Why Silicon Valley Needs Immigration

WIRED

4 hours ago

A general view of the UC Berkeley campus, including Sather Tower, also known as The Campanile, as seen from Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, California. Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Photograph:All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Expanded deportations, a virtually shutdown asylum process, increased scrutiny of H1-B visa applicants—immigration policy has been overhauled under the latest Trump administration. And, just last week the Trump administration said it would begin revoking the visas of some Chinese students who are currently studying at U.S. schools. On today's episode, we dive into the impacts that these changes could have on the tech industry from the talent pipeline to future innovations.
Articles mentioned in this episode:
The Trump Administration Wants to Create an 'Office of Remigration' by David Gilbert
US Tech Visa Applications Are Being Put Through the Wringer by Lauren Goode
You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on Bluesky at @laurengoode, and Katie Drummond on Bluesky at @katie-drummond. Write to us at [e-mail]. How to Listen
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Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Michael Calore: A quick note before we begin today. We recorded this episode before the Trump administration's travel ban on citizens from 12 countries from entering the United States and before its proclamation to suspend all new student visas for students enrolling at Harvard University. Although we will get to student visas quite a bit in this episode. How's everybody doing this week?
Lauren Goode: I'm good. I just got back from Katie's motherland, Canada.
Michael Calore: Oh.
Lauren Goode: Yeah.
Katie Drummond: Lauren and I were in Vancouver together.
Lauren Goode: We were.
Katie Drummond: Although I saw her for probably 15 minutes in the span of like five days. I'm doing okay. I also, as we just established, was in Vancouver with Lauren at Web Summit. I took a red-eye home on Thursday night and it was three hours late and so that was a lot.
Michael Calore: Yikes.
Katie Drummond: And then Lauren, right before we started recording just told me that I have a bobble head, so I'm just grappling with that feedback.
Lauren Goode: I did not say bobblehead, I said you had celebrity energy because your head presents well on camera. I don't know. Mike, how are you doing?
Katie Drummond: Yeah, how are you doing, Mike?
Michael Calore: I'm staying out of this one. Also, I have a gigantic head. I can tell you that I wear a size eight fitted cap, which is the largest size that they make.
Katie Drummond: Do you want to know what size I wear?
Michael Calore: Yes.
Katie Drummond: I have to shop at a specialty hat store. Because my head actually doesn't... I can't wear.
Lauren Goode: What is this store called?
Katie Drummond: I can't wear normal hats.
Lauren Goode: Is it called Bobblehats?
Katie Drummond: No, I'm going to look it up. It's from Oddjob Hats. The last hat I bought was called Big Running Hat. Just Big Running Hats.
Lauren Goode: Do you also have one called Big Walking Hats?
Katie Drummond: Probably. Probably.
Lauren Goode: Oh.
Michael Calore: Oh, it's too much.
Lauren Goode: All right.
Michael Calore: Should we get into it?
Katie Drummond: Let's do it.
Lauren Goode: Let's do it.
Michael Calore: This is WIRED's Uncanny Valley , a show about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. Today we're going to be talking about the Trump administration's policies around immigration and the effect that those policies are poised to have on the tech industry. Since day one of the current administration immigration policy has been overhauled, the asylum process was virtually shut down, the obscure Aliens Enemy Act was invoked to deport hundreds of people, and birthright citizenship is being challenged in the US Supreme Court. Visas have been under increased scrutiny. WIRED recently reported how the H-1B visa application process is becoming more hostile, and last week the administration said it would begin revoking the student visas of some Chinese students who are currently studying at US schools. So today we're going to dive into the impacts that these changes could have on the tech industry from the talent pipeline to future innovations. I'm Michael Calore, director of Consumer Tech and Culture here at WIRED.
Lauren Goode: I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a senior correspondent at WIRED.
Katie Drummond: And I'm Katie Drummond, WIRED's global editorial director.
Michael Calore: I want to start us off by focusing on how the Trump administration has been handling student visas. Just last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the administration would start to, "Aggressively" revoke visas for Chinese students. The State Department said it would focus on students from critical fields and those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, but also that it would just generally enhance the scrutiny across the board. The vagueness of these guidelines has sent students, parents and universities into an emotional tailspin. What do we make of these latest developments?
