chance to record and share the operation’s full WhatsApp conversations.Photograph: Saumya KhandelwalMuzahir is eager now for WIRED to release our full analysis of that data. I’ve pointed out to him that, when we do, the Chinese mafia could find a way to retaliate against him in India, or elsewhere if he follows through on his plan to leave the country. We could obscure his identity, but his team was small enough that it will likely still be immediately clear to his former bosses who the leaker was—even if we didn’t publish this detailed narrative of his experience.Muzahir responds that he’s willing to accept that risk to get his story out—including his real identity. After everything he has suffered, Muzahir is still idealistic enough to hope that his experience will serve not only as a warning but as a source of inspiration to others like him.As he explains that decision, I can see more clearly than ever before the motivation driving every risk he has taken: He’s speaking not only to me but to every potential resister or whistleblower inside the burgeoning scam compound industry and the global power structures that enable it, to its survivors, to the hundreds of thousands of other voiceless people trapped in its systems of modern slavery.“When someone reads about me, then maybe a lot of Red Bulls will stand up and speak,” Muzahir says with his usual shy smile. “When a lot of Red Bulls speak in this world, it will help to make things better.”Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at mail@wired.com. He Leaked the Secrets of a Southeast Asian Scam Compound. Then He Had to Get Out Alive It was a perfect June evening in New York when I received my first email from the source who would ask me to call him Red Bull. He was writing from hell, 8,000 miles away. A summer shower had left a rainbow over my Brooklyn neighborhood, and my two children were playing in a kiddie pool on the roof of our apartment building. Now the sun was setting, while I—in typical 21st-century parenting fashion, forgive me—compulsively scrolled through every app on my phone. The message had no subject line and came from an address on the encrypted email service Proton Mail: “vaultwhistle@proton.me.” I opened it. “Hello. I’m currently working inside a major crypto romance scam operation based in the Golden Triangle,” it began. “I am a computer engineer being forced to work here under a contract.” “I’ve collected internal evidence of how the scam works—step by step,” the message continued. “I am still inside the compound, so I cannot risk direct exposure. But I want to help shut this down.” I knew only vaguely that the Golden Triangle was a lawless jungle region in Southeast Asia. But as a reporter who has covered cryptocurrency crime for the past decade and a half, I understood that crypto scamming—specifically the version of it that’s come to be known as “pig butchering,” in which victims are lured with promises of romance and lucrative investments, only to be tricked into handing over their life savings—has become the most profitable form of cybercrime in the world, pulling in tens of billions of dollars annually. This sprawling scam industry is, today, staffed by hundreds of thousands of forced laborers in compounds across Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. They’re trafficked there from the poorest regions of Asia and Africa and pressed into the service of Chinese organized crime groups. The result is a self-perpetuating, constantly growing, globe-spanning money funnel that destroys lives on both ends—bankrupting one kind of victim, enslaving another. I had read harrowing reports of scam compounds where laborers are beaten, tortured with electric shock batons, starved, and even murdered by their captors. Those stories have mostly come from the rare survivors who have escaped or been rescued by law enforcement. Never before, though, had I heard of someone currently working within a scam compound offering to act as a whistleblower—an actual source on the inside. I had no idea, still, if this purported source was real. But I wrote back anyway, asking them to switch over from email to the encrypted messaging app Signal and turn on disappearing messages to better cover their tracks. The source wrote back immediately and told me to expect to hear from them in two hours. That night, after my kids were asleep, the Signal messages began to light up my phone. First, the source sent carefully prepared documents: a flowchart and then a written guide that described the scam processes of the compound in northern Laos. (I’d come to learn that the Golden Triangle—once the American nickname for a vast hotbed of opium and heroin production—now mainly refers to a city-size Laotian “special economic zone” bordering Myanmar and Thailand and largely controlled by Chinese business interests.) The two write-ups described every step in the compound’s work: creating fake Facebook and Instagram profiles; using hired models and AI deepfake tools to complete the illusion of a real romantic prospect; tricking victims into “investing” in fake trading platforms they recommended. It even detailed the small gong that would be struck in the office when someone pulled off a successful scam. I had barely had time to skim these detailed descriptions—this was not how I’d planned to spend a Saturday evening with my wife—when my phone rang, just after midnight. I picked up the Signal call. A polite Indian-accented voice said, “Hello.” “What do I call you?” I asked. “You can call me any name, brother, no matter,” the voice said with a shy laugh. I insisted that I’d need a name for him, even if he just wanted to make one up on the spot. “You can call me Red Bull,” he said. Months later, he would tell me that he’d been looking at an empty can of the energy drink as we spoke. Red Bull explained that he’d tried reaching out to US and Indian law enforcement agencies and Interpol, as well as the tip lines for a few news outlets, but no one had responded other than me. He asked me to tell him more about myself—and then cut me off as soon as I’d said two sentences about my work covering crypto crime. “So you are the person I share everything with,” he said hurriedly. “And you will help me to expose this, right?” Thrown off, I told him he’d have to first tell me who he was. For the next few minutes, Red Bull warily answered my questions. He didn’t tell me his real name but said he was from India—that most of the compound’s forced laborers were from India, Pakistan, or Ethiopia. He was in his early twenties and had a diploma in computer engineering, he said. Like most of his coworkers, Red Bull had been tricked by a fake job offer—in his case, to work as an IT manager for an office in Laos. Then his passport had been taken from him by his Chinese bosses. He was forced to sleep in a dormitory room with five other men and work 15 hours at a time on a nocturnal schedule designed to sync with the daytime of the Indian Americans they targeted for scamming. (That system—matching scammers with victims of their own ethnicity to build rapport and avoid language issues—is common, I’d later learn.) Red Bull’s situation was not precisely the brutal modern slavery I had read about elsewhere. It was more like a grotesque parody of a corporate sales floor. In theory, the staffers were incentivized with commissions designed to create the illusion that they could get rich from hard work. In reality, they were kept in perpetual debt and servitude. Red Bull told me he was paid a base salary of 3,500 Chinese yuan a month, close to $500, but the money was almost entirely taken from him by daily fines for various infractions, most often not meeting his quota of initial conversations with victims. The result was that he had virtually no income and subsisted off the food in the cafeteria, mostly rice and vegetables that he said tasted of strange chemicals. He was bound into this system by a one-year contract, and believed when that time was over—in about six more months—he’d be allowed to leave. So far, he told me, he hadn’t successfully scammed anyone, only skated by with the minimum number of plausible attempts. That meant he was still essentially captive unless he escaped, served out his time, or paid off his contract with thousands of dollars he didn’t have. A city-sized “special economic zone” just inside Laos, the Golden Triangle is controlled largely by Chinese business interests—often illegal ones. This map shows the office and dormitory where Red Bull was kept. Red Bull told me he’d heard of people who were beaten and electrocuted for breaking rules, a female staffer who he believes was sold into sexual slavery, and other coworkers who mysteriously disappeared. “If they knew I was talking to you or doing something wrong to them, they would directly kill me,” he said. “But I promised myself that whether I stay alive or not, I will stop this scam.” Then Red Bull launched into the immediate purpose of his call: There was a scam in progress he knew about, targeting an Indian American man who had already been scammed at least once, but remained in the thrall of one of Red Bull’s colleagues. The man’s crypto wallet service appeared to have frozen his account on the suspicion that he was being defrauded. So for the next payment, a courier was being sent to pick up a six-figure sum in cash. The pickup was set to happen in three or four days. The victim lived just a few hours away from me. If I acted quickly, Red Bull explained, I could alert law enforcement and help set up a sting operation to capture the courier. Beyond this tip, he wanted me to find him an FBI agent to be his handler going forward, while continuing to work with me as a source. We’d spoken for just over 10 minutes. Red Bull impatiently said that he’d write me the details on Signal and hung up. Within seconds, he was sending screenshots of the compound’s internal chat logs, his colleagues’ conversations with victims, and more details on the sting operation he wanted me to arrange. With my mind reeling, I paused for a moment. Then I called Red Bull back on Signal without warning—with video enabled. I wanted to see who I was talking to. The view from the hotel room where Red Bull first spoke to WIRED, as seen over a Signal video call. Red Bull picked up. He was slim and handsome, with slightly shaggy hair and a trim beard. He gave me a half smile, seemingly unconcerned about revealing his face. I asked him to show me his surroundings, and he flipped the video to display a bare hotel room—he explained that he’d risked booking a room in the hotel next to his office to have somewhere to talk to me—and the view out the window of ugly concrete buildings and parking lots, construction sites, and a few palm trees. At my request, he walked outside and showed me the Chinese-language sign on the front of the building. I didn’t know much about the Golden Triangle, but this appeared to be it. Finally, Red Bull showed me his work ID, with a Chinese name the compound had given him: Machao. (None of the workers in the office, he explained, knew each other’s real name.) I began to believe Red Bull was what he said: a real whistleblower in a Laos scam compound. I told him I’d consider everything he’d asked for, but that I wanted to work with him patiently and carefully to minimize his risk. “I am with you and whatever I do, I do under your guidance,” he wrote back at 1:33 am. “Have a nice night ahead.” At 4 am, I was still lying awake in bed, considering what to do with the eager new source who seemed determined to put his life in my hands. After a few hours’ sleep, I texted Erin West, a California prosecutor—or, as I would learn in our phone call later that day, a former prosecutor. Toward the end of 2024, West became so fed up with the US government’s failure to do anything about the pig butchering epidemic that she’d retired early from her position as a deputy district attorney and was now focused full-time on running her own anti-scam organization, called Operation Shamrock. I asked West for advice about who in law enforcement could help arrange the sting that Red Bull had requested. West, to my surprise, was far more excited about the story that Red Bull wanted me to write. “This is a major, major deal,” West said. “Here’s someone on the inside who’s willing to share this information and tell us everything about how this whole operation runs.” But she quickly shot down the idea of a sting. No time to arrange it, she said. Nor did she think that arresting a lowly money mule would be the major win that Red Bull believed it to be. Most couriers of this kind, she said, were freelancers even further down the hierarchy of a scam operation than Red Bull himself and would know nothing of value. More important, a sting—or any effort to warn the victim myself by asking Red Bull for his contact and reaching out—could also create suspicion of a leak inside the scam compound that might be traced to Red Bull and put his life in jeopardy. Preventing one case of fraud, or taking down one courier, hardly seemed worth that risk of exposure. I had been talking to Red Bull for less than 24 hours. Already I was making the decision to stand by as a potential six-figure scam took place, as a cost of protecting him. Beyond this question of a sting, West told me, she wasn’t sure that handing Red Bull over to the FBI was the right approach. If he were to become a law enforcement source, she said, the FBI or Interpol would almost certainly tell him to stop talking to me or any other journalist. And the result of whatever he shared with the feds would likely fall far short of his expectations: criminal charges, in absentia, for low-level bosses at best. “If he thinks that the FBI and Interpol are going to march into Laos and take this place down, that’s never going to happen. The cavalry is not coming.” Far more valuable than building a case against this single operation, she argued, would be to use whatever Red Bull could share to tell the larger story: the high-resolution reality of pig butchering compounds, their operational details, the scale of their work. Some of this had been described before by survivors of the compounds, but never, to West’s knowledge, by an insider source leaking documents and evidence in real time. The role of human trafficking in scam compounds’ operations has only become harder to measure, West told me, with the Trump administration’s destruction of USAID, which funded humanitarian organizations in the region. “The Trump presidency has taken away any of the eyes on the ground that we had,” West said. All of that has enabled Chinese-origin gangs to continue stealing “a generation’s worth of our wealth” through a system of slavery that’s increasingly come to control an entire region of the world, as West described it. “The story here is how we allowed these criminals to embed themselves in Southeast Asia like a festering cancer,” West said. “And how it’s disrupting our ability to trust people.” I told Red Bull that we couldn’t arrange a sting operation without risking his life. I also made the case that if he wanted to be a source for me, he’d likely have to wait to talk to law enforcement. He accepted all this with surprising decisiveness. “OK, done,” he said. Red Bull and I soon settled into a routine of speaking on Signal every morning New York time, around 10 pm in Laos, as he walked around outside his dormitory in the half hour after he woke up and before he went into the cafeteria for a meal. (This “dinner” preceded his approximately 15-hour workday, which included two breaks to eat.) He spent much of our first conversations pitching a series of increasingly high-risk evidence-gathering methods: He wanted to wear a hidden camera or microphone. He suggested setting up remote desktop software so I could see in real time everything on his screen. He offered to install spyware on the computer of his team leader, another Indian worker with aviator glasses and a short beard who went by the name “Amani.” He even proposed to hack into the laptop of Amani’s supervisor, 50k, a short Chinese man with a paunch, tight pants, and a tattoo on his chest that Red Bull could never quite make out. Maybe that spyware would help us gather intel on 50k’s communications with his own boss, “Alang,” whom Red Bull never saw in person. For every one of these brazen ideas, I consulted with colleagues and experts who told me, one after another, how hidden-camera evidence-gathering required training, how the software Red Bull wanted to install on the office computers left behind detectable artifacts—why, in other words, all these ideas were likely to get him caught and killed. We settled on a far simpler approach: He would use Signal on his work computer to send me messages and materials throughout his work hours, using Signal’s disappearing messages feature set to a five-minute countdown timer to cover his tracks. At times he started calling me “Uncle” to bolster the cover story that he was just speaking to a relative, in case he was caught. We adopted a protocol in which one of us would start a conversation by saying “Red.” The other would respond “Bull.” This exchange would verify no one had taken over his account. It was Red Bull’s idea to change the name and icon of the Signal app on his computer to make it look like a desktop shortcut for its hard drive. He began to send me a steady stream of pictures, screenshots, and videos: a spreadsheet and photos of a whiteboard on which his team’s work was tracked, with scam totals in the thousands of dollars next to many of the group’s nicknames. A photo of a Chinese ceremonial drum on a stand that stood in the office, ready to be struck to celebrate big wins of $100,000 or more. Pages and pages of chat logs, posted to the office WhatsApp group, documented the scamming wins of Red Bull’s colleagues and the tragic responses from victims: “Always had a dream of having a girlfriend then wife like you” … “U stopped talking to me” … “I will continue praying for your Mom” … “Please help me withdraw my money OK?” … “??????” … “😭” One video showed a victim crying in his car after losing a six-figure sum; the mark had sent the clip to his scammer to elicit guilt, perhaps, but it was instead being passed around the office for laughs. Every member of the team was required to post daily updates—how many “first chats” they’d started, how many “deep chats” they’d had, the kind that might lead to successful scams. Their group chat used euphemisms like “opening a new customer,” for hooking a new mark, and “recharges,” for repeat victims. Each team had a quota, typically around a million dollars a month. If they met it, they’d be rewarded with weekends off, the freedom to have snacks in the office, even parties at a nearby club. (Their bosses, Red Bull said, would spend those parties in a private room separated by a curtain.) Miss the target, and they’d be berated, fined, and forced to work seven nights a week. A whiteboard in the office tracked scam successes, listed alongside workers’ pseudonyms and team names. Every worker also posted a mandatory daily schedule—not of their own nocturnal life sitting at a desk in a fluorescent-lit office and sending Facebook and Instagram messages, but the schedule of the rich, single woman they were pretending to be: 7 am “peaceful yoga and meditation,” 9:30 am “self-care and vacation planning,” 2:30 pm “dentist visit,” 6 pm “dinner and talking with mother.” Sometimes during our voice calls, Red Bull would tell me to enable video and record my screen. Then he would walk into the cafeteria and surreptitiously film his surroundings while pretending to talk to his “uncle.” I got a tour through the bright lights of the building’s lobby and stairwells, the lines of depressed-looking South Asian and African men lining up for food. Once he even showed me the inside of the office, a large, beige room where I could see clusters of desks with red, yellow, and green flags on them that connoted each team’s scamming performance. A video surreptitiously recorded via a Signal call shows the inside of the Boshang scam compound’s office. After a few days, Red Bull and I tried upgrading our cover story, and I became a secret girlfriend he was texting with—a better explanation for his use of Signal should it be detected. We peppered our conversation with heart emojis, referred to each other as “dear,” and signed off with “miss you,” until our chat logs started to look almost like the fraud romances his team carried on daily. But we soon found the pretense too embarrassing and gave it up. On another occasion, as I was heading to sleep, Red Bull wrote a surprisingly sensitive farewell message: “Good night! 🌙 Rest easy—you’ve done enough for today. Let your mind reset, and let tomorrow come with fresh clarity and quiet strength.” As stilted as the language felt, I admit to being moved by the unusually thoughtful note—I had, in fact, gotten very little sleep over the several stressful days since we’d first started communicating. Then, during our call the following morning, Red Bull began explaining to me the role that AI chat tools like ChatGPT and DeepSeek play in the compound’s work: how they’re trained to use them to clean up their language, find just the right sentiment, never run out of inviting turns of phrase. His goodnight message the previous evening, he told me without hesitation, had been copied directly from ChatGPT. “Everyone does this here; they teach us this,” he said. Funny, I thought, how easy it is to be taken in by a bit of sympathetic text sent by a new acquaintance on the other side of the world. In the few minutes I had with Red Bull every day between the dormitory and the office, amid our other conversations about his safety and evidence-gathering tactics, I asked how he’d come to be trapped in the compound and why he had become so singularly motivated to expose it. In answering, in hurried snippets of conversation and then later in longer texts, he told me the 23-year story of his life. Red Bull grew up, he told me, as one of eight children in a Muslim family in a mountainous village in Jammu and Kashmir, a disputed territory on the India–Pakistan border. His father was a schoolteacher but also sometimes worked as a construction laborer and, along with Red Bull’s mother, raised dairy cattle and sold ghee—clarified butter—to survive. When Red Bull was a young child in the mid-2000s, the family would often leave their village for areas in northern Kashmir to escape the intermittent conflicts between the Indian Army and Pakistani-supported guerrillas. Muslim men in the region had sometimes been conscripted to fight or carry supplies for Pakistani-backed forces, then branded as terrorists and killed by India’s military. When the conflict died down, Red Bull’s parents sent him to live with his grandparents in the city of Rajouri, a four-hour bus ride away, where they hoped their unusually bright and inquisitive child could get a better education. His grandparents were harsh guardians, he told me. They forced him to chop wood and fetch water when he wasn’t studying, and his school was a 6-mile walk away. He wore out his shoes, blistered his feet, and attended classes with a rope tied around his pants for a belt. Even then, he says, he maintained a kind of defiant optimism. “I kept thinking: If not today then tomorrow things will get better,” he wrote to me. When he was 15, Red Bull’s grandparents sent him to live with the family of a pair of his teachers, who made him work as a servant in exchange for paying his school fees. He would wake up early every morning to clean the house before breakfast, then wash the dishes before going to school—including the separate set they required him to use. One day in that house, he remembers watching, entranced, as the family’s eldest son played the latest FIFA game on his PC, the first time Red Bull had ever seen a computer. He was told to get back to work. This became the beginning of his computer fixation. “I felt ashamed and disrespected because I was not even allowed to touch it,” Red Bull wrote. “I told myself that one day I would become the master of this machine.” After a particularly humiliating scolding, Red Bull decided to run away. He left the next morning before the family was awake and traveled to the city, where he found odd jobs cleaning houses, doing construction work, cutting rice. For a time he went door-to-door selling Ayurvedic medicines. At night he would study alone in the room he rented. In 2021, he was accepted into the computer science program at Kashmir Government Polytechnic College in Srinagar, the region’s biggest city. At the university, he slept in a room without proper bedding through the freezing Kashmiri winters, and often went hungry. A friend taught him how to make Facebook pages for businesses, or buy and sell them like a real estate developer flipping properties. Working on the school’s PCs, he soon made the equivalent of $200, enough to buy his own used Dell laptop—a prized, life-changing possession. After three years of studying, working, and sending money home to his family, he graduated with a diploma in computer engineering—the first time, he says, that anyone from his village had ever attained that level of technical education. He’d also developed a stubborn, even angry determination to chart his own path through the world. “My mom and dad always advised me to have patience and to stay strong, and their advice gave me some inner strength, but the fight itself I always carried alone,” he wrote. “It is very hard for anyone to truly understand me, but I never stopped fighting my circumstances.” Not long after Red Bull graduated, he was making a livable wage creating Facebook pages and websites, earning as much as a thousand dollars a month. But he had bigger ambitions. He dreamed of working in artificial intelligence, in the biomedical field, or in cybersecurity as a whitehat hacker. (The TV show Mr. Robot had long been one of his favorites.) He wanted to study abroad but couldn’t afford it, and was rejected when he sought student loans. He resigned himself to working for a year or two to save money. A friend from college told him of someone in Laos who seemed to be able to find people good work. Red Bull began talking to that thirdhand contact, called Ajaz, who said he knew an agent who could get him hired as an office IT manager making around $1,700 a month. For Red Bull, that alluring salary would mean he might only have to work for a single year before returning to school. Ajaz told Red Bull to fly to Bangkok and then call the recruiting agent from the airport. He boarded the plane without even knowing what industry his employer might be in—only that he would help manage its computers. He remembers the excitement of traveling abroad for the first time, dreaming of his future throughout the red-eye flight across the Indian Ocean. The next morning in Bangkok, he called the agent, an East African man who summarily told him to take a 12-hour bus ride to Chiang Mai, and then a taxi to the border with Laos. When Red Bull arrived there, he was to take a selfie showing that he was outside the immigration office, and text it to the agent. A few minutes after Red Bull did as instructed, an immigration official came outside, flashed the selfie he’d evidently received from the agent, and demanded 500 Thai baht—about $15. Red Bull paid, the official stamped his passport, and he was sent down to a boat waiting on the Mekong River below. The ferry crossed the river just south of the point where the three borders of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet in a single nexus: the Golden Triangle. After the boat had crossed into Laos, a young Chinese man waiting on the opposite river bank showed Red Bull the same selfie. He took Red Bull’s passport without explanation and gave it to immigration officials along with some Chinese currency. It came back with a visa. The Chinese man pocketed the passport and told Red Bull to wait for the East African agent. Then he left, taking Red Bull’s passport with him. An hour later, the agent arrived and drove him in a white van to a hotel in northern Laos, where he would spend the night. Lying in the bed of that bare hotel room, he remained entirely focused on the anxiety and excitement of his first real job interview, scheduled for the next day. He still suspected nothing. The next morning, he was brought to an office, a gray tower of concrete surrounded by other drab buildings amid the lush green mountains of northern Laos. Red Bull sat nervously at a desk as a Chinese man and a translator administered a typing test and an English language test, both of which he breezed through. They told him he’d passed, and they began asking him about his familiarity with social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Red Bull eagerly answered their questions. Finally they asked him whether he understood the job he’d be starting. “As an IT manager?” he asked. No, they said, for once speaking without euphemism: He would be a “scammer.” As the reality of his situation finally became clear, Red Bull spiraled into panic. The Chinese boss told him he’d be starting immediately. Trying to buy time, he begged to instead return to the hotel to rest for one night before beginning work. The boss agreed. That night in the hotel room, Red Bull frantically searched the internet for information about scam operations in the Golden Triangle. Only then did he see the dimensions of the trap that had sprung around him: Too late, he read about the thousands of Indians deceived and ensnared just as he had been, with no passport or means of escape. In the midst of this sickening epiphany, his parents video-called him to ask if he’d gotten the IT manager job. Burying his shame and regret, he said he had, smiled, and accepted their congratulations. The colored flags in each team’s work area indicate whether it’s been meeting scam revenue quotas. A Chinese ceremonial drum stands ready to be struck by any worker who achieves a scam of $100,000 or more. Over the next days, with little in the way of orientation, he was pulled into the machinery of the scamming organization he’d come to know as the Boshang compound: He was trained to create fake profiles, given scam scripts, and then set to work on a nocturnal schedule, manually spamming out hundreds of introductory messages every night to lure new victims. At the end of his shifts, he would return to the top bunk of his six-man dorm room—little bigger than the hotel room he’d occupied those first nights—with a toilet in the corner. Yet from the very beginning, he says, he was determined to again defy his circumstances. It struck him that he knew more about computers than most of his coworkers, or even his bosses, who seemed to understand only how to use social media, AI tools, and cryptocurrency. Within days, he began daydreaming of using his technical skills to quietly gather information on the compound and, somehow, expose it. There was, Red Bull came to believe, little to prevent him from leaking the compound’s secrets. Team leaders took employees’ personal phones and put them in a box when they began their shifts, and they were strictly prohibited from taking work devices out of the office. But otherwise, the surveillance of staffers and their own phones seemed surprisingly loose. Bosses seemed to depend largely on the fear and despair of Red Bull’s fellow trafficking victims—most of whom had, it seemed to him, lost all hope of resistance. “They tell themselves survival is the only goal, and they shut down anything that feels human,” Red Bull wrote to me. “Empathy, guilt, even memories of who they were before.” He kept his own hope alive in part with a sense that he was different. “Most people