Latest news with #uncannyvalley
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
17-04-2025
- Politics
- WIRED
How Americans Are Surveilled During Protests
Protesters rally in Manhattan to demand an end to cuts in science, research, education and other areas by the Trump administration on April 08, 2025 in New York City. Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Photograph: Spencer Platt There have been a number of protests in the past few months pushing back against President Trump's most recent policy changes, and we're likely to see more. Today on the show, WIRED's senior editor of security and investigations, Andrew Couts, talks us through the technology being used by law enforcement to surveil protests, how surveillance tech has evolved over the years, and what it means for anyone taking to the streets or posting to social media to voice their concerns. Plus, we share WIRED tips on how to stay safe, should you choose to protest. You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on Bluesky at @laurengoode, and Andrew Couts on Bluesky at @couts. 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. [Archival audio]: No justice, no peace. Ho ho. Trump and Musk have got to go. Michael Calore: People are taking to the streets to challenge President Donald Trump's most recent policy changes, some of which have been created with the aid of Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency. [Archival audio]: All 50 states saw these so-called hands-off rallies and so did a few cities in Europe. Michael Calore: The first hands-off protests occurred earlier this month. The Tesla Takedown demonstrations have been rolling for weeks and from the feel of it, we're looking at a summer full of protests. So today we're talking about the risks of being surveilled by law enforcement during protests. We'll talk about how surveillance tech is being used, how it's evolved over the years, and what it means for anyone taking to the streets or posting to social media to voice their concerns. This is WIRED's Uncanny Valley , a show about the people power and influence of Silicon Valley. I'm Michael Calore, Director of Consumer Tech and Culture here at WIRED. Lauren Goode: And I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a senior writer at WIRED. Michael Calore: Katie Drummond is out today, but we're joined by WIRED's Senior Editor of Security and Investigations, Andrew Couts. Andrew Couts: Thanks so much for having me. Michael Calore: So let's start by talking about what's going on right now. There are the hands-off protests, there are the Tesla Takedown protests. Are these related at all? Lauren Goode: The hands-off protests and the Tesla Takedown movement are not the same, but they are related. They're both in some way resisting some of the policies that Donald Trump has quickly enacted without congressional approval in the short time since he took office in January. Tesla Takedown is pegged directly at Elon Musk who has this official but unofficial role in Trump's administration as the leader of DOGE. We sometimes refer to him as the Buddy In Chief, and the idea there is to challenge Musk's power as one of the world's richest men by devaluing one of his most important businesses in the private sector, which is Tesla, whereas the hands-off protests are about all kinds of things. They're protesting the firing of federal workers, the overreaching and potentially unconstitutional immigration policies, threats to women's rights and LGBTQ rights, threats to social security, threats to healthcare. The list goes on. The idea is basically get your hands off my rights. Michael Calore: And how are the protests looking? Lauren Goode: They're fairly significant. Tesla Takedown is a grassroots movement that started outside of Tesla dealerships in showrooms back in February and has been happening on an ongoing basis and has gotten quite a bit of attention. Hands-off had its biggest day so far on April 5th I think, and organizers said that there were more 1,300 rallies of varying sizes across the United States on that Saturday. And if you haven't heard of these rallies or seen the sizes of the crowds that people like AOC and Bernie Sanders have been pulling in, then I would seriously question the media that you're consuming because this is really happening. Michael Calore: Yeah, there's been really striking footage of people walking in Manhattan and just wall to wall people down one of the major avenues just for like a mile. Lauren Goode: Right, and not AI generated. Michael Calore: The people who are out taking the streets and engaging in their constitutional right of free speech and assembly, what are they worried about? Lauren Goode: I can't speak for everyone and I want to toss this to Andrew because I think Andrew's going to give us the real meat here in terms of digital surveillance, but I would just say that I think with any protest, even before we all had smartphones and there were surveillance cameras everywhere on every street corner in every train station, you always had to weigh the risks of doing the surveilling as in being a watchdog of the powerful and questioning abuses of power and civil rights versus being surveilled at the same time you're doing it, but because we live in this digital world now, I think surveillance really is one of the biggest threats today. Andrew, do you want to say more about that? Andrew Couts: Yeah, I mean surveillance is just constant and we are all being surveilled constantly if you have a smartphone or just on the internet. So whether someone is being surveilled at a protest, the answer is a hundred percent yes, especially if they have their phone with them and there's obviously other types of surveillance, but I think one of the things that you have to think about if you're going to engage in any type of protest and engage in your first amendment right to speak out against whatever you want to speak