[1] Thompson's assorted writing includes features on Facebook's scandals,[3] his own friendship with Stalin's daughter,[4] an unidentified hiker,[5][6] and his marathon running.

[10] He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1997 with honors and with degrees in Earth Systems, Political Science, and Economics,[11][12] and in 1996, he was awarded a Harry S. Truman Scholarship.

[13] Without other plans, he traveled to Africa, where he was kidnapped in Morocco by drug dealers “immediately upon landing.”[13] The daylong experience led Thompson to publish his first professional story, a piece in The Washington Post titled "Continental Drift.

[16][17] During two years Thompson worked at Washington Monthly under Charles Peters and Paul Glastris,[18] his most prominent story was a piece that exposed fraud in the U.S. News & World Report college rankings.

[41] In February 2018, he co-wrote Wired's cover story "Inside the Two Years that Shook Facebook—and the World," an 11,000-word investigation based on reporting with more than fifty current and former Facebook employees.

[42] Fortune described the piece as "a stellar example of the sort of long-form journalism that no summaries or clickbait teases or listicles can replace, the kind of substantive analysis and storytelling that make democracy and capitalism function.”[43] He has also authored features about Instagram's machine learning, the rising tensions between the US and China over artificial intelligence,[44] how technology helped him run a faster marathon at age 43,[45] and his personal relationship to running.

In March, the company announced it was profitable, marking “a successful turnaround that offers a glimmer of hope for the rest of the industry,” wrote The Wall Street Journal.

[47] During Thompson’s time, the publication has won three National Magazine Awards for General Excellence, three Pulitzer Prizes, and been named Digiday's Publisher of the Year.

He has interviewed AI experts, academics, politicians, and entrepreneurs including Geoffrey Hinton, Sam Altman, Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron, Fei-Fei Li, and Mark Zuckerberg.

[48] It tells the story of the Cold War through the relationship and rivalry of Kennan, the author of the Long Telegram, and Nitze, one of America's top arms negotiators, who was also Thompson's grandfather.

[1] The Washington Post called the book “brilliant” and The New York Times described it as “brimming with fascinating revelations.”[16] In 2018, he was named one of LinkedIn's top voices alongside Richard Branson, Melinda Gates, and Justin Trudeau.