Latest news with #ZoëSchiffer
WIRED
30-04-2025
- Business
- WIRED
A Tariff Standoff With China, Power Outages, and the End of Christmas
By Zoë Schiffer and Louise Matsakis Apr 30, 2025 12:21 PM On today's episode of Uncanny Valley , we break down how Trump's tariffs might threaten this year's holiday season. People work at a Christmas tree factory for export and domestic markets in Jinhua, China's eastern Zhejiang province on April 11, 2025. Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Photograph:President Trump's tariff standoff with China has caused chaos, confusion, and major delays for companies of all shapes and sizes. As everyone waits to see what happens next, some businesses that depend on international trade are already feeling major impacts, saying that they might not meet their production deadlines. And one of those deadlines is pretty important: Christmas. Today on the show, we're joined by WIRED's senior business editor Louise Matsakis to talk through the latest on tariffs. Mentioned in this episode: Donald Trump Is Already Ruining Christmas by Zeyi Yang OpenAI Adds Shopping to ChatGPT in a Challenge to Google by Reece Rogers The Agonizing Task of Turning Europe's Power Back On by Natasha Bernal You can follow Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer and Louise Matsakis on Bluesky at @lmatsakis. Write to us at uncannyvalley@ How to Listen You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for 'uncanny valley.' We're on Spotify too. Transcript Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley . I'm WIRED's Director of Business and Industry Zoë Schiffer. Well, we're 100 days in to Trump's second term in office and we're all waiting to see what happens with the tariff standoff with China. Especially for businesses of all sizes that absolutely depend on international trade. In some cases, the setbacks have been so significant that businesses with set production cycles are saying that might not even meet their deadlines. One of those deadlines is pretty important because it's Christmas. Today on the show, I'm joined by WIRED's Senior Business Editor Louise Matsakis to talk the latest on tariffs. Welcome to Uncanny Valley , Louise. Louise Matsakis: Hey, Zoë. Thanks for having me. Zoë Schiffer: Let's dive right in because we had some reporting on WIRED this week about Christmas specifically. I guess the first question to kick things off is is Christmas canceled? Louise Matsakis: Well, it definitely could be. I think that we're certainly in danger of missing a bunch of deadlines for, like you said, production cycles for things like artificial trees to be produced, decorations, toys for kids to put under the tree. All of those things start happening now in April. Zoë Schiffer: I think that that's a little bit counterintuitive for a lot of people. It definitely was for me when Zeyi, our reporter, started working on this story. The idea that these companies in the United States need to anticipate what they're going to need for Christmas now is mind-blowing. Louise Matsakis: Totally. If you think about it though, it makes a lot of sense. The first thing you need to do is negotiate with the suppliers, agree on designs, finalize product orders. Then it takes about two to three months for the manufacturing to actually happen. For all of those ornaments to be produced, for the decorations to put on, for everything to be packaged. Then it can take another one to two months just for those items to cross the Pacific Ocean and get to the US, and then be distributed to different retailers and warehouses across the country from there. That gets us to about mid-September to October. By, I feel like it gets earlier and earlier every year, but around November, Christmas stuff starts hitting shelves. Zoë Schiffer: It seems like there are also a bunch of products where consumers might be able to eat the cost, but when we're talking about ornaments, and trees, and stuff like that, you just really can't set the price that much higher, right? Louise Matsakis: Yeah. These are essentially non-essentials. These are the types of items that you don't necessarily need to buy, but that make life more fun, or perhaps make Christmas magical. Zoë Schiffer: Based on Zeyi's reporting, how are manufacturers doing right now? Louise Matsakis: There's two sides of the coin. On one side are the business owners, the retailers in the US, and then there are the manufacturers in China. The retailers are basically saying, "These tariffs are so high that we have to cancel or pause our orders." The manufacturers are saying, "Well, without orders, we have to close down our production lines." Or in a lot of cases, they're trying to pivot to other markets. Zeyi Yang, our senior China reporter, had this amazing anecdote about people in China who make Santa decorations, Santa figurines. They're trying to make Santa's face more European. Apparently, it's a slightly wider Santa in Europe that they prefer, an old-school Santa look. They're trying to pivot to making more figurines like that, instead of the chubby, jolly Santa that we prefer in the United States. Zoë Schiffer: Oh my gosh, okay. Is anyone winning as a result of these tariffs? Is this a total boon to people who manufacture ornaments in the United States? Or is that market just incredibly small? Louise Matsakis: I think aside from really small crafters who make ornaments and maybe other sorts of decorations here, it's basically a non-existent market. Even those crafters and small businesses, they're probably getting their craft supplies from China in the first place. This is not really benefiting any US manufacturing. There's not a renaissance of Christmas decorations happening. Zoë Schiffer: While I'm curious to see how this all plays out, I feel like if there's anything that will get Americans to riot in the streets, it's prices on Amazon going on, and/or their Christmas decorations getting too expensive. We'll take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the impact on ecommerce goods in particular. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . This weekend, we saw companies like Shein and Temu hike their prices as a result of Trump's 145% tariffs on China. Let's talk about the impact of tariffs on ecommerce. Louise, I feel like this is maybe a core area of expertise for you. Can you get us started? Louise Matsakis: Yes. What's happening on Shein and Temu is my personal Roman Empire. What we're seeing, particularly on Temu thus far, is that they are actually adding a line item when you go to check out that shows the price of the tariffs. Yesterday, I just added about $32 worth of random goods to my shopping cart, and then I could see that there was a $44 tariff charge that was added on top. I think that's a really savvy move because it shows consumers exactly why they're seeing a price increase. I think it's also helpful for Shein and Temu, which have been pivoting even before these tariffs were announced to other markets, like Europe and Latin America. Those goods can stay roughly the same price in those markets, but it's just the American consumers that will see that added charge near where you see the added taxes. Zoë Schiffer: Got it, okay. Obviously, that makes sense for logistical reasons. It's easier to just add a tariff charge than raise the price of individual goods. But is it also a way to subtly exert pressure on the Trump Administration, or am I over-interpreting things? Louise Matsakis: I don't think that you are. I think it sends a pretty clear political message. That these charges are because your country has these really high tariffs. I think it's definitely a subtle message that these companies are sending. I think Temu in particular is a mystery. They don't have any lobbyists on Capitol Hill. They rarely if ever respond to media requests from journalists like me. It's interesting to see them I think doing something that is politically savvy in this case, whereas most of the time they're either silent or they're policy decisions seem a little bit haphazard. Zoë Schiffer: Like you said, for at least Temu and Shein, it's a line item right now. We're not seeing the price of individual goods really change at this point. But is that true across the board, or are there some items in particular that we should be worried about? Louise Matsakis: The types of items that you should look out for are things that really can't be made anywhere else. That's stuff like electronics, anything that's plastic. A lot of stuff for parents. Strollers, baby gear, baby toys, baby clothes, all of those things are almost entirely made in China. These are also product categories where the margins are already pretty thin, so there's not that much wiggle room for the manufacturer or the American brand to eat the cost themselves. These are items that are often already somewhere between 10 to $30. Zoë Schiffer: Right, okay. Well, I won't put you on blast and make you talk about the things that you've stocked up on recently. Louise Matsakis: I'm happy to share with our dear readers that I sent Zoë a horrifying photo the other day of an ungodly number of makeup sponges that I panic ordered on Temu the other day, because I refuse to go back to spending, whatever, $11 that Sephora charges for one of these. Zoë Schiffer: 100%. This is a little bit of a pivot, but I feel like you and I have talked a lot about how it's not as simple as just opening up production facilities in the United States. There's a lot that goes into China being so dominant in the space. I'm wondering if you can just talk us through that briefly? Louise Matsakis: I think that there's this narrative that all these jobs left the United States and they went to China when China joined the World Trade Organization at the turn of the century. But that's a really simplistic narrative. The reality is that 20 years ago, a lot of the products that we're talking about right now, makeup sponges, iPhones, small electronics, the insulated Stanley cup that I'm looking at right now on my desk, these products literally did not exist. It's not as though these supply chains moved from the US to China, it's that they were built entirely from the ground up in China. That includes things like the machinery. How do you do an injection molding to make this plastic cup out of a mold? Those machines were built, designed, manufactured, and maintained in China from the time that they were invented. It's really difficult to move that entire supply chain to the US. In China, the government has totally organized itself around supporting this type of enterprise. Where, in the US, we just don't have any of that infrastructure in place, whether it's even the most basic things. Roads, ports, land available to open giant factories, talent pipelines. We don't have a high school you can go to here to become a garment worker, which is a very common thing in China. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I think it's so interesting, because I feel like prior to talking to you for many hours a day, I had the misconception that a lot of people have, that made in China was a synonym for cheaply made. But you've told me again and again that actually, the quality of manufacturing in China is far superior. When you talk to companies in the United States that have tried to source from the US versus China, what they'll say is that the US quality just absolutely isn't there. Louise Matsakis: Totally. I think it's just we don't have the supply chains in place. I think in China, you can definitely get cheap manufacturing, but I think that one thing people don't always understand is that if you're Walmart, your signature thing is that you have low prices. You're going to put pressure on your suppliers in China to ensure that prices remain low. If prices are low, then the manufacturing is not going to be high quality. I think that that's the type of retailer that a lot of people are historically familiar with when it comes to things made in China. But you can go to a much nicer store, and the stuff is still made in China and the prices are higher. It's just maybe less in your face or it's less discussed when you go to William Sonoma or to, back in the day we used to call Target Tar-jay when it was the nicer retailer. But it doesn't mean that it's coming from a different place, it just depends on the economics of that particular item. Zoë Schiffer: Then just getting back to the Christmas of it all, if they don't put in their orders now, those facilities in China that are working 24 hours or whatever, they conceivably would either have to pivot their manufacturing or lay people off. Which would mean that even if the tariff situation is resolved, we won't be able to get stuff back and working in a timeframe that would allow Christmas to proceed as usual. Louise Matsakis: Yeah, there's two things to consider here. One is that, let's say tomorrow, Trump totally changes his mind, which is perfectly possible. There's going to be a stampede to resume orders. All of a sudden, these factories that have been sitting idle for almost a month now are going to have to ramp up production immediately. Retailers are going to have to pay a premium to get space on that factory line, or to be prioritized, to have their orders made first and put on ships as quickly as possible. Prices are still going to be higher for consumers. The other thing is that if this goes on for too long and these workers and these factories don't have jobs anymore, a lot of them are going to go home. In many cases, these are migrant workers who come from more rural parts of China and they actually live onsite often at the factory. They live and work in the same place. They often do these long stints where they'll work six or sometimes seven days a week for a few months, and then take that money and go back where they're from, see their kids, see their families. If there's no more work, there's no reason for them to stay there. This isn't their home, this is not where they're from. It's really hard when that happens for factories to get those workers to come back immediately. Zoë Schiffer: Also, very hard to imagine even a remotely similar scenario playing out in the United States if we were able to open big manufacturing facilities here. Louise Matsakis: Yeah, I can't see that many Americans wanting to live in a dorm with 12 of their coworkers on the factory line. But let me know! Send me an email if you're interested in that setup for sure, because I would love to talk to you about it. Zoë Schiffer: We're going to take another quick break. Up next, our favorite reads on this week. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . I'm Zoë Schiffer, WIRED's director of business and industry. I'm joined today by WIRED's Senior Business Editor Louise Matsakis. Before we go, Louise, tell our listeners what they absolutely have to read on today. Other than the stories we mentioned in this piece, obviously. Louise Matsakis: Speaking of online shopping, OpenAI is now getting into the ecommerce business. I highly recommend people read Reese Rogers, another one of our AI reporters, did a deep dive on how OpenAI's new shopping integration works. It's super fascinating. I think it'll be really interesting if, in a few years, when we all want to buy something that is now much higher in price because of tariffs, maybe we all start asking ChatGPT how to find the best deal. Zoë Schiffer: I'm a little worried about this because I feel like one reason that I like ChatGPT's search so much better than Google's is because it doesn't have horrendous ads all over the place. I feel like we are inevitably inching closer to a world in which they look more similar. Louise Matsakis: Yeah, I agree. Zoë Schiffer: Okay. The piece that I want to recommend is Natasha Bernal's piece from yesterday about the major blackout that hit basically the entirety of Portugal and Spain, and also small regions of France. This was obviously major news that we woke up to yesterday. She had a really good angle on it, on basically how difficult it is to get the grid back up and running. Experts she talked to said it will take several hours to several days. There was a quote in there that it's like "assembling some hellishly complicated Ikea furniture." That's worrying. Louise Matsakis: That's a great recommendation, Zoë. Zoë Schiffer: That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Make sure to check out Thursday's episode of Uncanny Valley , which is about measles and the state of health in the United States under RFK, Jr. If you liked 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 for any questions, comments, or show suggestions, write to us at uncannyvalley@ Kyana Moghadam and Adriana Tapia produced this episode. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Jordan Bell is our executive producer. Conde Nast's Head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon. Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.