don’t have the skills, or the tools, or even the mental strength to fight from the inside,” he wrote. “I can move through the system. I can observe. I can gather evidence, names, scripts, patterns, connections.” At times, though, I still struggled to understand what had given Red Bull the conviction to reach out to me, to risk his life rather than merely serve out his time. “Maybe it’s justice, or maybe it’s conscience,” he responded. “If there’s a God, I hope he sees what I’m doing. If there isn’t, then at least I’ll know I stayed human in a place that tries to turn people into monsters.” As time passed and the collection of materials Red Bull sent to me mounted, I was also getting the sense that the walls were closing in on him. One day, Red Bull told me, his team leader Amani asked him with menacing calm why he was spending so much time outside—referring, most likely, to the walks when Red Bull would talk to me on Signal—and generating so few new “clients.” Maybe, Amani suggested, a beating or some electric shocks would increase his productivity. Around the same time, Red Bull told me that new surveillance cameras had been installed in the office, including on the ceiling both behind and in front of his desk. I told him he should immediately stop communicating with me from the office—it was now far too risky. My editors came to a more severe conclusion: I should shut down my reporting with Red Bull altogether until he was free. Red Bull had, by this point, sent me a collection of 25 scam scripts and guides in English and Chinese. The documents displayed the anatomy of scamming at a level of resolution I’d never seen before: lists of conversation starters; tutorials on what to do when a target asks for a video call and how to delay until a deepfake model is ready to speak with them; tips on how to complain about overcautious financial institutions so victims don’t get spooked by their own bank’s warnings. Maybe what he’d given me was already enough. Following my editors’ lead, I told Red Bull that it was time to stop. “OK, done,” he said, with his usual quick pivot. A video secretly recorded over a Signal call shows the inside of the Boshang compound’s cafeteria. Red Bull says the food tasted of strange chemicals. Access to the cafeteria was frequently denied to workers for violations as basic as showing up late to a shift or not being in their dorm rooms at check-in time. Now, I told him, he should focus on completing the remaining six months of his contract as safely as possible, and we’d talk again when he was free. But Red Bull, once again, was already several thoughts ahead. If our reporting process was finished, he told me, he wanted to leave now. He told me about a plan he’d been concocting to get home: He’d forge an Indian police letter stating that he was under investigation back in Jammu and Kashmir. If he didn’t go back, he’d tell his supervisor, it would cause serious trouble for him, his family, and ultimately the compound. He would plead to take a two-week trip home, deal with the situation, and return. Maybe, he said, his bosses would buy this story and let him leave. I didn’t think it would work, and I told him as much: I warned that his overseers might detect the forgery and punish him. But after all the risky schemes I had already talked Red Bull out of, he seemed more stubbornly intent on this one. I asked him to please wait, and I told him I’d try to find him someone in the region who was more familiar with scam compound escape tactics. I was in touch, for instance, with a Southeast Asian activist who asked to be identified only as “W,” who had experience helping political refugees escape from the region. Red Bull suddenly switched into cover story mode as he entered the office lobby. “No problem uncle, you stay relaxed,” he said as he walked by the security guard. “Things will be better soon, OK?” Then he ended the call. At another point in those daily conversations, Red Bull brought up another potential path to freedom: If only he could pay the equivalent of $3,400, he could buy out his contract and go home. He just needed to get the money somehow. In a matter of seconds, a fleet of thoughts ran through my mind. First, a flash of hope for Red Bull and a desire to pay off his debt. Then the realization that, of course, WIRED couldn’t possibly give money to a source in this way, much less reward an organized crime group for human trafficking. The idea violated journalistic ethics—payments to sources are generally considered a corrupting conflict of interest—and would set an unforgivable precedent. I said as much to Red Bull, and he quickly responded that he understood “completely” and that he had never asked me or WIRED to pay. Even so, the mere mention of that payment option also planted in my mind a different, darker thought that I now couldn’t shake: What if Red Bull was scamming me? I had set aside my initial skepticism of Red Bull once I’d seen enough proof that he was who he said he was: a real person trapped in a grim compound in Laos. Now, almost two weeks into our relationship, the troubling possibility nagged at me: What if he truly was a scam compound insider, but this had been the scam all along? The mere thought felt like a betrayal of all the trust he seemed to have placed in me. I decided to compartmentalize my suspicions, keeping the possibility of an ulterior motive in my mind next to the more likely probability that his intentions were genuine. A couple of days later, meanwhile, he mentioned his forged document idea again, and I again suggested he wait for help from someone like W and not risk the scheme. But with every day, I could tell that he was increasingly set on his plan. “I have no other options,” he said. “Let’s see what happens.” Just a few days later, on a Saturday afternoon, I was surprised to get an email from the same Proton Mail account that Red Bull had first reached out from but hadn’t used since we’d switched to Signal. Just like that first email, it had no subject line. I opened the message and my mind instantly went blank with dread. “they people cath me and now they get my phone everything,” it read. “they beaten me andn ow may be they kill me” Red Bull had tried his forged-police-document deception. Now, it seemed, the worst possible outcome had come to pass. I suppressed panic as my mind spun through options. I texted my editors and W, in the hopes they might have some idea of how to help. Fifteen minutes after that first email came another, more coherent message from Red Bull: “I’m trapped. I have no way to get out. They have my personal phone and my ID card,” this one read. “If there’s anything you can do, please help me.” In the meantime, W responded to me on Signal. Over the phone, we hurriedly talked through what we could possibly do to increase Red Bull’s chances of survival. I didn’t know how Red Bull was emailing me, but W cautioned that it would be dangerous to respond. His bosses knew he’d lied to them to try to escape. It still seemed they didn’t know he was talking to a journalist and leaking their secrets. If they found out, there was little doubt they would kill him. “Brutally,” W said. “There’s no way he’d get out of this area alive.” He advised that I wait to hear more from Red Bull about his situation and how to safely communicate. Twenty-four excruciating hours passed before I received another email from Red Bull—a long, stream-of-consciousness block of frantic text. “Last night those people beat me I am still hungry I have not eaten anything they disconnected my card my personal phone and everything today they will decide what to do with me the Indian team leader and everyone sat in front of me and said do you know who we are and they beat me again and then made me sit back in the office today I have to accept that whatever I did was fake and I have to accept my mistake I cannot run away from here I have no money and I cannot even go outside the gate I am contacting you from the system PC if you have any way then send me an email I will check it and tell W to talk to me on my email and those people are telling me to give them 20k yuan they said if I give it they will leave me without doing anything more please tell W to reply to my email whenever they torture me and bring me back to the office I am only on the system PC have a nice evening ahead” Before I could respond to this email, I got a Signal message: “Red.” “Bull,” I wrote back. He wrote quickly, this time with the short version: He’d been put in a room and told again to find someone to pay 20,000 yuan for his release, the equivalent of around $2,800. In the midst of this life-or-death crisis, I couldn’t help but think that this might just as easily be the endgame of the scam I’d suspected in the back of my mind: Hook a journalist’s attention, lure him in, give him responsibility for a source’s safety, and now require a payment to save his life. Regardless, my editors had made clear to me that neither WIRED nor I could pay Red Bull or his captors. They were, in fact, warier than ever that he might be scamming me. But the more likely truth, I still felt, was that this nightmare was all entirely real. Red Bull seemed to have his phone back—likely to allow him to find someone to pay his ransom—but it felt too risky to call him. I texted him, suggesting he instead try to speak to W about who might be able to help him escape. W was far more experienced in these situations—and if Red Bull were monitored, he’d at least be caught speaking to an activist rather than a reporter. I also told Red Bull that, as terrible as I felt that he was going through this hell, I wouldn’t be able to pay his ransom, any more than I’d been able to pay out his contract. “Okay,” Red Bull wrote. “I understand.” He asked me to tell W to get in touch, and I told him I would. I watched as he set Signal’s disappearing message feature to delete messages after only five seconds, a sign of how closely he feared he was being watched. He posted a thumbs-up emoji. Then it was gone. Over the next few days, I spoke with one person after another who I hoped might be able to help Red Bull, perhaps even by paying his ransom: Erin West, W, W’s boss at the nonprofit he worked for. One by one, each of them backed away—either from concerns about rewarding a scam compound’s human trafficking, suspicion that Red Bull’s story might itself be a scam, or some combination of the two. West, despite her enormous enthusiasm when Red Bull first came forward, now said it sounded like a human trafficking racket she’d heard of elsewhere, in which fake victims solicit fake ransoms. W got as far as speaking to Red Bull on multiple Signal voice calls but was overwhelmed by his panicked energy and thought his desperate pleas for the ransom payment—and promises to pay W back in the future—were dubious. “It sounded like ‘Send me one bitcoin and I’ll send you two,’” W told me afterward. But I still felt I owed it to Red Bull to take his situation at face value and—assuming it was all true—do whatever I could within the bounds of journalistic ethics to get him out. Three days had passed since he was first held ransom. It was becoming clearer that he was no longer being closely monitored, perhaps because his captors were growing bored with him. I decided to risk a call. “Things are not going good,” he told me with typical understatement, speaking softly, close to the phone’s microphone. He told me he had a fever, that he’d been beaten several times, slapped and kicked and made to confess that he’d forged the Indian police document. On one occasion the bosses put a white powder into a cup of water and told him to drink it. He found that it made him unnaturally talkative and confident but then gave him a rash of raised red bumps on his skin. He was sometimes sent back to his dormitory to sleep, he told me, but hadn’t eaten in days and was deprived of water for long stretches. He’d written to various Indian embassies and consulates across Southeast Asia, but none had responded. “No one is going to help me. I don’t know why,” he said a few minutes into our call, his voice finally breaking into a muffled sob, the first time I’d ever heard him express self-pity. Then he quickly controlled himself with a single breath. “I want to cry,” he said. “But let’s see.” Four days after he’d first been caught trying to escape and held for ransom, Red Bull texted me to say that something had changed in the compound. Everything was strangely quiet, and no one had summoned him to the office. When he asked some of his coworkers, they told him there were rumors the Laotian police were planning a raid. Their Chinese bosses had gotten a tip from someone on the inside and were laying low. The next day, with rumors of a raid still circulating through the compound, Red Bull got a hopeful message from the Indian embassy in Laos. “Please share your passport copy, company ID,” it read. “Embassy will take necessary action to rescue you.” Salvation seemed to be on the horizon. But then more days passed, and—nothing. The embassy stopped responding to Red Bull’s messages. Late one night, I managed to get an Indian embassy official on the phone after several tries. He seemed confused about which person we were talking about, then repeated the government’s vague assurance that it would rescue him, and hung up. As the days went by—with no more clarity from the Indian government, no police raid, and no one willing to pay for his freedom—Red Bull seemed to be sinking into fatalism. One day I woke up to a series of messages offering up a confession, as if he feared he might die in the room where he was being held and wanted to absolve himself of sin. “I want to say something honestly. When I first talked to you I said I never scammed anyone. That was not fully true,” he wrote. “The truth is the Chinese bosses forced me to bring two people into the scam. I did not do it by choice. I feel guilty about it every day. That is why I want to tell the full truth now.” He later told me more details of those two victims. From one, he’d taken $504. From the other, around $11,000. He gave me both of their names. I tried contacting them but couldn’t find one, and the other never responded. For the larger of those two sums, Red Bull should have received a commission based on the scam compound’s incentive structure. But he says he was never paid any reward beyond his meager base salary. I’d later look back at the picture of the office whiteboard Red Bull had shared early on. On it I could see, quite clearly, the Chinese name the compound had given him, “Machao,” next to the sum of $504. I had entirely missed this, though he’d made no attempt to hide it. “I am trusting you with my real story,” Red Bull concluded his confession. “This is the truth.” After 10 days in limbo, Red Bull told me that he and his coworkers had been ordered to pack their things. The office computers had been boxed up and stored in the dormitory. The entire staff was moving to a new building a few hundred feet away, and the workers were told they’d have to continue their work from these temporary dorm rooms rather than the office. According to the rumors, a raid was finally coming. Throughout this time, Red Bull was treated more or less like a dog, as he described it, a pariah set apart from the other workers: He had no bedding; sometimes he slept on the floor and was fed only when someone remembered to give him food, often spoiled leftovers. He lost weight and suffered from body aches, fever, and what felt like the flu. Yet somehow, even then, Red Bull was still motivated to keep digging. During this hiatus from the office, work devices were now allowed into the dormitory—a loosening of security that Red Bull realized could offer him an opportunity. One day when one of his roommates was asleep, he found the man’s work phone. He had seen the man enter his passcode over his shoulder, and now quickly unlocked it. Red Bull then connected his own personal phone to the man’s WhatsApp using the app’s “linked device” feature, allowing him to read the scam compound’s internal messaging. He used that access to make screen recordings, meticulously scrolling through months of the compound’s internal conversations, as well as all the screenshots of chat logs with victims his colleagues had posted. Another day, he found his own work phone left unattended in a different dorm room—he hadn’t had access to it since he was first caught trying to escape—and repeated the WhatsApp linking trick so that he could access that device’s messages, too, from his personal phone. Then he made another screen recording of scrolling through its chats. Together, the videos added up to a detailed record of three months of the compound’s day-to-day operations. Red Bull sent me samples of these recordings, but the full videos ran to nearly 10 gigabytes, far more than he could text me from his phone’s data plan. A raid by Laotian police targeted the building that housed the Boshang compound offices, but Red Bull’s bosses had already moved their operation on a tip. So the raid appeared to round up forced laborers in other offices. A week later, after he and his coworkers had moved to the new building, Red Bull sent me a very different, more dramatic series of short clips: One showed dozens of South Asian men standing outside of a high-rise building, being lined up by what appeared to be Laotian police in khaki and black uniforms. Another showed a similar-looking crowd sitting in rows in a lobby. The raids, Red Bull told me, had arrived, sweeping the scam operations that hadn’t taken the precaution of vacating the old building, as his bosses had. Now these videos were circulating among workers who had only narrowly missed the crackdown. As the rest of the compound’s operations struggled to adapt to their new makeshift workspace, Red Bull, of course, had already been stuck in purgatory for weeks. He pleaded with his bosses to be released, arguing that he was no use to them. He had no money, and clearly there was no one willing to pay his ransom. He was dead weight, taking up space when they were already crowded into their temporary building. Shockingly, his bosses agreed. Rather than kill him, they told him he could go. To scrape together enough money for a return journey, Red Bull borrowed a few hundred dollars from his brother. Then he wrote to an Indian acquaintance who had a position in a scam compound nearby, telling him that he needed to go home to see his family but would soon return. If the acquaintance could send enough money to buy plane tickets, Red Bull proposed, he’d let the man take the recruitment fee when he returned. Soon he had several hundred more dollars in his account. Red Bull had scammed a scammer, and he’d found a path home. In late July, Red Bull’s team leader, Amani, intercepted him outside the dormitory, handed him his passport, and told him it was time to leave. Red Bull explained that most of his things, including his shoes, were in his room. He was wearing only a pair of flip-flops. Amani told him he didn’t care. 50k himself was waiting in an Audi to drive Red Bull to the border of the Golden Triangle region. From there, he’d be on his own. He got in the back of the car in his flip-flops and left. Later, when Red Bull had finally escaped, he would marvel at this last slight, as if it were somehow worse than all the slaps, kicks, drugging, and starvation he’d endured. “I never expected this from them,” he wrote to me, punctuating his text with crying emojis. “They didn’t even allow me to wear my shoes.” A few days after that drive to the border, near the end of a journey that involved buses, a train, and a dirt-cheap plane itinerary with no fewer than five layovers, Red Bull was finally back in India. During a stopover on the way to his home village, he began sending me the WhatsApp screen-recording videos he’d smuggled out of the compound on his phone. For an analysis of the thousands of pages of materials that Red Bull leaked to WIRED, click here. These files would turn out to be the most significant and unique material he provided me. A team of reporters at WIRED would later convert them into a 4,200-page PDF of screenshots and share them with scam compound experts. The document, we’d discover, offers a detailed diary of life inside the compound, cataloging every successful scam it achieved during those months and laying out the scale and hierarchy of the operation. It also reveals the mundane minute-by-minute life of the forced laborers carrying out those scams, from their daily schedules to the fines and punishments they received to the Orwellian language their bosses used to manipulate, cajole, and discipline them—some of which is included in the text interspersed throughout this story. Ultimately, no one had given Red Bull the help he needed to escape—not the human rights groups I tried to connect him with, not the Indian government (which never rescued him as promised), and not WIRED. Red Bull had rescued himself. Now, despite that complete lack of incentive or aid, amid the most desperate circumstances, he had obtained and given me the biggest data prize yet. Red Bull, back in his home country of India. Red Bull’s hands weren’t clean. He had admitted to me that, under duress, he’d scammed two innocent people. But despite my fears and those of the others I’d tried to connect him with, his motivation to act as a whistleblower had proven to be pure. Now there could finally be no doubt: Red Bull was real. On a quiet backstreet of a city somewhere in India, I wait alone—surrounded by several dozen macaque monkeys lounging, grooming each other, and parkouring off the neighborhood’s balconies and electrical wires. Then the monkey troop disperses into the trees and onto rooftops, and a white SUV emerges around a corner, drives up the street, and stops in front of me. A door opens, and out steps Red Bull, displaying the same shy smile he had on his face when he picked up my first Signal video call. He looks smaller than I imagined, very thin, but more put together than he did on my phone screen, with a button-up flannel shirt and a fresh haircut. As he walks toward me, he breaks into a bigger, less restrained grin, and I shake his hand. Now that he’s finally free, Red Bull has given me permission to reveal his real name: Mohammad Muzahir. Mohammad Muzahir, aka Red Bull, in a car in India after his first in-person meeting with a WIRED reporter. “I’m feeling very, very happy to meet with you. I’ve been waiting a long time to meet with you and share everything, face-to-face,” Muzahir says after we’ve checked him into his hotel and we’re riding in the SUV to mine. “I have no words to express it right now.” The three months between Muzahir’s escape and this in-person meeting have been far from easy. He’s virtually broke, but he can’t bring himself to focus on building websites and Facebook pages as he has done in the past, nor does he even have a laptop. Instead he has worked as a waiter and taken construction jobs to survive. When Muzahir isn’t working or applying to jobs and universities abroad—so far without success—he obsessively researches scam operations on his phone, which is cracked on both front and back, with glitching lines across its damaged screen. In that research, Muzahir has come to believe that almost all of the men rounded up in the raids that displaced his compound were later released back into the Golden Triangle. He assumes the police action was all just for show and barely disrupted the scam operations there. He has also learned that the Boshang operation that indentured him has since relocated to Cambodia, taking many of his former coworkers with it. Muzahir is haunted by the coworkers he left behind in the compound—which has since relocated to Cambodia—and racked with guilt over the two people he scammed. Muzahir sleeps as little as three hours a night, he tells me after we sit down in an empty lounge in the basement of my hotel. He’s haunted, he says, by the fact that the scam compound he escaped, and dozens like it, are still operating and even expanding across lawless zones in Southeast Asia, and now other parts of the world. He thinks compulsively about the colleagues he left behind. He feels crushing guilt, too, about the two people he scammed, even while telling himself it was a necessary precursor to his actions as a whistleblower. He dreams of earning enough to somehow pay the two men back. “Honestly this is not a happy ending to the story,” he says. After experiencing so many personal betrayals—and working for an operation where industrialized betrayal was, in fact, the business model—Muzahir’s more fundamental problem is that he has trouble putting faith in anyone. He’s reluctant to engage with even the human-rights NGOs and survivor groups I’ve tried to introduce him to. “These people are just wasting time and giving false hope,” he wrote to me at one point. “I’m not trusting too much in people.” Somehow I’ve become an exception to that near-universal mistrust. But now that we’re finally meeting in person, I feel compelled to confess to Muzahir that there were times when I didn’t trust him—that even when he most needed my help, I still feared, incorrectly, that he might be scamming me. To my relief, he just grins at this. “You did good,” Muzahir says. If I had paid off his contract or even paid his ransom, he points out, he would have left the compound before he had a chance to record and share the operation’s full WhatsApp conversations. Muzahir is eager now for WIRED to release our full analysis of that data. I’ve pointed out to him that, when we do, the Chinese mafia could find a way to retaliate against him in India, or elsewhere if he follows through on his plan to leave the country. We could obscure his identity, but his team was small enough that it will likely still be immediately clear to his former bosses who the leaker was—even if we didn’t publish this detailed narrative of his experience. Muzahir responds that he’s willing to accept that risk to get his story out—including his real identity. After everything he has suffered, Muzahir is still idealistic enough to hope that his experience will serve not only as a warning but as a source of inspiration to others like him. As he explains that decision, I can see more clearly than ever before the motivation driving every risk he has taken: He’s speaking not only to me but to every potential resister or whistleblower inside the burgeoning scam compound industry and the global power structures that enable it, to its survivors, to the hundreds of thousands of other voiceless people trapped in its systems of modern slavery. “When someone reads about me, then maybe a lot of Red Bulls will stand up and speak,” Muzahir says with his usual shy smile. “When a lot of Red Bulls speak in this world, it will help to make things better.” Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at mail@wired.com. You Might Also Like In your inbox: Maxwell Zeff's dispatch from the heart of AI ICE is expanding at breakneck speed—here’s where it’s going next Big Story: Inside the gay tech mafia Big Tech says AI will save the planet—it doesn’t offer much proof Event: Helping small business owners succeed © 2026 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. WIRED may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices |
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[SOURCE: https://www.ynet.co.il/entertainment/article/sjicjcz00bx] | [TOKENS: 532] |
"בסוכנות דוגמניות ביקשו להוריד 8 קילו - בנות הלכו לאכול צמר גפן, אני הלכתי למקדונלדס״ גם אחרי כמעט 20 שנה בתחום, ריף נאמן מודה שהמציאות כאם טרייה טלטלה אותה הרבה יותר מכל אודישן לקמפיין או סדרה. עכשיו, כשהיא חוזרת גם למסך כאמא בסרט "הולה צ'או", היא מספרת בריאיון בלי פילטרים על האתגרים והפער בין הדימוי הנוצץ לבין תחושת הבדידות שחוותה בתחילת הדרך, חוזרת לרגעים הקשוחים של תעשיית הדוגמנות ("ביקשו שאוריד 8 קילו - והלכתי למקדונלדס"), ולא מוותרת על החלום לפרוץ מעבר לים: "אני יכולה - וגם מאמינה שאצליח" פוסט משותף על ידי Reef Neeman Sheinfeld (@reefneeman) |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:EditPage/Template:Existential_risk_from_artificial_intelligence] | [TOKENS: 1450] |
Editing Template:Existential risk from artificial intelligence Copy and paste: – — ° ′ ″ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · § Sign your posts on talk pages: ~~~~ Cite your sources: <ref></ref> {{}} {{{}}} | [] [[]] [[Category:]] #REDIRECT [[]] <s></s> <sup></sup> <sub></sub> <code></code> <pre></pre> <blockquote></blockquote> <ref></ref> <ref name="" /> {{Reflist}} <references /> <includeonly></includeonly> <noinclude></noinclude> {{DEFAULTSORT:}} <nowiki></nowiki> <!-- --> <span class="plainlinks"></span> Symbols: ~ | ¡ ¿ † ‡ ↔ ↑ ↓ • ¶ # ∞ ‹› «» ¤ ₳ ฿ ₵ ¢ ₡ ₢ $ ₫ ₯ € ₠ ₣ ƒ ₴ ₭ ₤ ℳ ₥ ₦ ₧ ₰ £ ៛ ₨ ₪ ৳ ₮ ₩ ¥ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ 𝄫 ♭ ♮ ♯ 𝄪 © ¼ ½ ¾ Latin: A a Á á À à  â Ä ä Ǎ ǎ Ă ă Ā ā à ã Å å Ą ą Æ æ Ǣ ǣ B b C c Ć ć Ċ ċ Ĉ ĉ Č č Ç ç D d Ď ď Đ đ Ḍ ḍ Ð ð E e É é È è Ė ė Ê ê Ë ë Ě ě Ĕ ĕ Ē ē Ẽ ẽ Ę ę Ẹ ẹ Ɛ ɛ Ǝ ǝ Ə ə F f G g Ġ ġ Ĝ ĝ Ğ ğ Ģ ģ H h Ĥ ĥ Ħ ħ Ḥ ḥ I i İ ı Í í Ì ì Î î Ï ï Ǐ ǐ Ĭ ĭ Ī ī Ĩ ĩ Į į Ị ị J j Ĵ ĵ K k Ķ ķ L l Ĺ ĺ Ŀ ŀ Ľ ľ Ļ ļ Ł ł Ḷ ḷ Ḹ ḹ M m Ṃ ṃ N n Ń ń Ň ň Ñ ñ Ņ ņ Ṇ ṇ Ŋ ŋ O o Ó ó Ò ò Ô ô Ö ö Ǒ ǒ Ŏ ŏ Ō ō Õ õ Ǫ ǫ Ọ ọ Ő ő Ø ø Œ œ Ɔ ɔ P p Q q R r Ŕ ŕ Ř ř Ŗ ŗ Ṛ ṛ Ṝ ṝ S s Ś ś Ŝ ŝ Š š Ş ş Ș ș Ṣ ṣ ß T t Ť ť Ţ ţ Ț ț Ṭ ṭ Þ þ U u Ú ú Ù ù Û û Ü ü Ǔ ǔ Ŭ ŭ Ū ū Ũ ũ Ů ů Ų ų Ụ ụ Ű ű Ǘ ǘ Ǜ ǜ Ǚ ǚ Ǖ ǖ V v W w Ŵ ŵ X x Y y Ý ý Ŷ ŷ Ÿ ÿ Ỹ ỹ Ȳ ȳ Z z Ź ź Ż ż Ž ž ß Ð ð Þ þ Ŋ ŋ Ə ə Greek: Ά ά Έ έ Ή ή Ί ί Ό ό Ύ ύ Ώ ώ Α α Β β Γ γ Δ δ Ε ε Ζ ζ Η η Θ θ Ι ι Κ κ Λ λ Μ μ Ν ν Ξ ξ Ο ο Π π Ρ ρ Σ σ ς Τ τ Υ υ Φ φ Χ χ Ψ ψ Ω ω {{Polytonic|}} Cyrillic: А а Б б В в Г г Ґ ґ Ѓ ѓ Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ё ё Є є Ж ж З з Ѕ ѕ И и І і Ї ї Й й Ј ј К к Ќ ќ Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ У у Ў ў Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я ́ IPA: t̪ d̪ ʈ ɖ ɟ ɡ ɢ ʡ ʔ ɸ β θ ð ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʂ ʐ ç ʝ ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ ɦ ɱ ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ ʋ ɹ ɻ ɰ ʙ ⱱ ʀ ɾ ɽ ɫ ɬ ɮ ɺ ɭ ʎ ʟ ɥ ʍ ɧ ʼ ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ ɨ ʉ ɯ ɪ ʏ ʊ ø ɘ ɵ ɤ ə ɚ ɛ œ ɜ ɝ ɞ ʌ ɔ æ ɐ ɶ ɑ ɒ ʰ ʱ ʷ ʲ ˠ ˤ ⁿ ˡ ˈ ˌ ː ˑ ̪ {{IPA|}} Wikidata entities used in this page Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page (help): |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#cite_ref-112] | [TOKENS: 9291] |
