Louise Matsakis
senior business editor @wired.com focused on AI, China, and Silicon Valley. Send tips to louise_matsakis.83 on Signal. How I work with sources: louisematsakis.com/sourcefaq
- SCOOP: Elon Musk's DOGE has started rolling out a dedicated website and other digital infrastructure for Trump's $5 million gold card program, which he said would allow wealthy people to buy US residency. From me & @zoeschiffer.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/doge-t...
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- The Trump administration has described the visa as a way to reduce the federal deficit, but since there's no law outlining the visa, there's no specifics about where the money would go
- Over the past few weeks, DOGE has been meeting with officials from those agencies to coordinate on the Trump Visa Card initiative, our reporting shows. Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick has said that he's already sold 1,000 of these gold cards, but it's not clear to who or where the money would go
- One thing we found in our reporting is that a reference to the "Trump Card Visa" has already appeared in application forms for Global Entry, the program that lets you skip the normal immigration line at the airport when you enter the US
- Immigration regulations on the books carefully outline how many green cards the US government can issue each year and under what circumstances. It's not clear what the legal basis is for the Trump Card Visa, but it appears to be moving ahead any way
- In late March, DOGE registered the website "trumpcard.gov," according to federal domain registrar records. The website is connected to other domains associated with immigration services, Customs and Border Protection, and the State Department
- "WIRED confirmed that citizens of China, Russia, Ukraine, South Korea and many other countries are eligible to select the Trump Card Visa option in Global Entry applications." New details on the Trump "gold card visa" from @zoeschiffer.bsky.social @lmatsakis.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/doge-t...
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- This is a good question! As we noted in the story, the White House hasn't clarified whether it believes current immigration law gives it the statutory authority to launch this program, but our reporting indicates it's going ahead anyway
- SCOOP: Jamieson Greer, Trump's top advisor on matters related to international trade, consulted for Chinese ecommerce giant Shein before joining the White House, according to a former Shein employee and internal documents seen by WIRED. By @timmclaughlin3.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/shein-...
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View full threadSince returning to office, Trump has imposed devastatingly high tariffs on Chinese imports and ended the de minimis exemption, a trade provision that once allowed Shein to import millions of packages to the United States duty-free
- What I love about Tim's reporting is how it details the revolving door of DC. It's become normalized to take a government job, go to industry, and then go back to the government. For people outside the beltway, this is often really bewildering to see in detail
- Greer is one of at least three high-ranking Trump officials to have worked for Shein, including FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy US attorney general Todd Blanche. But despite courting these powerful Republicans, Trump's presidency has devastated Shein so far
- At 2 PM EST today me and @zeyiyang.bsky.social are doing an Reddit AMA about Temu, answering all your questions about Chinese e-commerce, tariffs, higher prices, and more. Hit us up! www.reddit.com/r/TemuThings...
- NEW from @zeyiyang.bsky.social: The wife of professor Xiaofeng Wang, who was abruptly fired by Indiana University the same day the couple’s houses were searched by the FBI last month, said on Monday that she believes her family has been unfairly targeted www.wired.com/story/profes...
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View full threadWang’s case has raised concerns among academics that Chinese-born scholars are being intentionally targeted. Gang Chen, an MIT professor who was accused of academic misconduct under the first Trump administration and later had the charges against him dropped, spoke at the same event on Monday
- "Nianli’s story is heartbreaking. The images of the FBI raid of Nianli and Professor Xiaofeng Wang’s home brings chills to our spines,” Chen said. “It brings back the fear my family and many others went through."
- Nianli Ma said the couple is the victim of what she described as misplaced accusations of academic misconduct. “Our family is determined to fight, not only for ourselves, but for the broader research community who would be impacted if this type of allegation goes unchallenged,” Ma said.
- I wrote about how Trump's trade war is falling flat in a moment when Americans don't feel as negatively about China as they once did www.wired.com/story/china-...
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View full threadlast thing I wanted to note: I heard from a lot of readers that they were intrigued by Mixue, the Chinese drink and ice cream chain that now has more locations than Starbucks or McDonald's worldwide. Here's the Mixue flagship store in Zhengzhou when I visited in October!
- the ice cream and cold brew is very good
- While the US basically gave up on the idea of soft power and threw the global economy into chaos, an American livestreamer was doing a tour across China, showing his fans impressive skylines and infrastructure in cities like Shanghai
- I'm not saying that China will entirely fill the soft power void left by America, but I think we're seeing an interesting dynamic where at least some Americans are unwilling to blindly accept that China is the enemy, and that could make Trump's tariffs less tenable for a lot of voters
- The American argument against Chinese manufacturing used to be about "slave labor" and intellectual property theft. That's a hard case to make when small business owners are showing customers their factories in China and explaining they simply can't make these things here
- I checked a few super pro-Trump media sites to get a sense of how they're messaging in this moment. Here's one of the top opinion pieces right now on Townhall. Can't say I find this narrative very inspiring or convincing. "reality doesn't care about your hopes and aspirations."