out against is that it's not just what's happening at the protest that matters, it's also the constant surveillance that's happening of your social media feeds or any other types of publishing you might do online. You really need to be thinking about your entire life and your entire data footprint and how that's going to be contextualized within you being at a protest. The other thing I'd be worried about is bad actors or anybody committing crimes while you're at that protest, there's a difference between going and exercising your constitutional rights and committing crimes. And I think these days those two get conflated a lot, especially after the 2020 protests where there's a lot of vandalism and violence and the protesters and the people committing crimes get all lumped together and it's very easy to lump people together these days, and I feel like that's happening on an official level in terms of immigration right now with the Department of Justice, the state Department categorizing anybody who they deem as a problematic as either a criminal outright, they'll say that or just canceling visas because somebody spoke out against the war in Gaza. These things are all getting conflated, and so you don't necessarily have power over how you're going to be perceived if you go to a protest and something happens or somebody just decides to characterize that activity in a way that's inaccurate but is potentially consequential for your life. Michael Calore: And to get into how exactly that conflation happens, I want to talk a little bit about how devices and certain signals on social media are used in order to identify you and identify you as a certain type of person or a person who was somewhere. So let's talk specifically about the phone for a minute. What specifically does the phone do to identify you? Andrew Couts: So there's a few ways. The first is even if you had no apps on your phone except for the phone app basically, probably even not then, if you just have the device with you and it's powered on your phone is going to be pinging the nearby cell towers, it's going to ping whatever the tower is that has the highest signal that's close to you and that power is going to be collecting your device ID and the time and date when your phone pinged the tower. And so that information can easily be obtained by police with subpoenas and anything to get just whatever devices were pinging a specific tower. So that's one way. The other way is through the apps on your phone. And so we've done a ton of reporting at WIRED about the ways in which advertising data, which can be collected in a few different ways, but is often collected through developer kits or SDKs, and these can often include very, very precise location data down to which parking spot you parked your car in front of a Home Depot or something. It can be extremely precise and it's constant. And so as long as your phone is on and is communicating with any server that's connected to an SDK on whatever random apps on your phone, that data is then being backing up and used typically to serve you ads, but it can also be purchased by governments, it can be purchased by police departments or anybody, me or you, if you have the money to buy that data and you can see exactly where someone was at a specific time or at least you can see where the device was. And so it's not too difficult to kind of figure out where somebody was at any certain time if you have your device. And so that's one of the main reasons that having a phone with you at a protest, you got to make that decision about whether that's the best choice. Michael Calore: Right. The idea is that as you move around in the world, if law enforcement wants to sort of draw any sort of conclusions about what kind of person you are and who you hang out with and what sorts of places you go, it's relatively easy for them to do so. Andrew Couts: Yeah, absolutely. And the fact is that they're not going to just be using one or the other. They're going to be using basically every tool available to them. So that can include other people's social media posts that show you in photographs or videos. It's going to be police body cameras, it's going to be your own social media posts or statements saying that you were at a certain place at a certain time, and so it's all going to be used together to show like, yes, this person was at X place at X time. Lauren Goode: What is your advice then for sharing the social media from a protest, particularly since social media can be an important tool for getting a message out or letting people know there is a rally happening? Andrew Couts: When making these decisions, it's really depends on your risk threshold. I think if you are really concerned about your safety and maybe your immigration status or your ability to live freely in the United States, I would definitely limit your exposure to other people's social media posts, meaning wear a mask if you're able to, remove any identifying features that you can cover up or make sure you don't have your name on your shirt or anything like that. And definitely don't post to your own social media about the protest if you're really concerned about that. Not everybody's risk levels are going to be the same though. Maybe getting the word out is the most important thing to you, maybe that's your job, but it is definitely something to factor in that you are almost certainly going to be subjected to other people's video and photos and you need to take that into consideration before you decide to go to a protest or how you decide to conduct yourself there. Michael Calore: So if we can assume that what you're doing online and not only moving around in the world, but the things that you're doing online are being monitored, then what about your private conversations? What about if you're using Twitter DMs or if you're on Facebook and you're private messaging with people on Facebook? Lauren