Contents Internet The Internet (or internet)[a] is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP)[b] to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that comprises private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information services and resources, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, discussion groups, internet telephony, streaming media and file sharing. Most traditional communication media, including telephone, radio, television, paper mail, newspapers, and print publishing, have been transformed by the Internet, giving rise to new media such as email, online music, digital newspapers, news aggregators, and audio and video streaming websites. The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interaction through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking services. Online shopping has also grown to occupy a significant market across industries, enabling firms to extend brick and mortar presences to serve larger markets. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries. The origins of the Internet date back to research that enabled the time-sharing of computer resources, the development of packet switching, and the design of computer networks for data communication. The set of communication protocols to enable internetworking on the Internet arose from research and development commissioned in the 1970s by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense in collaboration with universities and researchers across the United States and in the United Kingdom and France. The Internet has no single centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage. Each constituent network sets its own policies. The overarching definitions of the two principal name spaces on the Internet, the Internet Protocol address (IP address) space and the Domain Name System (DNS), are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols is an activity of the non-profit Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Terminology The word internetted was used as early as 1849, meaning interconnected or interwoven. The word Internet was used in 1945 by the United States War Department in a radio operator's manual, and in 1974 as the shorthand form of Internetwork. Today, the term Internet most commonly refers to the global system of interconnected computer networks, though it may also refer to any group of smaller networks. The word Internet may be capitalized as a proper noun, although this is becoming less common. This reflects the tendency in English to capitalize new terms and move them to lowercase as they become familiar. The word is sometimes still capitalized to distinguish the global internet from smaller networks, though many publications, including the AP Stylebook since 2016, recommend the lowercase form in every case. In 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary found that, based on a study of around 2.5 billion printed and online sources, "Internet" was capitalized in 54% of cases. The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably; it is common to speak of "going on the Internet" when using a web browser to view web pages. However, the World Wide Web, or the Web, is only one of a large number of Internet services. It is the global collection of web pages, documents and other web resources linked by hyperlinks and URLs. History In the 1960s, computer scientists began developing systems for time-sharing of computer resources. J. C. R. Licklider proposed the idea of a universal network while working at Bolt Beranek & Newman and, later, leading the Information Processing Techniques Office at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense. Research into packet switching,[c] one of the fundamental Internet technologies, started in the work of Paul Baran at RAND in the early 1960s and, independently, Donald Davies at the United Kingdom's National Physical Laboratory in 1965. After the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in 1967, packet switching from the proposed NPL network was incorporated into the design of the ARPANET, an experimental resource sharing network proposed by ARPA. ARPANET development began with two network nodes which were interconnected between the University of California, Los Angeles and the Stanford Research Institute on 29 October 1969. The third site was at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by the University of Utah. By the end of 1971, 15 sites were connected to the young ARPANET. Thereafter, the ARPANET gradually developed into a decentralized communications network, connecting remote centers and military bases in the United States. Other user networks and research networks, such as the Merit Network and CYCLADES, were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Early international collaborations for the ARPANET were rare. Connections were made in 1973 to Norway (NORSAR and, later, NDRE) and to Peter Kirstein's research group at University College London, which provided a gateway to British academic networks, the first internetwork for resource sharing. ARPA projects, the International Network Working Group and commercial initiatives led to the development of various protocols and standards by which multiple separate networks could become a single network, or a network of networks. In 1974, Vint Cerf at Stanford University and Bob Kahn at DARPA published a proposal for "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication". Cerf and his graduate students used the term internet as a shorthand for internetwork in RFC 675. The Internet Experiment Notes and later RFCs repeated this use. The work of Louis Pouzin and Robert Metcalfe had important influences on the resulting TCP/IP design. National PTTs and commercial providers developed the X.25 standard and deployed it on public data networks. The ARPANET initially served as a backbone for the interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the United States to enable resource sharing. Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET). In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized, which facilitated worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks. TCP/IP network access expanded again in 1986 when the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet) provided access to supercomputer sites in the United States for researchers, first at speeds of 56 kbit/s and later at 1.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s. The NSFNet expanded into academic and research organizations in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan in 1988–89. Although other network protocols such as UUCP and PTT public data networks had global reach well before this time, this marked the beginning of the Internet as an intercontinental network. Commercial Internet service providers emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990. The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s, as well as the advent of the World Wide Web, marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet. Steady advances in semiconductor technology and optical networking created new economic opportunities for commercial involvement in the expansion of the network in its core and for delivering services to the public. In mid-1989, MCI Mail and Compuserve established connections to the Internet, delivering email and public access products to the half million users of the Internet. Just months later, on 1 January 1990, PSInet launched an alternate Internet backbone for commercial use; one of the networks that added to the core of the commercial Internet of later years. In March 1990, the first high-speed T1 (1.5 Mbit/s) link between the NSFNET and Europe was installed between Cornell University and CERN, allowing much more robust communications than were capable with satellites. Later in 1990, Tim Berners-Lee began writing WorldWideWeb, the first web browser, after two years of lobbying CERN management. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 0.9, the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the first Web browser (which was also an HTML editor and could access Usenet newsgroups and FTP files), the first HTTP server software (later known as CERN httpd), the first web server, and the first Web pages that described the project itself. In 1991 the Commercial Internet eXchange was founded, allowing PSInet to communicate with the other commercial networks CERFnet and Alternet. Stanford Federal Credit Union was the first financial institution to offer online Internet banking services to all of its members in October 1994. In 1996, OP Financial Group, also a cooperative bank, became the second online bank in the world and the first in Europe. By 1995, the Internet was fully commercialized in the U.S. when the NSFNet was decommissioned, removing the last restrictions on use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic. As technology advanced and commercial opportunities fueled reciprocal growth, the volume of Internet traffic started experiencing similar characteristics as that of the scaling of MOS transistors, exemplified by Moore's law, doubling every 18 months. This growth, formalized as Edholm's law, was catalyzed by advances in MOS technology, laser light wave systems, and noise performance. Since 1995, the Internet has tremendously impacted culture and commerce, including the rise of near-instant communication by email, instant messaging, telephony (Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP), two-way interactive video calls, and the World Wide Web. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber optic networks operating at 1 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s, or more. The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever-greater amounts of online information and knowledge, commerce, entertainment and social networking services. During the late 1990s, it was estimated that traffic on the public Internet grew by 100 percent per year, while the mean annual growth in the number of Internet users was thought to be between 20% and 50%. This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network. In November 2006, the Internet was included on USA Today's list of the New Seven Wonders. As of 31 March 2011[update], the estimated total number of Internet users was 2.095 billion (30% of world population). It is estimated that in 1993 the Internet carried only 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunication. By 2000 this figure had grown to 51%, and by 2007 more than 97% of all telecommunicated information was carried over the Internet. Modern smartphones can access the Internet through cellular carrier networks, and internet usage by mobile and tablet devices exceeded desktop worldwide for the first time in October 2016. As of 2018[update], 80% of the world's population were covered by a 4G network. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimated that, by the end of 2017, 48% of individual users regularly connect to the Internet, up from 34% in 2012. Mobile Internet connectivity has played an important role in expanding access in recent years, especially in Asia and the Pacific and in Africa. The number of unique mobile cellular subscriptions increased from 3.9 billion in 2012 to 4.8 billion in 2016, two-thirds of the world's population, with more than half of subscriptions located in Asia and the Pacific. The limits that users face on accessing information via mobile applications coincide with a broader process of fragmentation of the Internet. Fragmentation restricts access to media content and tends to affect the poorest users the most. One solution, zero-rating, is the practice of Internet service providers allowing users free connectivity to access specific content or applications without cost. Social impact The Internet has enabled new forms of social interaction, activities, and social associations, giving rise to the scholarly study of the sociology of the Internet. Between 2000 and 2009, the number of Internet users globally rose from 390 million to 1.9 billion. By 2010, 22% of the world's population had access to computers with 1 billion Google searches every day, 300 million Internet users reading blogs, and 2 billion videos viewed daily on YouTube. In 2014 the world's Internet users surpassed 3 billion or 44 percent of world population, but two-thirds came from the richest countries, with 78 percent of Europeans using the Internet, followed by 57 percent of the Americas. However, by 2018, Asia alone accounted for 51% of all Internet users, with 2.2 billion out of the 4.3 billion Internet users in the world. China's Internet users surpassed a major milestone in 2018, when the country's Internet regulatory authority, China Internet Network Information Centre, announced that China had 802 million users. China was followed by India, with some 700 million users, with the United States third with 275 million users. However, in terms of penetration, in 2022, China had a 70% penetration rate compared to India's 60% and the United States's 90%. In 2022, 54% of the world's Internet users were based in Asia, 14% in Europe, 7% in North America, 10% in Latin America and the Caribbean, 11% in Africa, 4% in the Middle East and 1% in Oceania. In 2019, Kuwait, Qatar, the Falkland Islands, Bermuda and Iceland had the highest Internet penetration by the number of users, with 93% or more of the population with access. As of 2022, it was estimated that 5.4 billion people use the Internet, more than two-thirds of the world's population. Early computer systems were limited to the characters in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), a subset of the Latin alphabet. After English (27%), the most requested languages on the World Wide Web are Chinese (25%), Spanish (8%), Japanese (5%), Portuguese and German (4% each), Arabic, French and Russian (3% each), and Korean (2%). Modern character encoding standards, such as Unicode, allow for development and communication in the world's widely used languages. However, some glitches such as mojibake (incorrect display of some languages' characters) still remain. Several neologisms exist that refer to Internet users: Netizen (as in "citizen of the net") refers to those actively involved in improving online communities, the Internet in general or surrounding political affairs and rights such as free speech, Internaut refers to operators or technically highly capable users of the Internet, digital citizen refers to a person using the Internet in order to engage in society, politics, and government participation. The Internet allows greater flexibility in working hours and location, especially with the spread of unmetered high-speed connections. The Internet can be accessed almost anywhere by numerous means, including through mobile Internet devices. Mobile phones, datacards, handheld game consoles and cellular routers allow users to connect to the Internet wirelessly.[citation needed] Educational material at all levels from pre-school (e.g. CBeebies) to post-doctoral (e.g. scholarly literature through Google Scholar) is available on websites. The internet has facilitated the development of virtual universities and distance education, enabling both formal and informal education. The Internet allows researchers to conduct research remotely via virtual laboratories, with profound changes in reach and generalizability of findings as well as in communication between scientists and in the publication of results. By the late 2010s the Internet had been described as "the main source of scientific information "for the majority of the global North population".: 111 Wikis have also been used in the academic community for sharing and dissemination of information across institutional and international boundaries. In those settings, they have been found useful for collaboration on grant writing, strategic planning, departmental documentation, and committee work. The United States Patent and Trademark Office uses a wiki to allow the public to collaborate on finding prior art relevant to examination of pending patent applications. Queens, New York has used a wiki to allow citizens to collaborate on the design and planning of a local park. The English Wikipedia has the largest user base among wikis on the World Wide Web and ranks in the top 10 among all sites in terms of traffic. The Internet has been a major outlet for leisure activity since its inception, with entertaining social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on university servers, and humor-related Usenet groups receiving much traffic. Many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos. Another area of leisure activity on the Internet is multiplayer gaming. This form of recreation creates communities, where people of all ages and origins enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from role-playing video games to online gambling. While online gaming has been around since the 1970s, modern modes of online gaming began with subscription services such as GameSpy and MPlayer. Streaming media is the real-time delivery of digital media for immediate consumption or enjoyment by end users. Streaming companies (such as Netflix, Disney+, Amazon's Prime Video, Mubi, Hulu, and Apple TV+) now dominate the entertainment industry, eclipsing traditional broadcasters. Audio streamers such as Spotify and Apple Music also have significant market share in the audio entertainment market. Video sharing websites are also a major factor in the entertainment ecosystem. YouTube was founded on 15 February 2005 and is now the leading website for free streaming video with more than two billion users. It uses a web player to stream and show video files. YouTube users watch hundreds of millions, and upload hundreds of thousands, of videos daily. Other video sharing websites include Vimeo, Instagram and TikTok.[citation needed] Although many governments have attempted to restrict both Internet pornography and online gambling, this has generally failed to stop their widespread popularity. A number of advertising-funded ostensible video sharing websites known as "tube sites" have been created to host shared pornographic video content. Due to laws requiring the documentation of the origin of pornography, these websites now largely operate in conjunction with pornographic movie studios and their own independent creator networks, acting as de-facto video streaming services. Major players in this field include the market leader Aylo, the operator of PornHub and numerous other branded sites, as well as other independent operators such as xHamster and Xvideos. As of 2023[update], Internet traffic to pornographic video sites rivalled that of mainstream video streaming and sharing services. Remote work is facilitated by tools such as groupware, virtual private networks, conference calling, videotelephony, and VoIP so that work may be performed from any location, such as the worker's home.[citation needed] The spread of low-cost Internet access in developing countries has opened up new possibilities for peer-to-peer charities, which allow individuals to contribute small amounts to charitable projects for other individuals. Websites, such as DonorsChoose and GlobalGiving, allow small-scale donors to direct funds to individual projects of their choice. A popular twist on Internet-based philanthropy is the use of peer-to-peer lending for charitable purposes. Kiva pioneered this concept in 2005, offering the first web-based service to publish individual loan profiles for funding. The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills have made collaborative work dramatically easier, with the help of collaborative software, which allow groups to easily form, cheaply communicate, and share ideas. An example of collaborative software is the free software movement, which has produced, among other things, Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and OpenOffice.org (later forked into LibreOffice).[citation needed] Content management systems allow collaborating teams to work on shared sets of documents simultaneously without accidentally destroying each other's work.[citation needed] The internet also allows for cloud computing, virtual private networks, remote desktops, and remote work.[citation needed] The online disinhibition effect describes the tendency of many individuals to behave more stridently or offensively online than they would in person. A significant number of feminist women have been the target of various forms of harassment, including insults and hate speech, to, in extreme cases, rape and death threats, in response to posts they have made on social media. Social media companies have been criticized in the past for not doing enough to aid victims of online abuse. Children also face dangers online such as cyberbullying and approaches by sexual predators, who sometimes pose as children themselves. Due to naivety, they may also post personal information about themselves online, which could put them or their families at risk unless warned not to do so. Many parents choose to enable Internet filtering or supervise their children's online activities in an attempt to protect their children from pornography or violent content on the Internet. The most popular social networking services commonly forbid users under the age of 13. However, these policies can be circumvented by registering an account with a false birth date, and a significant number of children aged under 13 join such sites.[citation needed] Social networking services for younger children, which claim to provide better levels of protection for children, also exist. Internet usage has been correlated to users' loneliness. Lonely people tend to use the Internet as an outlet for their feelings and to share their stories with others, such as in the "I am lonely will anyone speak to me" thread.[citation needed] Cyberslacking can become a drain on corporate resources; employees spend a significant amount of time surfing the Web while at work. Internet addiction disorder is excessive computer use that interferes with daily life. Nicholas G. Carr believes that Internet use has other effects on individuals, for instance improving skills of scan-reading and interfering with the deep thinking that leads to true creativity. Electronic business encompasses business processes spanning the entire value chain: purchasing, supply chain management, marketing, sales, customer service, and business relationship. E-commerce seeks to add revenue streams using the Internet to build and enhance relationships with clients and partners. According to International Data Corporation, the size of worldwide e-commerce, when global business-to-business and -consumer transactions are combined, equate to $16 trillion in 2013. A report by Oxford Economics added those two together to estimate the total size of the digital economy at $20.4 trillion, equivalent to roughly 13.8% of global sales. While much has been written of the economic advantages of Internet-enabled commerce, there is also evidence that some aspects of the Internet such as maps and location-aware services may serve to reinforce economic inequality and the digital divide. Electronic commerce may be responsible for consolidation and the decline of mom-and-pop, brick and mortar businesses resulting in increases in income inequality. A 2013 Institute for Local Self-Reliance report states that brick-and-mortar retailers employ 47 people for every $10 million in sales, while Amazon employs only 14. Similarly, the 700-employee room rental start-up Airbnb was valued at $10 billion in 2014, about half as much as Hilton Worldwide, which employs 152,000 people. At that time, Uber employed 1,000 full-time employees and was valued at $18.2 billion, about the same valuation as Avis Rent a Car and The Hertz Corporation combined, which together employed almost 60,000 people. Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce. Online advertising is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. In 2011, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television.: 19 Many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to regulation. The Internet has achieved new relevance as a political tool. The presidential campaign of Howard Dean in 2004 in the United States was notable for its success in soliciting donation via the Internet. Many political groups use the Internet to achieve a new method of organizing for carrying out their mission, having given rise to Internet activism. Social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, helped people organize the Arab Spring, by helping activists organize protests, communicate grievances, and disseminate information. Many have understood the Internet as an extension of the Habermasian notion of the public sphere, observing how network communication technologies provide something like a global civic forum. However, incidents of politically motivated Internet censorship have now been recorded in many countries, including western democracies. E-government is the use of technological communications devices, such as the Internet, to provide public services to citizens and other persons in a country or region. E-government offers opportunities for more direct and convenient citizen access to government and for government provision of services directly to citizens. Cybersectarianism is a new organizational form that involves: highly dispersed small groups of practitioners that may remain largely anonymous within the larger social context and operate in relative secrecy, while still linked remotely to a larger network of believers who share a set of practices and texts, and often a common devotion to a particular leader. Overseas supporters provide funding and support; domestic practitioners distribute tracts, participate in acts of resistance, and share information on the internal situation with outsiders. Collectively, members and practitioners of such sects construct viable virtual communities of faith, exchanging personal testimonies and engaging in the collective study via email, online chat rooms, and web-based message boards. In particular, the British government has raised concerns about the prospect of young British Muslims being indoctrinated into Islamic extremism by material on the Internet, being persuaded to join terrorist groups such as the so-called "Islamic State", and then potentially committing acts of terrorism on returning to Britain after fighting in Syria or Iraq.[citation needed] Applications and services The Internet carries many applications and services, most prominently the World Wide Web, including social media, electronic mail, mobile applications, multiplayer online games, Internet telephony, file sharing, and streaming media services. The World Wide Web is a global collection of documents, images, multimedia, applications, and other resources, logically interrelated by hyperlinks and referenced with Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), which provide a global system of named references. URIs symbolically identify services, web servers, databases, and the documents and resources that they can provide. HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the main access protocol of the World Wide Web. Web services also use HTTP for communication between software systems for information transfer, sharing and exchanging business data and logistics and is one of many languages or protocols that can be used for communication on the Internet. World Wide Web browser software, such as Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple's Safari, and Google Chrome, enable users to navigate from one web page to another via the hyperlinks embedded in the documents. These documents may also contain computer data, including graphics, sounds, text, video, multimedia and interactive content. Client-side scripts can include animations, games, office applications and scientific demonstrations. Email is an important communications service available via the Internet. The concept of sending electronic text messages between parties, analogous to mailing letters or memos, predates the creation of the Internet. Internet telephony is a common communications service realized with the Internet. The name of the principal internetworking protocol, the Internet Protocol, lends its name to voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).[citation needed] VoIP systems now dominate many markets, being as easy and convenient as a traditional telephone, while having substantial cost savings, especially over long distances. File sharing is the practice of transferring large amounts of data in the form of computer files across the Internet, for example via file servers. The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networks. Access to the file may be controlled by user authentication, the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption, and money may change hands for access to the file. The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example, a credit card whose details are also passed—usually fully encrypted—across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by a digital signature. Governance The Internet is a global network that comprises many voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks. It operates without a central governing body. The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols (IPv4 and IPv6) is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise. While the hardware components in the Internet infrastructure can often be used to support other software systems, it is the design and the standardization process of the software that characterizes the Internet and provides the foundation for its scalability and success. The responsibility for the architectural design of the Internet software systems has been assumed by the IETF. The IETF conducts standard-setting work groups, open to any individual, about the various aspects of Internet architecture. The resulting contributions and standards are published as Request for Comments (RFC) documents on the IETF web site. The principal methods of networking that enable the Internet are contained in specially designated RFCs that constitute the Internet Standards. Other less rigorous documents are simply informative, experimental, or historical, or document the best current practices when implementing Internet technologies. To maintain interoperability, the principal name spaces of the Internet are administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN is governed by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and other non-commercial communities. The organization coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers for use on the Internet, including domain names, IP addresses, application port numbers in the transport protocols, and many other parameters. Globally unified name spaces are essential for maintaining the global reach of the Internet. This role of ICANN distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body for the global Internet. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency of the United States Department of Commerce, had final approval over changes to the DNS root zone until the IANA stewardship transition on 1 October 2016. Regional Internet registries (RIRs) were established for five regions of the world to assign IP address blocks and other Internet parameters to local registries, such as Internet service providers, from a designated pool of addresses set aside for each region:[citation needed] The Internet Society (ISOC) was founded in 1992 with a mission to "assure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world". Its members include individuals as well as corporations, organizations, governments, and universities. Among other activities ISOC provides an administrative home for a number of less formally organized groups that are involved in developing and managing the Internet, including: the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), and Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG). On 16 November 2005, the United Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis established the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss Internet-related issues.[citation needed] Infrastructure The communications infrastructure of the Internet consists of its hardware components and a system of software layers that control various aspects of the architecture. As with any computer network, the Internet physically consists of routers, media (such as cabling and radio links), repeaters, and modems. However, as an example of internetworking, many of the network nodes are not necessarily Internet equipment per se. Internet packets are carried by other full-fledged networking protocols, with the Internet acting as a homogeneous networking standard, running across heterogeneous hardware, with the packets guided to their destinations by IP routers.