Eileen Guo
Senior reporter, features and investigations at MIT Technology Review.
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Select Stories
April 2022
Deception, exploited workers, and cash handouts: how Worldcoin recruited its first half a million test users
When venture-backed crypto startup Worldcoin announced a new cryptocurrency that would be universally and freely distributed, in exchange for a biometric scan, and that it would be testing primarily in the developing world, I had questions.
To answer them, I put together a cross-border reporting team that interviewed over 35 individuals in six countries to get at the bottom of what the company, valuated at $3 billion, was really doing, and why. The result is this 7000-word investigation available online and in print in our Money issue.
For more on this story, listen to my interview with Tech Policy Press.
august 2021
This is the real story of the Afghan biometric databases abandoned to the Taliban.
As the Taliban swept through Afghanistan in mid-August, declaring the end of two decades of war, reports circulated that they had captured US military biometric devices used to collect data such as iris scans, fingerprints, and facial images. Some feared that the machines, known as HIIDE, could be used to help identify Afghans who had supported coalition forces.
The reality was a little different—and a little more nuanced. In this investigation, co-reported with an Afghan journalist, I look at what one particular internationally-funded Afghan government database tells us about the biometric experiment more broadly.
February 2021
He started a covid-19 vaccine company. Then he hosted a superspreader event.
With covid-19 cases spiking this winter, the Los Angeles area banned all gatherings. But Peter Diamandis, a serial entrepreneur, thought he could beat the odds. In late January, he hosted an indoor, unmasked conference and, as a result, at least 21 people present caught covid-19. Then, he tried to cover it all up.
I broke the story, which was picked up by outlets like The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, ABC, CBS-LA, and the Associated Press, and resulted in the reopening of an investigation by the LA County Department of Public Health.
For more on this story:
my follow-up investigation, “First he held a superspreader event. Then he recommended fake cures”
The Open Notebook’s annotated version of the story and Q&A on how I reported it for their Storygram series.
August 2020
New U.S. Citizens Were One of the Fastest-Growing Voting Blocs. But Not This Year.
In this story supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, I delved into how the pandemic, combined with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ response, is affecting not only naturalization, but also voter registration, with over 315,000 citizen-applicants waiting to complete their naturalization interviews. I report on how this could have profound electoral impacts in November but, regardless of the outcome of any specific races, that naturalization delays during the pandemic is also an issue of voter rights.
This story won second place in the 2021 Los Angeles Press Club journalism awards for immigration reporting.
july 2020
Inmates witnessed a suicide attempt. They received coloring books instead of counseling.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, incarcerated individuals in California’s 35 state prisons faced poor mental health care. The situation is especially dire for the rapidly increasing number of female prisoners, who make up 4 percent of the state’s incarcerated population but 11 percent of suicides, according to 2016 figures.
In this story for The Washington Post and The Fuller Project, I report on how the pandemic has exacerbated the lack of mental health care at CIW. Inmates have refused tests, temperature checks and other measures meant to contain the virus’s spread to avoid being put in isolation, and four women have attempted suicide while in quarantine or isolation for the coronavirus.
Read more of my coverage of Covid-19 in CA state prisons in STAT.
JUN 2020
‘Obsessed with staying alive’: Inmates describe a prison’s piecemeal response to a fatal Covid-19 outbreak
For the first three months of the covid-19 pandemic, the California Institution for Men (CIM) had the largest coronavirus outbreak—and the only one resulting in fatalities—in all of California’s state prisons.
For weeks, I spoke to incarcerated men terrified that their prison sentences would become death sentences, and from those conversations, pieced together how CIM’s slow and piecemeal response, characterized by a lack of testing, consistent policies, and, perhaps, even empathy towards prisoners put the prison’s standard operating procedures ahead of the demands of a public health emergency. That approach, combined with existing overcrowding, has fueled proven deadly.
Also listen to my conversation with Michael Krasny and Guardian reporter Sam Levin on coronavirus in CA state prisons on KQED’s The Forum, and check out more of my reporting for STAT, “As covid-19 cases in prisons climb, data on race remains obscured.”
March 2020
Coronavirus Threatens an Already Strained Maternal Health System
No visitors. Induced labor. Converted delivery wards. Tens of thousands of women across the country are giving birth in unprecedented circumstances.
Even so, the pandemic does not affect all communities equally, and in this feature story for The New York Times and The Fuller Project, I report on how black mothers, in particular, are disproportionately affected by both the pandemics and new hospital policies put into place to fight it.
This story won second place in the “gender and society reporting” and “pandemic reporting (print)” categories of the annual Los Angeles Press Club journalism awards.
Read more of my coverage on how coronavirus amplifies inequality in Mother Jones.
August 2019
The fight to protect the world’s most trafficked wild commodity
Rosewood is a tropical hardwood prized for its durability, rich color, and fragrant scent, and used to make musical instruments, from guitars and marimbas to violins, as well as high-end, furniture, mainly in China. It is also the world’s most trafficked wild product by value or volume—more than ivory, rhino horn, and pangolin scales combined.
In 2016, Guatemala led the global efforts to add all 300 species of rosewood to Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES.) Three years later, I investigated for National Geographic’s Wildlife Watch the effect that its leadership has had on its internal efforts to stop the trafficking.
leélo en español.
March 2019
ICE and the Banality of Spin
In mid-2018, as news of family separations at the border dominated media coverage and the #AbolishICE movement gathered steam, I decided that, to better understand Immigration and Customs Enforcement, I should go to the source material: ICE press releases.
In this report for Topic Stories, I scraped, read, and built a database to analyze 3,457 ICE press releases and wrote about what they taught me about the agency’s worldview.
April 2017
How WeChat Spreads Rumors, Reaffirms Bias, and Helped Elect Trump
In the wake of the 2016 elections, when the mainstream American media was focused on how fake news may have influenced voters on Facebook, Twitter, and Google, I noticed that a parallel phenomenon was occurring among Asian-American voters — especially Chinese-Americans — the country’s fastest-growing minority, on the wildly popular but little-understood Chinese social app, WeChat. I investigated for the long form section of Wired.com.