Ive says that the emphasis on physical buttons, each with a singular purpose, is to let the driver keep their eyes on the road and off the screen. “When you look at this, you are not wondering, ‘How many layers deep am I going to have to go to find something to make my bottom warm?’” he said.

“You don’t touch anything but aluminum, glass, or leather,” multiple Ferrari employees said multiple times over the event. (The only bits of plastic they owned up to were a couple of gears in the control panel.)

The result is a truly tactile experience. Everything feels satisfyingly clicky or twisty. The aluminum buttons have, unsurprisingly, an incredible feel. The glass knobs were similarly smooth. We were particularly taken with the air vents, which have aluminum shields that flip around when you twist them open and closed. We fiddled with these over and over until the Ferrari people had to come tell us it was time to leave the room.

Familiar Friends

Ferrari’s glass partner is Corning, the company whose Gorilla Glass has been used on every iPhone model. Corning says there are more than 40 glass parts in the Luce, including buttons, screens, and even the casing of the center console and gear-shift knob.

Ive calls glass a “truthful material.” Compared to a more standard plastic option, glass certainly feels more premium as a knob or gear shifter. But will it shatter in an instant if you get in a wreck? Hopefully not, as Corning says its technicians have done countless crash tests to make sure this version of Gorilla Glass is safe enough.

The steering wheel has the signature three-spoke design Ferrari is famous for. It is almost a circle but has a squished bottom that gives the wheel a shape that evokes a dumpling (or a flat tire). The wheel has a leather grip all the way around, of course, but clicky aluminum buttons right by your fingers let you signal or change music tracks and volume.

Behind the steering wheel is the binnacle, the console where the odometer, speedometer, and other indicators are placed. Taken by itself, the screen looks like a large iPhone in landscape mode with three Apple Watches positioned in the center. Convex lenses with a parallax effect magnify the circular OLED screens supplied by Samsung, which Ferrari has partnered with for the display tech. Additional icons appear in the top-right corner to indicate things like road conditions.

Though the binnacle is dominated by screens, very select bits are entirely analog. Namely, the needles of the speedometer and odometer, which are made of aluminum and polycarbonates. When the car is off, the dials’ screens go dark and the needles seem to float in a black void. When the screens come on, they light up the needles as well, making them glow.

Taking Control

To the right of the wheel sits a control panel display, a rectangular screen with smooth curved edges and almost no bezel. In other words, iPad shaped. However, the screen is mounted on a ball-and-socket joint and so can be moved around in a manner that brings to mind another relic of Ive’s tenure in Cupertino, the iMac G4.

“CCTV networks, facial-recognition systems, applications designed to capture or log private user messages, and systems assessing citizens’ lifestyle patterns and behavioral profiles collectively provide the Islamic Republic’s security agencies with the means for broad and precise monitoring of the population,” the analysis says.

Put another way, Holistic Resilience’s Mahdi Saremifar says simply, “They want to have a centralized system that monitors daily life—lifestyle surveillance.”

The NIN was developed as a core component of the Iranian regime’s mechanisms for control, designed to provide Iran-specific apps, web services, and digital platforms to monitor Iranians constantly and control the information they can access while simultaneously making it much more difficult to get information out of the country to the international community. The NIN has an isolationist architecture that also prevents connections from outside Iran.

The first days of January’s connectivity blackout were so severe, though, that the NIN itself was offline, disrupting government websites and domestic services. Multiple researchers told WIRED that the NIN, landline telephone networks, and even privileged-access SIM cards had no connectivity.

“There’s been a lot of stuff in Iran, but I would say the blackout we’re in now is without precedent in the country,” says Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at monitoring firm Kentik, “And I think it’s arguably one of the biggest communications blackouts in history, not just Iran.”

Filterwatch, a project by internet freedom organization Miaan Group, says that as some connectivity has been restored, including international connections, it believes the Iranian regime is moving to a system of “whitelisting”—restricting internet access to certain organizations and websites or apps. Around the middle of January, the group notes, Iranian state-controlled media published a list of websites available on the NIN, which included Iranian search engines, maps, video services, and messaging apps.