[citation needed] Internet service providers (ISPs) establish worldwide connectivity between individual networks at various levels of scope. At the top of the routing hierarchy are the tier 1 networks, large telecommunication companies that exchange traffic directly with each other via very high speed fiber-optic cables and governed by peering agreements. Tier 2 and lower-level networks buy Internet transit from other providers to reach at least some parties on the global Internet, though they may also engage in peering. End-users who only access the Internet when needed to perform a function or obtain information, represent the bottom of the routing hierarchy.[citation needed] An ISP may use a single upstream provider for connectivity, or implement multihoming to achieve redundancy and load balancing. Internet exchange points are major traffic exchanges with physical connections to multiple ISPs. Large organizations, such as academic institutions, large enterprises, and governments, may perform the same function as ISPs, engaging in peering and purchasing transit on behalf of their internal networks. Research networks tend to interconnect with large subnetworks such as GEANT, GLORIAD, Internet2, and the UK's national research and education network, JANET.[citation needed] Common methods of Internet access by users include broadband over coaxial cable, fiber optics or copper wires, Wi-Fi, satellite, and cellular telephone technology.[citation needed] Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Commercial Wi-Fi services that cover large areas are available in many cities, such as New York, London, Vienna, Toronto, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Pittsburgh. Most servers that provide internet services are today hosted in data centers, and content is often accessed through high-performance content delivery networks. Colocation centers often host private peering connections between their customers, internet transit providers, cloud providers, meet-me rooms for connecting customers together, Internet exchange points, and landing points and terminal equipment for fiber optic submarine communication cables, connecting the internet. Internet Protocol Suite The Internet standards describe a framework known as the Internet protocol suite (also called TCP/IP, based on the first two components.) This is a suite of protocols that are ordered into a set of four conceptional layers by the scope of their operation, originally documented in RFC 1122 and RFC 1123:[citation needed] The most prominent component of the Internet model is the Internet Protocol. IP enables internetworking, essentially establishing the Internet itself. Two versions of the Internet Protocol exist, IPv4 and IPv6.[citation needed] Aside from the complex array of physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is facilitated by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts (e.g., peering agreements), and by technical specifications or protocols that describe the exchange of data over the network.[citation needed] For locating individual computers on the network, the Internet provides IP addresses. IP addresses are used by the Internet infrastructure to direct internet packets to their destinations. They consist of fixed-length numbers, which are found within the packet. IP addresses are generally assigned to equipment either automatically via Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, or are configured.[citation needed] Domain Name Systems convert user-inputted domain names (e.g. "en.wikipedia.org") into IP addresses.[citation needed] Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) defines an IP address as a 32-bit number. IPv4 is the initial version used on the first generation of the Internet and is still in dominant use. It was designed in 1981 to address up to ≈4.3 billion (109) hosts. However, the explosive growth of the Internet has led to IPv4 address exhaustion, which entered its final stage in 2011, when the global IPv4 address allocation pool was exhausted. Because of the growth of the Internet and the depletion of available IPv4 addresses, a new version of IP IPv6, was developed in the mid-1990s, which provides vastly larger addressing capabilities and more efficient routing of Internet traffic. IPv6 uses 128 bits for the IP address and was standardized in 1998. IPv6 deployment has been ongoing since the mid-2000s and is currently in growing deployment around the world, since Internet address registries began to urge all resource managers to plan rapid adoption and conversion. By design, IPv6 is not directly interoperable with IPv4. Instead, it establishes a parallel version of the Internet not directly accessible with IPv4 software. Thus, translation facilities exist for internetworking, and some nodes have duplicate networking software for both networks. Essentially all modern computer operating systems support both versions of the Internet Protocol.[citation needed] Network infrastructure, however, has been lagging in this development.[citation needed] A subnet or subnetwork is a logical subdivision of an IP network.: 1, 16 Computers that belong to a subnet are addressed with an identical most-significant bit-group in their IP addresses. This results in the logical division of an IP address into two fields, the network number or routing prefix and the rest field or host identifier. The rest field is an identifier for a specific host or network interface.[citation needed] The routing prefix may be expressed in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation written as the first address of a network, followed by a slash character (/), and ending with the bit-length of the prefix. For example, 198.51.100.0/24 is the prefix of the Internet Protocol version 4 network starting at the given address, having 24 bits allocated for the network prefix, and the remaining 8 bits reserved for host addressing. Addresses in the range 198.51.100.0 to 198.51.100.255 belong to this network. The IPv6 address specification 2001:db8::/32 is a large address block with 296 addresses, having a 32-bit routing prefix.[citation needed] For IPv4, a network may also be characterized by its subnet mask or netmask, which is the bitmask that when applied by a bitwise AND operation to any IP address in the network, yields the routing prefix. Subnet masks are also expressed in dot-decimal notation like an address. For example, 255.255.255.0 is the subnet mask for the prefix 198.51.100.0/24.[citation needed] Computers and routers use routing tables in their operating system to forward IP packets to reach a node on a different subnetwork. Routing tables are maintained by manual configuration or automatically by routing protocols. End-nodes typically use a default route that points toward an ISP providing transit, while ISP routers use the Border Gateway Protocol to establish the most efficient routing across the complex connections of the global Internet.[citation needed] The default gateway is the node that serves as the forwarding host (router) to other networks when no other route specification matches the destination IP address of a packet. Security Internet resources, hardware, and software components are the target of criminal or malicious attempts to gain unauthorized control to cause interruptions, commit fraud, engage in blackmail or access private information. Malware is malicious software used and distributed via the Internet. It includes computer viruses which are copied with the help of humans, computer worms which copy themselves automatically, software for denial of service attacks, ransomware, botnets, and spyware that reports on the activity and typing of users.[citation needed] Usually, these activities constitute cybercrime. Defense theorists have also speculated about the possibilities of hackers using cyber warfare using similar methods on a large scale. Malware poses serious problems to individuals and businesses on the Internet. According to Symantec's 2018 Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR), malware variants number has increased to 669,947,865 in 2017, which is twice as many malware variants as in 2016. Cybercrime, which includes malware attacks as well as other crimes committed by computer, was predicted to cost the world economy US$6 trillion in 2021, and is increasing at a rate of 15% per year. Since 2021, malware has been designed to target computer systems that run critical infrastructure such as the electricity distribution network. Malware can be designed to evade antivirus software detection algorithms. The vast majority of computer surveillance involves the monitoring of data and traffic on the Internet. In the United States for example, under the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act, all phone calls and broadband Internet traffic (emails, web traffic, instant messaging, etc.) are required to be available for unimpeded real-time monitoring by Federal law enforcement agencies. Under the Act, all U.S. telecommunications providers are required to install packet sniffing technology to allow Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies to intercept all of their customers' broadband Internet and VoIP traffic.[d] The large amount of data gathered from packet capture requires surveillance software that filters and reports relevant information, such as the use of certain words or phrases, the access to certain types of web sites, or communicating via email or chat with certain parties. Agencies, such as the Information Awareness Office, NSA, GCHQ and the FBI, spend billions of dollars per year to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems for interception and analysis of data. Similar systems are operated by Iranian secret police to identify and suppress dissidents. The required hardware and software were allegedly installed by German Siemens AG and Finnish Nokia. Some governments, such as those of Myanmar, Iran, North Korea, Mainland China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, restrict access to content on the Internet within their territories, especially to political and religious content, with domain name and keyword filters. In Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, major Internet service providers have voluntarily agreed to restrict access to sites listed by authorities. While this list of forbidden resources is supposed to contain only known child pornography sites, the content of the list is secret. Many countries, including the United States, have enacted laws against the possession or distribution of certain material, such as child pornography, via the Internet but do not mandate filter software. Many free or commercially available software programs, called content-control software are available to users to block offensive specific on individual computers or networks in order to limit access by children to pornographic material or depiction of violence.[citation needed] Performance As the Internet is a heterogeneous network, its physical characteristics, including, for example the data transfer rates of connections, vary widely. It exhibits emergent phenomena that depend on its large-scale organization. PB per monthYear020,00040,00060,00080,000100,000120,000140,000199019952000200520102015Petabytes per monthGlobal Internet Traffic Volume The volume of Internet traffic is difficult to measure because no single point of measurement exists in the multi-tiered, non-hierarchical topology. Traffic data may be estimated from the aggregate volume through the peering points of the Tier 1 network providers, but traffic that stays local in large provider networks may not be accounted for.[citation needed] An Internet blackout or outage can be caused by local signaling interruptions. Disruptions of submarine communications cables may cause blackouts or slowdowns to large areas, such as in the 2008 submarine cable disruption. Less-developed countries are more vulnerable due to the small number of high-capacity links. Land cables are also vulnerable, as in 2011 when a woman digging for scrap metal severed most connectivity for the nation of Armenia. Internet blackouts affecting almost entire countries can be achieved by governments as a form of Internet censorship, as in the blockage of the Internet in Egypt, whereby approximately 93% of networks were without access in 2011 in an attempt to stop mobilization for anti-government protests. Estimates of the Internet's electricity usage have been the subject of controversy, according to a 2014 peer-reviewed research paper that found claims differing by a factor of 20,000 published in the literature during the preceding decade, ranging from 0.0064 kilowatt hours per gigabyte transferred (kWh/GB) to 136 kWh/GB. The researchers attributed these discrepancies mainly to the year of reference (i.e. whether efficiency gains over time had been taken into account) and to whether "end devices such as personal computers and servers are included" in the analysis. In 2011, academic researchers estimated the overall energy used by the Internet to be between 170 and 307 GW, less than two percent of the energy used by humanity. This estimate included the energy needed to build, operate, and periodically replace the estimated 750 million laptops, a billion smart phones and 100 million servers worldwide as well as the energy that routers, cell towers, optical switches, Wi-Fi transmitters and cloud storage devices use when transmitting Internet traffic. According to a non-peer-reviewed study published in 2018 by The Shift Project (a French think tank funded by corporate sponsors), nearly 4% of global CO2 emissions could be attributed to global data transfer and the necessary infrastructure. The study also said that online video streaming alone accounted for 60% of this data transfer and therefore contributed to over 300 million tons of CO2 emission per year, and argued for new "digital sobriety" regulations restricting the use and size of video files. See also Notes References Sources Further reading External links |
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Contents Natufian culture The Natufian culture (/nə.ˈtuː.fi.ən/, nə-TOO-fee-ən) is an archaeological culture of the late Epipalaeolithic Near East in West Asia from 15–11,500 Before Present. The culture was unusual in that it supported a sedentary or semi-sedentary population even before the introduction of agriculture. Natufian communities may be the ancestors of the builders of the region's first Neolithic settlements, which may have been the earliest in the world. Some evidence suggests deliberate cultivation of cereals, specifically rye, by the Natufian culture at Tell Abu Hureyra, the site of the earliest evidence of agriculture in the world. The world's oldest known evidence of the production of bread-like foodstuff has been found at Shubayqa 1, a 14,400-year-old site in Jordan's northeastern desert, 4,000 years before the emergence of agriculture in Southwest Asia. In addition, the oldest known evidence of possible beer-brewing, dating to approximately 13,000 BP, was found in Raqefet Cave on Mount Carmel, although the beer-related residues may be a result of spontaneous fermentation. Generally, though, Natufians exploited wild cereals and hunted animals, notably mountain gazelles. Archaeogenetic analysis has revealed derivation of later (Neolithic to Bronze Age) Levantines primarily from Natufians, along with substantial later gene flow from Anatolia. Dorothy Garrod coined the term Natufian based on her excavations at the Shuqba Cave at Wadi Natuf. Discovery The Natufian culture was discovered by British archaeologist Dorothy Garrod during her excavations of Shuqba Cave in the Judaean Mountains of Mandatory Palestine in the Cisjordan, now the Judea and Samaria Area of Israel. Before the 1930s, the majority of archaeological work taking place in Palestine was biblical archaeology focused on historic periods, and little was known about the region's prehistory. In 1928, Garrod was invited by the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (BSAJ, now the Kenyon Institute) to excavate Shuqba Cave, where prehistoric stone tools had been discovered by Père Mallon four years earlier. She found a layer sandwiched between the Upper Paleolithic and Bronze Age deposits characterised by the presence of microliths. She identified this with the Mesolithic, a transitional period between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic well-represented in Europe but which had not yet been found in West Asia. A year later, when she discovered similar material at el Wad (now in the Nahal Me'arot Nature Reserve), Garrod suggested the name "the Natufian culture" after the Wadi Natuf, which runs close to Shuqba. Over the next two decades, Garrod found Natufian material at several of her pioneering excavations in the Mount Carmel region, including el-Wad, Kebara and Tabun, as did the French archaeologist René Neuville, firmly establishing the Natufian culture in the regional prehistoric chronology. As early as 1931, both Garrod and Neuville drew attention to the presence of stone sickles in Natufian assemblages and the possibility that this represented a very early agriculture. Dating Fertile Crescent: Europe: Africa: Siberia: Radiocarbon dating places the Natufian culture at an epoch from the terminal Pleistocene to the very beginning of the Holocene, a time period between 12,500 and 9,500 BC. The period is commonly split into two subperiods: Early Natufian (12,000–10,800 BC) and Late Natufian (10,800–9,500 BC). The Late Natufian most likely occurred in tandem with the Younger Dryas (10,800 to 9,500 BC). The Levant hosts more than a hundred kinds of cereals, fruits, nuts, and other edible parts of plants, and the flora of the Levant during the Natufian period was not the dry, barren, and thorny landscape of today, but rather woodland. Precursors and associated cultures The Natufian developed in the same region as the earlier Kebaran culture. It is generally seen as a successor, which evolved out of elements within that preceding culture. There were also other industries in the region, such as the Mushabian culture of the Negev and the Sinai Peninsula, which are sometimes distinguished from the Kebaran culture or believed to have been involved in the evolution of the Natufian culture. More generally there has been discussion of the similarities of these cultures with those found in coastal North Africa. Graeme Barker notes there are: "similarities in the respective archaeological records of the Natufian culture of the Levant and of contemporary foragers in coastal North Africa across the late Pleistocene and early Holocene boundary". According to Isabelle De Groote and Louise Humphrey, Natufians practiced the Iberomaurusian and Capsian custom of sometimes extracting their maxillary central incisors (upper front teeth). Ofer Bar-Yosef has argued that there are signs of influences coming from North Africa to the Levant, citing the microburin technique and "microlithic forms such as arched backed bladelets and La Mouillah points." But recent research has shown that the presence of arched backed bladelets, La Mouillah points, and the use of the microburin technique was already apparent in the Nebekian industry of the Eastern Levant. And Maher et al. state that, "Many technological nuances that have often been always highlighted as significant during the Natufian were already present during the Early and Middle EP [Epipalaeolithic] and do not, in most cases, represent a radical departure in knowledge, tradition, or behavior." Authors such as Christopher Ehret have built upon the little evidence available to develop scenarios of intensive usage of plants having built up first in North Africa, as a precursor to the development of true farming in the Fertile Crescent, but such suggestions are considered highly speculative until more North African archaeological evidence can be gathered. In fact, Weiss et al. have shown that the earliest known intensive usage of plants was in the Levant 23,000 years ago at Ohalo II on the shores of the Sea of Galilee by Kinneret. Anthropologist C. Loring Brace (1993) cross-analysed the craniometric traits of Natufian specimens with those of various ancient and modern groups from the Near East, Africa and Europe. The Late Pleistocene Epipalaeolithic Natufian sample was described as problematic due to its small size (consisting of only three males and one female), as well as the lack of a comparative sample from the Natufians' putative descendants in the Neolithic Near East, such as the PPNB. Nonetheless, Brace observed that the Natufian fossils lay between those of the Niger–Congo-speaking series included and the other samples (Near East, Europe), which he suggested may point to a Sub-Saharan influence in their constitution. Subsequent ancient DNA analysis of Natufian skeletal remains by Lazaridis et al. (2016) instead found that the specimens were a mix of 50% Basal Eurasian ancestral component (see Genetics) and 50% West Eurasian Unknown Hunter Gatherer (UHG) related to the western hunter-gatherers of Europe. Natufians have also been described by other anthropologists as a Proto-Mediterranean population, being similar to the Kebarans. According to Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen, "It seems that certain preadaptive traits, developed already by the Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran populations within the Mediterranean park forest, played an important role in the emergence of the new socioeconomic system known as the Natufian culture." Settlements Settlements occur mostly in Israel and the Palestinian territories. This could be deemed the core zone of the Natufian culture, but Israel is a place that has been excavated more frequently than other places hence the greater number of sites. During the years more sites have been found outside the core zone of Israel and the Palestinian territories stretching into what now is Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula and the Negev desert. The settlements in the Natufian culture were larger and more permanent than in preceding ones. Some Natufian sites had stone built architecture; Ain Mallaha is an example of round stone structures. Cave sites are also seen frequently during the Natufian culture. El Wad is a Natufian cave site with occupation in the front part of the cave also called the terrace. Some Natufian sites were located in forest/steppe areas and others near inland mountains. The Natufian settlements appear to be the first to exhibit evidence of food storage; not all Natufian sites have storage facilities, but they have been identified at certain sites. Natufians are also suggested to have visited Cyprus, requiring travel over significant distances of water. Material culture The Natufian had a microlithic industry centered on short blades and bladelets. The microburin technique was used. Geometric microliths include lunates, trapezes, and triangles. There are backed blades as well. A special type of retouch (Helwan retouch) is characteristic for the early Natufian. In the late Natufian, the Harif-point, a typical arrowhead made from a regular blade, became common in the Negev. Some scholars[who?] use it to define a separate culture, the Harifian. Sickle blades also appear for the first time in the Natufian lithic industry. The characteristic sickle-gloss shows that they were used to cut the silica-rich stems of cereals, indirectly suggesting the existence of incipient agriculture. Shaft straighteners made of ground stone indicate the practice of archery. There are heavy ground-stone bowl mortars as well. The Ain Sakhri lovers, a carved stone object held at the British Museum, is the oldest known depiction of a couple having sex. It was found in the Ain Sakhri cave in the Judean desert. A Natufian clay figurine uncovered from Nahal Ein Gev II, shows that prehistoric artists also used intimate, intertwined bodies to express spiritual beliefs and human–animal relationships. Natufian grave goods are typically made of shell, teeth (of red deer), bones, and stone. There are pendants, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and belt-ornaments as well. In 2008, the 12,400–12,000 cal BC grave of an apparently significant Natufian female was discovered in a ceremonial pit in the Hilazon Tachtit cave in northern Israel. Media reports referred to this person as a "shaman" or "witch doctor." The burial contained the remains of at least three aurochs and 86 tortoises, all of which are thought to have been brought to the site during a funeral feast. The body was surrounded by tortoise shells, the pelvis of a leopard, forearm of a boar, a wingtip of a golden eagle, and skull of a beech marten. At Ain Mallaha (in Northern Israel), Anatolian obsidian and shellfish from the Nile valley have been found. The source of malachite beads is still unknown. Epipaleolithic Natufians carried parthenocarpic figs from Africa to the southeastern corner of the Fertile Crescent, c. 10,000 BC. There was a rich bone industry, including harpoons and fish hooks. Stone and bone were worked into pendants and other ornaments. There are a few human figurines made of limestone (El-Wad, Ain Mallaha, Ain Sakhri), but the favorite subject of representative art seems to have been animals. Ostrich-shell containers have been found in the Negev. In 2018, the world's oldest brewery was found, with the residue of 13,000-year-old beer, in a prehistoric cave near Haifa in Israel when researchers were looking for clues into what plant foods the Natufian people were eating. This is 8,000 years earlier than experts previously thought beer was produced. A study published in 2019 shows an advanced knowledge of lime plaster production at a Natufian cemetery in Nahal Ein Gev II site in the Upper Jordan Valley dated to 12 thousand (calibrated) years before present [k cal BP]. Production of plaster of this quality was previously thought to have been achieved some 2,000 years later. Subsistence The Natufian people lived by hunting and gathering. The preservation of plant remains is poor because of the soil conditions, but at some sites such as Tell Abu Hureyra substantial amounts of plant remains discovered through flotation have been excavated. However wild cereals like legumes, almonds, acorns and pistachios have been collected throughout most of the Levant. Animal bones show that mountain and goitered gazelles (Gazella gazella and Gazella subgutturosa) were the main prey. Additionally, deer, aurochs and wild boar were hunted in the steppe, as well as onagers and caprids (ibex). Waterfowl and freshwater fish formed part of the diet in the Jordan river valley. Animal bones from Salibiya I (12,300 – 10,800 cal BP) have been interpreted as evidence for communal hunts with nets, however, the radiocarbon dates are far too old compared to the cultural remains of this settlement, indicating contamination of the samples. A pita-like bread has been found from 12,500 BC attributed to Natufians. This bread is made of wild cereal seeds and papyrus cousin tubers, ground into flour. According to one theory, it was a sudden change in climate, the Younger Dryas event (c. 10,800 to 9500 BC), which inspired the development of agriculture in the region. The Younger Dryas was a 1,000-year-long interruption in the higher temperatures prevailing since the Last Glacial Maximum, which produced a sudden drought in the Levant. This would have endangered the wild cereals, which could no longer compete with dryland scrub, but upon which the population had become dependent to sustain a relatively large sedentary population. By artificially clearing scrub and planting seeds obtained from elsewhere, they began to practice agriculture. However, this theory of the origin of agriculture is controversial in the scientific community. At the Natufian site of ʿAin Mallaha in Israel, dated to 12,000 BC, the remains of an elderly human and a four-to-five-month-old puppy were found buried together. At another Natufian site at the cave of Hayonim, humans were found buried with two canids. Genetics Ancient DNA analysis of Natufian skeletal remains found that the Natufian ancestry could be modelled as a mix of about 50% Basal Eurasian ancestry and 50% from a West-Eurasian Unknown Hunter Gatherer (UHG) population, which was related to the western hunter-gatherer group of Mesolithic Europe. Vallini et al. (2024) modeled the amount of Basal Eurasian ancestry among Natufians at roughly 15%, with the remainder being associated with West Eurasian sources. The Natufian population also displays ancestral ties to Paleolithic Taforalt samples, the makers of the Epipaleolithic Iberomaurusian culture of the Maghreb, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture of the Levant, the Early Neolithic Ifri N'Amr Ou Moussa and the Late Neolithic Kelif el Boroud culture of North Africa, with samples associated with these early cultures all sharing a common genomic component dubbed the "Natufian component", which diverged from other West Eurasian lineages ~26,000 years ago, and is most closely linked to the Arabian lineage. Possible bidirectional geneflow events between these groups has also been suggested, with particular evidence for affinity between the Natufians and Iberomaurusians. Taforalt individuals belonged to the Y-DNA haplogroup E1b1b1a1 (M78), which is closely related to the E1b1b1b (M123) sublineage that has been observed in skeletal remains belonging to the Epipaleolithic Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic cultures of the Levant, possibly suggesting geneflow. Contact between Natufians, other Neolithic Levantines, Caucasus Hunter Gatherers (CHG), Anatolian and Iranian farmers is believed to have decreased genetic variability among later populations in the Middle East. Migrations from the Near-East also occurred towards Africa, and the West Eurasian geneflow into the Horn of Africa is best represented by the Levant Neolithic, and may be associated with the spread of Afroasiatic languages. The scientists suggest that the Levantine early farmers may have spread southward into East Africa, bringing along the associated ancestral components. Lazaridis et al. (2016) did not find a greater genetic affinity between Natufians and modern sub-Saharan Africans than that existing between present-day sub-Saharan Africans and other ancient populations of Western Eurasia, and also stated that the ancestry of a primitive population from North Africa could not be tested because modern North Africans are largely descended from late migrant populations from Eurasia. As summarized by Rosa Fregel (2021), a later preprint from Lazaridis et al. (2018) has contested Loosdrecht's conclusion and argues for a minor sub-Saharan African component in Natufians, stating "that [the Iberomaurusians of] Taforalt can be better modeled as a mixture of a Dzudzuana component and a sub-Saharan African component" (or an ancient and now-extinct North African component that diverged prior to the Out-of-Africa migration) and "also argue that (...) the Taforalt people (...) contributed to the genetic composition of Natufians and not the other way around", which, according to Lazaridis et al., would be consistent with morphological and archaeological studies that indicate a dissemination of morphological characteristics and artifacts from North Africa to the Near East, as well as explaining the presence of Y-chromosome haplogroup E in Natufians and Levantine farmers. Fregel summarizes that "More evidence will be needed to determine the specific origin of the North African Upper Paleolithic populations". Later, Iosif Lazardis documented that the Natufians had a total of 9.1% non-Eurasian ancestry, and the explanation by the geneticist was because of their partial descent from the Paleolithic Iberomaurusians, whose contributions were estimated at 22% in Natufians. In fact, a total of 41.4% non-Eurasian ancestry is present in Taforalt from Morocco. A study in 2025 by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig sequenced two individuals from Takarkori (7,000 YBP), and discovered that most of their ancestry was from an unknown ancestral North African lineage, related to the non-Eurasian admixture component found in Iberomaurusians and Natufians. The study concluded that the Takarkori people derive 93% of their ancestry from an unknown population native to North Africa that diverged there before the Out-of-Africa migration that gave rise to Eurasians, but never left Africa and became mostly isolated (both from sub-Saharan African and Eurasian groups). According to the study, the Takarkori people were distinct, both from contemporary sub-Saharan Africans and from non-Africans/Eurasians, and had "only a minor component of non-African ancestry" but did "not carry sub-Saharan African ancestry, suggesting that, contrary to previous interpretations, the Green Sahara was not a corridor connecting Northern and sub-Saharan Africa." In their 2017 paper, Ranajit Das, Paul Wexler, Mehdi Pirooznia and Eran Elhaik analyzed the Lazaridis et al. (2016) study concluding that the Natufians, together with one Neolithic Levantine sample, clustered in the proximity to modern Palestinians and Bedouins, and also "marginally overlapped" with Yemenite Jews. Daniel Shriner (2018), using modern populations as a reference, found 28% autosomal African ancestry in Natufian samples, with 21.2% related to North Africa and 6.8% related to Omotic-speaking populations in southern Ethiopia, which reveals a plausible source for haplogroup E in Natufians; still according to Shriner, the Natufian samples had 61.2% ancestry related to Arabs and 10.8% ancestry related to West Asians. Ferreira et al. (2021) and Almarri et al. (2021) found that ancient Natufians cluster with modern Arabian groups, such as Saudi Arabians and Yemenis, which derive most of their ancestry from local Natufian-like hunter-gatherer peoples and have less Neolithic Anatolian ancestry than Levantines. Sirak et al. (2024) found that Arabian populations, have a majority component that is "maximized in Late Pleistocene (Epipaleolithic) Natufian hunter–gatherers from the Levant". Language Alexander Militarev, Vitaly Shevoroshkin and others have linked the Natufian culture to the proto-Afroasiatic language, which they in turn believe has a Levantine origin. Some scholars, for example Christopher Ehret, Roger Blench and others, contend that the Proto-Afroasiatic homeland is to be found in North Africa or Northeast Africa, probably in the area of Egypt, the Sahara, Horn of Africa or Sudan. Within this group, Ehret, who like Militarev believes Afroasiatic may already have been in existence in the Natufian period, would associate Natufians only with the Near Eastern Proto-Semitic branch of Afroasiatic. John Bengtson documented that archeological and physical anthropological evidence showed Natufians are closely related to modern Semitic-speaking people from the Levant. Under his hypothesis, Afro-Asiatic branches originated in North Africa proper (Egypt), and the age of these languages can be dated to the periods of the Natufian culture around ~12,000 years ago. He postulated this based on the biological discontinuity between Pleistocene and Holocene North Africa, where there was population replacement and admixture in this region involving external migrants from northern areas, who were the ancestral Afro-Asiatic speakers. Sites The Natufian culture has been documented at dozens of sites. Around 90 have been excavated, including: See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilad_Kariv] | [TOKENS: 1257] |
