Tech
Everything Is Content for the ‘Clicktatorship’
In President Donald Trump’s second term, everything is content. Videos of immigration raids are shared widely on X by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), conspiracy theories dictate policy, and prominent right-wing podcasters and influencers have occupied high-level government roles. The second Trump administration is, to put it bluntly, very online.
Trump and his supporters have long trafficked in—and benefited from—misinformation and conspiracy theories, leveraging them to build visibility on social media platforms and set the tone of national conversations. During his first term, Trump was famous for announcing the administration’s positions and priorities via tweet. In the years since, social media platforms have become friendlier environments for conspiracy theories and those who promote them, helping them spread more widely. Trump’s playbook has adjusted accordingly.
Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, says that social media, particularly right-wing social media ecosystems, are no longer just a way for Trump to control conversations and public perception. The administration, he says, is now actively making decisions and shaping policy based primarily on how they’ll be perceived online. Their priority is what right-wing communities care about—regardless of whether it’s real.
WIRED spoke to Moynihan, who argues that the US has entered a new level of enmeshment between the internet and politics, in what he calls a “clicktatorship.”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
WIRED: To start us off, what is the “clicktatorship”?
Don Moynihan: A “clicktatorship” is a form of government that combines a social media worldview alongside authoritarian tendencies. This implies that people working in this form of government are not just using online platforms as a mode of communication, but that their beliefs, judgement, and decisionmaking reflect, are influenced by, and are directly responsive to the online world to an extreme degree. The “clicktatorship” views everything as content, including basic policy decisions and implementation practices.
The supply of a platform that encourages right-wing conspiracies and the demand of an administration for people who can traffic in those conspiracies is what’s giving us the current moments of “clicktatorship” that we’re experiencing.
The “clicktatorship” is generating these images to justify the occupation of American cities by military forces, or to justify cutting off resources to states that did not support the president, to do things that would have truly shocked us a decade ago.
Trump’s first presidency was characterized by a sort of showmanship. How is that different from what we’re seeing now?
The first Trump presidency might be understood as a “TV presidency,” where watching The Apprentice or Fox News gave you real insight into the milieu in which Trump was operating. The second Trump presidency is the “Truth Social or X presidency,” where it is very hard to interpret without the reference points of those online platforms. Some of the content and messaging that the president or other senior policymakers use is stuffed with inside references, messaging that doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’re already in that online community.
Modes of discourse have also changed. We’re seeing very senior policymakers exhibit the patterns and habits that work online. Pam Bondi going to a Senate hearing with a list of zingers and printed out X posts as a means of responding to a traditional accountability process, reflects how this online mode of discourse is shaping how public officials view their real life roles.
There’s been a lot of research about the polarizing and harmful nature of social media. What does it mean that our political leaders are people who have not only been successful in manipulating social media, but have themselves been manipulated by it?
Tech
Lenovo’s Latest Wacky Concepts Include a Laptop With a Built-In Portable Monitor
Do you like having a second screen with your computer setup? What if your laptop could carry a second screen for you? That’s the idea behind Lenovo’s latest proof of concept, the ThinkBook Modular AI PC, announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Lenovo is never shy to show off wacky, weird concept laptops. We’ve seen a PC with a transparent screen, one with a rollable OLED screen, a swiveling screen, and another with a flippy screen. At CES earlier this year, the company showed off a gaming laptop with a display that expands at the push of a button. Sometimes, these concepts turn into real products that go on sale (often in limited quantities).
At MWC 2026, Lenovo trotted out three concepts. While it’s unclear whether any of them will become real, purchasable products, there’s some unique utility here, and a peek at how computing experiences could change in the future.
A Laptop With a Built-In Portable Screen
As someone with a multi-screen setup at home and a fondness for portable monitors, the ThinkBook Modular AI PC appeals to me the most. At first glance, it looks like a normal laptop. Take a look behind, and you’ll notice there’s a second screen magnetically hanging off the back of the laptop, like a koala carrying a baby on its back.
The screen is connected to the laptop using pogo-pin connectors, so you can use it in this state to display content to people in front of you, say, if you were making a presentation during a meeting. Alternatively, you can pop this second screen off, remove a hidden kickstand resting under the laptop, and magnetically attach it to the 14-inch screen so that you have a traditional portable monitor experience. (You’ll need to connect this to the laptop via a USB-C cable in this orientation.)