Lauren Goode: So there were actually two directives that went out last week and I'm sure we're going to hear more, but I think they're both worth noting. The first was that a directive was sent to US embassies around the world telling them to pause any new interviews for student and visitor visas, and that included the F, M and J visas, until further notice. And this whole idea was that it was in preparation for an expansion of social media screening and vetting. So basically the State Department is going to be looking much more closely at students' online activity, social media activity, and consider that as a part of their interview process when they're applying for a visa to the US. That was already a part of the application process, but now it's just going to be expanded. We don't really know what that means. The other was the revoking of visas for Chinese students as you mentioned, Mike. And really I think what this does is it adds another tool to this current Cold War of sorts that we're having with China, whether it's with the tariffs or whether it's measures like these, it's clear that the current administration wants to have the upper hand. And what we've reported at WIRED is that if this continues and the courts allow it, this would all have a significant effect on higher education because roughly a quarter of the international student population in the US is from China. And also, this is something I think a lot of people don't realize, I personally didn't realize until I started doing more research into this, international students often pay full tuition or close to it when they come here into the United States for school, which makes it an economic lifeline for a lot of these universities and also in some ways helps offset the costs for domestic students, US students who are getting scholarships or getting partial reduction in tuition and that sort of thing. I do think in general it's dangerous territory to start targeting students under a specific nationality for these alleged national security reasons. There are going to be questions about how effective it is longterm, but also how this could potentially weaken the US technology sector in the longterm.
Katie Drummond: Yeah. And I think, Lauren, you're right to point out these two directives and I think that both got a fair bit of press attention, but I was surprised that the first announcement, this idea that we are going to be doing enhanced social media screening and vetting of international students and people applying for visas to come to the United States, the fact that that was not an international outrage when that was announced is very telling to me in terms of how much is happening in the news in the United States every single day because that is a very chilling announcement to be coming from the Secretary of State in this country. It is a massive free speech issue and really speaks I think to what will be an ongoing theme for WIRED and unfortunately already is, which is just the techno-authoritarian world, country that we now live in where these tools are essentially being weaponized to surveil and monitor not only US citizens, but people who proactively want to live and work and study here, that if you dare have an opinion that is contrary to the opinion of the Trump administration, that you could potentially have your visa revoked or not even be able to qualify for a visa. I think it's also important to note that everything that Lauren just spelled out and that we're talking about is part of this much larger conflict that's been unfolding between the Trump administration and higher education. So you have this Ivy League battle playing out between Trump and Columbia, Trump and Harvard. A lot of that obviously having to do with free speech issues and the Trump administration, again, essentially looking for institutions of higher education to adopt their viewpoint as opposed to being places where a plurality of points of view can be discussed and debated and held. There was already an attempt made to block Harvard from enrolling international students. A federal judge has blocked that for now, but we will have to see where it nets out. And I think regardless of where that one legal decision nets out there is, for so many reasons, this chilling effect where the United States is all of a sudden no longer a desirable destination for students, both at an undergraduate level and a graduate level. You have not only the Trump administration basically going to war with the best colleges in the country, you have them going to war with the actual student visa process, and then you have them going to war with research and science and even blocking already billions of dollars of research funding that is earmarked ostensibly for these institutions and now means that these institutions are much less attractive destinations. So it's not like, oh, a judge reverses a couple of decisions or one decision or blocks one thing from happening and all of a sudden we're in the clear again, this is already very clearly becoming a systemic and longterm crisis for the United States.
Michael Calore: And this choking off of talent coming into research institutions and into jobs in the United States is also happening at a moment when China and the US are currently involved in an AI arms race. In January, the Chinese AI company DeepSeek showed off a reasoning model that is demonstrably and seemingly just as powerful as ChatGPT, but was developed for a fraction of the cost. So the US definitely needs to keep bringing in top AI talent, but how are these restrictions on student visas going to potentially shape the growth of the AI industry in the US?