Contents Gilad Kariv Gilad Kariv (Hebrew: גלעד קריב; born 30 November 1973) is an Israeli attorney, Reform rabbi, and a politician. He was the former CEO of the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism and is currently a member of the Knesset for the Democrats and previously for the Labor Party, in the 25th Knesset. He has also served as chairman of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee of the Knesset during the term of the 36th Government of Israel. Biography Kariv was born and educated in Tel Aviv. His involvement with the Reform Movement began in high school, when he joined the Beit Daniel Synagogue, the Center of Progressive movement in Tel Aviv. Once completing his secondary education at Lady Davis High School, Gilad volunteered for a Service Year in the Hebrew Scouts, and worked on establishing educational Nahal groups. Kariv served in the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Corps under the Haman Talpiot program. Following five years of service in the 8200 unit, during which he completed the officers program with honors, reaching the rank of Lieutenant, Kariv went to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2001, he earned a bachelor's degree in law and Jewish studies. In 2001–2002 he interned in the Supreme Court of the State Attorney Office. In 2003, he received a master's degree in Jewish studies at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. In 2004, he was certified as a lawyer by the Israel Bar Association. In 2008, Kariv received a master's degree in constitutional law from Northwestern University in Chicago, through a combined program with Tel Aviv University. During his academic studies, Kariv established Progressive Movement student networks on campuses around the country. Following the economic sanctions of 2002, Kariv was one of the founding members of the Social Organizations Forum, and was active in several social initiatives, such as the single mothers protest. In 2003, Kariv received rabbinic ordination at the HUC. Among his posts, Kariv served as a rabbi at Congregation Beit Daniel in Tel Aviv until 2008. Kariv lives in Givatayim with his wife and three children. Between 2003 and 2009, Kariv served as the director of the Israel Religious Action Center, and headed Reform movement public and legal initiatives in Israel on issues of freedom of religion, relation between religion and state, conversion, and many other social causes. Kariv initiated the establishment of Keren Be'chavod ('Be'chavod Fund) – the Reform Movement's humanitarian aid foundation, and "Kehilat Tzedek" – the training and guidance center for people of all Jewish sects in the field of social action. In 2009, Kariv was appointed executive director of the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism (IMPJ). Since then, he has worked to expand the work of the movement, establish new Reform congregations around the country, and obtain government recognition of the movement's activities. He was replaced by Anna Kislanski after Kariv was elected to the Knesset in 2021. Kariv publishes opinion pieces in the news and online. He has published several position papers on a variety of topics, including a proposal for the re-organization of religious service provisions in Israel, a suggestion for separation of religious institutions from state bodies, Israeli public space on the Sabbath and a report on the crisis of conversion. Kariv is regularly invited to represent the Reform movement before Knesset committees and in a variety of other public settings. Between 2006 and 2009, Kariv took part in the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee's discussions over the proposed writing of an Israeli constitution. In these meetings, Kariv represented the liberal Zionist point of view. Together with his colleagues at the IMPJ, Kariv proposed constitutional principles for the State of Israel. As a representative of the Reform movement, Kariv serves as a board member at the Jewish Federation Institute for Jewish Learning, and as a board member in the Menucha Nechona organization, which works to advance civil burials in Israel. Between 2008 and 2011, Kariv also served as a committee member at the Israel Broadcasting Authority. Kariv helped lead the efforts to establish an egalitarian praying platform at the Western Wall, resulting in a government resolution officially recognizing the right for egalitarian prayer at the end of January 2016. Kariv ran in the 2012 Israeli Labor Party primary elections, winning 27th place on the party's list for the 2013 Knesset election. The party won only 15 seats. In December 2014, he informed Labor Party Chairman Isaac Herzog that he would be running for a spot on the Labor list for the 2015 election. In January 2021, Kariv ran again in the Labor Party's primary election for the 2021 Knesset election and placed fourth on the party's slate. He was subsequently elected to the Knesset in 2021. As a Member of Knesset, he is vehemently opposed to the proposed "Police Reform" proposed by Minister of Interior, Itamar Ben Gvir. After the 2022 elections, resulting in the election of the 25th Knesset, Kariv was involved in merging the Meretz and Labor parties into the new party The Democrats. Kariv currently serves as a MK in the 25th Knesset, and heads the Committee for Immigration, Absorption, and Diaspora Affairs. He also serves on the National Security Committee. In a July 2025 letter to the IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir and the Defense Minister Israel Katz, Kariv has called for the 2023 Gaza war to end, citing the need to return the hostages, the danger to IDF soldiers, and the humanitarian situation in Gaza, specifically calling out the number of Palestinian casualties, stating that thousands of Palestinian children have been killed, and mentioning the destruction of infrastructure in Gaza. References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://www.theverge.com/transportation/858514/is-this-the-worlds-first-solid-state-battery] | [TOKENS: 4244] |
TransportationCloseTransportationPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TransportationScienceCloseSciencePosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All ScienceTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechIs this the world’s first solid-state battery?Donut Lab says its solid-state batteries are in production. Is the startup blowing smoke?by Tim StevensCloseTim StevensFreelancerPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Tim StevensJan 8, 2026, 4:00 PM UTCLinkShareGift Image: Tim StevensTransportationCloseTransportationPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TransportationScienceCloseSciencePosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All ScienceTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechIs this the world’s first solid-state battery?Donut Lab says its solid-state batteries are in production. Is the startup blowing smoke?by Tim StevensCloseTim StevensFreelancerPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Tim StevensJan 8, 2026, 4:00 PM UTCLinkShareGiftPart OfCES 2026 live: all the news, announcements, and innovations from the show floor and beyondsee all updates CES is a land of bold announcements of amazing, innovative products and technologies that will revolutionize the world, often set for release in two years’ time. Twenty-four months seems to be about the right hype window: close enough to generate excitement and investment, but far enough that everyone forgets about your promises before that deadline quietly comes and goes.It was CES 2018 when Henrik Fisker made such a proclamation, saying that his team of gurus had cracked the code of solid-state batteries. By 2020, he said, those batteries would be in mass production. The car was the EMotion, which never did come to market. By 2021, the company had given up on the solid-state dream, and by 2024, the whole operation went bust.In Las Vegas at CES 2026, it’s time for another bold proclamation about a small team of engineers that have figured out solid state. This time it’s Marko Lehtimaki, cofounder and CEO of Donut Lab, an EV technology startup that spun off from Verge Motorcycles (no relation to The Verge). Naturally, I’m skeptical, but there’s one key difference that’s giving me hope: Lehtimaki says the Donut Battery isn’t 24 months away. It’s in production right now.Solid hypeIf you’ve not been riding the hype wave around solid state, the promise is for a battery cell that is cheap, light, fast-charging, cool-running, energy-dense, and combustion-free. They’re still conceptually the same battery design as the past couple-hundred years. That means an anode on one side and a cathode on the other, separated by an electrolyte across which charge-carrying ions can scurry back and forth as the cell is charged or discharged.In a traditional lithium-ion cell, the electrolyte is a liquid of some sort. In a solid-state battery, it is, of course, a solid. That may sound like a small shift, but it has huge ramifications, the biggest being effective durability. Like solid-state electronics, there’s nothing that wears or breaks down, which means a massive increase in durability, charging speed, and energy density.For its solid-state batteries, Donut Lab is listing some incredible figures. To start with, there’s an energy density of 400 Wh/kg, which is about a third greater than that of a modern lithium-ion pack. In other words, 30 percent more range in an EV with the same weight battery pack.It has huge ramifications, the biggest being effective durabilityDespite that boost, Lehtimaki says these cells are actually cheaper to manufacture. These batteries will appear first in the Verge TS Pro, and Lehtimaki told me that swapping to these hyper-advanced new cells actually reduced cost.“The bill of materials went down, and it is going down with every other vendor buying at the rate that we are selling them,” Lehtimaki says.Donut says the batteries can take a full charge in as few as five minutes, which would finally mean an EV that charges as fast as you can fuel up a car.For this first application, though, it’s a bit slower: 10 minutes in the Verge TS Pro. The company is also being a little conservative when it comes to the lifespan of the cells. Where Donut Lab promises 100,000 charge cycles before the battery is worn out, Verge says 10,000.Even that is a radical improvement over the roughly 1,500 cycles that you might expect out of a typical lithium-ion EV battery pack. 100,000, though, is a total game changer, creating a battery that will easily outlast the car it was created to power.“The cycle life, the residual value of the battery, is actually 100 percent after the lifetime of the car. So it becomes the only component that keeps its value, and you can use it as a home battery, or whatever,” Lehtimaki says.Image: Tim StevensThermal stabilityThere are other implications, too. Lehtimaki says that Donut Batteries are extremely thermally stable, offering nearly full capacity, even down to -22 degrees Fahrenheit. That means it will also require less cooling. I spoke with Neil Yates, founder and CEO at Watt Electric Vehicle Company, an EV platform maker that uses Donut Lab’s hub motors in its products and is looking to adapt the new batteries onto its platform as well.“There will be no real active cooling requirement at all,” Yates says, thanks to the Donut Battery’s thermal resiliency. “We do a little bit to manage the enclosure in which they are, but that’s enclosure management, rather than specific battery management.” No active cooling means less plumbing required in the car, saving even more weight.“There will be no real active cooling requirement at all.”And, again, this is all said to be happening now. Lehtimaki says that the cells are actively in production in Finland, with initial production capacity of roughly one gigawatt-hour. But, he says Donut Lab can quickly spin up new factories in the U.S. if there is sufficient demand from American car manufacturers.That’s aided by a battery chemistry totally free of any sort of conflict or difficult materials that might be subject to tricky import or export regulations or tariffs.That might point to something like a sodium-metal construction, but Lehtimaki wasn’t willing to talk specifics. In fact, there are many details that we’ll have to wait for clarity on, including how Donut Lab managed to solve the so-called dendrite issue. This challenge has stymied many solid-state startups, a battery flaw that’s a little like a microscopic stalagmite growing from anode to cathode across the solid-state electrolyte. When they bridge across, you get a catastrophic short and, potentially, a lot of smoke and fire.How did Donut Lab solve this issue where many major companies have failed? He credits having a small, agile team. “The party that has the capability and then iterates faster is the one that obviously makes the innovation,” Lehtimaki says. “I’ve always said that 20 engineers beat 2,000 engineers.”Sourcing innovationThere has been speculation online that Donut Lab is using technology from another Finnish startup, Nordic Nano, a renewable energy company that Donut Lab has invested in. Lehtimaki even serves as a board member at Nordic Nano, but says that’s not the source of this product. “It’s not from them,” he says.Lehtimaki says that Donut and Verge Motorcycles’ engineers have been quietly working on battery designs since 2018, and this is the fruit of all that labor. Where are the patents? They’re coming, Lehtimaki says, and promised to have a lot more details to share within the next few months once they clear.There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical here. There are some uncanny parallels between Lehtimaki’s claims and those that Fisker made back in 2018, including talk of smaller versions for phones. But unlike Fisker and all the many other solid-state prognosticators and promisers of mega-range, insta-charging EVs, Lehtimaki isn’t giving himself that 24-month window to milk investors before fading into the sunset. He says all will be proven in just a matter of weeks. That alone gives me reason for optimism, but at the very least I won’t have to wait long to be disappointed.Photography by Tim StevensFollow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Tim StevensCloseTim StevensFreelancerPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Tim StevensCESCloseCESPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All CESElectric CarsCloseElectric CarsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Electric CarsScienceCloseSciencePosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All ScienceTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechTransportationCloseTransportationPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TransportationMore in: CES 2026 live: all the news, announcements, and innovations from the show floor and beyondThis fanny pack robot helped me walk milesSean HollisterJan 28Rodecaster Video Core turns its podcast mixers into video production consoles.Terrence O'BrienJan 18Samsung adds new sizes of Frame TVs, but is backing away from the One Connect Box.Terrence O'BrienJan 18Most PopularMost PopularXbox chief Phil Spencer is leaving MicrosoftRead Microsoft gaming CEO Asha Sharma’s first memo on the future of XboxThe RAM shortage is coming for everything you care aboutAmazon blames human employees for an AI coding agent’s mistakeWill Stancil, man of the people or just an annoying guy?The Verge DailyA free daily digest of the news that matters most.Email (required)Sign UpBy submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Advertiser Content FromThis is the title for the native ad Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Transportation Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Science Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech Is this the world’s first solid-state battery? Donut Lab says its solid-state batteries are in production. Is the startup blowing smoke? Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Tim Stevens Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Transportation Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Science Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech Is this the world’s first solid-state battery? Donut Lab says its solid-state batteries are in production. Is the startup blowing smoke? Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Tim Stevens CES is a land of bold announcements of amazing, innovative products and technologies that will revolutionize the world, often set for release in two years’ time. Twenty-four months seems to be about the right hype window: close enough to generate excitement and investment, but far enough that everyone forgets about your promises before that deadline quietly comes and goes. It was CES 2018 when Henrik Fisker made such a proclamation, saying that his team of gurus had cracked the code of solid-state batteries. By 2020, he said, those batteries would be in mass production. The car was the EMotion, which never did come to market. By 2021, the company had given up on the solid-state dream, and by 2024, the whole operation went bust. In Las Vegas at CES 2026, it’s time for another bold proclamation about a small team of engineers that have figured out solid state. This time it’s Marko Lehtimaki, cofounder and CEO of Donut Lab, an EV technology startup that spun off from Verge Motorcycles (no relation to The Verge). Naturally, I’m skeptical, but there’s one key difference that’s giving me hope: Lehtimaki says the Donut Battery isn’t 24 months away. It’s in production right now. Solid hype If you’ve not been riding the hype wave around solid state, the promise is for a battery cell that is cheap, light, fast-charging, cool-running, energy-dense, and combustion-free. They’re still conceptually the same battery design as the past couple-hundred years. That means an anode on one side and a cathode on the other, separated by an electrolyte across which charge-carrying ions can scurry back and forth as the cell is charged or discharged. In a traditional lithium-ion cell, the electrolyte is a liquid of some sort. In a solid-state battery, it is, of course, a solid. That may sound like a small shift, but it has huge ramifications, the biggest being effective durability. Like solid-state electronics, there’s nothing that wears or breaks down, which means a massive increase in durability, charging speed, and energy density. For its solid-state batteries, Donut Lab is listing some incredible figures. To start with, there’s an energy density of 400 Wh/kg, which is about a third greater than that of a modern lithium-ion pack. In other words, 30 percent more range in an EV with the same weight battery pack. It has huge ramifications, the biggest being effective durability Despite that boost, Lehtimaki says these cells are actually cheaper to manufacture. These batteries will appear first in the Verge TS Pro, and Lehtimaki told me that swapping to these hyper-advanced new cells actually reduced cost. “The bill of materials went down, and it is going down with every other vendor buying at the rate that we are selling them,” Lehtimaki says. Donut says the batteries can take a full charge in as few as five minutes, which would finally mean an EV that charges as fast as you can fuel up a car. For this first application, though, it’s a bit slower: 10 minutes in the Verge TS Pro. The company is also being a little conservative when it comes to the lifespan of the cells. Where Donut Lab promises 100,000 charge cycles before the battery is worn out, Verge says 10,000. Even that is a radical improvement over the roughly 1,500 cycles that you might expect out of a typical lithium-ion EV battery pack. 100,000, though, is a total game changer, creating a battery that will easily outlast the car it was created to power. “The cycle life, the residual value of the battery, is actually 100 percent after the lifetime of the car. So it becomes the only component that keeps its value, and you can use it as a home battery, or whatever,” Lehtimaki says. Thermal stability There are other implications, too. Lehtimaki says that Donut Batteries are extremely thermally stable, offering nearly full capacity, even down to -22 degrees Fahrenheit. That means it will also require less cooling. I spoke with Neil Yates, founder and CEO at Watt Electric Vehicle Company, an EV platform maker that uses Donut Lab’s hub motors in its products and is looking to adapt the new batteries onto its platform as well. “There will be no real active cooling requirement at all,” Yates says, thanks to the Donut Battery’s thermal resiliency. “We do a little bit to manage the enclosure in which they are, but that’s enclosure management, rather than specific battery management.” No active cooling means less plumbing required in the car, saving even more weight. “There will be no real active cooling requirement at all.” And, again, this is all said to be happening now. Lehtimaki says that the cells are actively in production in Finland, with initial production capacity of roughly one gigawatt-hour. But, he says Donut Lab can quickly spin up new factories in the U.S. if there is sufficient demand from American car manufacturers. That’s aided by a battery chemistry totally free of any sort of conflict or difficult materials that might be subject to tricky import or export regulations or tariffs. That might point to something like a sodium-metal construction, but Lehtimaki wasn’t willing to talk specifics. In fact, there are many details that we’ll have to wait for clarity on, including how Donut Lab managed to solve the so-called dendrite issue. This challenge has stymied many solid-state startups, a battery flaw that’s a little like a microscopic stalagmite growing from anode to cathode across the solid-state electrolyte. When they bridge across, you get a catastrophic short and, potentially, a lot of smoke and fire. How did Donut Lab solve this issue where many major companies have failed? He credits having a small, agile team. “The party that has the capability and then iterates faster is the one that obviously makes the innovation,” Lehtimaki says. “I’ve always said that 20 engineers beat 2,000 engineers.” Sourcing innovation There has been speculation online that Donut Lab is using technology from another Finnish startup, Nordic Nano, a renewable energy company that Donut Lab has invested in. Lehtimaki even serves as a board member at Nordic Nano, but says that’s not the source of this product. “It’s not from them,” he says. Lehtimaki says that Donut and Verge Motorcycles’ engineers have been quietly working on battery designs since 2018, and this is the fruit of all that labor. Where are the patents? They’re coming, Lehtimaki says, and promised to have a lot more details to share within the next few months once they clear. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical here. There are some uncanny parallels between Lehtimaki’s claims and those that Fisker made back in 2018, including talk of smaller versions for phones. But unlike Fisker and all the many other solid-state prognosticators and promisers of mega-range, insta-charging EVs, Lehtimaki isn’t giving himself that 24-month window to milk investors before fading into the sunset. He says all will be proven in just a matter of weeks. That alone gives me reason for optimism, but at the very least I won’t have to wait long to be disappointed. Photography by Tim Stevens Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Tim Stevens Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All CES Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Electric Cars Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Science Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Transportation More in: CES 2026 live: all the news, announcements, and innovations from the show floor and beyond Most Popular The Verge Daily A free daily digest of the news that matters most. This is the title for the native ad More in Transportation This is the title for the native ad Top Stories © 2026 Vox Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_life#cite_ref-space20130102_46-0] | [TOKENS: 11349] |
