His writing radicalized young hackers. Now he wants to redeem them

PLUS: A fix for school air, a phone made for terrible times, and tech for public good. View this email in your browser  |  Manage newsletter subscriptions  10.18.20 For the last dozen years, Cory Doctorow's Little Brother series has been a kind of cypherpunk training manual in the guise of young adult sci-fi. In the first book of the series, published in 2008, terrorists bomb the Bay Bridge, and the DHS turns San Francisco into a fascist surveillance panopticon. The teen hero of the story and his friends respond by hacking their Xboxes to create an anonymous and encrypted communications network, which they use to thwart the feds' spying and organize a resistance. In the second book in the series, Homeland, the same young crypto-rebel gets his hands on a thumb drive full of classified secrets, and has to figure out how to leak them to the public with maximum impact. Published in the spring of 2013, it more or less told the story of Edward Snowden's bombshell NSA leaks just months before they became public. Now the third book in the series has arrived, titled Attack Surface. It tells the story of the same cat-and-mouse game, but now from a darker and more adult perspective that far better matches our current reality: a young, morally ambivalent hacker recruited to work for the DHS and its surveillance contractors—while also secretly working on behalf of the dissidents trying to resist it. For Backchannel this week, I wrote a profile of Cory Doctorow and a review of his new, fully grown-up installment in the series. For the piece, I interviewed Cory Doctorow about how his technological idealism and ideology have changed over the last 12 years. And I also trace the influence Little Brother has had on modern digital subversives from Aaron Swartz to Laura Poitras to Edward Snowden, who carried a copy of one of Doctorow's Little Brother books with him as he fled to exile in Russia. Andy Greenberg | Senior Writer, WIRED   BACKCHANNEL His Writing Radicalized Hackers. Now He Wants to Redeem Them BY ANDY GREENBERG Cory Doctorow's Little Brother series has been a young-adult sci-fi bible for teen hacktivists. But with the latest and darkest book in the trilogy, it's all grown up.   O, ROBOT! One Woman's High-Touch Bid to Upend the Sex-Toy Industry BY LUX ALPTRAUM Lora DiCarlo said her company's robotic vibrator, the Osé, would redefine the market. But her hyped-up personal brand would be the real master stroke.   Schools (and Children) Need a Fresh Air Fix BY VERONIQUE GREENWOOD Classrooms have needed better ventilation for years. It took a pandemic to get us to pay attention.   IDEAS The iPhone 12 Is a Smartphone Made for Our Terrible Times BY VIJITH ASSAR The features get a little hotter every year! It's a self-perpetuating cycle that can't ever be reversed.   CIPHER IN CHIEF The Man Who Speaks Softly—and Commands a Big Cyber Army BY GARRETT M. GRAFF Meet General Paul Nakasone. He reined in chaos at the NSA and taught the US military how to launch pervasive cyberattacks. And he did it all without you noticing.   OPINION The Tech That's Championing the Public Good BY NICHOLAS THOMPSON AND ASH CARTER While some technologies are tearing us apart, the Tech Spotlight finalists, selected from over 200 submissions worldwide, are helping shape a better future.         This e-mail was sent to you by WIRED. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our e-mail address, wired@newsletters.wired.com, to your address book.   View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe or manage your newsletter subscriptions