If you don’t have the desk space for that orientation, you can always remove the keyboard from the base and pop the second screen there—it’ll auto-connect to the laptop via the pogo pins, and you’ll be able to use the Bluetooth keyboard to type on a dual-screen setup that resembles the Asus ZenBook Duo. The whole system is a fantastically portable method of improving productivity on the go, and the laptop isn’t too thick or cumbersome.
Tech
The 5 Big ‘Known Unknowns’ of Donald Trump’s New War With Iran
More recently, Iran has been a regular adversary in cyberspace—and while it hasn’t demonstrated quite the acuity of Russia or China, Iran is “good at finding ways to maximize the impact of their capabilities,” says Jeff Greene, the former executive assistant director of cybersecurity at CISA. Iran, in particular, famously was responsible for a series of distributed-denial-of-service attacks on Wall Street institutions that worried financial markets, and its 2012 attack on Saudi Aramco and Qatar’s Rasgas marked some of the earliest destructive infrastructure cyberattacks.
Today, surely, Iran is weighing which of these tools, networks, and operatives it might press into a response—and where, exactly, that response might come. Given its history of terror campaigns and cyberattacks, there’s no reason to think that Iran’s retaliatory options are limited to missiles alone—or even to the Middle East at all.
Which leads to the biggest known unknown of all:
5. How does this end? There’s an apocryphal story about a 1970s conversation between Henry Kissinger and a Chinese leader—it’s told variously as either Mao-Tse Tung or Zhou Enlai. Asked about the legacy of the French revolution, the Chinese leader quipped, “Too soon to tell.” The story almost surely didn’t happen, but it’s useful in speaking to a larger truth particularly in societies as old as the 2,500-year-old Persian empire: History has a long tail.
As much as Trump (and the world) might hope that democracy breaks out in Iran this spring, the CIA’s official assessment in February was that if Khamenei was killed, he would be likely replaced with hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And indeed, the fact that Iran’s retaliatory strikes against other targets in the Middle East continued throughout Saturday, even after the death of many senior regime officials—including, purportedly, the defense minister—belied the hope that the government was close to collapse.
The post-World War II history of Iran has surely hinged on three moments and its intersections with American foreign policy—the 1953 CIA coup, the 1979 revolution that removed the shah, and now the 2026 US attacks that have killed its supreme leader. In his recent bestselling book King of Kings, on the fall of the shah, longtime foreign correspondent Scott Anderson writes of 1979, “If one were to make a list of that small handful of revolutions that spurred change on a truly global scale in the modern era, that caused a paradigm shift in the way the world works, to the American, French, and Russian Revolutions might be added the Iranian.”
It is hard not to think today that we are living through a moment equally important in ways that we cannot yet fathom or imagine—and that we should be especially wary of any premature celebration or declarations of success given just how far-reaching Iran’s past turmoils have been.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly bragged about how he sees the military and Trump administration’s foreign policy as sending a message to America’s adversaries: “F-A-F-O,” playing off the vulgar colloquialism. Now, though, it’s the US doing the “F-A” portion in the skies over Iran—and the long arc of Iran’s history tells us that we’re a long, long way from the “F-O” part where we understand the consequences.
Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at mail@wired.com.
Tech
This Backyard Smoker Delivers Results Even a Pitmaster Would Approve Of
While my love of smoked meats is well-documented, my own journey into actually tending the fire started just last spring when I jumped at the opportunity to review the Traeger Woodridge Pro. When Recteq came calling with a similar offer to check out the Flagship 1600, I figured it would be a good way to stay warm all winter.
While the two smokers have a lot in common, the Recteq definitely feels like an upgrade from the Traeger I’ve been using. Not only does it have nearly twice the cooking space, but the huge pellet hopper, rounded barrel, and proper smokestack help me feel like a real pitmaster.
The trade-off is losing some of the usability features that make the Woodridge Pro a great first smoker. The setup isn’t as quite as simple, and the larger footprint and less ergonomic conditions require a little more experience or patience. With both options, excellent smoked meat is just a few button presses away, but speaking as someone with both in their backyard, I’ve been firing up the Recteq more often.
Getting Settled
Photograph: Brad Bourque
Setting up the Recteq wasn’t as time-consuming as the Woodridge, but it was more difficult to manage on my own. Some of the steps, like attaching the bull horns to the lid, or flipping the barrel onto its stand, would really benefit from a patient friend or loved one. Like most smokers, you’ll need to run a burn-in cycle at 400 degrees Fahrenheit to make sure there’s nothing left over from manufacturing or shipping. Given the amount of setup time and need to cool down the smoker after, I would recommend setting this up Friday afternoon if you want to smoke on a Saturday.
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