WIRED
23-04-2025
- Automotive
- WIRED
Is Tesla on the Outs in China?
By Zoë Schiffer and Zeyi Yang Apr 23, 2025 1:29 PM Despite being the biggest electric vehicle market in the world, China might decide it's had enough of Tesla. In this episode of Uncanny Valley , we break it all down. Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, April 10, 2025. Photograph:China has long been an important market for Tesla and for Elon Musk, but with the new US tariffs and rising competition in the electric vehicle market, Tesla may be on the outs in China. Today on the show, we're joined by senior writer Zeyi Yang to talk about what this means for Elon Musk's company. Mentioned in this episode: DOGE Is Building a Master Database to Surveil and Track Immigrants by Makena Kelly and Vittoria Elliott Stumbling and Overheating, Most Humanoid Robots Fail to Finish Half-Marathon in Beijing by Zeyi Yang You can follow Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer and Zeyi Yang on Bluesky at @zeyiyang. Write to us at uncannyvalley@ How to Listen You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for 'uncanny valley.' We're on Spotify too. Transcript Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley . I'm WIRED's Director of Business and Industry Zoë Schiffer. Today on the show, Tesla's troubles in China and what it means for Elon Musk's wallet. We're going to talk about how China is the biggest electric vehicle market in the world and has played a major role in Tesla's growth. But with the US tariffs and rising competition in the country, China may just be done with Tesla. We'll see. I'm joined today by Zeyi Yang, senior writer at WIRED. Zeyi, welcome to the show. Zeyi Yang: Thanks for having me, Zoë. Zoë Schiffer: Tesla is scheduled to release its first quarter earnings today, after a pretty grim quarter for the company's stock price. Can we just start with what are we expecting to see from these results? Because we're recording a few hours before they actually come out. Zeyi Yang: Exactly. I'm also looking for the result, too. But I think we already know that Tesla sales has doing pretty bad in Europe. It may have also been bad in the USA. Really, China may have been one of the last market where its sales are still doing relatively okay, but we're about to find out. I think from what I saw, the data collected by Chinese industry associates, they're saying that Tesla's doing still okay this year, mostly because of they release a new model of their car. But if not for that, maybe would have went down, too. Zoë Schiffer: Let's take a bit of a step back, because China has been a really important market for Tesla and for Elon Musk generally. He's a celebrity there and so is his mom, as you've reported. Zeyi Yang: Yes, she is. Zoë Schiffer: Can you talk to me about that relationship? And also, what is Tesla's standing like in China? Is it viewed as a popular, cool car still? Zeyi Yang: It's still sort of, because for the longest time, Chinese auto brands have been seen as much inferior than foreign brands. Tesla still has that halo on as this American electric car company. But it's losing it as we speak. Also, when we talk about the relationship between Tesla and China, sometimes I forget how far back it dates. There's one very interesting figure we have to talk about. His name is Zhuanglong. He used to be Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technologies. Basically, the chief ministry of innovations in China. He went to San Francisco in 2008 and tried one of the roadsters, one of the first electric cars that Tesla makes. Because he came from the auto industry, he was an electric car nerd. That's how this all started. Then, from Musk's very first visit to China in 2014, he met this guy again. He really tried to push for it to sell his car in China, and later we know built a Gigafactory in Shanghai in 2020. That's a long history of how Musk and Tesla entered China. But what we know for now is that China is one of the most production facility for Tesla. It's also one of the biggest market for Tesla. Tesla absolutely cannot lose China. Zoë Schiffer: That's really fascinating, because we know with other tech companies like Google and Meta, they tried really, really hard to get into China and weren't quite as successful, or completely failed in some cases. But Elon Musk was able to prevail. Do we know why that was? Zeyi Yang: I think it helps that he's working on a car company instead of a social media company, because there's just so much stricter control over information and internet in China. Whereas if you're just making a car, it don't really go across those red lines that China has. Also, it just helps that China, for the last two decades, have really been thinking, "Maybe I should be betting on electric vehicle as the future of transportation, too." It did welcome Tesla to be a part of its grand experiment, and also investment to build up an EV empire. That's why Tesla become a very central part of it and contributed to how China has achieved so far. Zoë Schiffer: Well, that leads right into my next question, because China has invested really heavily in electric vehicles. In part, I think, to reduce its dependency on foreign oil imports. How is that going so far? Zeyi Yang: It's going pretty well, I will say. Yeah. China does not have very rich oil reserve and it has been importing oil from a lot of other places for the longest time. That's why the Chinese government have always been very careful about that, because if, for example, a World War III happens, those oil supply are going to be cut off. What is it going to do? I think in the early days, I will say the early 2000s, the idea of electric vehicles was this moonshot idea. Where they were thinking, "Maybe, if one day all the cars will be powered by electricity, then we don't need to import this oil anymore and we'll be much more secure if war breaks out." That's when they really started investing in the research of batteries and electric vehicles as a college research funds. But then, that gradually lead to Chinese companies building up. They heavily subsidize any car company who can make actually a product that get run on the road and customers can buy. All of that, after years of heavy spending, lead to what we have right now, which is a very booming electric vehicle market in China. I think the latest data says that more than 50% of consumers when they're trying to buy a new car, they go for electric rather than a gas car. That's pretty remarkable. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, that's really interesting. It's also something we're hearing a lot about now. We're seeing people close to President Trump saying, "Hey, look at China. They really help their homegrown tech companies, and now China seems to be beating us in key markets." It's this idea that perhaps the US government should have a friendlier relationship with the tech companies that are created in the United States. Zeyi Yang: Well, I will say it's more of a love and hate relationship between the Chinese government and their homegrown companies, because we definitely have seen the honeymoon eras where they subsidize them, where they get the domestic market and driven out all of the foreign competitors. But also, there are periods, I think around 2020, when they really cracked down on the tech companies like Alibaba and Tencent. It can backfire. The government can help you, but it can also destroy you. Zoë Schiffer: Okay. Who is Tesla's biggest competition in the country right now? Which cars are we seeing become more popular than Tesla? Zeyi Yang: There are so many, I will say dozens are EV brands in China right now. The biggest probably is BYD, just because of its sheer size. BYD, a Chinese company, that started really by making batteries and small electronics, now is I think the biggest electric vehicle companies in the world in terms of the number of cars they sell. Bigger than Tesla. Of course, they're growing in China and they're selling their cars much cheaper and in much more varieties in China. But we're also seeing there are a few more electric car, I will call it startups because they were funded in the last 10 years or so, but still they are big players in the Chinese market now, too. They are Neo, they are Li Auto. These companies have really rosen up from having nothing and becoming a big player, pushing for affordable and also capable cars to the market now. Zoë Schiffer: When we hone in on BYD specifically, what is that car like compared to a Tesla? I guess, I want your subjective opinion now. Are they better or are they just cheaper? Zeyi Yang: I think the biggest thing is that they come in more variety. You will get a very cheap car, for example, I don't know, a Toyota Corolla, something similar to that, but in an EV form by BYD. Or if you want a luxury SUV, you want something that you can show off to your friends, BYD offers that, too. Where Tesla really only have, what, three models being offered right now? It's hard to compete with them when you know consumers want very different things. The other thing I find really interesting is that because, I guess Chinese EV companies are already pretty confident with the quality of their car now, they're going for those very niche, very weird applications. They're making cars that can run in water, like turn into a boat. They're making cars that can allow you to play computer games, and they even have a hotpot in there. Not everyone's going to use it like that, but maybe someone will see that and be like, "I want a car that allow me to do that once in a year." Zoë Schiffer: Oh my gosh. Well, as someone who really liked the show Pimp My Ride on MTV when I was younger, maybe this was what I need in my life. We'll be right back. When we return, what does this mixed economic outlook mean for Elon Musk's wallet? The outlook seems mixed for Elon Musk's future in China, or Tesla's future in China I should say. What does this mean him, and specifically his overall wealth? Zeyi Yang: I will say that, first of all, he really wants to make sure the factory in Shanghai keeps producing more cars, because it is the most productive plant in Tesla. He wants it to keep churning out cars. But if the foreign demand doesn't catch up, then what are these cars for? We know right now it's mostly for I would say the European market and also the Chinese domestic market. He's proud that these factories are running 24/7. If that doesn't happen, it would really hurt Tesla's Shanghai factory's efficiency and that would not be good for him. Zoë Schiffer: Musk is in an interesting position with his business interests in China, particularly as the Trump Administration gets more antagonistic toward the Chinese Communist Party. Can you talk about that a little bit? And also, how do you see that playing out? Zeyi Yang: I think the whole development's very fascinating to me. One thing I want to mention right now is that, obviously everyone's talking about the tariffs. The Chinese government and Chinese people hate that Trump is slapping at 145% tariff on Chinese imports. Musk actually doesn't like that. He said it publicly on X, that he doesn't think the tariffs are a good idea. That is because if you are a multinational company doing business in US and China, you are going to be impacted by those tariffs. Even though we know that the cars made in the Shanghai factory aren't exactly shipped to the United States, but maybe they're trading car parts in emergencies maybe, or there's some kind of business developed between the countries that will be cut off by these tariffs. That's not good new for him. I think that's a good example to show that, even though we know Musk and Trump are in this very close alliance, there's still diverging interests between them. How to handle business deals with China, how to handle the private sector connections with China, that is one thing I think they will disagree on. Zoë Schiffer: We know from other reporting that Elon tried to privately lobby Trump against the tariffs on China, and ultimately he appears to have been unsuccessful, at least so far. It's interesting to see it play out, because those of these men seem very interested in their own bottom line and their own business interests. When those interests align, they get along really well, but China is this point where they seem to diverge, like you said, quite intensely. I'm curious if that will become a breaking point in the relationship, or if they'll be able to resolve their differences. Zeyi Yang: Yeah. The other thing I want to point out is that, for the longest time, China, both the Chinese people and the government, have really viewed Musk as one of their friends. They came here, helped us prop up the electric vehicle industry, and are still contributing a lot of tax dollar from their Shanghai Tesla factory. Now I think they're in a bit of figuring out what's their new attitude to Musk. It's like, "He's still doing all of those things. His company is still contributing to our economy." But at the same time, he's a close ally of Trump that's absolutely wreaking havoc to our economy. What do we see there? When I go on social media and just watch how people comment about Musk, I see a lot of mix there. There's people who still see him as the future of technology. But then there are people who are like, "Why don't you say something about the tariffs?" Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. It's so interesting. It'll be very curious to see whether his celebrity status starts to fade. Or even, we've seen in the United States and Europe, if this symbol of what a Tesla means, it used to be this very cool, environmental symbol, become something different altogether. We've all seen those bumper stickers that are like, "I bought this Tesla before Elon Musk went crazy," or whatever. Zeyi Yang: Yeah. Zoë Schiffer: I think the point where we know it's really shifted is when Maye Musk's popularity starts to decline, because you've reported that she's an enormous celebrity in China. Zeyi Yang: Oh, that would be a big change, for sure. I don't see that happening yet, but maybe soon. Zoë Schiffer: We're going to take another short break. When we come back, we'll share our recommendations for what to check out on this week. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . I'm Zoë Schiffer, WIRED's director of business and industry. I'm joined by WIRED's Senior Writer Zeyi Yang. Before we take off, Zeyi, tell our listeners what they absolutely need to read on today. Zeyi Yang: I will say it's the story about how DOGE is building a massive immigration database by my colleagues Mackena and Victoria. I read the story on Monday morning when I was just coming back from work and my head was blown. I was like, "Oh, wow." It's connecting so many dots of our previous DOGE reporting, including some by you, Zoë. I remember when I was reading all of those previous reporting, I was thinking that, "Why do they want all of this data? What is it going to be of use to them?" Now, when we're finally connecting dots and be like, "Hey, maybe this is what they were going for," I think that's such a much better explainer of the whole DOGE operation to me. The last thing is that, I don't know, there are just so many granular details in that story. Absolutely everyone should read it. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I completely agree. I think one thing we were wondering from the very early days of DOGE, because we saw them sucking up all of this data, or at least accessing it in a lot of different ways. The question was why, like you said. Now we know at least one use might be to track people coming into this country. Zeyi Yang: I have to say that, as someone from China, this is something people are always afraid of the Chinese government doing. They're saying that, "Well, you obviously have a lot of data of the Chinese people already. Please do not connect them and build into a central database to surveil everyone." Now we're seeing a similar kind of thing being built in the US and that makes me even more scared. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, completely. Okay. Well, my recommendation is a story that you wrote. You took your Saturday and probably some of your Friday to write about this humanoid robot half-marathon. It was a half-marathon that humans were running in, but also about 21 robots were running in. I think it was the first time we've seen this happen. You wrote this really charming, funny, scary at points dispatch from the race. Maybe because you're here, you can just give us a little bit of an overview, because the robots didn't do that well, right? Zeyi Yang: No. Unfortunately, no. I was expecting them to do a little bit better, but no. Basically, on Saturday morning in China, this was this half-marathon race in Beijing where 21 robot teams participated. Only six of them actually finished the race, and only one of them made it into the cut of time for human athletes. From that you know, they're not doing great. But also, just the literal ways that they fall and fail, it's hilarious. One of them, I remember so clearly. First of all, I don't think it actually worked. It used propellers, like drone propellers to push the robot forward. It immediately lost its direction, twirled in two circles, and fell. And dragged down the human operators too, which was really, really painful. I think it's a good example of saying that robots can do impressive things now, like for example finishing a half-marathon. But at the same time, there are a lot of problems we need to address. Definitely not every company is getting to that level. Zoë Schiffer: Honestly, it comforts me a little bit that there are some things that they're still worse at than humans, although I'm sure it will change soon. That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Make sure to check out Thursday's episode of Uncanny Valley , which is about protecting yourself from phone searches at the US border. 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 for any questions, comments, or show suggestions, write to us at uncannyvalley@ Kyana Moghadam and Adriana Tapia produced this episode. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Pran Bandi was our New York studio engineer. Jordan Bell is our executive producer. Conde Nast's head of global audio is Chris Bannon. Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.
WIRED
16-04-2025
- Business
- WIRED
Will Meta Really Have to Sell Instagram and WhatsApp?
People stand in line to enter the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Court House on April 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Photograph: Chip Somodevilla The trial between the US Federal Trade Commission and Meta began this week—and the future of the company is at stake. The FTC wants Meta to sell off two prized assets, Instagram and WhatsApp, arguing that it acquired them illegally to suppress competition. Today on the show, senior writer Paresh Dave joins host Zoë Schiffer to discuss what we know right now about the government's case—and what we learned when Mark Zuckerberg took the stand Monday. Articles mentioned in this episode: FTC v Meta Trial: The Future of Instagram and WhatsApp Is at Stake, by Paresh Dave You can follow Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer and Paresh Dave on Bluesky at @peard33. Write to us at uncannyvalley@ How to Listen You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for 'Uncanny Valley.' We're on Spotify too. Transcript Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley . I'm WIRED's director of business and industry, Zoë Schiffer. Today on the show, we're talking about the FTC versus Meta trial. The US Federal Trade Commission is alleging that Meta illegally acquired Instagram and WhatsApp in an effort to suppress competition, and it wants to force Meta to spin off those assets into separate entities. Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg took the stand to defend his company. We're going to get into it today. I'm joined by Paresh Dave, senior writer at WIRED, to talk about the trial. Paresh, welcome to Uncanny Valley . Paresh Dave: Hey. Thanks, Zoë. Zoë Schiffer: Paresh, before we get started, what's the big story here? Paresh Dave: The FTC is trying to get Facebook to sell off WhatsApp and Instagram. That's huge. Zoë Schiffer: That's a big deal. Let's start with what the FTC is actually arguing here, because this is something you and I have talked about in recent days. What's the theory of the case? Paresh Dave: It's a couple of things. One, that Facebook has a long-standing monopoly on providing what's known in the FTC's parlance as personal social networking services in the US. We all know Facebook is a social media platform, but what kind of social media platform is it? In the FTC's view, it competes with Snapchat and this little-known thing called MiWi that are about connecting with friends and family. In the FTC's argument, TikTok, YouTube, all these other social media services we know of are not competitors to Facebook because those are about watching creators, not really about connecting with family and friends. One, the FTC has to establish that Facebook has this monopoly on personal social networking services, and the judge has to go along with that being the right market here. And then two, the argument is that Facebook made these acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp over a decade ago, and that the acquisitions harmed competition, being they were meant to take out competitors in this space of personal social networking services in the US. Consumers and advertisers are worse off as a result, that there's more ads that consumers are seeing. Worse advertising services. Consumers have less privacy because if there was more competition, Facebook wouldn't be able to get away with taking as much of our data. Issues like that are why the FTC say that this is a trial worth pursuing. Zoë Schiffer: I laughed when you were talking about it only because the definition of that market seems a little bit absurd to me. The idea that TikTok isn't a competitor seems like something maybe only the FTC believes. Paresh Dave: It does, but the FTC points to these emails from early Facebook days, right after Mark Zuckerberg created it, where he says Facebook is about connecting with family and friends. The argument being that Facebook kind of changed and evolved because it didn't have competition. And that's fuzzy, too, because we also know that Facebook copied a lot of what other companies did, but that's now for the judge to decide what the right market definition is. He was skeptical early on when this case was first filed by the FTC, and the FTC had to amend it. But if we land on this personal social networking services in the US, then Facebook commands 80 percent of that market, in the FTC's view. Zoë Schiffer: Interesting. And what is Meta's argument? What's its pushback to the FTC's case? Paresh Dave: Well, the first one is what we just talked about. The FTC is defining this market too narrowly, and Facebook faces tons of competition, including from TikTok in particular, and that when TikTok went down back in January as a result of the TikTok ban and the Biden-Trump transition, and there was that 12- to 14-hour period where TikTok was gone, a lot of TikTok users migrated to Facebook, is the argument. And so, Facebook is a substitute, and therefore they are competitors. Another argument is that consumers aren't actually worse off, that Instagram and WhatsApp would not have been what they are today without Meta's help, that they were these small startups with very few employees. Facebook showered them with millions of dollars a year, potentially to the tune of well over billions of dollars now, and that these services could not have thrived to the point that they are today with