'If you do wrong, I want the world to know.' Wired's Katie Drummond on tech's new political order.

When Katie Drummond describes her entry into journalism, she doesn’t romanticize it. “As a kid, I was a voyeuristic little weirdo who needed to know everything about everyone, at all times,” she tells Depth Perception. This refreshingly blunt self-assessment reveals much about her leadership style at Wired, where she now serves as global editorial director: unapologetically straightforward and driven by a powerful sense of purpose.

That purpose has evolved since her early days. “As I’ve gotten older, my reasons have evolved and now have a lot more to do with accountability, with right and wrong, with the value of transparency and access to information,” she explains. “Right and wrong is a big one for me. If you do wrong, I want to find out, and then I want the world to know.”

At Wired, these principles are being put to the test as the publication navigates the unprecedented crossover between tech and politics, exemplified by Elon Musk’s deep involvement in the Trump administration. Under Drummond’s leadership, Wired has aggressively pursued this story despite the challenges of being “first to the DOGE story” while working with “a fraction the size of big players like the New York Times.”

Prior to joining Wired, Drummond built an impressive resume across digital media, serving as senior vice president of global news and entertainment at Vice, where she oversaw the global expansion of Vice News and all its digital brands. Her leadership experience extends to key positions at Bloomberg.com and as editor-in-chief of Gizmodo. This varied background has equipped her with the resilience needed for today’s media landscape, where powerful tech figures increasingly retaliate against critical coverage.

In this edition of Depth Perception, we traded emails with Drummond about Wired’s approach to covering Silicon Valley’s political entanglements, protecting journalists and sources from retaliation, and finding hope in an era of unprecedented challenges for the media. —Parker Molloy

What unique challenges has Wired faced reporting on Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration?

Two big ones come to mind. 

The first is our relative size: We have some of the best reporters and editors working today — yes, I’m biased, but show me the lie — but our newsroom is a fraction the size of big players like the New York Times. We often have more tips than we can act on, and I’m trying to make sure nobody’s brain gets too fried, so weighing the potential stories we could do versus the stories we have bandwidth to do has been challenging. 

The second is really a first-mover challenge. We were first to the DOGE story in a very noticeable way, for at least a solid week there. That’s a very, very long week when your neck is sticking all the way out — on a very high-risk, high-profile story — and you realize nobody else is doing the coverage. That has changed, and we’ve subsequently seen a ton of coverage from a ton of outlets, which we welcome. But that first week or two was weird and a little lonely, if I’m being honest. More coverage, from more outlets, is not just a public good — there’s strength in numbers in a bunch of different ways, especially right now.

How has Wired’s approach to covering tech power players such as Musk and other Silicon Valley names evolved as they’ve become more directly involved in politics?

You just can’t have a conversation with any of these guys — any of the big tech CEOs or Silicon Valley players — without asking them about politics and policy or interrogating that in your reporting. The tech industry and D.C. are so interconnected, and between the two of them you’re basically looking at the power base that’s driving the entire country… not to mention the world. So you ask the hard questions, not just about the business of Meta or Amazon or Tesla, but about how that business interacts with and thinks about what’s happening in the administration and with policy. I’m not saying they’ll answer the questions (and trust me, by and large they are currently not), but it is imperative that Wired journalists ask the questions — over, and over, and over.

When reporting draws legal threats from powerful figures, how do you balance journalist safety with the public’s right to know?

I think it’s really this: Do the reporting well, do your diligence, get it right, be responsible, and then come what may. There are plenty of tools at our disposal to safeguard our journalists, and we’ll go to the ends of the earth to make sure they can do their jobs as safely as possible. We have, of course, had a lot of those conversations since Trump was elected and taken a lot of steps to enhance how we protect our reporters, editors, fact-checkers, and so on. Ultimately, accurate reporting in the public interest is the primary consideration. If it’s accurate and of news value, we’ll figure out a way to publish it.

Listen up: ‘Long Shadow’ earned a Peabody Award nomination

 

Long Lead is honored to announce that Long Shadow: In Guns We Trust has been nominated for a Peabody Award for Public Service.

Produced in collaboration with The Trace, Campside Media, and PRX, the podcast’s third season chronicles how firearms moved from being an ordinary part of the background of rural life to a menacing element of modern American life. Weeks after its the last episode came out, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory declaring gun violence “a public health crisis.” 

In addition to this nomination, Long Shadow: In Guns We Trust has won Signal Awards for Best History Podcast, Documentary Podcast, and Activism, Public Service, & Social Impact Podcast; was named one of the year’s top podcasts by The Atlantic, Audible, Mashable, and The Week; and it was nominated for Best Audio Documentary at the International Documentary Association Awards.

