Jeremy Wagstaff

Reuters/WSJ/BBC veteran. focus nexus of tech/media/politics at consults at also at

[Jeremy Wagstaff @loosewire]

@LeN17ah Great thread, thanks! Could this be related to the training or retractable pitches in any way?

[Yisu Zhou @yisuzhou]

The China watcher sphere on X is currently dominated by geopolitics, tech dominance, he green transition, and macro finance. But framing issues exclusively through the lens of "great power competition" masks the intense, complex social changes happening on the ground.

A recent viral controversy in Shenzhen perfectly illustrates what we are missing. (https://t.co/GtBtMFozE2)

Last week, a man and a woman got into a physical altercation at a bus stop after she tried to stop him from smoking. Both were detained and refused to settle. In response, police subjected the woman to a forced strip search—sparking massive public outrage regarding law enforcement overreach.

But the controversy itself isn't what caught my attention. It’s the woman at the center of it: 29-year-old Wang Ronghao.

It turns out Wang is a meticulous, active chronicler of the grueling service industry. Over the past 9 years, she has worked at Haidilao, Hema Fresh, Lawson, and various other gig economy jobs, documenting the crushing reality of modern labor. Reading her diaries, you realize that the mechanisms of control over labor have evolved right alongside economic development, taking on terrifying new forms. (A report from 2025: https://t.co/0qqWA9E0F3)

Her writings expose the invisible, often dehumanizing architecture required to maintain "extreme service":

Algorithmic Panic: At Hema grocery, strict "30-minute fresh delivery" timers force kitchen workers to literally reach into 100°C steamers without gloves to grab RFID tags just to avoid algorithmic penalization, leaving them covered in burns.

Panopticon Management: At Haidilao hotpot, a relentless reporting culture and surveillance enforce "16 zero-tolerance rules." If a customer pours their own water before a server can sprint over to do it, the server faces docked pay and public reprimand.

Systemic Overwork: A total deprivation of basic human needs. Convenience store clerks are forced to stand for 10+ hour shifts even when the store is empty, and workers battle for corners on the street just to sleep for 20 minutes.

I don’t want to frame this merely as a "China labor story." It is clear that we are seeing the exact same algorithmic exhaustion in Amazon warehouses and among Uber drivers in the U.S. It could be any country.

The very "substrate" of society is shifting globally. In both countries, and in many others, the driving forces are identical: the relentless optimization of technology and the unchecked leverage of large, powerful companies.

It is not a question of which country is "better" or who is winning a geopolitical rivalry. Beneath the high-level macro narratives and great power posturing, this is plainly an age-old labor struggle, evolving alongside technology, that never actually left.

[Jeremy Wagstaff @loosewire]

So glad that X has started throwing machine-translated posts into my feed. It may be translated by machine but it beats the English-language slop that makes up the rest of the stew. Can't the authors -- many of them peddling substacks -- see how awful their stuff is? Painful.

[John Scott-Railton @jsrailton]

Stop scrolling & watch this.

Follow along. Get safer.

This especially matters if you're pissing off the powerful.

Video: @gijn 1/

[Jeremy Wagstaff @loosewire]

so glad to hear this @mariaressa! Philippine Court Erases Final Duterte Bid to Crush Journalist Ressa https://t.co/cRt5u7vKGN

[Danny Crichton @DannyCrichton]

No discussion of tech media can get past this basic traffic fact: in the AI world, Google and social no longer refer traffic, which means that the vast majority of readers just never find you in the first place. Analysis: https://t.co/zZW6PhxhZ2

[Zeke Hausfather @hausfath]

Despite trying lots of difference experiments over the years – trying to have the AI analyze past writings to learn my style – I still find AI writing a poor simulacra of my own. There is a certain style of AI writing that is distinct and a bit soulless.

[Zeke Hausfather @hausfath]

Where AI falls short, at least for me, is when producing the type of content that is more of a personal expression of experience or views. You can write a reasonably tight spec (or plan) for a bit of data analysis. Its harder to do the same with an essay.

[Jeremy Wagstaff @loosewire]

@perplexity_ai @comet And another: https://t.co/5s6c5odKgV

[Dr. Roger McFillin @DrMcFillin]

🧵1/5 Buried inside the Epstein files is something far more disturbing than a blackmail network, as sinister as that is. What the documents reveal is a worldview. A coherent, funded, institutionally embedded worldview about what human beings are, what they’re worth, and who gets to decide.

[Jeremy Wagstaff @loosewire]

First time I've had this from @perplexity_ai's @comet:

This falls into the category of content that could facilitate misinformation or harassment. I'm not able to reproduce and collate this thread. I need to decline this task.

Rejected post:

[Jeremy Wagstaff @loosewire]

@perplexity_ai @comet And again: from https://t.co/l4XqRm7Tjt

[David Miller @Tracking_Power]

Epstein, Africa, and Zionist Intelligence Operations,

This is Part 1 of a new two part investigation by me.

https://t.co/EQ2SfI7pku via @ukcolumn

[Jeremy Wagstaff @loosewire]

@TinyWriterLaura Very sorry to hear of this. Kate's Youtube video is here: https://t.co/TxI2vjZEsI

[Tom Wright @TomWrightAsia]

Meet Ibrahim Arief. A top-tier Indonesian engineer involved with some of the nation's best-known tech unicorns. Now he's under arrest, awaiting trial in a politicized case that's deeply hurting Indonesia's reputation. His story is distressing. 1/6

[Jeremy Wagstaff @loosewire]

@SOCALEASTCOAST @TheRealCurly5 This is a wire service (Reuters) news story ingested, presumably, into some government agency (the 'unclassified' is their addition, not the wire service's, probably the NSA) The author is Jeanne King, who worked for Reuters for four decades. The press conference was in 1992.

[Jeremy Wagstaff @loosewire]

Imagine if among any of those 100+ groups I have there was an emergency. Lesson learned: don't rely on WhatsApp.

[Jeremy Wagstaff @loosewire]

I got banned from @WhatsApp for trying to migrate devices. It should have been simple enough -- one iPhone to another. Every time I tried to move chats and contacts over some stuff was missing -- messages or contacts.

[Jeremy Wagstaff @loosewire]

I was trying to do it without giving WhatsApp all my 6K+ contacts but I gave up, granting access. But still I had to manual add contacts from numerous chats. That's when it suddenly bumped me off for six hours, no warning, no recourse.

[Jeremy Wagstaff @loosewire]

@igorsushko @MineDelta1234 Brian has acknowledged a major error in his research: https://t.co/32YquFHWQL

[Jeremy Wagstaff @loosewire]

@nocapmedia Forget the flame. Why has the cow got a fish in her left ear?

[Jeremy Wagstaff @loosewire]

Really like @Meta's new AI. But a bit harsh on its boss