billions of users. And that the email in which Zuckerberg says that Facebook is about connecting with friends and family, that these acquisitions were about taking out competition, that those are all irrelevant because intent doesn't matter. What matters is whether the market has less competition, and Facebook's argument is the market doesn't have less competition, that there's very much all this competition. Zoë Schiffer: And we are expecting Instagram founder, Kevin Systrom, to testify at some point, right? Paresh Dave: Yeah. He's on the witness list, as are some of the venture capitalists involved that supported Instagram and WhatsApp early on. Zoë Schiffer: We know that Mark Zuckerberg was trying to really do, it seemed, everything in his power to make sure this trial did not happen. He was reportedly trying to make a last-minute deal with President Trump, and he's been cozying up to Trump in recent months. What has that looked like? Paresh Dave: You could imagine he of course wants to make a deal, because we're talking about two important assets for Facebook. Imagine losing that. He's trying to do whatever he can to, one, just save face and not have to have his dirty laundry aired at a big trial, but also save these two pieces of his empire. Zuckerberg, we've seen him relax Facebook and Meta policies that Republicans have criticized. He got personally involved in settling this lawsuit that Trump had filed against the company after it had banned his account back in 2021. And then Meta, which hadn't donated to Trump's first inauguration fund, did donate to Trump's second inauguration fund back in January. He's made all these overtures to try to warm this relationship, and they met a few times in recent months, but it doesn't seem like any deal was reached since the trial began. Zoë Schiffer: Right. And even that lawsuit settlement … I've seen it described as a frivolous lawsuit. In some ways, you could categorize that as a campaign donation of sorts. That's really helpful context. We are going to take a short break, and we'll be right back. Yesterday was day one of the trial. The FTC gave its opening remarks and so did the company, and then the star witness, Mark Zuckerberg, took the stand. Let's start with what we learned from that testimony. Paresh Dave: The government has begun its questioning of Mark Zuckerberg, and a lot of this case potentially hinges on what Zuckerberg wrote in emails and memos many, many years ago. And the government has been trying to get Zuckerberg to say that Facebook was meant to be about connecting friends and family, and that Facebook made these acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram to take out competitors, that they were freaking out because the world was moving to apps, and Facebook's apps kind of sucked. People didn't want to use them. They were buggy, and Facebook was losing out in areas like photo sharing that Instagram was just starting to really not dominate, but really taking off. And then WhatsApp was doing great in messaging, and Facebook's messaging plan was kind of all over the place. And so they needed these acquisitions. They took out competitors so they didn't have to build things themselves. And then there's this one email in which Zuckerberg says it's better to buy than compete. And so, the FTC is trying to really pin down Zuckerberg on some of these emails and what his thinking was. That was sort of day one. Zoë Schiffer: That was Mark Zuckerberg's testimony. He's probably going to be called up again. Who else could be called up as a witness? What should we expect as the trial continues in the coming weeks? Paresh Dave: The exact schedule isn't public, but we expect executives from competitors, such as Google, YouTube, antitrust experts, professors, to talk about that personal social networking services market. And even, I think, a big appearance could be former Facebook executive, Sheryl Sandberg. Zoë Schiffer: I would be curious for her specifically to take the stand. I feel like this is kind of beside the point from the anticompetitive allegations, but Mark Zuckerberg has, well, in an effort, I think to ingratiate himself to Trump, rolled back a lot of the DEI efforts that Sheryl Sandberg kind of touted as core parts of her platform when she was at the company. And they've made a big show of still being friendly, but I would expect inside maybe Sheryl feels a bit different about Mark than she used to. Paresh Dave: And I'm sure she's been involved with the months of prep that Meta has reportedly been engaged in for this trial. You could expect that they will all be on the same page here. Zoë Schiffer: Right. Right. What happens if Meta is successful here, if Meta wins? Paresh Dave: Well, it kind of is that nothing changes. If Meta wins, they get to keep WhatsApp and Instagram. They don't have to sell them off. Does it really send a message that the FTC should sort of not pursue actions like this where they try to unwind acquisitions from super long ago? Probably not, because the FTC doesn't usually pursue cases like this anyway, so it's sort of the status quo continues. And for startups, maybe not so great because Meta is going to be as dominant as ever. Zoë Schiffer: What happens if the FTC wins? Paresh Dave: That's the big one. There would be a second trial to determine remedies. What are the penalties that Meta should face? Should they be forced to divest Instagram and WhatsApp? Should they be blocked from doing similar acquisitions in the future? Should they be forced to share data with startups or other competitors to increase competition in the social media market? Those are all possible remedies, and the judge would basically decide what to order at a second trial. Zoë Schiffer: It could be a while before we see anything happen with Instagram and WhatsApp even if Meta does lose. Paresh Dave: Exactly. And add in appeals if Meta loses. Certainly, they would appeal. If the FTC loses, unclear if they would appeal, but could be years more. Zoë Schiffer: What stands out to you in all of this? You've reported on Big Tech for a long time. There've been various attempts to break up companies in the past. I'm curious. What's the big top-line information for you right now? Paresh Dave: To me, it kind of underscores how important it is for the FTC and the DOJ, the Department of Justice, which are the two big antitrust regulators in the US at the federal level. It sort of underscores how important it is for them to review these deals before they are finalized and consummated. I know predicting the future isn't easy. It's a tough job for regulators to balance innovation and competition and what the future is going to look like, but there's plenty of antitrust experts who believe both are possible so that we're not in this position again where we're talking about deals from 13 years ago, 11 years ago. Imagine how hard it is for a company to plan into the future if the government all of a sudden can come in and say, "You need to break up these acquisitions that you did so long ago." And then on top of that, how fast the tech industry moves. If the FTC's view of the world is to believe so many startups over the last decade could have existed or thrive that never did, it is just unimaginable in some ways. We need to get better at reviewing these deals ahead of time. Zoë Schiffer: I think that's really smart. And it's also true that Meta has done a lot to integrate the backends of these apps. It says it's to make it easier for people to talk between the different apps or view content between the different apps, but it also could have been a strategy to make unwinding these acquisitions incredibly difficult on a technical level. Paresh Dave: Absolutely. The timing when some of those moves were first announced was viewed as kind of suspicious because it was right around when these investigations into Meta and these cases started getting filed against Big Tech companies. Zoë Schiffer: We're going to take one more short break. And when we come back, we'll tell you what to check out on this week. Zoë Schiffer: Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . I'm Zoë Schiffer, WIRED's director of business and industry. I'm joined today by WIRED senior writer Paresh Dave. Before we go, Paresh, can you tell our listeners about what they have to read on today other than the stories we mentioned in this episode already? Paresh Dave: Yes. Smishing Triad, the scam group stealing the world's riches. Zoë Schiffer: Is Smishing a phishing variant? Paresh Dave: It's a combination of phishing with SMS. Smishing, yes. Zoë Schiffer: Smishing. Got it, got it, got it. Paresh Dave: I'm sure we've all gotten those text messages about, "You got to pay this toll road fee," or some parcel can't be delivered properly. Very annoying. I still get them all the time. I don't know why our phones can't stop this, but this story by our colleague, Matt Burgess, talks about how a lot of these messages, which are called sort of smishing messages, originate from this group of cyber criminals that is actually constantly improving their scamming software. The cybersecurity does not have the upper hand here. And my takeaway was we are going to get more and more of these messages before it gets better. And this article is part of a WIRED series, Guide to the Most Dangerous Hackers You've Never Heard Of. And this is dangerous, right? There are people who type in their credit card numbers in reply to these text messages and get all their money stolen. It's not great. Zoë Schiffer: I feel like after I started at WIRED, I started getting messages purporting to be from company executives asking me to input personal information, which was well timed because I had just started a new job. I was like, 'I don't know if they text me.' But no. Paresh Dave: Maybe it was our cybersecurity team testing us. I don't know. I had that too. Zoë Schiffer: They do that from time to time. Paresh Dave: And what about you, Zoë? What are you recommending this week? Zoë Schiffer: Well, in addition to your wonderful prewrite about the trial, which everyone should read and gives people kind of a good overview of what we should expect, we also published a piece just this morning by Caroline Haskins, another writer on the business desk at WIRED, about a New Mexico man who faces federal charges for allegedly setting fire to a Tesla showroom. This is part of the Tesla protest indictments that are happening. Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and Trump and Elon Musk have all called for the people who are engaged in violent acts against Tesla property to be charged with really, really serious crimes. And this is the second time that we know of that the FBI terrorism investigators have gotten involved in an investigation tied to the kind of public backlash against Elon Musk and Tesla in particular. Bondi said that the man in question would be going to prison for 20 years or more, even though he hasn't yet been convicted. We have a lot of detail on the allegations in the case, things that we found in the arrest warrant, and it's a really good kind of overview of what's happening on that. Paresh, thank you so much for joining me today. Paresh Dave: Thanks for having me. Zoë Schiffer: That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Make sure to check out Thursday's episode of Uncanny Valley , which is all about surveillance technology, protests, and how to safely navigate physical and online spaces during this moment. If you liked 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 for any questions, comments, or show suggestions, write to us at uncannyvalley@ Kyana Moghadam and Adriana Tapia produced this episode. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Pran Bandi was our New York Studio engineer. Jordan Bell is our executive producer. Condé Nast Head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon. And Katie Drummond is WIRED's Global Editorial Director.
