Jack Dorsey Is Ready to Explain the Block Layoffs

In an exclusive interview with WIRED, Block’s cofounder and CEO says he axed 40 percent of his workforce so that he can rebuild the company “as an intelligence.”

When the bombs hit in Iran, I thought of Jack Dorsey. In 2009, he and I were both part of a contingent of technology people sent by the US State Department to Baghdad, in the wake of another questionable Middle East war. At that time Dorsey was not involved in Twitter’s day-to-day operations, and he was glumly following from afar as his cofounders embarked on a media tour to celebrate the success of the product that sprang from his vision. Our survey of a city ravaged by war—we wore flak jackets and helmets when venturing outside the protected Green Zone—was a distraction from his obvious pain of exile.