- isn't it really important what people want???
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- Thank you so much, you don't know how much this kind of public support means to us
- Scoop: Before professor Xiaofeng Wang and his wife disappeared, the school is said to have been reviewing for months whether he received unreported research funding from China. By @zeyiyang.bsky.social @carolinehaskins.bsky.social and me www.wired.com/story/xiaofe...
- A lawyer representing the couple says they are “safe” after the FBI searched two of their homes last week and Wang was suddenly dismissal from Indiana University, where he taught for over 20 years
- SCOOP: A decade ago, Elon Musk boasted on Twitter about meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Details of the meeting were later deleted from his profile, but we uncovered them because they lived on in a retweet....from Musk's mom, Maye Musk. By @zeyiyang.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/maye-m...
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View full threadBut in the US, Maye’s career has increasingly converged with Elon’s as her son gained influence over the US federal government. Since Trump won reelection, Maye has traveled on Air Force One, sat next to Melania Trump at a Mar-a-Lago dinner party, and attended a luncheon with Ivanka Trump
- @zeyiyang.bsky.social spent weeks reporting on how Maye straddles two different worlds in the US and China, and found so many great and illuminating details about Maye's work and parallel life in the two countries
- In China, Elon Musk's mom has built a largely apolitical reputation for herself as a fashion model and book author. She regularly garners positive coverage in Chinese state media, and just last week, was in the Chinese city of Wuxi where she posed with a special Tesla model sold only in Asia
- Thanks @wired.com for sharing & contextualising this news. Research like atomic spectroscopy is foundational to many areas of science & should be supported.
- SCOOP: The Trump administration is planning to eliminate an entire team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology responsible for publishing critical data that underpins advanced scientific research around the world. from me and @willknight.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/nist-d...
- Thanks so much for reading our work!
- SCOOP: The Trump administration is planning to eliminate an entire team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology responsible for publishing critical data that underpins advanced scientific research around the world. from me and @willknight.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/nist-d...
- the Atomic Spectroscopy Group at NIST studies how atoms absorb or emit light, allowing researchers to identify the elements present in a given sample. Its tools are used by researchers working on nuclear fusion, semiconductor manufacturing, diagnostic medicine, and much, much more
- Will and I spoke to scientists in France, Israel, and the United States who said the data published and maintained by this team is absolutely critical to their work. It also helps position the United States as a world leader in STEM, while costing taxpayers very little
- When I read the details of what ICE did in this case—showing up at the house of a young protestor’s parents, texting them out of the blue—a wave of familiarity washed over me. It eerily reminds me of the way China seeks to intimidate student activists and journalists
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View full threadbut sometimes the threats were really terrifying, and I always came away extremely grateful that I couldn’t really understand what their experiences were like, because I was lucky enough to be an American, and the idea of being hunted down by state security was unfathomable
- The details about Yunseo Chung’s lawsuit are here www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/n...
- I’ve listened to colleagues in China talk about what it’s like when state security agents came to talk to their parents about their journalism, sometimes they described these incidents as more annoying or awkward than truly frightening
- Attorney General Pam Bondi says that attacks on Tesla cars and charging statations are “domestic terrorism” as @carolinehaskins.bsky.social reports, that could give law enforcement more leeway to surveil protestors and potentially even share info w/ Tesla www.wired.com/story/fbi-te...
- "I had a Canadian passport, lawyers, resources, media attention, friends, family, and even politicians advocating for me. And yet, I was still detained for nearly two weeks." medium.com/@jasminemoon...
- some big personal news! next week i'm coming on board at @wired.com to cover all things climate, energy, & environment. i'm pinching myself that i get to join this unbelievable team of journalists who are doing absolutely incredible work — i'm so excited to dive in.
- So excited to work with you Molly!!
- “They were unaware that the clinic was closing because America’s leaders have already taken actions to let impoverished women bleed to death in the dust here.” www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
- can't think of a stupider way to immediately undermine US innovation, aside from haphazardly slashing federal research grants as the Trump admin is already doing www.foxnews.com/politics/chi...
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- Omg
- Looking back, I think an incredibly dumb mistake that helped lead to this moment was the unchecked glorification of “manufacturing jobs”
- the idea that making things like clothing and small household items in the US would lead to an explosion in the kind of stable, good jobs that autoworkers had decades ago is an insane premise when you think about it for more than 2 seconds
- the irony is that while Trump is trying to use tariffs to usher in a future where young men men and women spend long shifts working at assembly lines, young people in China don’t even want to do these jobs anymore
- "Really, what more could be said? Something unbelievable had happened: A young father was grieving the death of his 6-year-old from measles." www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...
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- always lovely to have you on our website Graham