Lauren Goode: Yeah, this is something that when the news started to trickle out last week, we at WIRED were thinking, "Okay, this is really in our wheelhouse." We cover AI so closely, we have for years, and automatically the question is what does this mean for the AI race? We ended up reporting a story last week, it was myself, a few other WIRED folks, Kate, Louise, and Will, and some of the sources that we spoke to were pointing out the contradiction that exists here in the White House saying that AI is one of its top priorities and then trying to send the people who are doing this kind of research, this critical research for us here in the United States, home back to their home countries, or not letting them into the first place. And it's some US colleges, I would say probably a fair number of them, international students do make up the majority of doctoral students in departments like computer science. One of our colleagues, Kate Knibbs, talked to someone at the University of Chicago who said that foreign nationals accounted for 57% of newly enrolled computer science Ph.D. students last year. We know that immigrants have founded or co-founded nearly two thirds of the top AI companies in the United States. That's according to a 2023 analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy. And this is something that's been going on for a long time. I had this interesting conversation with a well-known economist last week. His name is William Lazonick. I was asking him his thoughts on this crackdown on student visas, and he made an important observation, which is that foreign students pursuing those STEM careers have actually been critical to the very existence of graduate programs in those fields. And some of this is cultural. Back in the 1980s, there was this big shift that was happening in the US around money basically. It was the era of Reaganomics and great is good, and American students were gravitating towards careers in finance. At the same time, Lazonick said, there were significant advancements happening in microelectronics and computing and biopharmaceuticals, and that opened the window for foreign students to say, "We're going to study stem." So what we are potentially on the brink of right now by thwarting or revoking these visas for foreigners could literally affect the outcome of American technology and science development for the next several decades.
Katie Drummond: And particularly at a moment where, as you said, we're in this Cold War with China, we're in this AI arms race. You hear it from the administration, you read about it in WIRED, you hear about it from Sam Altman, other leaders of the AI industry, this like, "We must beat China. We must beat China." And then stuff like this happens and you feel like, "Let's just hand it to them. Let's just give it to them." Because we are basically doing that by disincentivizing not only Chinese students, but just brilliant people from all around the world, from coming here, bringing their intellect here, bringing their ideas here. We're basically telling them, "Go somewhere else. Maybe go to China." And something I did find fascinating in that reporting, Lauren, was that the vast majority of PhD students from China and India actually typically intend to stay in the US after they graduate. While the majority of people from other countries, places like Switzerland and Canada, report actually planning to leave, maybe they want to go back to their home country, maybe they want to go somewhere else, but it's rejecting the people who are most committed to staying here and to contributing to new technology in the United States is a certain kind of choice. And so other countries are already trying to take advantage of that. Hong Kong is already trying to attract Harvard students. The UK is setting up scholarships. There's a lot going on outside the United States in terms of basically trying to make the brain drain happen for us. Our loss is all of their gain. But when you put it in the context of this AI race and the US and China of it all, it feels like what we are doing is distinctly disadvantageous for us in this moment. Unless you both disagree and think I'm missing something.
Lauren Goode: No, we always say on this podcast, it would be nice if we vehemently disagreed with each other because it would create tension. But I think in this case, we are all aligned on this.
Michael Calore: Yeah. This scrutiny over foreign nationals, it doesn't just end at academia, of course. It also extends into the workforce here in the US and work visas. Lauren, you recently reported on how the process to obtain an H-1B visa has become more difficult recently. Can you tell us a little bit about what H-1B visas are and why they matter so much to the tech industry in particular?
Lauren Goode: Sure, yeah. So H-1B visas are work visas that are granted for specialty occupations. They're typically valid for three years. They can be extended in some cases. This type of visa was first introduced in 1990 as part of a broader immigration act. And the idea is that it's supposed to help employers hire people with specialty skills that they might not otherwise get from the talent pool that already exists in the US. And the H-1B is a bit of a controversial visa. Even just saying, so you can hire people outside of the US because there are people who don't have that skillset here, naturally prompts the question for some people, "Wait, why are we not educating and training people in the US to have those jobs?" But basically what I was starting to hear from immigration attorneys who I was speaking to is that the requests for evidence, RFEs, had shot up since Trump took office in January of this year. Typically, when a person is applying or petitioning for an H-1B, their lawyer submits a bunch of paperwork on their behalf and that typically will include resumes, awards, letters of prestige, letters of recommendation from colleagues and friends and that sort of thing. You basically have to put together this packet to prove that you're worthy of this specialty visa. And then sometimes it would get bounced back and USCIS would ask for more requests for evidence. In this case, a lot of visa applications are being sent back. There are a lot more RFEs or requests for evidence for applicants. And that's something that four different immigration attorneys I spoke to said they're seeing happening. It's also not just happening across H-1B. There's another type of visa called the O-1 Extraordinary Ability visas. Once again, this is a specialty visa. A lot of tech entrepreneurs, engineers, and founders alike will come here under the O-1 visa and folks in that world are starting to say that they're getting pushback on their applications as well. All of this, it's instilling fear amongst some entrepreneurs and tech workers in the Valley, and it's creating a climate of uncertainty where people who seemed so committed and excited to come here and build their companies here and contribute to the technological environment here are now rethinking that because of what's going on with visa applications.
