Rich people rule the world

When do I get it? a new job, the first thing I do is call my dad. The first thing he asked me was: how much do they pay you? The man’s obsession with dollars and cents is a legend in the Drummond family. But there’s a very good reason he’s keenly interested in the size of my salary: money rules the world. you there is or not. So Mr. Drummond figures, you might as well try to earn as much as you can.

My genetic pathologies aside, WIRED’s interest in money is as obvious as it is colossal: We cover a multi-trillion-dollar industry that shapes everything about how we all live. But who has that money? How do they manage it? And what does that mean for the rest of us? To find out, we sent several money-obsessed wire reporters: From the United Arab Emirates to Denmark, Denmark to Washington, D.C., Florida, we broadcast far and wide to bring you rare wire stories documenting wealth and power. across the planet.

Finally, a group of editors sat down to evaluate our lineup. As we scrolled through the drafts and infographics, we noticed something. Where in the world were we sending a reporter, what corner of the technology landscape were we covering, the owners of that money? Men. All of them. Every. Single. one. Sitting down with Stephen Levy to talk about his new memoir, Bill Gates has enjoyed 19 of the last 30 years at the top of the world’s richest people list. All 30 or so crypto investors in Trump’s inner circle are—wait for it—guys. Even the young men who go door-to-door in the Sunshine State, shilling solar panels in a desperate bid to become millionaires by the age of 30, are men.

Let me be the first to point out: There is more testosterone in this issue than in the last decade of People’s Sexiest Man Alive editions. In part, it’s a reality of circumstance: 87 percent of the world’s billionaires are men, and women continue to vastly, overwhelmingly dominate leadership positions in the tech industry. None of this even begins to account for racial diversity, which paints an even bleaker picture. This will continue apace as tech giants like Meta and Google divest from their DEI investments. Meanwhile, online manosphere– just emboldened by President Trump and his First Friend Musk – continues to metastasize in scope and influence.

But I will own it. It’s a failure of our editorial shortsightedness and imagination to see page after page of overt, insistent masculinity at WIRED only at the last moment. Earlier in our assignment process, we decided to interrogate the tense and fragmented gender dynamics of wealth accumulation, corporate influence, and power. All of this still, infuriatingly, applies almost exclusively to people with penises, boardroom baritones and centuries-old head starts.

Don’t get me wrong: you’ll enjoy this publication both in print and online. We hope you’ll learn a thing or two about how the big bucks in tech are raised and spent, and how people – men – raise and spend them. But to all the guys out there, from one woman in charge, including those featured in our pages: It may be a rich man’s world for now, but trust me, women love money too. We are coming to pick up some of yours.

Let us know what you think about this article. send a letter to the editor at mail@wired.com.