Contents Extraterrestrial life Extraterrestrial life, or alien life (colloquially aliens), is life that originates from another world rather than on Earth. No extraterrestrial life has yet been scientifically or conclusively detected. Such life might range from simple forms such as prokaryotes to intelligent beings, possibly bringing forth civilizations that might be far more, or far less, advanced than humans. The Drake equation speculates about the existence of sapient life elsewhere in the universe. The science of extraterrestrial life is known as astrobiology. Speculation about inhabited worlds beyond Earth dates back to antiquity. Early Christian writers, including Augustine, discussed ideas from thinkers like Democritus and Epicurus about countless worlds in the vast universe. Pre-modern writers typically assumed extraterrestrial "worlds" were inhabited by living beings. William Vorilong, in the 15th century, acknowledged the possibility Jesus could have visited extraterrestrial worlds to redeem their inhabitants.: 26 In 1440, Nicholas of Cusa suggested Earth is a "brilliant star"; he theorized that all celestial bodies, even the Sun, could host life. Descartes wrote that there were no means to prove the stars were not inhabited by "intelligent creatures", but their existence was a matter of speculation.: 67 In comparison to the life-abundant Earth, the vast majority of intrasolar and extrasolar planets and moons have harsh surface conditions and disparate atmospheric chemistry, or lack an atmosphere. However, there are many extreme and chemically harsh ecosystems on Earth that do support forms of life and are often hypothesized to be the origin of life on Earth. Examples include life surrounding hydrothermal vents, acidic hot springs, and volcanic lakes, as well as halophiles and the deep biosphere. Since the mid-20th century, researchers have searched for extraterrestrial life and intelligence. Solar system studies focus on Venus, Mars, Europa, and Titan, while exoplanet discoveries now total 6,022 confirmed planets in 4,490 systems as of October 2025. Depending on the category of search, methods range from analysis of telescope and specimen data to radios used to detect and transmit interstellar communication. Interstellar travel remains largely hypothetical, with only the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes confirmed to have entered the interstellar medium. The concept of extraterrestrial life, especially intelligent life, has greatly influenced culture and fiction. A key debate centers on contacting extraterrestrial intelligence: some advocate active attempts, while others warn it could be risky, given human history of exploiting other societies. Context Initially, after the Big Bang, the universe was too hot to allow life. It is estimated that the temperature of the universe was around 10 billion Kelvin at the one-second mark. Roughly 15 million years later, it cooled to temperate levels, though the elements of organic life were yet nonexistent. The only freely available elements at that point were hydrogen and helium. Carbon and oxygen (and later, water) would not appear until 50 million years later, created through stellar fusion. At that point, the difficulty for life to appear was not the temperature, but the scarcity of free heavy elements. Planetary systems emerged, and the first organic compounds may have formed in the protoplanetary disk of dust grains that would eventually create rocky planets like Earth. Although Earth was in a molten state after its birth and may have burned any organics that fell on it, it would have been more receptive once it cooled down. Once the right conditions on Earth were met, life started by a chemical process known as abiogenesis. Alternatively, life may have formed less frequently, then spread—by meteoroids, for example—between habitable planets in a process called panspermia. During most of its stellar evolution, stars combine hydrogen nuclei to make helium nuclei by stellar fusion, and the comparatively lighter weight of helium allows the star to release the extra energy. The process continues until the star uses all of its available fuel, with the speed of consumption being related to the size of the star. During its last stages, stars start combining helium nuclei to form carbon nuclei. The larger stars can further combine carbon nuclei to create oxygen and silicon, oxygen into neon and sulfur, and so on until iron. Ultimately, the star blows much of its content back into the stellar medium, where it would join clouds that would eventually become new generations of stars and planets. Many of those materials are the raw components of life on Earth. As this process takes place in all the universe, said materials are ubiquitous in the cosmos and not a rarity from the Solar System. Earth is a planet in the Solar System, a planetary system formed by a star at the center, the Sun, and the objects that orbit it: other planets, moons, asteroids, and comets. The sun is part of the Milky Way, a galaxy. The Milky Way is part of the Local Group, a galaxy group that is in turn part of the Laniakea Supercluster. The universe is composed of all similar structures in existence. The immense distances between celestial objects are a difficulty for studying extraterrestrial life. So far, humans have only set foot on the Moon and sent robotic probes to other planets and moons in the Solar System. Although probes can withstand conditions that may be lethal to humans, the distances cause time delays: the New Horizons took nine years after launch to reach Pluto. No probe has ever reached extrasolar planetary systems. The Voyager 2 left the Solar System at a speed of 50,000 kilometers per hour; if it headed towards the Alpha Centauri system, the closest one to Earth at 4.4 light years, it would reach it in 100,000 years. Under current technology, such systems can only be studied by telescopes, which have limitations. It is estimated that dark matter has a larger amount of combined matter than stars and gas clouds, but as it plays no role in the stellar evolution of stars and planets, it is usually not taken into account by astrobiology. There is an area around a star, the circumstellar habitable zone or "Goldilocks zone", wherein water may be at the right temperature to exist in liquid form at a planetary surface. This area is neither too close to the star, where water would become steam, nor too far away, where water would be frozen as ice. However, although useful as an approximation, planetary habitability is complex and defined by several factors. Being in the habitable zone is not enough for a planet to be habitable, not even to actually have such liquid water. Venus is located in the solar system's habitable zone, but does not have liquid water because of the conditions of its atmosphere. Jovian planets or gas giants are not considered habitable even if they orbit close enough to their stars as hot Jupiters, due to crushing atmospheric pressures. The actual distances for the habitable zones vary according to the type of star, and even the solar activity of each specific star influences the local habitability. The type of star also defines the time the habitable zone will exist, as its presence and limits will change along with the star's stellar evolution. The Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago, the Solar System was formed 4.6 billion years ago, and the first hominids appeared 6 million years ago. Life on other planets may have started, evolved, given birth to extraterrestrial intelligences, and perhaps even faced a planetary extinction event millions or billions of years ago. When considered from a cosmic perspective, the brief times of existence of Earth's species may suggest that extraterrestrial life may be equally fleeting under such a scale. During a period of about 7 million years, from about 10 to 17 million years after the Big Bang, the background temperature was between 373 and 273 K (100 and 0 °C; 212 and 32 °F), allowing the possibility of liquid water if any planets existed. Avi Loeb (2014) speculated that primitive life might in principle have appeared during this window, which he called "the Habitable Epoch of the Early Universe". Life on Earth is quite ubiquitous across the planet and has adapted over time to almost all the available environments in it, extremophiles and the deep biosphere thrive at even the most hostile ones. As a result, it is inferred that life in other celestial bodies may be equally adaptive. However, the origin of life is unrelated to its ease of adaptation and may have stricter requirements. A celestial body may not have any life on it, even if it were habitable. Likelihood of existence Life in the cosmos beyond Earth has been observed. The hypothesis of ubiquitous extraterrestrial life relies on three main ideas. The first one, the size of the universe, allows for plenty of planets to have a similar habitability to Earth, and the age of the universe gives enough time for a long process analog to the history of Earth to happen there. The second is that the substances that make life, such as carbon and water, are ubiquitous in the universe. The third is that the physical laws are universal, which means that the forces that would facilitate or prevent the existence of life would be the same ones as on Earth. According to this argument, made by scientists such as Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, it would be improbable for life not to exist somewhere else other than Earth. This argument is embodied in the Copernican principle, which states that Earth does not occupy a unique position in the Universe, and the mediocrity principle, which states that there is nothing special about life on Earth. Other authors consider instead that life in the cosmos, or at least multicellular life, may actually be rare. The Rare Earth hypothesis maintains that life on Earth is possible because of a series of factors that range from the location in the galaxy and the configuration of the Solar System to local characteristics of the planet, and that it is unlikely that another planet simultaneously meets all such requirements. The proponents of this hypothesis consider that very little evidence suggests the existence of extraterrestrial life and that, at this point, it is just a desired result and not a reasonable scientific explanation for any gathered data. In 1961, astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake devised the Drake equation as a way to stimulate scientific dialogue at a meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The Drake equation is a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. The Drake equation is:: xix where: and Drake's proposed estimates are as follows, but numbers on the right side of the equation are agreed as speculative and open to substitution: 10,000 = 5 ⋅ 0.5 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 1 ⋅ 0.2 ⋅ 1 ⋅ 10,000 {\displaystyle 10{,}000=5\cdot 0.5\cdot 2\cdot 1\cdot 0.2\cdot 1\cdot 10{,}000} [better source needed] The Drake equation has proved controversial since, although it is written as a math equation, none of its values were known at the time. Although some values may eventually be measured, others are based on social sciences and are not knowable by their very nature. This does not allow one to make noteworthy conclusions from the equation. Based on observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, there are nearly 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. It is estimated that at least ten percent of all Sun-like stars have a system of planets. In other words, there are 6.25×1018 stars with planets orbiting them in the observable universe. Even if it is assumed that only one out of a billion of these stars has planets supporting life, there would be some 6.25 billion life-supporting planetary systems in the observable universe. A 2013 study based on results from the Kepler spacecraft estimated that the Milky Way contains at least as many planets as it does stars, resulting in 100–400 billion exoplanets. The Nebular hypothesis that explains the formation of the Solar System and other planetary systems would suggest that those can have several configurations, and not all of them may have rocky planets within the habitable zone. The apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilisations and the lack of evidence for such civilisations is known as the Fermi paradox. Dennis W. Sciama claimed that life's existence in the universe depends on various fundamental constants. Zhi-Wei Wang and Samuel L. Braunstein suggest that a random universe capable of supporting life is likely to be just barely able to do so, giving a potential explanation to the Fermi paradox. Biochemical basis If extraterrestrial life exists, it could range from simple microorganisms and multicellular organisms similar to animals or plants, to complex alien intelligences akin to humans. When scientists talk about extraterrestrial life, they consider all those types. Although it is possible that extraterrestrial life may have other configurations, scientists use the hierarchy of lifeforms from Earth for simplicity, as it is the only one known to exist. The first basic requirement for life is an environment with non-equilibrium thermodynamics, which means that the thermodynamic equilibrium must be broken by a source of energy. The traditional sources of energy in the cosmos are the stars, such as for life on Earth, which depends on the energy of the sun. However, there are other alternative energy sources, such as volcanoes, plate tectonics, and hydrothermal vents. There are ecosystems on Earth in deep areas of the ocean that do not receive sunlight, and take energy from black smokers instead. Magnetic fields and radioactivity have also been proposed as sources of energy, although they would be less efficient ones. Life on Earth requires water in a liquid state as a solvent in which biochemical reactions take place. It is highly unlikely that an abiogenesis process can start within a gaseous or solid medium: the atom speeds, either too fast or too slow, make it difficult for specific ones to meet and start chemical reactions. A liquid medium also allows the transport of nutrients and substances required for metabolism. Sufficient quantities of carbon and other elements, along with water, might enable the formation of living organisms on terrestrial planets with a chemical make-up and temperature range similar to that of Earth. Life based on ammonia rather than water has been suggested as an alternative, though this solvent appears less suitable than water. It is also conceivable that there are forms of life whose solvent is a liquid hydrocarbon, such as methane, ethane or propane. Another unknown aspect of potential extraterrestrial life would be the chemical elements that would compose it. Life on Earth is largely composed of carbon, but there could be other hypothetical types of biochemistry. A replacement for carbon would need to be able to create complex molecules, store information required for evolution, and be freely available in the medium. To create DNA, RNA, or a close analog, such an element should be able to bind its atoms with many others, creating complex and stable molecules. It should be able to create at least three covalent bonds: two for making long strings and at least a third to add new links and allow for diverse information. Only nine elements meet this requirement: boron, nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic, antimony (three bonds), carbon, silicon, germanium and tin (four bonds). As for abundance, carbon, nitrogen, and silicon are the most abundant ones in the universe, far more than the others. On Earth's crust the most abundant of those elements is silicon, in the Hydrosphere it is carbon and in the atmosphere, it is carbon and nitrogen. Silicon, however, has disadvantages over carbon. The molecules formed with silicon atoms are less stable, and more vulnerable to acids, oxygen, and light. An ecosystem of silicon-based lifeforms would require very low temperatures, high atmospheric pressure, an atmosphere devoid of oxygen, and a solvent other than water. The low temperatures required would add an extra problem, the difficulty to kickstart a process of abiogenesis to create life in the first place. Norman Horowitz, head of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory bioscience section for the Mariner and Viking missions from 1965 to 1976 considered that the great versatility of the carbon atom makes it the element most likely to provide solutions, even exotic solutions, to the problems of survival of life on other planets. However, he also considered that the conditions found on Mars were incompatible with carbon based life. Even if extraterrestrial life is based on carbon and uses water as a solvent, like Earth life, it may still have a radically different biochemistry. Life is generally considered to be a product of natural selection. It has been proposed that to undergo natural selection a living entity must have the capacity to replicate itself, the capacity to avoid damage/decay, and the capacity to acquire and process resources in support of the first two capacities. Life on Earth may have started with an RNA world and later evolved to its current form, where some of the RNA tasks were transferred to DNA and proteins. Extraterrestrial life may still be stuck using RNA, or evolve into other configurations. It is unclear if our biochemistry is the most efficient one that could be generated, or which elements would follow a similar pattern. However, it is likely that, even if cells had a different composition to those from Earth, they would still have a cell membrane. Life on Earth jumped from prokaryotes to eukaryotes and from unicellular organisms to multicellular organisms through evolution. So far no alternative process to achieve such a result has been conceived, even if hypothetical. Evolution requires life to be divided into individual organisms, and no alternative organisation has been satisfactorily proposed either. At the basic level, membranes define the limit of a cell, between it and its environment, while remaining partially open to exchange energy and resources with it. The evolution from simple cells to eukaryotes, and from them to multicellular lifeforms, is not guaranteed. The Cambrian explosion took place thousands of millions of years after the origin of life, and its causes are not fully known yet. On the other hand, the jump to multicellularity took place several times, which suggests that it could be a case of convergent evolution, and so likely to take place on other planets as well. Palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris considers that convergent evolution would lead to kingdoms similar to our plants and animals, and that many features are likely to develop in alien animals as well, such as bilateral symmetry, limbs, digestive systems and heads with sensory organs. Scientists from the University of Oxford analysed it from the perspective of evolutionary theory and wrote in a study in the International Journal of Astrobiology that aliens may be similar to humans. The planetary context would also have an influence: a planet with higher gravity would have smaller animals, and other types of stars can lead to non-green photosynthesizers. The amount of energy available would also affect biodiversity, as an ecosystem sustained by black smokers or hydrothermal vents would have less energy available than those sustained by a star's light and heat, and so its lifeforms would not grow beyond a certain complexity. There is also research in assessing the capacity of life for developing intelligence. It has been suggested that this capacity arises with the number of potential niches a planet contains, and that the complexity of life itself is reflected in the information density of planetary environments, which in turn can be computed from its niches. It is common knowledge that the conditions on other planets in the solar system, in addition to the many galaxies outside of the Milky Way galaxy, are very harsh and seem to be too extreme to harbor any life. The environmental conditions on these planets can have intense UV radiation paired with extreme temperatures, lack of water, and much more that can lead to conditions that don't seem to favor the creation or maintenance of extraterrestrial life. However, there has been much historical evidence that some of the earliest and most basic forms of life on Earth originated in some extreme environments that seem unlikely to have harbored life at least at one point in Earth's history. Fossil evidence as well as many historical theories backed up by years of research and studies have marked environments like hydrothermal vents or acidic hot springs as some of the first places that life could have originated on Earth. These environments can be considered extreme when compared to the typical ecosystems that the majority of life on Earth now inhabit, as hydrothermal vents are scorching hot due to the magma escaping from the Earth's mantle and meeting the much colder oceanic water. Even in today's world, there can be a diverse population of bacteria found inhabiting the area surrounding these hydrothermal vents which can suggest that some form of life can be supported even in the harshest of environments like the other planets in the solar system. The aspects of these harsh environments that make them ideal for the origin of life on Earth, as well as the possibility of creation of life on other planets, is the chemical reactions forming spontaneously. For example, the hydrothermal vents found on the ocean floor are known to support many chemosynthetic processes which allow organisms to utilize energy through reduced chemical compounds that fix carbon. In return, these reactions will allow for organisms to live in relatively low oxygenated environments while maintaining enough energy to support themselves. The early Earth environment was reducing and therefore, these carbon fixing compounds were necessary for the survival and possible origin of life on Earth. With the little amount of information that scientists have found regarding the atmosphere on other planets in the Milky Way galaxy and beyond, the atmospheres are most likely reducing or with very low oxygen levels, especially when compared with Earth's atmosphere. If there were the necessary elements and ions on these planets, the same carbon fixing, reduced chemical compounds occurring around hydrothermal vents could also occur on these planets' surfaces and possibly result in the origin of extraterrestrial life. Planetary habitability in the Solar System The Solar System has a wide variety of planets, dwarf planets, and moons, and each one is studied for its potential to host life. Each one has its own specific conditions that may benefit or harm life. So far, the only lifeforms found are those from Earth. No extraterrestrial intelligence other than humans exists or has ever existed within the Solar System. Astrobiologist Mary Voytek points out that it would be unlikely to find large ecosystems, as they would have already been detected by now. The inner Solar System is likely devoid of life. However, Venus is still of interest to astrobiologists, as it is a terrestrial planet that was likely similar to Earth in its early stages and developed in a different way. There is a greenhouse effect, the surface is the hottest in the Solar System, sulfuric acid clouds, all surface liquid water is lost, and it has a thick carbon-dioxide atmosphere with huge pressure. Comparing both helps to understand the precise differences that lead to beneficial or harmful conditions for life. And despite the conditions against life on Venus, there are suspicions that microbial life-forms may still survive in high-altitude clouds. Mars is a cold and almost airless desert, inhospitable to life. However, recent studies revealed that water on Mars used to be quite abundant, forming rivers, lakes, and perhaps even oceans. Mars may have been habitable back then, and life on Mars may have been possible. But when the planetary core ceased to generate a magnetic field, solar winds removed the atmosphere and the planet became vulnerable to solar radiation. Ancient life-forms may still have left fossilised remains, and microbes may still survive deep underground. As mentioned, the gas giants and ice giants are unlikely to contain life. The most distant solar system bodies, found in the Kuiper Belt and outwards, are locked in permanent deep-freeze, but cannot be ruled out completely. Although the giant planets themselves are highly unlikely to have life, there is much hope to find it on moons orbiting these planets. Europa, from the Jovian system, has a subsurface ocean below a thick layer of ice. Ganymede and Callisto also have subsurface oceans, but life is less likely in them because water is sandwiched between layers of solid ice. Europa would have contact between the ocean and the rocky surface, which helps the chemical reactions. It may be difficult to dig so deep in order to study those oceans, though. Enceladus, a tiny moon of Saturn with another subsurface ocean, may not need to be dug, as it releases water to space in eruption columns. The space probe Cassini flew inside one of these, but could not make a full study because NASA did not expect this phenomenon and did not equip the probe to study ocean water. Still, Cassini detected complex organic molecules, salts, evidence of hydrothermal activity, hydrogen, and methane. Titan is the only celestial body in the Solar System besides Earth that has liquid bodies on the surface. It has rivers, lakes, and rain of hydrocarbons, methane, and ethane, and even a cycle similar to Earth's water cycle. This special context encourages speculations about lifeforms with different biochemistry, but the cold temperatures would make such chemistry take place at a very slow pace. Water is rock-solid on the surface, but Titan does have a subsurface water ocean like several other moons. However, it is of such a great depth that it would be very difficult to access it for study. Scientific search The science that searches and studies life in the universe, both on Earth and elsewhere, is called astrobiology. With the study of Earth's life, the only known form of life, astrobiology seeks to study how life starts and evolves and the requirements for its continuous existence. This helps to determine what to look for when searching for life in other celestial bodies. This is a complex area of study, and uses the combined perspectives of several scientific disciplines, such as astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, oceanography, and atmospheric sciences. The scientific search for extraterrestrial life is being carried out both directly and indirectly. As of September 2017[update], 3,667 exoplanets in 2,747 systems have been identified, and other planets and moons in the Solar System hold the potential for hosting primitive life such as microorganisms. As of 8 February 2021, an updated status of studies considering the possible detection of lifeforms on Venus (via phosphine) and Mars (via methane) was reported. Scientists search for biosignatures within the Solar System by studying planetary surfaces and examining meteorites. Some claim to have identified evidence that microbial life has existed on Mars. In 1996, a controversial report stated that structures resembling nanobacteria were discovered in a meteorite, ALH84001, formed of rock ejected from Mars. Although all the unusual properties of the meteorite were eventually explained as the result of inorganic processes, the controversy over its discovery laid the groundwork for the development of astrobiology. An experiment on the two Viking Mars landers reported gas emissions from heated Martian soil samples that some scientists argue are consistent with the presence of living microorganisms. Lack of corroborating evidence from other experiments on the same samples suggests that a non-biological reaction is a more likely hypothesis. In February 2005 NASA scientists reported they may have found some evidence of extraterrestrial life on Mars. The two scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASA's Ames Research Center, based their claim on methane signatures found in Mars's atmosphere resembling the methane production of some forms of primitive life on Earth, as well as on their own study of primitive life near the Rio Tinto river in Spain. NASA officials soon distanced NASA from the scientists' claims, and Stoker herself backed off from her initial assertions. In November 2011, NASA launched the Mars Science Laboratory that landed the Curiosity rover on Mars. It is designed to assess the past and present habitability on Mars using a variety of scientific instruments. The rover landed on Mars at Gale Crater in August 2012. A group of scientists at Cornell University started a catalog of microorganisms, with the way each one reacts to sunlight. The goal is to help with the search for similar organisms in exoplanets, as the starlight reflected by planets rich in such organisms would have a specific spectrum, unlike that of starlight reflected from lifeless planets. If Earth was studied from afar with this system, it would reveal a shade of green, as a result of the abundance of plants with photosynthesis. In August 2011, NASA studied meteorites found on Antarctica, finding adenine, guanine, hypoxanthine, and xanthine. Adenine and guanine are components of DNA, and the others are used in other biological processes. The studies ruled out pollution of the meteorites on Earth, as those components would not be freely available the way they were found in the samples. This discovery suggests that several organic molecules that serve as building blocks of life may be generated within asteroids and comets. In October 2011, scientists reported that cosmic dust contains complex organic compounds ("amorphous organic solids with a mixed aromatic-aliphatic structure") that could be created naturally, and rapidly, by stars. It is still unclear if those compounds played a role in the creation of life on Earth, but Sun Kwok, of the University of Hong Kong, thinks so. "If this is the case, life on Earth may have had an easier time getting started as these organics can serve as basic ingredients for life." In August 2012, and in a world first, astronomers at Copenhagen University reported the detection of a specific sugar molecule, glycolaldehyde, in a distant star system. The molecule was found around the protostellar binary IRAS 16293-2422, which is located 400 light years from Earth. Glycolaldehyde is needed to form ribonucleic acid, or RNA, which is similar in function to DNA. This finding suggests that complex organic molecules may form in stellar systems prior to the formation of planets, eventually arriving on young planets early in their formation. In December 2023, astronomers reported the first time discovery, in the plumes of Enceladus, moon of the planet Saturn, of hydrogen cyanide, a possible chemical essential for life as we know it, as well as other organic molecules, some of which are yet to be better identified and understood. According to the researchers, "these [newly discovered] compounds could potentially support extant microbial communities or drive complex organic synthesis leading to the origin of life." Although most searches are focused on the biology of extraterrestrial life, an extraterrestrial intelligence capable enough to develop a civilization may be detectable by other means as well. Technology may generate technosignatures, effects on the native planet that may not be caused by natural causes. There are three main types of techno-signatures considered: interstellar communications, effects on the atmosphere, and planetary-sized structures such as Dyson spheres. Organizations such as the SETI Institute search the cosmos for potential forms of communication. They started with radio waves, and now search for laser pulses as well. The challenge for this search is that there are natural sources of such signals as well, such as gamma-ray bursts and supernovae, and the difference between a natural signal and an artificial one would be in its specific patterns. Astronomers intend to use artificial intelligence for this, as it can manage large amounts of data and is devoid of biases and preconceptions. Besides, even if there is an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, there is no guarantee that it is transmitting radio communications in the direction of Earth. The length of time required for a signal to travel across space means that a potential answer may arrive decades or centuries after the initial message. The atmosphere of Earth is rich in nitrogen dioxide as a result of air pollution, which can be detectable. The natural abundance of carbon, which is also relatively reactive, makes it likely to be a basic component of the development of a potential extraterrestrial technological civilization, as it is on Earth. Fossil fuels may likely be generated and used on such worlds as well. The abundance of chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere can also be a clear technosignature, considering their role in ozone depletion. Light pollution may be another technosignature, as multiple lights on the night side of a rocky planet can be a sign of advanced technological development. However, modern telescopes are not strong enough to study exoplanets with the required level of detail to perceive it. The Kardashev scale proposes that a civilization may eventually start consuming energy directly from its local star. This would require giant structures built next to it, called Dyson spheres. Those speculative structures would cause an excess infrared radiation, that telescopes may notice. The infrared radiation is typical of young stars, surrounded by dusty protoplanetary disks that will eventually form planets. An older star such as the Sun would have no natural reason to have excess infrared radiation. The presence of heavy elements in a star's light-spectrum is another potential biosignature; such elements would (in theory) be found if the star were being used as an incinerator/repository for nuclear waste products. Some astronomers search for extrasolar planets that may be conducive to life, narrowing the search to terrestrial planets within the habitable zones of their stars. Since 1992, over four thousand exoplanets have been discovered (6,128 planets in 4,584 planetary systems including 1,017 multiple planetary systems as of 30 October 2025). The extrasolar planets so far discovered range in size from that of terrestrial planets similar to Earth's size to that of gas giants larger than Jupiter. The number of observed exoplanets is expected to increase greatly in the coming years.