“This architecture utilizes sophisticated service and customer segmentation to transform internet access from a public utility into a government-granted privilege, allowing the state to maintain critical business services while severing the public’s connection to the global web,” Filterwatch explains.

Even as connectivity has been partially restored, researchers emphasize that the volatility of the digital landscape is still striking and leaves open the possibility that the current saga could precipitate permanent disconnection—or splintering—of Iran from the global internet.

For now, analyzing signals from the outside does not make the regime’s intentions clear. “I’m seeing this kind of chaos in the traffic, and I don’t know if that’s the objective—they want chaos—or if this is the system not working correctly,” Kentik’s Madory says. Maybe “they instituted this internet blocking system that is going haywire or maybe they wanted it to go to haywire. I can’t tell, but it’s nuts.”

Connectivity shutdowns, selective blocking, and other digital censorship can be appealing to repressive governments when regimes feel that a situation is getting out of control—both domestically and potentially in terms of optics on the global stage. But as researchers who are focused on Iran and other authoritarian governments have often noted, there are very real limitations of control via digital disconnection.

“When you absolutely disconnect everything, even people who may not want to end up coming to the streets, because they can’t see what’s happening from just sitting in their homes anymore,” another Project Ainita researcher told WIRED. “So in terms of controlling the situation, a bunch of these decisions don’t make any sense.”

As Iranians slowly regain connectivity, though, they face the difficult reality that they are returning to a surveillance dragnet as intrusive and comprehensive as it has ever been.

Jim Lockhart, from Boston:

Did you travel to get here today?

Yeah, we came in early on Friday morning. Planes, trains, and automobiles from Logan Airport.

And where are you staying?

The Intercontinental, right in San Fran, downtown.

Beautiful. I’m from San Francisco, born and raised, so I have a lot of hometown pride. Hope you’re enjoying your stay.

Oh, you know what? They’ve done an unbelievable job. San Fran’s been very accommodating. Everybody’s been awesome. Friendly bartenders, waitresses, concierge, Uber guys. Everyone’s been awesome, man. They’ve done a great job. The city stepped up. We went to Alcatraz yesterday, and what an experience. We love it. Golden Gate Bridge, Bay Bridge, all those. It was a great experience.

What are you most excited about?

I’m excited to see the game. I’m excited to win some money on the under.

I was just about to ask you. Yeah, did you place any bets today?

Of course I did. I got bets on everything. The coin toss, the Gatorade, everything. The first pass, everything. I got a mortgage on it.

Did you do any of the prediction markets?

So you can’t bet out here on the Draft Kings. It’s a weird thing. So I had to put all my bets in with the bookie. Offline.

Do you have any thoughts about the potential for ICE agents in the area?

No, I’m from Boston, you know? We love ICE. In my drinks and on the streets. Let’s go. Let’s keep those borders, shut them down.

And do you have any thoughts about Bad Bunny?

I think it’s disgusting that there’s a guy who doesn’t speak English who’s playing at the Super Bowl, at the largest sporting event in America. And there’s a guy singing that doesn’t speak English, and he also said that he was gonna leave America and never do a tour here again. My kids like him and stuff. I don’t even know him good enough to, like, make an opinion, but if he’s gonna be singing in Spanish and stuff, I mean, come on.

Will you be watching the halftime show?

No. I’m gonna walk out.

You’re gonna walk out?

I’m gonna go to the beer line. In protest. I know it’s not gonna make a difference, but, you know?

Have you taken a driverless car since you’ve been here?

We’re trying to get on those, but they kind of make me nervous. You know what I mean? It’s creepy to me to watch a car drive by without somebody driving the car. But we did take those scooters last night. So we were, like, Sons of Anarchy on these scooters last night. It was great. That was so fun.

You have the scooters in Boston, though, right?

We do. I’ve never taken one. We left a bar yesterday—a Patriots bar, a party—and we took them all the way back to our hotel.

If you get a chance to ride in a Waymo before you leave, I think it’s a fun experience for a tourist.