Katie Drummond: Ugh. That is so bleak. 66% of people working in tech in Silicon Valley are born outside of the US. That is just an astonishing number to think about that being at risk.
Lauren Goode: Yep. We're talking about the rank and file in a sense, but also just look at some of the CEOs-
Katie Drummond: Yeah, look at the leadership.
Lauren Goode: Of the companies we're talking about. Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, and I think the most... Should we talk about the most obvious one?
Katie Drummond: I was going to say, just look at Elon Musk.
Lauren Goode: Yes.
Katie Drummond: What an international success story he is.
Lauren Goode: Yes.
Katie Drummond: What a success he has been for the United States of America. I will say, the H-1B visa program is not perfect. It's certainly been criticized for not being a fair system or a fair lottery, but despite the fact that this is an imperfect system, none of this actually feels like an approach to fix any of these problems or challenges, it's more just creating extra adversity and uncertainty around a process that's already very lengthy and very expensive.
Michael Calore: So these challenges to the visa application have ramped up recently, but we're already seeing the effects of this, right?
Lauren Goode: Yeah, this is something that's harder to quantify right now because these visa policies are just getting put in place. Everything's just changing. But I think we can qualify it by saying that the folks that we're talking to in Silicon Valley who are either here on a visa or they were hoping to stay on an extended visa or they were thinking of maybe coming here and we're working with attorneys to get that process started are now just reconsidering everything. You're already throwing yourself into a pretty uncertain world when you decide to launch a startup. You're choosing hard mode for yourself when you do that. So now throwing this uncertainty into the mix and thinking like, "Am I actually still going to be able to be here in three years if that's how long it takes me to actually make a product or build up a profitable business or raise my next funding round or something?" And if you can't see beyond that, I don't see how you realistically say like, "Oh, the US seems like a good bet right now."
Katie Drummond: It just underscores how systemic and long-lasting this is going to be. Even if this were six months of bad federal policy and somehow the administration wakes up overnight and flips a switch and we see a lot of this pressure and additional scrutiny and adversity around immigration, around H-1B visas ease, there has already been so much damage done. We are going to feel this in this country for such a long time.
Michael Calore: One of the thing about immigration policy that we have to talk about is something that our colleague David Gilbert has reported on for WIRED, and that is, as part of a reorganization of the State Department, the Trump administration is creating an office of remigration. And in very simple terms, remigration is an immigration policy embraced by extremists that calls for the removal of migrants including non-assimilated citizens. What do we make of this?
Katie Drummond: So I talked a little bit earlier about being surprised that Marco Rubio announcing that enhanced social media scrutiny. I was surprised that that wasn't more of an outrage, that didn't get more coverage. This is even more extreme in that context, and it is a truly shocking development in this administration's war on anyone who is not a white American. That is basically what this is. I was shocked when I read this story last week and realized that this should be front page news for every news organization in the United States, and somehow it just wasn't.
Lauren Goode: So the whole idea behind this is that they want to create a white ethnostate in this part of the world.
Katie Drummond: That is our understanding of it, yeah. There is a long history to the idea of remigration and it really comes together through the lens of mega, it was present in the administration's first term as well. You had the Muslim ban, you had this idea of building a border wall, and I think what's so different this time from 2016, there's a lot that's different this time, I think big picture as we have seen, what's different is that this time the administration really means business. They're buttoned up, they're here to get the job done. And so it's the speed and the intensity at which these ideas, this very racist idea of remigration is going from just being something that's done in a scattershot way that is now showing up as a tactical specific policy proposal that is being released in official government documents. It's just a very different kind of approach and it feels much more real. It is much more real. And it's happening so quickly and amid I think so much other news that people are just not seeing that it's happening, and that's really scary.
Lauren Goode: And what happens too I think is that there are all different kinds of immigration policies we're talking about here and if you're not paying close attention you might conflate them. There's a difference between the asylum process being shut down and the Aliens Enemy Act being overhauled with what may be going on with student and foreign visitor visas, Extraordinary Ability visas, which is different from what's being proposed with this remigration document. And a lot of it is happening under the guise of, "This is better for national security." There are of course going to be some instances in which that is true. For example, Stanford Review reported, I think it was a few weeks ago now, that they'd become aware of Chinese nationals actually trying to spy on Stanford University and its students. They'd purported to be other students. This sort of thing does happen, there are nations that are our adversaries that want to get information from the United States and wield it in nefarious ways, but for the most part, the Trump administration is putting immigrants in this giant bucket and creating this world in which they're all a threat to the United States. And that is absolutely not the case.