[better source needed] The Kepler space telescope has also detected a few thousand candidate planets, of which about 11% may be false positives. There is at least one planet on average per star. About 1 in 5 Sun-like stars[a] have an "Earth-sized"[b] planet in the habitable zone,[c] with the nearest expected to be within 12 light-years distance from Earth. Assuming 200 billion stars in the Milky Way,[d] that would be 11 billion potentially habitable Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way, rising to 40 billion if red dwarfs are included. The rogue planets in the Milky Way possibly number in the trillions. The nearest known exoplanet is Proxima Centauri b, located 4.2 light-years (1.3 pc) from Earth in the southern constellation of Centaurus. As of March 2014[update], the least massive exoplanet known is PSR B1257+12 A, which is about twice the mass of the Moon. The most massive planet listed on the NASA Exoplanet Archive is DENIS-P J082303.1−491201 b, about 29 times the mass of Jupiter, although according to most definitions of a planet, it is too massive to be a planet and may be a brown dwarf instead. Almost all of the planets detected so far are within the Milky Way, but there have also been a few possible detections of extragalactic planets. The study of planetary habitability also considers a wide range of other factors in determining the suitability of a planet for hosting life. One sign that a planet probably already contains life is the presence of an atmosphere with significant amounts of oxygen, since that gas is highly reactive and generally would not last long without constant replenishment. This replenishment occurs on Earth through photosynthetic organisms. One way to analyse the atmosphere of an exoplanet is through spectrography when it transits its star, though this might only be feasible with dim stars like white dwarfs. History and cultural impact The modern concept of extraterrestrial life is based on assumptions that were not commonplace during the early days of astronomy. The first explanations for the celestial objects seen in the night sky were based on mythology. Scholars from Ancient Greece were the first to consider that the universe is inherently understandable and rejected explanations based on supernatural incomprehensible forces, such as the myth of the Sun being pulled across the sky in the chariot of Apollo. They had not developed the scientific method yet and based their ideas on pure thought and speculation, but they developed precursor ideas to it, such as that explanations had to be discarded if they contradict observable facts. The discussions of those Greek scholars established many of the pillars that would eventually lead to the idea of extraterrestrial life, such as Earth being round and not flat. The cosmos was first structured in a geocentric model that considered that the sun and all other celestial bodies revolve around Earth. However, they did not consider them as worlds. In Greek understanding, the world was composed by both Earth and the celestial objects with noticeable movements. Anaximander thought that the cosmos was made from apeiron, a substance that created the world, and that the world would eventually return to the cosmos. Eventually two groups emerged, the atomists that thought that matter at both Earth and the cosmos was equally made of small atoms of the classical elements (earth, water, fire and air), and the Aristotelians who thought that those elements were exclusive of Earth and that the cosmos was made of a fifth one, the aether. Atomist Epicurus thought that the processes that created the world, its animals and plants should have created other worlds elsewhere, along with their own animals and plants. Aristotle thought instead that all the earth element naturally fell towards the center of the universe, and that would make it impossible for other planets to exist elsewhere. Under that reasoning, Earth was not only in the center, it was also the only planet in the universe. Cosmic pluralism, the plurality of worlds, or simply pluralism, describes the philosophical belief in numerous "worlds" in addition to Earth, which might harbor extraterrestrial life. The earliest recorded assertion of extraterrestrial human life is found in ancient scriptures of Jainism. There are multiple "worlds" mentioned in Jain scriptures that support human life. These include, among others, Bharat Kshetra, Mahavideh Kshetra, Airavat Kshetra, and Hari kshetra. Medieval Muslim writers like Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and Muhammad al-Baqir supported cosmic pluralism on the basis of the Qur'an. Chaucer's poem The House of Fame engaged in medieval thought experiments that postulated the plurality of worlds. However, those ideas about other worlds were different from the current knowledge about the structure of the universe, and did not postulate the existence of planetary systems other than the Solar System. When those authors talk about other worlds, they talk about places located at the center of their own systems, and with their own stellar vaults and cosmos surrounding them. The Greek ideas and the disputes between atomists and Aristotelians outlived the fall of the Greek empire. The Great Library of Alexandria compiled information about it, part of which was translated by Islamic scholars and thus survived the end of the Library. Baghdad combined the knowledge of the Greeks, the Indians, the Chinese and its own scholars, and the knowledge expanded through the Byzantine Empire. From there it eventually returned to Europe by the time of the Middle Ages. However, as the Greek atomist doctrine held that the world was created by random movements of atoms, with no need for a creator deity, it became associated with atheism, and the dispute intertwined with religious ones. Still, the Church did not react to those topics in a homogeneous way, and there were stricter and more permissive views within the church itself. The first known mention of the term 'panspermia' was in the writings of the 5th-century BC Greek philosopher Anaxagoras. He proposed the idea that life exists everywhere. By the time of the late Middle Ages there were many known inaccuracies in the geocentric model, but it was kept in use because naked eye observations provided limited data. Nicolaus Copernicus started the Copernican Revolution by proposing that the planets revolve around the sun rather than Earth. His proposal had little acceptance at first because, as he kept the assumption that orbits were perfect circles, his model led to as many inaccuracies as the geocentric one. Tycho Brahe improved the available data with naked-eye observatories, which worked with highly complex sextants and quadrants. Tycho could not make sense of his observations, but Johannes Kepler did: orbits were not perfect circles, but ellipses. This knowledge benefited the Copernican model, which worked now almost perfectly. The invention of the telescope a short time later, perfected by Galileo Galilei, clarified the final doubts, and the paradigm shift was completed. Under this new understanding, the notion of extraterrestrial life became feasible: if Earth is but just a planet orbiting around a star, there may be planets similar to Earth elsewhere. The astronomical study of distant bodies also proved that physical laws are the same elsewhere in the universe as on Earth, with nothing making the planet truly special. The new ideas were met with resistance from the Catholic church. Galileo was tried for the heliocentric model, which was considered heretical, and forced to recant it. The best-known early-modern proponent of ideas of extraterrestrial life was the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, who argued in the 16th century for an infinite universe in which every star is surrounded by its own planetary system. Bruno wrote that other worlds "have no less virtue nor a nature different to that of our earth" and, like Earth, "contain animals and inhabitants". Bruno's belief in the plurality of worlds was one of the charges leveled against him by the Venetian Holy Inquisition, which tried and executed him. The heliocentric model was further strengthened by the postulation of the theory of gravity by Sir Isaac Newton. This theory provided the mathematics that explains the motions of all things in the universe, including planetary orbits. By this point, the geocentric model was definitely discarded. By this time, the use of the scientific method had become a standard, and new discoveries were expected to provide evidence and rigorous mathematical explanations. Science also took a deeper interest in the mechanics of natural phenomena, trying to explain not just the way nature works but also the reasons for working that way. There was very little actual discussion about extraterrestrial life before this point, as the Aristotelian ideas remained influential while geocentrism was still accepted. When it was finally proved wrong, it not only meant that Earth was not the center of the universe, but also that the lights seen in the sky were not just lights, but physical objects. The notion that life may exist in them as well soon became an ongoing topic of discussion, although one with no practical ways to investigate. The possibility of extraterrestrials remained a widespread speculation as scientific discovery accelerated. William Herschel, the discoverer of Uranus, was one of many 18th–19th-century astronomers who believed that the Solar System is populated by alien life. Other scholars of the period who championed "cosmic pluralism" included Immanuel Kant and Benjamin Franklin. At the height of the Enlightenment, even the Sun and Moon were considered candidates for extraterrestrial inhabitants. Speculation about life on Mars increased in the late 19th century, following telescopic observation of apparent Martian canals – which soon, however, turned out to be optical illusions. Despite this, in 1895, American astronomer Percival Lowell published his book Mars, followed by Mars and its Canals in 1906, proposing that the canals were the work of a long-gone civilisation. Spectroscopic analysis of Mars's atmosphere began in earnest in 1894, when U.S. astronomer William Wallace Campbell showed that neither water nor oxygen was present in the Martian atmosphere. By 1909 better telescopes and the best perihelic opposition of Mars since 1877 conclusively put an end to the canal hypothesis. As a consequence of the belief in the spontaneous generation there was little thought about the conditions of each celestial body: it was simply assumed that life would thrive anywhere. This theory was disproved by Louis Pasteur in the 19th century. Popular belief in thriving alien civilisations elsewhere in the solar system still remained strong until Mariner 4 and Mariner 9 provided close images of Mars, which debunked forever the idea of the existence of Martians and decreased the previous expectations of finding alien life in general. The end of the spontaneous generation belief forced investigation into the origin of life. Although abiogenesis is the more accepted theory, a number of authors reclaimed the term "panspermia" and proposed that life was brought to Earth from elsewhere. Some of those authors are Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1834), Kelvin (1871), Hermann von Helmholtz (1879) and, somewhat later, by Svante Arrhenius (1903). The science fiction genre, although not so named during the time, developed during the late 19th century. The expansion of the genre of extraterrestrials in fiction influenced the popular perception over the real-life topic, making people eager to jump to conclusions about the discovery of aliens. Science marched at a slower pace, some discoveries fueled expectations and others dashed excessive hopes. For example, with the advent of telescopes, most structures seen on the Moon or Mars were immediately attributed to Selenites or Martians, and later ones (such as more powerful telescopes) revealed that all such discoveries were natural features. A famous case is the Cydonia region of Mars, first imaged by the Viking 1 orbiter. The low-resolution photos showed a rock formation that resembled a human face, but later spacecraft took photos in higher detail that showed that there was nothing special about the site. The search and study of extraterrestrial life became a science of its own, astrobiology. Also known as exobiology, this discipline is studied by the NASA, the ESA, the INAF, and others. Astrobiology studies life from Earth as well, but with a cosmic perspective. For example, abiogenesis is of interest to astrobiology, not because of the origin of life on Earth, but for the chances of a similar process taking place in other celestial bodies. Many aspects of life, from its definition to its chemistry, are analyzed as either likely to be similar in all forms of life across the cosmos or only native to Earth. Astrobiology, however, remains constrained by the current lack of extraterrestrial life-forms to study, as all life on Earth comes from the same ancestor, and it is hard to infer general characteristics from a group with a single example to analyse. The 20th century came with great technological advances, speculations about future hypothetical technologies, and an increased basic knowledge of science by the general population thanks to science divulgation through the mass media. The public interest in extraterrestrial life and the lack of discoveries by mainstream science led to the emergence of pseudosciences that provided affirmative, if questionable, answers to the existence of aliens. Ufology claims that many unidentified flying objects (UFOs) would be spaceships from alien species, and ancient astronauts hypothesis claim that aliens would have visited Earth in antiquity and prehistoric times but people would have failed to understand it by then. Most UFOs or UFO sightings can be readily explained as sightings of Earth-based aircraft (including top-secret aircraft), known astronomical objects or weather phenomenons, or as hoaxes. Looking beyond the pseudosciences, Lewis White Beck strove to elevate the level of public discourse on the topic of extraterrestrial life by tracing the evolution of philosophical thought over the centuries from ancient times into the modern era. His review of the contributions made by Lucretius, Plutarch, Aristotle, Copernicus, Immanuel Kant, John Wilkins, Charles Darwin and Karl Marx demonstrated that even in modern times, humanity could be profoundly influenced in its search for extraterrestrial life by subtle and comforting archetypal ideas which are largely derived from firmly held religious, philosophical and existential belief systems. On a positive note, however, Beck further argued that even if the search for extraterrestrial life proves to be unsuccessful, the endeavor itself could have beneficial consequences by assisting humanity in its attempt to actualize superior ways of living here on Earth. By the 21st century, it was accepted that multicellular life in the Solar System can only exist on Earth, but the interest in extraterrestrial life increased regardless. This is a result of the advances in several sciences. The knowledge of planetary habitability allows to consider on scientific terms the likelihood of finding life at each specific celestial body, as it is known which features are beneficial and harmful for life. Astronomy and telescopes also improved to the point exoplanets can be confirmed and even studied, increasing the number of search places. Life may still exist elsewhere in the Solar System in unicellular form, but the advances in spacecraft allow to send robots to study samples in situ, with tools of growing complexity and reliability. Although no extraterrestrial life has been found and life may still be just a rarity from Earth, there are scientific reasons to suspect that it can exist elsewhere, and technological advances that may detect it if it does. Many scientists are optimistic about the chances of finding alien life. In the words of SETI's Frank Drake, "All we know for sure is that the sky is not littered with powerful microwave transmitters". Drake noted that it is entirely possible that advanced technology results in communication being carried out in some way other than conventional radio transmission. At the same time, the data returned by space probes, and giant strides in detection methods, have allowed science to begin delineating habitability criteria on other worlds, and to confirm that at least other planets are plentiful, though aliens remain a question mark. The Wow! signal, detected in 1977 by a SETI project, remains a subject of speculative debate. On the other hand, other scientists are pessimistic. Jacques Monod wrote that "Man knows at last that he is alone in the indifferent immensity of the universe, whence which he has emerged by chance". In 2000, geologist and paleontologist Peter Ward and astrobiologist Donald Brownlee published a book entitled Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe.[better source needed] In it, they discussed the Rare Earth hypothesis, in which they claim that Earth-like life is rare in the universe, whereas microbial life is common. Ward and Brownlee are open to the idea of evolution on other planets that is not based on essential Earth-like characteristics such as DNA and carbon. As for the possible risks, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking warned in 2010 that humans should not try to contact alien life forms. He warned that aliens might pillage Earth for resources. "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans", he said. Jared Diamond had earlier expressed similar concerns. On 20 July 2015, Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, along with the SETI Institute, announced a well-funded effort, called the Breakthrough Initiatives, to expand efforts to search for extraterrestrial life. The group contracted the services of the 100-meter Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia in the United States and the 64-meter Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia. On 13 February 2015, scientists (including Geoffrey Marcy, Seth Shostak, Frank Drake and David Brin) at a convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, discussed Active SETI and whether transmitting a message to possible intelligent extraterrestrials in the Cosmos was a good idea; one result was a statement, signed by many, that a "worldwide scientific, political and humanitarian discussion must occur before any message is sent". Government responses The 1967 Outer Space Treaty and the 1979 Moon Agreement define rules of planetary protection against potentially hazardous extraterrestrial life. COSPAR also provides guidelines for planetary protection. A committee of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs had in 1977 discussed for a year strategies for interacting with extraterrestrial life or intelligence. The discussion ended without any conclusions. As of 2010, the UN lacks response mechanisms for the case of an extraterrestrial contact. One of the NASA divisions is the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA), also known as the Planetary Protection Office. A part of its mission is to "rigorously preclude backward contamination of Earth by extraterrestrial life." In 2016, the Chinese Government released a white paper detailing its space program. According to the document, one of the research objectives of the program is the search for extraterrestrial life. It is also one of the objectives of the Chinese Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) program. In 2020, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian space agency, said the search for extraterrestrial life is one of the main goals of deep space research. He also acknowledged the possibility of existence of primitive life on other planets of the Solar System. The French space agency has an office for the study of "non-identified aero spatial phenomena". The agency is maintaining a publicly accessible database of such phenomena, with over 1600 detailed entries. According to the head of the office, the vast majority of entries have a mundane explanation; but for 25% of entries, their extraterrestrial origin can neither be confirmed nor denied. In 2020, chairman of the Israel Space Agency Isaac Ben-Israel stated that the probability of detecting life in outer space is "quite large". But he disagrees with his former colleague Haim Eshed who stated that there are contacts between an advanced alien civilisation and some of Earth's governments. In fiction Although the idea of extraterrestrial peoples became feasible once astronomy developed enough to understand the nature of planets, they were not thought of as being any different from humans. Having no scientific explanation for the origin of mankind and its relation to other species, there was no reason to expect them to be any other way. This was changed by the 1859 book On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, which proposed the theory of evolution. Now with the notion that evolution on other planets may take other directions, science fiction authors created bizarre aliens, clearly distinct from humans. A usual way to do that was to add body features from other animals, such as insects or octopuses. Costuming and special effects feasibility alongside budget considerations forced films and TV series to tone down the fantasy, but these limitations lessened since the 1990s with the advent of computer-generated imagery (CGI), and later on as CGI became more effective and less expensive. Real-life events sometimes captivate people's imagination and this influences the works of fiction. For example, during the Barney and Betty Hill incident, the first recorded claim of an alien abduction, the couple reported that they were abducted and experimented on by aliens with oversized heads, big eyes, pale grey skin, and small noses, a description that eventually became the grey alien archetype once used in works of fiction. See also Notes References Further reading External links |
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Contents TV Time TV Time (formerly TVShow Time) is a tracking platform and social television network for TV and movies, available in app and desktop forms. Using TheTVDB as a data source, it allows users to store information about their media consumption and leave reviews. History Features Every registered TV Time user has their own profile. When a user opens the app, four tabs appear at the bottom of the screen: Shows, Movies, Discover and Profile. The app offers an explore feature which allows users to discover new shows according to different criterion, such as genre and popularity. TV Time is currently available in fourteen languages: Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. Users are able to filter their preferred languages in the app so they only see comments and reactions from the community in the languages they choose. Reception Media outlets noted interest in TV Time's service as an analytics tool in the era of streaming, which makes it difficult to prove a television series' popularity and viewership since streaming services do not necessarily make that information public. In 2018, Variety cited the website's TVLytics data as one of the reasons for Netflix to sign a $100M deal with Warner Bros. Television to maintain the American sitcom Friends on its online library until 2019. The same year, United Talents Agency signed a deal with TV Time that granted them access to their data, in an effort to gain a deeper understanding into the content audiences were engaging with the most and how they were consuming it. According to TV Time CEO Richard Rosenblatt this would "[allow them to] recognize what shows are potentially going to be popular, what shows people will be binging, what moments really engaged the fans." Some television personalities such as Álvaro Morte and Omar Sy have shown interest in TV Time's statistics on social media, the former reacting to his character on the Spanish television series Money Heist being featured in the Top 10 Most Voted Character of 2020 and the latter reacting to the French television series Lupin being number 1 on the Most Binged TV Series list on the week of its release. In 2021, TV Time won "Best Entertainment App" at The Webby Awards in the "People's Voice" category. Statistics As of January 05, 2026, the most followed television shows on TV Time are:[citation needed] As of December 25, 2025, the most followed films on TV Time are:[better source needed] family musical family adventure fantasy family musical fantasy Vicky Jenson fantasy TV Time offers weekly reports of the "most binged" TV series on their platform which are made public on the app's social medias. For the series to be considered as "binged" by a user, 4 episodes of it must have been watched in a row in the same day. The website calls this a "binge session." Since 2018, TV Time publishes the top 10 most binged series during the year. In 2019, Lucifer was reported to be the number 1 series for the longest in the report's history, with 8 consecutive weeks. The following chart shows the "most binged" series of every year as reported by TV Time. On September 21, 2021, TV Time announced its new Streaming Originals report. Similar to The Binge Report, the Streaming Originals report shows a list of the most tracked series every week, but only the ones whose provider is a streaming service. Database TV Time uses TheTVDB's database as a source of information for all shows and movies in its library. Initially an independent website, The TVDB was acquired by TV Time in 2019. Users can edit information about TV series such as characters, airing dates, networks and more on this database if they have a registered account. User privacy The app developer provides information on the data that may be collected by the TV Time app and/or shared with third parties on the app listings in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. On the Google Play Store, it is declared that the TV Time app may collect and/or share approximate location data, email addresses, user identifiers, app interactions, diagnostics data, and device identifiers. The Apple App Store listing of the app states that it may collect and/or share contact info, diagnostics, usage data, identifiers, and user content. See also References Further reading |
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Currie EngelThe Big StoryFeb 4, 2026 6:00 AMWhy Are Some Women Training for Pregnancy Like It’s a Marathon?A growing legion of “zero trimester” influencers are convincing followers that healthy pregnancies are a choice—and that raw milk, watching sunsets, and pricey specialized courses can help.Play/Pause ButtonPauseAnimation: Georgia Pedley; Getty ImagesCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyThree years ago, Esther Rohr and her husband decided to start thinking about pregnancy. The 26-year-old Oregon-based wedding photographer made small but intentional lifestyle changes—going to bed earlier, drinking more water and less alcohol, dialing in her fitness, loading up on protein, and taking supplements like beef organ capsules and Vitamin D3. They started charging their phones in the kitchen for better sleep and unplugging their Wi-Fi at night, because her research suggested it might affect cellular health. Concerned about their exposure to reproductive toxins, Rohr began the slow, painstaking task of swapping out all their synthetic workout clothes, nonstick pans, and scented personal care products that might contain phthalates or other endocrine-disrupting chemicals. She bought an air purifier and hopes to eventually replace their LED bulbs with incandescents, because she worries they might be affecting her circadian rhythm.Rohr has never tried to conceive before. To her knowledge, she doesn’t have any health problems that would make it difficult. But nonetheless, she’s dedicated to optimizing her health to give their baby the “best chance at a healthy start in life.” Learning from accounts like @vitallymelanie, and @innate_fertility, what began as a curious interest in “crunchy, healthy, fitness, baby mama” content turned into a timeline filled with guidance for easy, breezy, positive pregnancies—and the tools she should use to get there.One of the accounts recommended reading 9 Months Is Not Enough, a book premised around the idea that women are plagued by a “fertility gap,” but not to worry because “you can do something about it.” That resonated with Rohr. After changing her house and her habits, Rohr also decided to go through extra hormone testing and a controversial OligoScan, which measures minerals and heavy metals in your body through a light-frequency-based hand scan. For the next year, she tried to lower the levels of mercury that showed up. Rohr and her husband completed two rounds of Dr. Daniel Pompa’s “cellular healing diet,” essentially a keto diet, and taking six to eight supplements each day.“It was a brutal, brutal year,” Rohr says. But it was all for a greater purpose. “I need to be focused on giving my body building blocks. Because right now, it's a huge, pivotal time to be giving it what it needs.” In late December of last year, after three years of preparation, Rohr finally feels like she’s on the precipice of being “ready.”Courtesy of Esther Rohr @picklewgrillchzThe cultural obsession with wellness and optimization, which is currently driven and designed by male biohackers like Bryan Johnson and Peter Attia, has come for this murky preconception period, coined “the zero trimester” by sociologist Miranda Waggoner in her 2017 book by the same name. Women have started training for pregnancy “like it’s a marathon,” as influencer Kaylie Stewart announced to her 1 million TikTok followers last fall. After all, if you spend months planning a wedding, some influencers point out, why wouldn’t you do the same for a baby?A growing group of influencers and holistic women’s health experts, doctors, life coaches, and nutritionists are posting content that speaks to the “Trying to Conceive” (TTC) demographic—including women who are struggling to conceive and those who haven’t started yet. The concept is simple: If you follow this wellness formula, you will set yourself up for the quickest conception, the easiest pregnancy, and the healthiest child. Pregnancy, these accounts argue, doesn’t have to be traumatic. You get to be in the driver’s seat. And what mom-to-be wouldn’t want that?These days, #preconception appears in 106,000 Instagram posts and #pregnancyprep in 36,000. Singular TikTok “prep” videos rack up tens of thousands—sometimes millions—of views and likes. “Pregnancy Prep” influencers post curated lists, aesthetic vlogs, and GRWM TikToks filled with glowing, happy women. They suggest a litany of lifestyle changes, niche products, books, courses, and “quick” tips and tricks to follow in the 6 to 12 months before getting pregnant. “Healthy pregnancy isn’t chance—it’s choice,” is a favorite line of Alexandra Radway, 29, a functional nutritional therapy practitioner who has been posting pregnancy prep content on her Instagram account, @alexandraradway, since 2021.Unsurprisingly, much of this content asks women to buy products and programs. From brazil nuts for “egg health” and grass-fed butter, to prenatal vitamins, pelvic floor Pilates, and nontoxic pans, the prepregnancy changeups and swap-outs offered up on social media seem never-ending. Some are basic, and others, more unconventional. One of Radway’s favorite tips is to watch the sun rise. “It's the equivalent of, like, 2,500 Brazil nuts of antioxidants,” she says. “Everyone's focusing on super foods. I'm like, ‘No, super sunrise.’”Courtesy of Alexandra Radway @alexandraradwayRadway’s advice may sound woo-woo, but preconception health has been around since the beginning of time. Ancient cultures, like the Spartans, encouraged “maidens” to “exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the quoit, and casting the dart” so that “the fruit they conceived might … take firmer root and find better growth.” For millennia, traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda have sought to boost fertility through diet, panchakarma, and acupuncture. There are even Biblical passages encouraging sobriety before conception.In Western medicine, several governing medical bodies, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, published the first guidelines for perinatal care in 1983, stating that “preparation for parenthood should begin prior to conception.” It wasn’t until the early ’90s that doctors started recommending folic acid use before and during pregnancy to prevent neural tube defects.Social media, it seems, has turbo-charged preconception health from a quick pharmacy stop for prenatals to a full blown industry. In 2019, a study from Harvard went viral because it suggested that, metabolically, carrying a baby was the equivalent to running more than a dozen marathons. Cut to 2025, and “pregnancy prep” accounts have their own vibrant ecosystem. Women seemed to recognize, “Hey, I have to sign up to run a marathon every single day, maybe I want to train for that,” says Radway. “I would want to be in shape and be well nourished and maybe have a coach and be prepared.”Radway started posting on Instagram after a difficult first pregnancy led her to get a degree in functional nutritional therapy, which emphasizes holistic dietary and lifestyle changes to address root causes of health issues. As a result, she says that her second pregnancy was a complete 180 from her first. And she felt a “divine calling” to share what she learned with other women. “To me that was the most pressing problem in the world, and I felt like I was uniquely positioned to solve it.”The current fixation on optimizing this fragile, sensitive zero trimester arrives at a moment when the average woman is having children three years later than their mothers did—if they have them at all. Though there is an emerging discussion around declining sperm counts thanks to a pivotal study in 2017—spawning a sperm-obsessed optimization movement—the latest stats suggest one in five women will experience infertility. And the burden of infertility, historically, has always fallen on women, even though this new data reveals a more complex reality.Unsurprisingly, one recent report suggests nearly three-quarters of Gen Z have fertility anxiety. The generation grew up with unlimited access to information about the ups and downs of conception and pregnancy, including infertility tell-alls and Girl Boss “Why I froze my eggs” articles; wearables that track macros, movement, and menstrual cycles; and a MAHA movement that has stoked fears about environmental toxins and falsely promotes the idea that moms taking Tylenol might give their babies autism and ADHD. Pair all of this with the extreme rollback of America’s reproductive rights since Roe’s fall in 2022 (17 states either have a total abortion ban or make it illegal after six weeks, making it difficult to get life-saving care) and you have fertile soil for a pregnancy prep fixation to take root.In response, younger generations are saying: “I ought to be able to have a pregnancy which is healthy and safe and happy, and I ought to get the support I need to be able to do that,” explains Lara Freidenfelds, a historian and author of The Myth of the Perfect Pregnancy: A History of Miscarriage in America.