The Download: how people fall for pig butchering schemes, and saving glaciers

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Inside a romance scam compound—and how people get tricked into being there

Gavesh’s journey had started, seemingly innocently, with a job ad on Facebook promising work he desperately needed.

Instead, he found himself trafficked into a business commonly known as “pig butchering”—a form of fraud in which scammers form romantic or other close relationships with targets online and extract money from them. The Chinese crime syndicates behind the scams have netted billions of dollars, and they have used violence and coercion to force their workers, many of them people trafficked like Gavesh, to carry out the frauds from large compounds, several of which operate openly in the quasi-lawless borderlands of Myanmar.

We spoke to Gavesh and five other workers from inside the scam industry, as well as anti-trafficking experts and technology specialists. Their testimony reveals how global companies, including American social media and dating apps and international cryptocurrency and messaging platforms, have given the fraud business the means to become industrialized. 

By the same token, it is Big Tech that may hold the key to breaking up the scam syndicates—if only these companies can be persuaded or compelled to act. Read the full story.

—Peter Guest & Emily Fishbein

How to save a glacier

There’s a lot we don’t understand about how glaciers move and how soon some of the most significant ones could collapse into the sea. That could be a problem, since melting glaciers could lead to multiple feet of sea-level rise this century, potentially displacing millions of people who live and work along the coasts.

A new group is aiming not only to further our understanding of glaciers but also to look into options to save them if things move toward a worst-case scenario, as my colleague James Temple outlined in his latest story. One idea: refreezing glaciers in place.

The whole thing can sound like science fiction. But once you consider how huge the stakes are, I think it gets easier to understand why some scientists say we should at least be exploring these radical interventions. Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

MIT Technology Review Narrated: How tracking animal movement may save the planet

Researchers have long dreamed of creating an Internet of Animals. And they’re getting closer to monitoring 100,000 creatures—and revealing hidden facets of our shared world.

This is our latest story to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which 
we’re publishing each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Donald Trump has announced 25% tariffs on imported cars and parts
The measures are likely to make new cars significantly more expensive for Americans. (NYT $)
+ Moving car manufacturing operations to the US won’t be easy. (WP $)
+ It’s not just big businesses that will suffer, either. (The Atlantic $)
+ How Trump’s tariffs could drive up the cost of batteries, EVs, and more. (MIT Technology Review)

2 China is developing an AI system to increase its online censorship 
A leaked dataset demonstrates how LLMs could rapidly filter undesirable material. (TechCrunch)

3 Trump may reduce tariffs on China to encourage a TikTok deal
The Chinese-owned company has until April 5 to find a new US owner. (Insider $)
+ The national security concerns surrounding it haven’t gone away, though. (NYT $)

4 OpenAI’s new image generator can ape Studio Ghibli’s distinctive style
Which raises the question of whether the model was trained on Ghibli’s images. (TechCrunch)
+ The tool’s popularity means its rollout to non-paying users has been delayed. (The Verge)
+ The AI lab waging a guerrilla war over exploitative AI. (MIT Technology Review)

5 DOGE planned to dismantle USAID from the beginning
New court filings reveal the department’s ambitions to infiltrate the system. (Wired $)
+ Can AI help DOGE slash government budgets? It’s complex. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Wildfires are getting worse in the southwest of the US
While federal fire spending is concentrated mainly in the west, the risk is rising in South Carolina and Texas too. (WP $)
+ North and South Carolina were recovering from Hurricane Helene when the fires struck. (The Guardian)
+ How AI can help spot wildfires. (MIT Technology Review)

7 A quantum computer has generated—and verified—truly random numbers
Which is good news for cryptographers. (Bloomberg $)
+ Cybersecurity analysts are increasingly worried about the so-called Q-Day. (Wired $)
+ Amazon’s first quantum computing chip makes its debut. (MIT Technology Review)

8 What’s next for weight-loss drugs Read More