WIRED
09-04-2025
- Business
- WIRED
Market Madness, Manufacturing, and the Liberation Day of It All
By Zoë Schiffer and Louise Matsakis Apr 9, 2025 3:49 PM Donald Trump's tariffs announcements are roiling the markets. On this week' special episode of Uncanny Valley , we break it all down. A monitor displays stock market information on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Friday, April 4, 2025. Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Photograph:If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. Learn more. WIRED's Louise Matsakis joins Zoë Schiffer, WIRED's Director of Business & Industry, to talk about this week's market madness and why the US probably won't have armies of people screwing little screws into iPhones anytime soon. Articles mentioned in this episode: Trump Tariffs Hit Antarctic Islands Inhabited by Zero Humans and Many Penguins by Caroline Haskins and Leah Feiger Trump and DOGE Defund Program That Boosted American Manufacturing for Decades by Paresh Dave and Louise Matsakis You can follow Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer and Louise Matsakis on Bluesky at @lmatsakis. Write to us at uncannyvalley@ How to Listen You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for 'uncanny valley.' We're on Spotify too. Transcript Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley . I'm WIRED's Director of Business and Industry, Zoë Schiffer. Today on the show we talk about this week's market madness and the impact of Trump's tariffs. I'm joined today by WIRED's Senior Business Editor, Louise Matsakis, the person I talk to a hundred thousand times a day about everything going on in our newsroom. Welcome to Uncanny Valley , Louise. Louise Matsakis: Hey, Zoë. I'm glad to be here. Zoë Schiffer: So let's jump right in with Monday morning, because yesterday we both logged on to the Slack account and saw this tweet from Walter Bloomberg, an aggregator account on X, saying that President Trump was considering a 90-day pause on the tariffs he had announced just last week. The markets reacted pretty wildly, so, Louise, take us through that. Louise Matsakis: Yeah. Basically there was this enormous swing, so the markets plunged, and then they turned around, and then they plunged again. And I think that this is just a sign of how volatile things are right now in the global economy. Walter Bloomberg is kind of like one of these accounts on Elon Musk's X that is sort of like a scourge, I would say. I think his avatar was like stolen from some Russian guy, and it's totally unrelated. I think that this just shows how muddled the messaging is from the White House about this. I think that the reason that the markets responded so immediately and so intensely is that it sounded like something that Trump might do. Like some people in the administration have framed this as a negotiating tactic and that the tariffs are going to be reversed and that it was just sort of this provocative measure, whereas other people are saying, "No, this is our strategy. We're not going to back down," like, "No, these tariffs are here to stay." And this account usually just kind of steals headlines from mainstream news organizations and puts them in all caps. But in this case, Walter, I doubt that's the actual name of the person running this account, but whoever is behind it, I think misinterpreted maybe a news appearance by a cabinet official. I'm not actually sure exactly what they were pulling from. Zoë Schiffer: I think what happened is that he had seen something on the Bloomberg Terminal that was pulling from something that had come from CNBC, which, in turn, was kind of an unconfirmed report that had been floating around X so like one thing led to another. But two questions. We don't know actually who is behind this account, and it doesn't appear to be affiliated with Bloomberg News, right? Louise Matsakis: No. Yeah, we should be clear. This has nothing to do with Michael Bloomberg, and I think that they took that last name to try and launder some credibility. Literally, we're just talking about an anonymous Twitter account that is moving trillions of dollars' worth of value in the market. Zoë Schiffer: And if anyone knows who this person is, we're all ears. So this is coming off last week's big tariff announcement. Can we just talk briefly about what that announcement was and why a tweet like Walter Bloomberg, quote unquotes, would have such a big impact? Like what was actually announced? Louise Matsakis: Yeah. So last Wednesday, which President Trump named Liberation Day, he announced tariffs on, literally, every country in the world, except for a group of countries that I would consider sort of the main US adversaries. So there were no tariffs on Russia, North Korea and Belarus. But some of the countries that were hit the hardest were actually the closest allies to the US, like South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, and a bunch of other countries which are seeing tariff rates, I think, as high as like I think over 30%. I believe China's among the highest, and they were hit with a 34% tariff, and then everybody else got at least 10%. Zoë Schiffer: Got it. Okay. And there were a couple like immediately funny things about this announcement. Aside from the Liberation Day of it all, Trump seems to love branding things, there was also like a 10% tariff that was put on these Antarctic islands, which are populated by like truly zero humans and many penguins, which we reported on last week. And then there was also the kind of hilarity around how the tariffs appeared to have been calculated. Louise Matsakis: Totally. So yeah, the Heard and McDonald Islands, which I'd never heard of before, are off the coast of Australia. Australia kind of claims that they belong to them, but they're basically only inhabited by penguins and seals, and they got hit with a 10% tariff as well, which immediately turned into a huge meme. It was really funny to see members of the Trump administration like retroactively try and justify this. So you saw Howard Lutnick say, "Well, we don't want China to take cargo and route it through the Heard and McDonald Islands and, therefore, try to avoid tariffs." It should be said that there are no ports for cargo ships to land on these uninhabited islands. There is simply nowhere to store said cargo. There is no one to pick it up. I don't think that the penguins are getting into the logistics business. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, they had come out with this baseline 10% tariff, and then the countries that you mentioned earlier got additional tariffs put on top of that. And it appeared that the way that they had made these calculations was by dividing US goods like trade deficit with a country by the total value of the US imports from that country, and then cutting that number in half, which resulted in whatever the percentage was, which is just like a hilarious way to do things. Louise Matsakis: Yeah. Sorry, I got distracted by the penguins and bad tariff math and poor economics was less interesting to me than imagining tiny little birds taking goods off of cargo ships. But yes, exactly. It was sort of this very simplistic calculation, which looks at like, okay, if you export a billion goods to Vietnam, let's say they sell us 2 billion goods. So you would just divide that 2 billion by 1 billion and you would get 1 billion and you cut that in half. So that would be whatever, like a 0.5% tariff in this case or whatever it is. So just this really sort of crude math that doesn't actually represent the underlying trade dynamic. But the Trump administration, basically, if there was a trade deficit with the country, they said, "Oh, you're treating the US unfairly." And just to give you a really good example of like why this makes no sense, I think a really good place to look is Lesotho, which is this landlocked country that is inside of South Africa, one of the poorest places in the world, not really somewhere where people are buying, say Google Ads, not really somewhere where people are buying iPhones, the sorts of things that the US exports. However, there are diamonds there. And so we buy a lot of diamonds from Lesotho in order to make engagement rings. So that seems like a trade imbalance, right? We're buying more diamonds than they're buying goods and services from the US, but it's like, we're not going to grow diamonds. There's no diamond mines here, right? Zoë Schiffer: Right. Louise Matsakis: We're a wealthy country. Zoë Schiffer: Also, just like a trade deficit seems like not necessarily a bad thing. It seems like kind of a natural thing in an environment where different countries are of radically different sizes and producing radically different things. Like that doesn't necessarily seem like something nefarious is going on. Louise Matsakis: Yeah, I totally agree. It's also a reflection of the fact that Americans consume a lot, and we have really high wages. And so we consume a lot more in goods and services every day than the average worker around the world. And that's a reflection of our wealth, not a reflection of some sort of like underlying unfairness. Zoë Schiffer: So talk to me about the theory of the case here. Because we were texting over the weekend when a favorite member of Trump's cabinet, Howard Lutnick, Commerce Secretary, went on Face the Nation and he said, quote, "The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to be coming to America." Louise, I know you, so I know you have thoughts on this. Let's hear them. Louise Matsakis: Yes, that is an absolutely beautiful quote that I really want to put on a hat or a T-shirt or a bumper sticker. Just an absolutely incredible picture that Secretary Lutnick is painting there. There's two basic camps within the Trump administration here, and I think that that's part of why you're seeing this confusion because these two camps are sort of warring with one another. They're both going on TV. So in one camp is the Art of the Deal crowd. Let's call them that. The Art of the Deal people say Trump is the ultimate negotiator. This is an incredibly provocative measure. These tariffs are a starting point, and the goal is not to keep the tariffs this high, but to create a new world economy where the US is not ripped off by these unfair trade deficits, and we're ushering in sort of a new world where the US is treated more fairly, we throw our power around, and you're going to see things change quickly. I would say that this is the camp that the false Walter Bloomberg tweet was speaking to. The other camp, maybe let's call them Armies of iPhone Workers, believes that the actual goal here is not to remove the tariffs or just to use them as a negotiating tactic. Sure, we can definitely get some concessions from other countries along the way. Maybe the tariffs will be adjusted over time. But broadly, the tariffs are going to stay in place because the point of them is to have a manufacturing renaissance in the US, and to genuinely have maybe not people assembling iPhones, but to have all sorts of industries come back to the United States. They've been pretty vague about like exactly which industries they want to prioritize here. But the idea here is honestly, I think it's kind of outgrowth in some ways of masculine Twitter, the backlash among like certain populations of the US that feel like in particular men with only a high school diploma have been sort of gotten the short change of globalization. So the idea is to harken back to this era where the man went to work and had a manly job, putting tiny screws into iPhones and provided for his family doing something like that, instead of having a, quote unquote, feminine email job. So that's the other camp. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Okay. Well, I definitely want to get into the manufacturing of it all, and I think we're going to touch on that in the next segment. But we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Louise Matsakis. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . So let's talk about some of the impacts, both of the tariffs and the market madness that followed. From your reporting, how is this hitting small businesses and manufacturing? Louise Matsakis: So these tariffs are a disaster for basically every kind of small business that you can imagine. So your local coffee shop is importing beans from Indonesia and Colombia. A clothing manufacturer, the boutique down the street, they're importing clothes from China, from Vietnam, from Cambodia, potentially also Bangladesh and places like that. And I think really, it's not necessarily the tariff rate. Obviously, trying to figure out how your small business that's probably already running on pretty thin margins is going to absorb 30% more in costs, obviously it's a big deal, but what the real problem is, is the uncertainty. So these tariffs were announced really suddenly. While Trump was talking about them, no one knew how high they might be. I saw some reporting from the Washington Post that actually indicated that they were still deliberating how high the tariffs were going to be and how they were going to be calculated hours before Trump's announcement. They moved around the time of the announcement. They ended up doing it after the markets closed, I think, because they knew there was going to be this big crash. So what that means is, for example, let's say you make shoes. You're a US-based shoe designer, but you produce your shoes in China. These kinds of businesses, they work months, sometimes a year, a full year, 12 months in advance. And so they've already set their prices, they've already talked to buyers, the retailers that are going to carry their shoes, they've already agreed on a price for the next season. Like right now, a shoe manufacturer is producing maybe like fall shoes at the earliest, but probably their winter shoes have already gone into production, or they're at least negotiating with manufacturers right now. And their summer shoes, those were priced five, six months ago. And in some cases, those summer shoes, they're already on a ship. So you've already paid your manufacturers for them, and that ship is coming, and suddenly like if that ship's coming from China, you're going to have to pay a 34% tariff that you were not expecting. So I think that it makes it really difficult for any business to plan right now. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, that's such a good point. And I have to imagine that ultimately consumers will absorb the cost. But that still assumes that companies are able to kind of adapt quickly, like you said, in this environment where they can't just set up a manufacturing arm in the United States overnight. That kind of thing can take literal years. I'm curious, because this is really your area of expertise, what China is doing in all of this. Because like you said before, Trump has implemented some of the highest tariffs specifically for China, and I can't imagine they are happy about that. Louise Matsakis: No, I think that you are seeing the strongest response thus far from China. China does not want to negotiate here. I think that they're open to negotiations, but I think that they're incredibly offended by the rhetoric, and I think it's politically untenable for the Chinese Communist Party to be seen as kowtowing to Trump. I think they have already introduced reciprocal tariffs. And it's worth noting that I think the perception among maybe your average American is, "Oh, well, we import all this stuff from China and we have all this leverage," which is true in some sense. But actually China imports a ton of agricultural products from the US because they're not able to produce enough food domestically to feed their own population. So I think one of the real losers here is going to be US farmers. And it's worth noting that during the last Trump administration, they ended up having to actually give a bailout to American farmers because of the impact of the trade war with China. And let's just say this is already 10 times worse and 10 times more intense than during the first Trump administration. So I think you're definitely going to see everyday people, farmers, manufacturers in China are hurting on both sides. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, okay. And we've already seen Trump respond to the reciprocal tariffs, another man who likes to post in all caps, much like Walter Bloomberg, saying like basically that he wasn't happy that they had responded this way and that he was going to implement even higher tariffs on China. And seeing this, I had kind of an instant fear reaction, like what is this leading to? It feels like the tensions are escalating really, really fast. But I'm curious from your perspective, is that a big concern, or is the situation with China going to be like tipped over the edge by something unrelated to this economic crisis? Louise Matsakis: I definitely think that it's possible this continues to escalate and that there might be more tariffs placed on Chinese goods. I do think eventually Wall Street and sort of Corporate America is going to freak out because this is going to lead to higher prices. And there's only so much that some kinds of markets can absorb. When you're talking about like food or electronics or toys or clothing, all of these categories are really important to Americans, and I think the price can only go up so much. And so I think the worst case scenario is that you go into a Walmart and there are fewer choices than there used to be, and there are shortages, and the things that are available are significantly higher priced. I think we're a long way off from that happening, but I don't see a scenario in which a week from now, this is all behind us and the tariffs are gone, especially on China, which... And I think that Trump is operating under the assumption that the might of America and sort of US power is going to be enough sort of to throw around whoever. And I think that he's very infuriated that China is not playing ball and is sort of refusing to back down. And I don't think that he's going to reconsider that perspective. And I also don't think that China is going to say, "Okay, you know what? You win." Zoë Schiffer: Right, right. Totally. Okay. Well, I am curious and terrified to see how this plays out. We're going to take another short break. When we come back, what you need to read on today. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . Before we go, Louise, tell our listeners what they absolutely should read on WIRED today, other than the stories we mentioned already in this episode. Louise Matsakis: Not to toot my own horn, but I think that an interesting dynamic that's happening at the same time as the tariffs is that DOGE and the Trump administration are also dismantling a lot of the programs that we have in the US to help local manufacturers. So my colleague Paresh and I wrote this story about this program that is being defunded right now that's literally a network of consultants that help US manufacturers figure out problems with their supply chains, like how to reshore their factories from other parts of the world. And so I find it really interesting that those two things, tariffs and sort of DOGE are happening at the same time. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, that was such a good piece. Are you able to say like how you stumbled upon this defunding issue? Louise Matsakis: Yeah, I can talk a little bit about that. So we heard from some of the consultants who work for the centers across the country, and then we also talked to some people in Congress who I think we're hearing from their constituents that they were losing access to this resource. What have you been reading, Zo? Zoë Schiffer: I still feel like I'm stuck on the penguins. This was the one that we published last week by Caroline Haskins and Leah Feiger, our Politics Editor, about Trump's tariffs hitting the Antarctic islands inhabited by zero humans and many penguins. It was just such a good example of like we're watching this announcement, this Liberation Day announcement from Trump. He's holding up this sign with this list of countries and all of the tariffs, and then handing out sheets to reporters with all of the countries again. And we zoom in on those photos and notice like, wait, these islands feel like kind of a strange addition here. And then it turned out that Leah is obsessed with Antarctica in general, it seems, and specifically with these islands. So she was like a total expert and knew a lot, and Caroline is such a great reporter, and they just jumped on it immediately, and it was a really fun, ridiculous, a little bit worrying example of like what this announcement actually meant and how it appeared to have been decided. Louise, thanks so much for joining me today. Louise Matsakis: Thanks for having me, Zoë. Zoë Schiffer: That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Make sure to check out Thursday's episode of Uncanny Valley , which is about the impact of the tariffs on tech companies, power players, products and you. If you liked 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 any of us for any questions, comments or show suggestions, write to us at uncannyvalley@ Kyana Moghadam produced this episode. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Jordan Bell is our executive producer, Conde Nast. Head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon, and Katie Drummond is WIRED's Global Editorial Director.
WIRED
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- WIRED
A Look at a Very Silicon Valley Approach to Repopulation
On Uncanny Valley this week, our hosts talk about the pronatalism movement, and how the push to increase birth rates is trending among some of Silicon Valley's biggest and wealthiest names. Photo-Illustration:If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED Silicon Valley is obsessed with solutionism. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that when it comes to a declining birth rate, some of the valley's elite have a clear answer: more babies at all costs. Today on the show, we talk about the pronatalism movement and how ideas around increasing birth rates are trending among some of the valley's biggest and wealthiest names. You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on Bluesky at @laurengoode, and Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer. Write to us at uncannyvalley@ How to Listen You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for 'uncanny valley.' We're on Spotify too. Transcript Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. Michael Calore: Zoë, you're here in the actual studio today, in San Francisco. Zoë Schiffer: I'm here, and Lauren is not, and then we'll be switching places starting next week. Lauren Goode: Oh, sadness. Although, we did have the quintessential San Francisco experience together, Zoë, which is that we had a burrito. Zoë Schiffer: We ate a burrito, and I took a Waymo to eat that burrito with you. So, I really, I did it all. That was a good time. Michael Calore: How many Cybertrucks have you seen? Zoë Schiffer: Honestly, I don't think I've seen a single Cybertruck. Michael Calore: Really? Zoë Schiffer: I don't think so. I will say, I've been on a screen for 20 hours a day, even in the car on the way to various places, I'm working. So, I wouldn't say, I haven't been searching for the Cybertruck. Michael Calore: I sit by the window here in the WIRED office, and when I look out the window, I look right on the Bay Bridge and I see Cybertrucks all day. Zoë Schiffer: Oh my gosh. Lauren Goode: It's almost like the Cybertrucks are just reproducing in real time. They're spawning, they're spawning more Cybertrucks. Is this the worst lead-in ever to this episode? Michael Calore: You know what? I will take it. Lauren Goode: All right. Michael Calore: I will absolutely take it. This is WIRED's Uncanny Valley , a show about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. Today, we are talking about the pronatalism movement, and how the push to increase birth rates is trending among some of Silicon Valley's biggest and wealthiest names. We'll talk about some of the history behind pronatalism, who the big advocates are right now, and what it all points to. I'm Michael Calore, Director of Consumer Tech and Culture here at WIRED. Lauren Goode: I'm Lauren Goode, I'm a senior writer at WIRED. Zoë Schiffer: And I'm Zoë Schiffer, WIRED's Director of Business and Industry. Lauren Goode: So, a few weeks ago when we were talking about dating apps, I was like, oh no, you guys are going to be leaning so heavily on me because I think among us, I probably have had the most experience using dating apps, but now I feel like Mike, you and I are just going to be like, "So, Zoë, tell us what it's like to have babies." Zoë Schiffer: I do feel like I'm doing my part for the population decline. I've had two and I will not be having anymore, thank you. Michael Calore: And setting the scene here, Lauren and I are both child free. Lauren Goode: And Zoë is also now one of our big bosses at WIRED. So, I would just say in a normal setting, not a podcast setting, I might not sit across from her and say, "Tell me about your experience having babies and being a parent," but for the sake of the podcast. Zoë Schiffer: Lauren, we bring our whole selves to work, come on. Lauren Goode: Me too. Zoë Schiffer: And we're friends. Lauren Goode: Yeah, we're friends. Michael Calore: Well, to start the conversation, I think we should define what pronatalism is and who are the biggest supporters right now of this movement. Zoë Schiffer: I thought you were going to say, we're going to define what a baby is. It's like a small, bald human. Next question. OK, so pronatalism at its core is an ideology that promotes people having babies. And in Silicon Valley specifically, it's been linked to this preoccupation with population decline. The idea that people are not having enough babies to kind of replenish the population, and that it creates all sorts of economic problems down the road. Obviously, when we think about pronatalism, the first name that comes to my mind is, drum roll, please, Elon Musk. So, he has said very clearly that population collapse due to low birthrates is a bigger risk to civilization than global warming. He's called it, I think one of the biggest threats that humanity faces. And when we speak about someone doing their part, he has fathered 14 children. A new baby was literally just announced. The other name that comes to mind is Jeff Bezos, because he has also talked about low birthrates. Lauren Goode: Zoë, I think you forgot to mention a pretty well-known venture capitalist these days who's expressed some pronatalism remarks. Zoë Schiffer: Are we talking about Balaji? Lauren Goode: We are talking about the now Vice President of the United States. Zoë Schiffer: Oh, OK. Tell me more, tell me more. Lauren Goode: Well, JD Vance was a venture capitalist. I don't know if he still is because I don't think that you can be when you are also the Vice President of the United States, but he has made remarks about the Democratic Party being anti-family and anti-child and has suggested that the votes of people with children should count for more than those of non-parents. And these have been some pretty controversial statements that he's made. So, it would be a mischaracterization to just lump him in with the tech guys that we're talking about right now, but I think what we are going to talk about is this intersection of tech and politics and policy and culture. And JD Vance did happen to work in tech investments and now is one of the leaders of our government. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, this feels in line with his kind of childless cat lady type comments. Michael Calore: Yeah. So broadly, when we talk about people who support pronatalism and want human beings to reproduce at higher rates, they come at it from different angles. There's not just a capital P, pronatalism movement, there are different movements within the movement. What are some of the different sort of flavors of pronatalism? Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, so the effective altruists have a stance here. It's been kind of linked to the idea of longterm-ism, which is a set of concerns about protecting and improving future, and that there are steps we can take now to determine what that future is going to look like. So you can imagine that birth rates factor into that. Michael Calore: Right, if you're thinking about what the country looks like 50 years or 100 years from now, or not even the country, but the society and the planet looks like decades from now, then you have to consider how many people we're going to have. Zoë Schiffer: Exactly, yeah. And this is where I feel like pronatalism starts to get into thornier issues. When you're talking about what the population should look like, it becomes less of a matter of pure numbers and can get into the almost eugenics feeling flavors of kind of trying to construct a society that looks a specific way. And often, that way is white and heteronormative. Michael Calore: Yeah, and along class lines and along socioeconomic lines as well, right? Zoë Schiffer: Exactly. Yeah, and you can imagine that the policies that you would design would be really different if you're focused on the family unit versus the number of babies. And so yeah, the different flavors of this kind of matter from a policy perspective too. It does also feel like, especially when we're talking about JD Vance's views and some of the tech elite's views, that this has become somewhat of a right-wing issue, which is interesting because, is population decline at its core, right or left coded? Michael Calore: It is not particularly coded one way or the other, but I think when you talk about the reasons why population decline happens, there's not one thing you can point to. You have to point to a bunch of things that are happening economically and a bunch of things that are happening societally. Right? So, when women enter the workplace, they tend to have fewer children. When women have more control over their reproductive health, they tend to have fewer children. When countries get more affluent, there tend to be fewer children. When countries have less support systems, like they don't invest in health care and they don't invest in child care systems for their populace, then there are fewer children because people have more anxiety about having kids. So, there are these things that feel like they're progressive political issues that if we followed those policies, they would result in fewer children. And if we rolled back those policies, sort of double down on the idea of traditional marriage, of a woman's place is not in the workplace but it's in the home. I mean, this is saying, this is putting a lot of words into conservatives' mouths because I'm sure there are a lot of conservative people who do not feel this way, but that is why it is traditionally right coded. Zoë Schiffer: Got it. Lauren Goode: Yeah, and just to double tap that, this has become politicized. This is now kind of broken down into liberals versus conservatives, but traditionally, the elites have determined in some ways whether we're supposed to be having more babies or whether we're supposed to be having less babies, because there have also been concerns in the past about the population bombs and the fact that we need to make fewer babies. I can't believe we're talking about this like talking about baking a cake, but [inaudible 00:08:29]. Michael Calore: It's sort of baking a cake. Lauren Goode: But it is. Michael Calore: You put one in the oven. Zoë Schiffer: A bun in the oven. Lauren Goode: But a lot of times it is the elites of a society that are setting the tone. And then ultimately, when those who are considered of a lower class either start to make more babies or start to have fewer babies, there's a little bit of the elites become appalled like, wait a second, this is supposed to apply to certain segments of society. Zoë Schiffer: It's also interesting because the countries that have tried to roll out policies to encourage people to have more kids have largely been unsuccessful. Japan has had a real problem with a declining birth rate, this kind of looming crisis with an aging population. And they rolled out policies to try and encourage people to have more kids, like more family-friendly type of government policies, but it hasn't changed the kind of statistics. Michael Calore: Well, I want to talk more about the actual crisis and how we got to this point, that we're calling it a crisis. So, let's take a quick break and we'll come right back. All right. So, let's talk about the history of birth rates. Lauren, I know you've been researching this a little bit, so, can you please let us know what is actually going on with the birth rate in this country, in the United States, and elsewhere around the world? Lauren Goode: Yeah, so when we say birth rate, I mean, I think we should just quickly define that. There are at least a couple different ways of looking at it. There's the number of live births per 1,000 people. Some people lean on this idea of the total fertility rate, which is the average number of babies a woman or a person with a uterus will bear. And everyone seems to be pretty happy when this total fertility rate is around 2.1. So basically, if women are having two children, the population seems stable, everything seems great. Zoë Schiffer: Got it, OK, so it's a little different than the kind of joke that in the Bay Area, that the ultimate status symbol these days is three kids in a Rivian. The happy place is a little less than that. Lauren Goode: What was I saying earlier about the elites? But yes, that's a pretty good one. I hadn't heard that before. Michael Calore: No shade at all if you're listening to this in your Rivian right now. Zoë Schiffer: No, absolutely not. We're— Lauren Goode: Yeah, that's right. Rivians are pretty— Michael Calore: You're cool. Lauren Goode: I went for my first ride in a Rivian recently, and I was like, this is pretty nice. But, yeah. Michael Calore: You're cool, don't worry. We think you're cool. Lauren Goode: So, as of around 2023, we've been in something that has been referred to as the birth dearth, which means that there are approximately 1.62 children born per woman, when the ideal replacement rate is once again 2.1. But we've been in this birth dearth now since the late 1980s. So, this is not a new thing, but it is part of the new conversations that we're having now. Michael Calore: So, we're all hyper aware of the conversation around pronatalism right now, because politicians and cultural influencers are always talking about the declining birth rate and their messaging around what the ideal family looks like. But the period of time in this country from the 1950s to the 1970s was a different kind of moment for birth rates as well. What happened then? Lauren Goode: This is the part of the podcast where we get into a little bit of a therapy session about the baby boomers, which I think are all of our parents, right? So everyone knows the term baby boomer and the baby boom. This happened from the late-1940s to the late-1960s, and prior to the baby boom, it was a boom because before that, fertility rates had been down. So, around the 1930s, the fertility rate was around two children per woman. During the baby boom, that fertility rate shot up, nearly doubled to nearly four children per woman. Zoë Schiffer: Oh my gosh. Lauren Goode: Yeah, and those levels haven't actually been seen since the beginning of the 20th century. So, what happened after the baby boom in the late-1960s is that everyone got really concerned with overpopulation, right? There were books and panels and talks and podcasts and Instagram stories. I'm just kidding, those didn't exist then, but the influencers of that time. People were panicking about this idea that the world's resources were going to be depleted, and we basically couldn't meet the need of this overwhelming population. So, that was around the time that China started rolling out one-child policies. People started using birth control more. There were even forced sterilizations in some countries. And so, there was low fertility rates in the 1930s and '40s, there was a boom, then there was an overreaction to that. Zoë Schiffer: And an overcorrection, it sounds like. Lauren Goode: That's correct, and an overcorrection to that as well. Zoë Schiffer: Interesting. Yeah, I mean, the issues with overpopulation to me feel a lot more tangible than the issues with declining birth rates. But I get that if you throw far enough in the future, both of these things can be problematic. Michael Calore: Yeah. Is population decline a concern around the world? Is everybody as worried about it as JD Vance and Silicon Valley? Lauren Goode: Yeah, no, this is a concern beyond just the western world, beyond the US. Global fertility rates are declining too, it's almost universal. And that's partly because of the reasons you mentioned before, Mike, where in developing countries, women are becoming educated or they're staying in the workforce, or where there's generally greater wealth, people have fewer babies. But there's also this factor of instability. We've just been through a pandemic, there's climate change. Now we have concerns about a destabilized government that may further slash social services. I guess if there's any learning we can take from the 1930s and '40s, the era before the baby boom, maybe it's, don't start wars and dismantle society. Zoë Schiffer: OK, so in summary, it sounds like population decline, as Elon Musk has said, is actually a problem, both in the United States and around the world. But the question of what to do about it differs, depending on who you ask. Lauren Goode: Yes. Michael Calore: And how big the problem is also depends on who you ask. Lauren Goode: Yep. Zoë Schiffer: OK, OK. Lauren Goode: Right. Michael Calore: So, what are the concerns? Why do the pronatalists among us feel as though we should be having more children? Lauren Goode: Well, they want to maintain population levels, clearly. I mean, they just want to support economic growth. They want to preserve national identities. They want to make sure that we have a strong military, they want to make sure that we're growing as a nation, essentially. People look at it as a direct correlation to things like prosperity as a nation and GDP, effectively. What are we able to produce as a society? There's also a factor here where in some cultures it's pretty standard for younger people, younger generations, even if they're no longer young, to care for their aging or elderly parents. People are now living into their 70s and 80s, and when you have fewer kids or no kids, then it reasons that your potential caretakers go away as you get older. And I think that's part of the tension here too, is that people are having fewer babies, same time, boomers and let's assume Gen X'ers are going to be living longer. We're all going to be living longer. Who's going to take care of people as they get older and need legitimate care? But at the same time, social services may not exist to support that either. It's a genuine problem, and so I could see how if you're just thinking about it purely from a pure reasoning or logical perspective, you would be like, well, we just need to have more babies then, because as people get older, we need more people to take care of the elderly. Michael Calore: That's why we have AI humanoid robots. Lauren Goode: Right, yeah, that's definitely going to make everything better, I think. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, it's interesting. I don't want to derail us too much, but it does feel like there's this emphasis on, who will do the caretaking in future generations? And yet, caretaking work, at least in the United States, is some of the least valued work in our society. It's either very low paid or unpaid. And ideally, I think there are a lot of experts who would say if that is an important factor, then the government should show that by actually compensating people adequately for that type of work. Lauren Goode: I think you're totally right, and I think that says something about the way that we look at labor now, and in particular Silicon Valley. Because as we all know from covering this world, there tends to be this kind of obsession with solutionism in Silicon Valley. And what that sometimes translates to is dehumanizing the humans in the workforce and just thinking about them as workers or laborers. And so when you're thinking about in pronatalism, well, we need more people to fuel our economic growth. What's the most obvious solution? What's the low-hanging fruit? Let's make more babies, right? But I do think it's also, pronatalism is inextricably linked with so many other factors of our society. The New Yorker was writing about this recently, and there was this one sentence that jumped out at me talking about how fertility is such a significant decision that any individual is going to make, but it's not just like this one decision. They wrote, "A theory of fertility is necessarily a theory of everything. It's gender, it's money, politics, culture, evolution." I would add religion to that list. And right now, we're in this moment where Democrats and I believe rightfully, are emphasizing bodily autonomy on the heels of Roe v. Wade being overturned and abortion rights being seriously threatened or eliminated entirely. And meanwhile, Republicans keep stressing a more traditional, and in some instances outdated idea of the family unit. And there's this element of control around all of this. Michael Calore: Silicon Valley is very good at thinking up tech-based solutions to problems. And I mean, there's a lot of very, very good data for the population trends, right? Governments and NGOs have been tracking it for decades. And I feel like when you put reams of data in front of somebody who is in founder mode, they're going to start thinking of every tech-based solution that they can. And that's going to spin off a whole bunch of ideas, it's going to affect the culture around them in their friend group and their peer group. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, you can see why this is an attractive idea for the tech elite, because it is, it's a big humanity level problem that has a lot of different factors at play. And the idea that you could come in and armed with enough data, solve it with an app. That's kind of core Silicon Valley. Lauren Goode: Totally, yeah. And Silicon Valley really embraces the idea of optimization too, always be optimizing, which can apply to child-rearing as well. There's so much expectation on parents these days, it seems. Of course, people are going to try to optimize parenting. On the other hand, people have been having babies for millennia and without being rich. It's just, how much love and care can you provide for a child, right? And I think people do still want to believe in that, and yet they feel that's insurmountable because of our lack of economic stability. Zoë Schiffer: I'm just snapping. Michael Calore: Let's snap our way into a break. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . So on the surface, the idea seems to be, more babies. We need to have more babies, babies, babies, babies. But in practice, this kind of looks like something beyond just making more babies. It seems to be more babies of a certain kind, a sort of selective pronatalism. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, there's been a lot of investment in this area. It kind of dovetails into the longevity stuff that we talked about in an earlier episode. People like Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos and even Peter Thiel, have invested in a number of biotech or longevity type companies. Sam Altman, for example, is invested in a company that's trying to see if it can grow human egg cells from blood cells. So, there are a bunch of different efforts to try and influence how people are able to have babies. And then Lauren, I know you've done a fair amount of research on what types of babies and what traits you can select for. Lauren Goode: So we actually ran a story in WIRED last year, written by Jason Kehe, it was one of our big interviews, and he interviewed the founder of this interesting company called Orchid, and the woman's name is Noor Siddiqui. Orchid is one of these technologies that allows people to screen for truly debilitating conditions or diseases at the embryo phase of IVF. So typically, embryos are screened before they're transferred to someone's body to make sure that there are no genetic abnormalities and that there's some likelihood that this would result in a successful live birth. And so this company, Orchid, takes that a step further during the screening process. They screen for all sorts of things. But when you get into this idea of we're screening for all of these things, it's a slippery slope. At what point do you start screening for intelligence or athletic ability? And at what point is the E word a dirty word here? I don't think so. At what point are you doing, is it eugenics? Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I think Elon Musk and Grimes used Orchid for one of their pregnancies. It's interesting because it's a more extreme example of a question that almost every parent has, which is, how much screening do I want to do? It's a question that you're asked when you're pregnant and you have to decide, do I want to just see if me and my partner are carriers for any of the same things? Do I want to do no testing? I've had friends that decided not to because for them it wasn't going to make a difference either way. And yeah, but we're in this interesting era where the number of things that you can test for go, like you said, Lauren, far beyond just genetic abnormalities. Lauren Goode: What's fascinating about this too, is that the people who now go this route, they sometimes choose which gender they want to try to have first, because the embryos are identified as male or female. And then some families kind of strategize around it. If they have embryos frozen on ice waiting, they'll go, well, we sort of wanted to have a girl first, and so we'll do this, or whatnot. And that's fairly normalized now. Zoë Schiffer: Totally. Lauren Goode: Right? That idea. And so as this technology advances, and maybe this is getting a little bit off topic, but it is taking it a step further. So as it goes a step further, at what point does it cross over into a territory where if someone is just screening for, we want to make sure we're having not only the healthiest but the smartest and the children with the most potential, and really kind of designing this hyper elite society in a way that just feels dangerous. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. It makes me think of this line from Chloe Cooper Jones' book, Easy Beauty , where she talked about the assumption that certain characteristics will lead to a better life. Like if a baby is born with better "traits," that they will be happier and have a better life is, that's a big assumption. There's no reason to believe that that would lead to a better life down the road. Lauren Goode: Well, I think what you're tapping into is, it's like, what is the definition of better, right? Michael Calore: And that's something that we can't ignore when we talk about this because there's so much tremendous ego involved with people who want to have a lot of children because they're saying like, "Hey, I'm a smart and really good person, and the world is lucky to have me here because I'm making the world better. We should have more of me." Zoë Schiffer: Right, I mean, that to me feels very Elon Musk coded, not to bring it all back to him, but—and I know this point has been made a lot, but it really does piss me off when someone says, talks a lot about how we should all be having more babies. And then in the case of Elon, is actively stripping away parental leave policies at his various companies. It just seems like the point is to care about the baby until they're born or the parent until they've had the baby, and then kind of leave them to fend for themselves, which is so problematic. Lauren Goode: Zoë, if I may ask you. When you were going from, you had one child and now you have a second, when you were thinking about the concept of more babies or having more children, were there factors in your mind like how much leave you might get at work or schools in your area or things like that, that were actually affecting your near term thinking about it? Zoë Schiffer: Honestly, no, that's just not how my brain works. I was really purely focused on the kind of idea of the family that I wanted. Wanting my first child to have a sibling, wanting to really experience having a baby again, the joy that brings, the fulfillment that that brings. Once my second was born, of course, those things were very on my mind because suddenly I was back at work trying to manage two kids, and the social safety net or the absence of that net was very apparent to me. So, I understand why people think that way, it's just, yeah, not how my brain works. Lauren Goode: Yeah. One of our colleagues once said to me when I was asking how their return from parental leave was, they said something really interesting that has rattled in my brain ever since, which is, "So it turns out the only way to have a kid is to have a kid." Michael Calore: That's poetry. Lauren Goode: And so I guess, yeah, there's part of you that just has to jump and take the leap. And if you just think about all of those other factors, then you'll psych yourself out of literally doing anything in your life. But that is not to downplay the very real concerns and economic realities and social instability that a lot of people feel. Zoë Schiffer: For sure. Lauren Goode: I mean, we're in a privileged western world, we just have to blanket statement this entire episode. Michael Calore: Fully. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, so Lauren, that makes me think about, I mean, and this might be simplistic, but when we're talking about concerns with a declining population or declining population rate, to me, a natural solution would be increased immigration. And yet we are having a very contentious discussion in the country and in Silicon Valley about that very issue. And while Silicon Valley has historically been pro-immigration, we're seeing more and more that it's a very specific type of immigrant with specialized skillset that is being welcome to the country, while a lot of other people are being either pushed out or barred from entering in the first place. Michael Calore: Yeah, and there is a correlation, like what we talked about earlier with regards to the factors in a society that lead to it having a declining birth rate. Economic prosperity is one of them, so as your country becomes more prosperous, then your birth rates go down. But also as your country becomes more prosperous, then you attract more people into the country through immigration. So, that's something that we're seeing a lot in the United States. People come to the United States to have a better life. Zoë Schiffer: Right. Michael Calore: Right? OK, so are there any final thoughts? Zoë Schiffer: My very personal final thought is just that having a baby for any reason outside of the fact that you just really want to have a baby, is a really foreign thing to me. I don't want to put judgment on anyone, but that just seems totally crazy. Michael Calore: But it's for the good of humanity. Zoë Schiffer: It's such a personal thing. I don't know if the good of humanity is going to get you through the very long nights where you're not sleeping. I'm sorry. It's so wonderful, but it's also so hard. I think you really need to want to do it. What's your final thought? Lauren Goode: My final thought is a little bit more of a question to put back on you guys, which is, do you think that this messaging that we're hearing now from members of government and from our technocratic elite, "Do you think this is going to work?" Will it be effective? Will we see a baby boom? Will the fertility rate go up? Michael Calore: I think the reasons for a baby boom are so complex and out of our short-term control, that we won't see big effects for a long time. Zoë Schiffer: I think if we see a change in the fertility rate, it'll be because we're taking away people's access to contraception or abortion, and not because Elon Musk and JD Vance are telling us to have more babies. That's my take. Michael Calore: I have a final thought that maybe will allow us to end on a brighter note. Zoë Schiffer: Please. Michael Calore: Which is the fact that all of this attention that Silicon Valley is paying to fertility stuff and women's reproductive health in general is a good thing, because there's a science-based mindset now to fertility and longevity in Silicon Valley, and I think that's a good thing. I think we can all agree that the state of women's fertility treatments and gadgets and various technological solutions to women's reproductive health have been bad for a very long time, and that is changing. And I think the reason it's changing is because there's all this investment in science and personal technology. You can buy a smartwatch that tracks your cycles now, right? You can buy sensors that you put on your body that measure your basal temperature. And all of these things that are accessible to more people now in order to give them technological solutions to have kids if they want to have kids. Zoë Schiffer: You could buy a ring, which we won't mention by name until they sponsor the podcast. No, I think that's really well said, Mike. Michael Calore: Thanks. Lauren Goode: OK. I have one pushback to that, Mike, which is, you're correct that it's great that all of these consumer tools are available to people, and the more advanced assistive reproductive technology is getting more advanced. That's all great. These things need to be designed very thoughtfully by a diverse group of people, including some people who have experienced pregnancy and other issues surrounding pregnancy. And they need to have truly, truly in today's day and age, have privacy in mind. That is of the utmost importance. Zoë Schiffer: And you know what I want? I want a better app that tells you the size of your baby week to week, because it's all like, your baby is the size of romaine lettuce. And I'm like, there's very different sizes of romaine. That doesn't tell me anything, this is crazy. All those apps suck. Michael Calore: Plus we live in California, our romaine lettuces are huge. Zoë Schiffer: They're huge, yeah. Michael Calore: [inaudible 00:30:19]. Zoë Schiffer: There's no way [inaudible 00:30:21]. Michael Calore: Thanks for listening to Uncanny Valley . If you'd 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, baby name suggestions, or suggestions for the show, write to us at uncannyvalley@ Today's show is produced by Kyana Moghadam. Amar Lal at Macrosound mixed this episode, Daniel Roman fact checked this episode. Jordan Bell is our Executive Producer. Katie Drummond is WIRED's Global Editorial Director, and Chris Bannon is our Head of Global Audio.