“We're just a bit tired of it,” says UK-based Sophie Payne, 33, of women not getting helpful answers about their health issues. At 27, Payne was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure and struggled to conceive. In 2022, she suffered multiple miscarriages. While there’s no “one thing” that helped her conceive in 2023, she believes that working with functional health professionals to change up her diet and lifestyle helped. Payne started a holistic pregnancy prep Instagram account called Curious_Clementine with her sister in early 2024. “Sadly, when it comes to getting pregnant, we're not really told what to do, how to do that, and how to go into it in the best possible health for us, but also for our future children.”Courtesy of Jessica and Sophie Payne @curious__clementineIn the not-so-distant past, moms-to-be would have been taught about pregnancy and childbirth from elders and other women in their community. These days, they live in an increasingly isolated world, often far from grandparents and mothers. They try their best to figure things out as they go—and often social media is their greatest mentor. From the Paynes’ view, more women want to take control of their health, which is one big element driving this trend. “They want to do their own research and do what they can to feel their best,” Payne says. The sisters estimate about half of the women who reach out to them have struggled to get pregnant or had a miscarriage and are looking for simple lifestyle tweaks that could help. After all, a few nutritional swaps and supplements cost a lot less than IUI or IVF.Rohr, as one of 10 children with 29 nieces and nephews, has watched countless family members and friends navigate hard pregnancies. In response, she’s determined to have a positive, empowering one. “I always thought having a baby was, like, the least casual thing ever,” she says. “It just seems like this life-changing thing that I wanted to be super, super sure about.”Doctors say that, in general, all this new attention surrounding the “zero trimester” is a very positive, exciting development. Healthy moms usually spell better outcomes for mom and baby. Currently, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend doctors ask patients of reproductive age if they plan to get pregnant within the year during checkups. “There's so many things that we can do to optimize underlying health in that preconception year that will make outcomes in pregnancy better,” says Natalie Clark Stentz, an ob-gyn and reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist at Michigan Medicine. This is especially true if you have a chronic health condition, like diabetes, hypertension, depression, or a thyroid disease, that needs to be managed and monitored during pregnancy.At the same time, that “prep” should be expert-vetted and backed by science, and it usually doesn’t involve the TikTok Shop. A doctor’s preconception toolbox is much simpler than what you might see online, and really hasn’t changed much in decades: ensure vaccinations are up to date, avoid alcohol, stop smoking and taking drugs, start a prenatal vitamin with folic acid to prevent neural tube defects at least a month before getting pregnant, and go through any prescription medications and supplements with your doctor. Only 5 percent of the preconception nutritional claims on social media reviewed in a 2025 study were referred to in current international preconception guidelines, and 54 percent were considered to have “no evidence for the health outcome.” TikTok and Instagram had a higher percentage of “no evidence” claims than other platforms.For instance, raw milk is a darling of self-proclaimed “crunchy moms,” yet unpasteurized milk can introduce harmful germs like listeria, which can cause a miscarriage or harm a fetus. Extreme diets and exercise can work against your fertility, too, by affecting the hormones that are necessary for conception, says Kara Goldman, an ob-gyn and associate professor of reproductive endocrinology and infertility and director of fertility preservation at Northwestern University. Recently, a patient with a history of estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer told her she’d been taking beef organ supplements, not realizing until Goldman dug into the ingredients that the capsules included “ovary” and “uterus.” This meant she was inadvertently taking supplemental estrogen after years of avoiding unnecessary estrogen exposure. Additionally, organ meats like liver can be rich in Vitamin A, which Stentz says can be “very toxic” for pregnancy.“Any buzzy individual thing is likely sensational, whether that's Brazil nuts, organ meats, or whatnot,” Stentz adds. “The evidence-based things, they're not sexy. Maintain a normal BMI, stop smoking, pick a boring prenatal vitamin.”Pregnancy prep regimens can get pricey fast. A month’s supply of Perelel’s “conception support pack,” which includes a prenatal, omega DHA + EPA, and CoQ12 + folate, costs $58.77. A full swap-out of all kitchen Tupperwares, cooking utensils, and pans can run you hundreds. Add on “soft movement” like Pilates, organic produce, a whole new set of makeup and skin-care products, and it becomes all the more expensive.Courtesy of Esther Rohr @picklewgrillchzIn a recent post, Radway explicitly calls out to “the woman looking for a sign to start preparing her body for pregnancy in 2026,” promoting her January Jumpstart, a “7-day winter reset to prepare your body, mind, and soul for pregnancy and birth.” For $97 you can get her Baby Ready Body Book Bundle, and in December, for $1,770, she offered her “Baby Ready Body LIVE” courses that promise to “balance your hormones, boost your energy, calm your nervous system, and prepare your body for a healthy pregnancy.” The courses promise to not only optimize hormone health and cook nutrient-dense meals, but also “prepare your body to give your baby the best possible start.”“You're taking a very vulnerable, very highly motivated population of patients and targeting them with information that is kind of driven by financial incentives,” says Goldman.The marketing can disguise the fact that even going into pregnancy in peak health is not a guarantee. For starters, we have “so little control over whether or not we're able to become pregnant or how easily we're able to become pregnant,” says Stentz. Early pregnancy loss is “very, very common and unpreventable for the most part,” adds Freidenfelds. “It is hard for people to manage the idea that you will try very hard to reduce risk, and yet you will not be able to completely forestall all bad outcomes.”This hyper-focus on women’s health can also subtly shift the burden of infertility, miscarriage, and fetal health onto their shoulders. In reality, men’s biology plays a role in 30 to 40 infertility cases. Under an Instagram post announcing a new book called, 9 Months That Count Forever: How your pregnancy diet shapes your baby’s future, by French biochemist Jessie Inchauspé, “the Glucose Goddess,” one commenter wrote, “I feel so much guilt for not eating well during pregnancy. Definitely a bit triggered by this …” Another typed, “Well I threw up sometimes 10X a day until she was born so … Prayers.”“It really can make women feel guilty or blame-worthy if their outcome isn't ‘perfect,’ however they're defining perfect,” says Waggoner, an associate professor of sociology at Rice University. This trend promotes the idea that there’s a “causal and deterministic link between preconception care behaviors and birth outcomes, and that's where I think it can be problematic for both individuals and at a policy level.”Perhaps most importantly, Goldman wants to set the record straight: Infertility is a disease, and most causes can't be prevented or treated by lifestyle modifications. Over the past 25 years, Freidenfelds has watched fertility get reframed as something less biologically focused, and instead, something you can plan or try to “do well.” When she started researching her book in the early aughts, the term “trying to conceive,” or “TTC,” was reserved for specialty internet forums for women with infertility. By 2018, women started to throw the term around when they were simply referring to stopping birth control the next month to try to get pregnant. “That's a very, very different scenario,” she says.Rohr doesn’t yet know if she will have a hard time getting pregnant, but that hasn’t stopped her from sharing her preparation with the world. In May of 2025, she began posting behind the scenes of her own journey on TikTok, including one video titled “POV me and my husband decided to lock tf in and get fit before trying to get pregnant so I can have a healthy (& easier) pregnancy and our baby can have the best chance at a healthy start.” The post went viral, racking up over 13.5 million views and 2.5 million likes.Courtesy of Esther Rohr @picklewgrillchzRohr knows that some of her “hacks” might seem bizarre or controversial. In fact, she started posting an entire series called “unhinged things we’re doing to prep for conception,” because her friends were fascinated by it. She even recently read a book called Hunt, Gather, Parent, geared towards parenting young children.“The energy [in our home] is just like, all pointed in one direction,” Rohr says. “Not knowing things is very uncomfortable for me.” If all goes well, she hopes to have a baby by this Christmas.What Say You?Let us know what you think about this article in the comments below. Alternatively, you can submit a letter to the editor at mail@wired.com. Why Are Some Women Training for Pregnancy Like It’s a Marathon? Three years ago, Esther Rohr and her husband decided to start thinking about pregnancy. The 26-year-old Oregon-based wedding photographer made small but intentional lifestyle changes—going to bed earlier, drinking more water and less alcohol, dialing in her fitness, loading up on protein, and taking supplements like beef organ capsules and Vitamin D3. They started charging their phones in the kitchen for better sleep and unplugging their Wi-Fi at night, because her research suggested it might affect cellular health. Concerned about their exposure to reproductive toxins, Rohr began the slow, painstaking task of swapping out all their synthetic workout clothes, nonstick pans, and scented personal care products that might contain phthalates or other endocrine-disrupting chemicals. She bought an air purifier and hopes to eventually replace their LED bulbs with incandescents, because she worries they might be affecting her circadian rhythm. Rohr has never tried to conceive before. To her knowledge, she doesn’t have any health problems that would make it difficult. But nonetheless, she’s dedicated to optimizing her health to give their baby the “best chance at a healthy start in life.” Learning from accounts like @vitallymelanie, and @innate_fertility, what began as a curious interest in “crunchy, healthy, fitness, baby mama” content turned into a timeline filled with guidance for easy, breezy, positive pregnancies—and the tools she should use to get there. One of the accounts recommended reading 9 Months Is Not Enough, a book premised around the idea that women are plagued by a “fertility gap,” but not to worry because “you can do something about it.” That resonated with Rohr. After changing her house and her habits, Rohr also decided to go through extra hormone testing and a controversial OligoScan, which measures minerals and heavy metals in your body through a light-frequency-based hand scan. For the next year, she tried to lower the levels of mercury that showed up. Rohr and her husband completed two rounds of Dr. Daniel Pompa’s “cellular healing diet,” essentially a keto diet, and taking six to eight supplements each day. “It was a brutal, brutal year,” Rohr says. But it was all for a greater purpose. “I need to be focused on giving my body building blocks. Because right now, it's a huge, pivotal time to be giving it what it needs.” In late December of last year, after three years of preparation, Rohr finally feels like she’s on the precipice of being “ready.” The cultural obsession with wellness and optimization, which is currently driven and designed by male biohackers like Bryan Johnson and Peter Attia, has come for this murky preconception period, coined “the zero trimester” by sociologist Miranda Waggoner in her 2017 book by the same name. Women have started training for pregnancy “like it’s a marathon,” as influencer Kaylie Stewart announced to her 1 million TikTok followers last fall. After all, if you spend months planning a wedding, some influencers point out, why wouldn’t you do the same for a baby? A growing group of influencers and holistic women’s health experts, doctors, life coaches, and nutritionists are posting content that speaks to the “Trying to Conceive” (TTC) demographic—including women who are struggling to conceive and those who haven’t started yet. The concept is simple: If you follow this wellness formula, you will set yourself up for the quickest conception, the easiest pregnancy, and the healthiest child. Pregnancy, these accounts argue, doesn’t have to be traumatic. You get to be in the driver’s seat. And what mom-to-be wouldn’t want that? These days, #preconception appears in 106,000 Instagram posts and #pregnancyprep in 36,000. Singular TikTok “prep” videos rack up tens of thousands—sometimes millions—of views and likes. “Pregnancy Prep” influencers post curated lists, aesthetic vlogs, and GRWM TikToks filled with glowing, happy women. They suggest a litany of lifestyle changes, niche products, books, courses, and “quick” tips and tricks to follow in the 6 to 12 months before getting pregnant. “Healthy pregnancy isn’t chance—it’s choice,” is a favorite line of Alexandra Radway, 29, a functional nutritional therapy practitioner who has been posting pregnancy prep content on her Instagram account, @alexandraradway, since 2021. Unsurprisingly, much of this content asks women to buy products and programs. From brazil nuts for “egg health” and grass-fed butter, to prenatal vitamins, pelvic floor Pilates, and nontoxic pans, the prepregnancy changeups and swap-outs offered up on social media seem never-ending. Some are basic, and others, more unconventional. One of Radway’s favorite tips is to watch the sun rise. “It's the equivalent of, like, 2,500 Brazil nuts of antioxidants,” she says. “Everyone's focusing on super foods. I'm like, ‘No, super sunrise.’” Radway’s advice may sound woo-woo, but preconception health has been around since the beginning of time. Ancient cultures, like the Spartans, encouraged “maidens” to “exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the quoit, and casting the dart” so that “the fruit they conceived might … take firmer root and find better growth.” For millennia, traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda have sought to boost fertility through diet, panchakarma, and acupuncture. There are even Biblical passages encouraging sobriety before conception. In Western medicine, several governing medical bodies, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, published the first guidelines for perinatal care in 1983, stating that “preparation for parenthood should begin prior to conception.” It wasn’t until the early ’90s that doctors started recommending folic acid use before and during pregnancy to prevent neural tube defects. Social media, it seems, has turbo-charged preconception health from a quick pharmacy stop for prenatals to a full blown industry. In 2019, a study from Harvard went viral because it suggested that, metabolically, carrying a baby was the equivalent to running more than a dozen marathons. Cut to 2025, and “pregnancy prep” accounts have their own vibrant ecosystem. Women seemed to recognize, “Hey, I have to sign up to run a marathon every single day, maybe I want to train for that,” says Radway. “I would want to be in shape and be well nourished and maybe have a coach and be prepared.” Radway started posting on Instagram after a difficult first pregnancy led her to get a degree in functional nutritional therapy, which emphasizes holistic dietary and lifestyle changes to address root causes of health issues. As a result, she says that her second pregnancy was a complete 180 from her first. And she felt a “divine calling” to share what she learned with other women. “To me that was the most pressing problem in the world, and I felt like I was uniquely positioned to solve it.” The current fixation on optimizing this fragile, sensitive zero trimester arrives at a moment when the average woman is having children three years later than their mothers did—if they have them at all. Though there is an emerging discussion around declining sperm counts thanks to a pivotal study in 2017—spawning a sperm-obsessed optimization movement—the latest stats suggest one in five women will experience infertility. And the burden of infertility, historically, has always fallen on women, even though this new data reveals a more complex reality. Unsurprisingly, one recent report suggests nearly three-quarters of Gen Z have fertility anxiety. The generation grew up with unlimited access to information about the ups and downs of conception and pregnancy, including infertility tell-alls and Girl Boss “Why I froze my eggs” articles; wearables that track macros, movement, and menstrual cycles; and a MAHA movement that has stoked fears about environmental toxins and falsely promotes the idea that moms taking Tylenol might give their babies autism and ADHD. Pair all of this with the extreme rollback of America’s reproductive rights since Roe’s fall in 2022 (17 states either have a total abortion ban or make it illegal after six weeks, making it difficult to get life-saving care) and you have fertile soil for a pregnancy prep fixation to take root. In response, younger generations are saying: “I ought to be able to have a pregnancy which is healthy and safe and happy, and I ought to get the support I need to be able to do that,” explains Lara Freidenfelds, a historian and author of The Myth of the Perfect Pregnancy: A History of Miscarriage in America. “We're just a bit tired of it,” says UK-based Sophie Payne, 33, of women not getting helpful answers about their health issues. At 27, Payne was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure and struggled to conceive. In 2022, she suffered multiple miscarriages. While there’s no “one thing” that helped her conceive in 2023, she believes that working with functional health professionals to change up her diet and lifestyle helped. Payne started a holistic pregnancy prep Instagram account called Curious_Clementine with her sister in early 2024. “Sadly, when it comes to getting pregnant, we're not really told what to do, how to do that, and how to go into it in the best possible health for us, but also for our future children.” In the not-so-distant past, moms-to-be would have been taught about pregnancy and childbirth from elders and other women in their community. These days, they live in an increasingly isolated world, often far from grandparents and mothers. They try their best to figure things out as they go—and often social media is their greatest mentor. From the Paynes’ view, more women want to take control of their health, which is one big element driving this trend. “They want to do their own research and do what they can to feel their best,” Payne says. The sisters estimate about half of the women who reach out to them have struggled to get pregnant or had a miscarriage and are looking for simple lifestyle tweaks that could help. After all, a few nutritional swaps and supplements cost a lot less than IUI or IVF. Rohr, as one of 10 children with 29 nieces and nephews, has watched countless family members and friends navigate hard pregnancies. In response, she’s determined to have a positive, empowering one. “I always thought having a baby was, like, the least casual thing ever,” she says. “It just seems like this life-changing thing that I wanted to be super, super sure about.” Doctors say that, in general, all this new attention surrounding the “zero trimester” is a very positive, exciting development. Healthy moms usually spell better outcomes for mom and baby. Currently, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend doctors ask patients of reproductive age if they plan to get pregnant within the year during checkups. “There's so many things that we can do to optimize underlying health in that preconception year that will make outcomes in pregnancy better,” says Natalie Clark Stentz, an ob-gyn and reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist at Michigan Medicine. This is especially true if you have a chronic health condition, like diabetes, hypertension, depression, or a thyroid disease, that needs to be managed and monitored during pregnancy. At the same time, that “prep” should be expert-vetted and backed by science, and it usually doesn’t involve the TikTok Shop. A doctor’s preconception toolbox is much simpler than what you might see online, and really hasn’t changed much in decades: ensure vaccinations are up to date, avoid alcohol, stop smoking and taking drugs, start a prenatal vitamin with folic acid to prevent neural tube defects at least a month before getting pregnant, and go through any prescription medications and supplements with your doctor. Only 5 percent of the preconception nutritional claims on social media reviewed in a 2025 study were referred to in current international preconception guidelines, and 54 percent were considered to have “no evidence for the health outcome.” TikTok and Instagram had a higher percentage of “no evidence” claims than other platforms. For instance, raw milk is a darling of self-proclaimed “crunchy moms,” yet unpasteurized milk can introduce harmful germs like listeria, which can cause a miscarriage or harm a fetus. Extreme diets and exercise can work against your fertility, too, by affecting the hormones that are necessary for conception, says Kara Goldman, an ob-gyn and associate professor of reproductive endocrinology and infertility and director of fertility preservation at Northwestern University. Recently, a patient with a history of estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer told her she’d been taking beef organ supplements, not realizing until Goldman dug into the ingredients that the capsules included “ovary” and “uterus.” This meant she was inadvertently taking supplemental estrogen after years of avoiding unnecessary estrogen exposure. Additionally, organ meats like liver can be rich in Vitamin A, which Stentz says can be “very toxic” for pregnancy. “Any buzzy individual thing is likely sensational, whether that's Brazil nuts, organ meats, or whatnot,” Stentz adds. “The evidence-based things, they're not sexy. Maintain a normal BMI, stop smoking, pick a boring prenatal vitamin.” Pregnancy prep regimens can get pricey fast. A month’s supply of Perelel’s “conception support pack,” which includes a prenatal, omega DHA + EPA, and CoQ12 + folate, costs $58.77. A full swap-out of all kitchen Tupperwares, cooking utensils, and pans can run you hundreds. Add on “soft movement” like Pilates, organic produce, a whole new set of makeup and skin-care products, and it becomes all the more expensive. In a recent post, Radway explicitly calls out to “the woman looking for a sign to start preparing her body for pregnancy in 2026,” promoting her January Jumpstart, a “7-day winter reset to prepare your body, mind, and soul for pregnancy and birth.” For $97 you can get her Baby Ready Body Book Bundle, and in December, for $1,770, she offered her “Baby Ready Body LIVE” courses that promise to “balance your hormones, boost your energy, calm your nervous system, and prepare your body for a healthy pregnancy.” The courses promise to not only optimize hormone health and cook nutrient-dense meals, but also “prepare your body to give your baby the best possible start.” “You're taking a very vulnerable, very highly motivated population of patients and targeting them with information that is kind of driven by financial incentives,” says Goldman. The marketing can disguise the fact that even going into pregnancy in peak health is not a guarantee. For starters, we have “so little control over whether or not we're able to become pregnant or how easily we're able to become pregnant,” says Stentz. Early pregnancy loss is “very, very common and unpreventable for the most part,” adds Freidenfelds. “It is hard for people to manage the idea that you will try very hard to reduce risk, and yet you will not be able to completely forestall all bad outcomes.” This hyper-focus on women’s health can also subtly shift the burden of infertility, miscarriage, and fetal health onto their shoulders. In reality, men’s biology plays a role in 30 to 40 infertility cases. Under an Instagram post announcing a new book called, 9 Months That Count Forever: How your pregnancy diet shapes your baby’s future, by French biochemist Jessie Inchauspé, “the Glucose Goddess,” one commenter wrote, “I feel so much guilt for not eating well during pregnancy. Definitely a bit triggered by this …” Another typed, “Well I threw up sometimes 10X a day until she was born so … Prayers.” “It really can make women feel guilty or blame-worthy if their outcome isn't ‘perfect,’ however they're defining perfect,” says Waggoner, an associate professor of sociology at Rice University. This trend promotes the idea that there’s a “causal and deterministic link between preconception care behaviors and birth outcomes, and that's where I think it can be problematic for both individuals and at a policy level.” Perhaps most importantly, Goldman wants to set the record straight: Infertility is a disease, and most causes can't be prevented or treated by lifestyle modifications. Over the past 25 years, Freidenfelds has watched fertility get reframed as something less biologically focused, and instead, something you can plan or try to “do well.” When she started researching her book in the early aughts, the term “trying to conceive,” or “TTC,” was reserved for specialty internet forums for women with infertility. By 2018, women started to throw the term around when they were simply referring to stopping birth control the next month to try to get pregnant. “That's a very, very different scenario,” she says. Rohr doesn’t yet know if she will have a hard time getting pregnant, but that hasn’t stopped her from sharing her preparation with the world. In May of 2025, she began posting behind the scenes of her own journey on TikTok, including one video titled “POV me and my husband decided to lock tf in and get fit before trying to get pregnant so I can have a healthy (& easier) pregnancy and our baby can have the best chance at a healthy start.” The post went viral, racking up over 13.5 million views and 2.5 million likes. Rohr knows that some of her “hacks” might seem bizarre or controversial. In fact, she started posting an entire series called “unhinged things we’re doing to prep for conception,” because her friends were fascinated by it. She even recently read a book called Hunt, Gather, Parent, geared towards parenting young children. “The energy [in our home] is just like, all pointed in one direction,” Rohr says. “Not knowing things is very uncomfortable for me.” If all goes well, she hopes to have a baby by this Christmas. What Say You?Let us know what you think about this article in the comments below. Alternatively, you can submit a letter to the editor at mail@wired.com. Comments You Might Also Like In your inbox: Maxwell Zeff's dispatch from the heart of AI ICE is expanding at breakneck speed—here’s where it’s going next Big Story: Inside the gay tech mafia Big Tech says AI will save the planet—it doesn’t offer much proof Event: Helping small business owners succeed © 2026 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. WIRED may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices |
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"בסוכנות דוגמניות ביקשו להוריד 8 קילו - בנות הלכו לאכול צמר גפן, אני הלכתי למקדונלדס״ גם אחרי כמעט 20 שנה בתחום, ריף נאמן מודה שהמציאות כאם טרייה טלטלה אותה הרבה יותר מכל אודישן לקמפיין או סדרה. עכשיו, כשהיא חוזרת גם למסך כאמא בסרט "הולה צ'או", היא מספרת בריאיון בלי פילטרים על האתגרים והפער בין הדימוי הנוצץ לבין תחושת הבדידות שחוותה בתחילת הדרך, חוזרת לרגעים הקשוחים של תעשיית הדוגמנות ("ביקשו שאוריד 8 קילו - והלכתי למקדונלדס"), ולא מוותרת על החלום לפרוץ מעבר לים: "אני יכולה - וגם מאמינה שאצליח" פוסט משותף על ידי Reef Neeman Sheinfeld (@reefneeman) |
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