Michael Calore: Yeah, these policies are going to obviously shape the culture of this country and they're going to shape the business that is done in this country. But of course, they are absolutely going to shape the technology industry. So let's take a break and when we come right back, we'll talk about the effects that these policies will have on tech. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . We've been talking about the Trump administration's immigration policies and how they could shape the future of tech development in the us, and I'm curious to know how tech companies and workers have been reacting to these measures so far.
Lauren Goode: I would say the number one thing I've heard directly from folks is that they are scaling back on their travel to conferences, whether they're academics or tech workers. And that may have a little bit more to do with what has been going on in some intermittent cases at the border, of people getting detained at the border. But also people are thinking about the status of their visa right now and whether they're an American citizen or they're here on a visa. Tech conferences and academic conferences are just a part of this world. Katie and I were just at one in Vancouver. And so if you have concerns about being let back into the United States after traveling, you may decline to go to one. And the same goes for universities. I think Brown University urged its international staff and students to postpone any plans to travel outside of the US out of an abundance of caution.
Katie Drummond: It's interesting to think about the flip side of that because for most of the tech industry and the human beings who work in that industry, this is a very scary thing. It's affecting how they do their jobs, it's affecting whether or not they travel. And then you have the flip side of it, which is where there are certain parts of the tech industry who are really benefiting from these new policies. And I think Palantir is probably the best example of that. So Palantir is the brainchild of Peter Thiel, obviously a mega donor to the GOP party. And Palantir is really making it rain with the Trump administration, and they are benefiting tremendously from these policies and from DOGE efforts and administration efforts to centralize and unify data about American citizens and about immigrants to the administration. God knows what you could use all of that information for once it's centralized. Palantir recently won a $30 million no-bid contract to build ImmigrationOS, which essentially provides real-time data about the whereabouts of migrants and about deportations. Palantir obviously has worked with the US government for a very long time. They've had a contract with ICE since 2011, so that's almost 15 years ago. But we are really seeing the surveillance state that Palantir helps support grow exponentially and grow very quickly as a result of the administration's aims around immigration for one thing, but also just their aims to basically stand up and run an authoritarian state that would impact not only immigrants but US citizens as well.
Michael Calore: So some tech companies are obviously seeing a paycheck opportunity in these immigration policies, but we can't say that the tech industry is operating as any kind of block, like they're not lockstep ideologically aligned with the immigration policies. And a lot of key tech leaders have been outspoken about the fact that they're not too happy with these policies, right?
Lauren Goode: Yeah. It's honestly a little bit confusing. Someone like Elon Musk has in the past been in support of the H-1B. He employs more than 1,000 people on that type of visa. He even used it himself in his early years in the US, and he has in the past tweeted in support of immigrants being in Silicon Valley and contributing to the economy here. More recently though, he has called for a reform on it, and he's not alone in that. Same with Marc Andreessen, obviously one of the most vocal people, influential people in Silicon Valley. Surprisingly, they've got some interesting bedfellows. The Democrat Ro Khanna of California, Vermont's Bernie Sanders, they're also calling for a reform of the H-1B program. It goes back to what Katie was saying earlier, that there have been some critiques of H-1B. There's been a lot of backlash to the program, and it's hard to know sometimes whether it's coming from this kind of vitriolic or potentially racist place around how people feel about immigrants versus, "No, I'm actually in support of this because it's good for the US economy and the tech industry, but the process is broken."
Katie Drummond: To me right now what we're looking at in the year 2025 is just part of this larger trend of tech leaders staying silent or muting their criticism or maybe posting something on X, but largely staying silent when it comes to politics, when it comes to political issues, at least publicly. We don't know what's happening behind the scenes, what kinds of lobbying efforts are going into trying to sway the administration one way or another when it comes to H-1B visas, when it comes to the importance of brilliant people from around the world being able to study and work in the United States and in the tech industry. But publicly for sure, we are not seeing that really robust resistance on the part of the tech industry. And that is certainly strategic because these guys know that this time the administration means business, they need to play ball, they need to work with this administration. And so we can only hope that behind the scenes there are more vigorous discussions happening than what we're seeing play out publicly.