Listen and subscribe at www.longshadowpodcast.com.

How do you protect sources when covering figures known for retaliation?

There are lots of things we do, many of them are tactical and commonplace. Corresponding on sensitive matters over email, for example, doesn’t happen. We go to great pains to protect our communications with sources. But the more subtle thing here is [that] we treat them with respect and dignity and empathy, and we’re as transparent as we can be about the inherent risks in sharing information with journalists. And we let them make their decisions from there — from a place of respect, and from a place where they’re fully informed.

Given increasing hostile reactions to critical tech coverage, how do you prepare reporters for potential backlash?

We talk about this a lot in our newsroom. I think an ongoing conversation about it, and making it known that you care and you’re concerned, is a big and important part of all of this. Because the truth is, there’s only so much you can do. I can’t stop a nasty troll from emailing my reporters or harassing them on social media. I can make sure the team has support and access to our security team and our legal team; that they know participating on social platforms is optional; that they have the rigor of our fact-checking and legal teams to bulletproof their reporting. We run a variety of digital security sessions. Basically, we do everything we can to equip people with the tools they need to withstand it — it shouldn’t be happening, but it is, so we deal with it on a rolling basis.

How has Wired’s editorial strategy adapted to cover the intersection of tech, politics, and democracy?

Well, with intention. Obviously I couldn’t have known that politics and technology would collide in exactly this way, where you have arguably the most powerful tech player in the world ripping through federal agencies with a chainsaw. I did not see that coming a year ago! But what I did see coming — the lobbying dollars wielded by big tech, the potential for AI to disrupt elections and sow chaos, the likelihood of hacking or foreign intrusions influencing the 2024 race — was enough to convince me that Wired needed to cover politics in a more dedicated and concerted way. It was a very specific and intentional decision. And it’s evolved from there, and will continue to evolve, I’m sure… two weeks ago it was all DOGE, and now it’s all tariffs. 

What is the best journalistic career advice you ever received?

Fake it til you make it, which was the advice I got from my first editor at Wired.com, where I started out as an intern and later as a reporter. My interest in health and science had turned into a job covering military medical research during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Was I equipped, really, to do that reporting? Not at all. But I sure as hell acted like I was to anyone who would take my calls or meet me for coffee. I did the hard work to master the beat and learn everything there was to know about Pentagon-funded research into PTSD treatments (among other things!), and it worked out from there.

What is the worst journalistic career advice you ever received?

Save the smaller scoop for the big story. No! Publish the scoop when the scoop is ready to publish! Small scoops beget more scoops. Good reporting begets more good reporting. Don’t withhold information from your audience — take an iterative approach to owning a beat and owning a story.

What makes you hopeful for the future of journalism?

One is the very real link between good, rigorous, valuable journalism and the willingness of an audience to pay for that journalism and go to the mat for an outlet. Paywalls are an imperfect solution, of course, but you can be creative with them. Wired makes vital service journalism, like our guide to digital security, free for anyone. And we recently made all of our FOIA-based reporting free for anyone. When we did that, we saw a huge surge in subscriptions from people with the means to pay who believed in that decision and wanted to show their support for the decision and for Wired. 

The second is the commitment and dedication and grit of the journalists I’ve worked with before, and work with at Wired. At Vice, we had a newsroom of immensely talented people who put up with a lot and continued to publish incredible reporting as the walls crumbled around them. At Wired, the walls are very firmly intact, but I am constantly humbled by the energy with which our team approaches coverage despite [Waves Hands Around Frantically] everything going on in the world that could very easily bring someone to their knees. Or send them back to bed for the day. Journalists are a resilient bunch — they deal with way more adversity than they should have to, but they still get up every single day and get down to business. They just keep going. That gives me hope.

Further reading and listening from Katie Drummond

• “DOGE Is Doing the Opposite of Government Auditing” with Vittoria Elliott (Wired, March 20, 2025)
• “Behind DOGE’s Many Conflicts of Interest and Elon Musk’s Weekend Email Chaos” with Brian Barrett (Wired, Feb. 27, 2025)
• “How We’re Keeping Tabs on DOGE” with Leah Feiger (Wired, Feb. 13, 2025)
• “Why — and How — WIRED Is Covering Politics” (Wired, March 20, 2024)
• “When GPS Goes Down, Pentagon Still Wants a Way to Fight” (Wired, June 13, 2012)