Michael Calore: It's distressing to me that the disconnect is so loud here because we really have to underscore how important of a positive role immigration has played in the growth of the tech industry. And in Silicon Valley in particular, like Lauren you were talking about earlier, some of the largest companies like Google and Microsoft have all had either founders or co-founders or CEOs who are first or second-generation immigrants. And if you look at a list right now of the country's current startups that are worth more than a billion dollars, more than half of them have an immigrant founder. Yeah. So the longterm stakes of keeping talented researchers and engineers and businesspeople out of the country seem deeply, deeply consequential.
Lauren Goode: It's also just not a zero-sum game. If the tech industry continues to grow, presumably there would be enough room for having high-skilled American workers and high-skilled foreign nationals working together.
Michael Calore: As it always has been. Okay, let's take another break and we'll come right back with recommendations. Thank you both for a great conversation. We are going to shift gears and talk about something completely different, which is our own personal desires and loves. We're going to do recommendations. Who wants to go first?
Katie Drummond: My recommendations. It's been a busy time, so I feel like I'm a little bit limited on hobby activities, but a book I just finished that I do recommend, Barry Diller's memoir. If you're not familiar with Barry Diller, I believe he is now the chairman of IAC. But a long-time executive, invented the modern-day Hollywood approach to movie-making. It was great, so I highly recommend that. But my other recommendation is that last night I was thinking about what to have for dinner, and I made an omelet, and I haven't had an omelet in a while. The omelet had a red pepper, it had spinach, and it had shredded cheese, and it was just a really nice reminder if you're thinking about what to have for dinner tonight, a nice omelet, some toast with french butter, a can of seltzer, you might just be all set. That and a book.
Michael Calore: Lauren, what is your recommendation?
Lauren Goode: My recommendation is after you make your breakfast for dinner, you should check out the Brazilian film I'm Still Here. When I was flying home from Vancouver last week I started watching it on the plane and did not finish it. It was one of those things where I went home, unpacked, and then immediately bought the movie because I was like, "I need to finish watching it."
Katie Drummond: Wow.
Lauren Goode: And I loved it so much that I knew I wanted to own it. It's beautiful. It's beautifully done. It's based on a true story of a Brazilian congressman who is abducted during the military dictatorship. In Brazil that was at its peak in 1970, 1971. And really it's about his family too. It's about his wife, who's this incredibly strong woman in character, and their five children. And because it's the 1970s, the world is just different. Technology is limited, they have a family camcorder and that's really it. And the kids are just running around in their swimsuits all day long and things just feel simpler, but also complicated. And there are these scenes in the beginning where people are basically being rounded up by the military and you hear families having these conversations of, "Should we stay or should we go?" It's chilling, but it's a beautifully done film and so I highly recommend I'm Still Here. All right, what's your recommendation?
Michael Calore: I'm here to tell the people to watch Mountainhead. This is a fiction film that feels closer.
Lauren Goode: Just when I thought we were getting away from the tech bros.
Michael Calore: It's a fiction film from Jesse Armstrong who is the creator of Succession. This is a movie that he did for HBO. We're just calling it HBO. Everybody deal with it. It's a bro fest. It's about four tech founders who gather at the Mountain retreat for a social weekend to catch up. There's a strict no deals policy, but of course that policy goes by the wayside as soon as things start happening. The four principal actors are Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, and Ramy Youssef. And if you liked the witty back and forth and the weird absurdist drama in Succession, there's plenty of that here. It's also very much of the moment because the backstory that happens during the film is that the world is embroiled in a bunch of political chaos because of AI DeepFakes on social media that are very inflammatory politically.
Lauren Goode: Great. So also based on a true story is what you're saying.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Katie Drummond: I do want to watch that. I would like to watch it. I will watch it.
Michael Calore: It's not exactly a good time, but it is a rewarding time.
Lauren Goode: I also will watch Mountainhead, but I'm actually wondering, and Katie, while we have you on the podcast, if I can just ask you, does that count as work? Because I interview those-
Katie Drummond: No.
Lauren Goode: Bros all the time, and so I can just take two hours during the day and watch that, right? It's work.
Katie Drummond: Abso-fucking-lutely not.
Lauren Goode: All right, we answered that.
Katie Drummond: We sure did.
Lauren Goode: Ooh.
Michael Calore: Thanks for listening to Uncanny Valley . If you like what you heard today, make sure to follow our show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. If you'd like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, write to us at [e-mail]. Today's show is produced by Adriana Tapia and Kyana Moghadam. Amar Lal mixed this episode. Jake Lummus was our New York Studio engineer. Matt Giles fact-checked this episode. Jordan Bell is our executive producer. Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director. And Chris Bannon is the head of Global Audio.