Goode: Or WhatsApp or any of the Facebook-owned apps? Michael Calore: Yeah, sure. Is it possible for those types of things to also be exposed through like a subpoena? Basically my question here is are tech companies protecting us in any way against governments prying into our DMs? Andrew Couts: So there's a difference between active surveillance and passive surveillance, especially when we're talking about social media. There are companies that are constantly collecting everything that is posted publicly online about a particular keyword or a hashtag or anything like that. So anytime you're posting about a certain protest or a certain political thing, you might be getting subjected to some kind of surveillance there, but it's very passive. You're part of many people who are talking about a thing presumably, and it's not targeted at you. Then there's active surveillance where you are a subject of an investigation or you're a person of interest to authorities, and that can be much more invasive. So if somebody suspects that you say caught a car on fire at a protest, you may be subjected to subpoenas or your communications may be subjected to subpoenas or warrants, search warrants, and the sky's the limit on how much the police are going to be able to get about your communications if you are subjected to a police investigation or some other government investigation. So those might not be subjected to it because those messages are much more limited in their availability. So that's going to be a big difference in terms of whether you're just at a protest, nothing has happened, you're just posting about stuff on social media that's just going to be probably passively surveilled in one degree or another. If you're subject to an active investigation, that's a much more serious type of surveillance and you're in a much more serious situation. Michael Calore: So there are several companies in Silicon Valley that specialize in surveillance technology. They basically make products that law enforcement and governments can use to surveil people. So I think we should identify some of them. Who are the big names here? Lauren Goode: Well, there are some companies that are specifically in data intelligence, and I think the Silicon Valley company that comes to mind for most people is Palantir. Palantir is building ICE's case management software. That's just one example. There's also Clearview AI, which is a facial recognition company, and then there are data aggregators like Data Miner, and then of course there's the whole network of other tech companies too, whether they're chip makers like Nvidia or Intel or they're cloud service providers like Amazon that directly or indirectly power some of the systems that governments around the world would use in their surveillance technology, if you want to call it a surveillance technology, but there are different contexts for all of these too. For example, Andrew, one of the things that you mentioned in your video series Incognito Mode is you call out Data Miner, but you also say, "But as a journalist I've used that too." Andrew Couts: Yeah, I mean there's a lot of overlap with what reporters do, what journalists do, and what other types of investigators do. You're trying to get the information and connect dots and try to see what you can prove. And so the motivation or the end product of that is going to be very different depending on what your job is. The thing, I think anybody using them regardless of why is just how powerful they are and how much data we're all producing all the time. And I think Data Miner is a good example. It's really one of the main ways that social media is surveilled, and I think when we're talking about social media, we're not just talking about X and Instagram and TikTok, we're talking about all of those plus Reddit forums, everything where there's user participation online is often getting sucked up into these tools as long as those posts are publicly available. A lot of these companies, they're now using AI to perform additional data analysis, at least on these conversations that are happening online and kind of flagging things to say, "This looks like it's maybe a threat," or, "This looks like it maybe falls into whatever parameters that an investigator of any type wants to look into." And so we're taking the human element out of it so it's not just some guy watching your Bluesky feed, it is a computer watching everybody's Bluesky feed and then using AI to flag that for human beings who can then maybe look into it further. It's happening constantly. We just have to assume everything you post, even if you delete it, whatever, it's all being vacuumed up into these big data tools and then potentially used by authorities in whatever way they're going to use them. And I think the biggest change from say the 2020 protests is we don't know how they're going to be used, what the authorities are going to be going after, what they could go after in a year from now. And so when we're talking about assessing our own personal risks, that has to be at the forefront of it is that we don't know what's going to matter or what's going to be a problem or what's going to even be a crime within the near future. Michael Calore: All right, that feels like a good place to take a break. We'll be right back. Okay, let's go back in time a little bit about five years ago to be exact. It's May 2020 and we're in the first year of the pandemic and George Floyd has been murdered by police in Minneapolis. This sparks nationwide an international protest. It also sparked a huge conversation about surveillance technology and how it was being used to monitor protesters. And Andrew, you wrote a story around this time about how hundreds of protesters in New York were arrested and eventually won a landmark settlement against the city of New York. Can you tell us about it and where the surveillance tech came in? Andrew Couts: Yeah, so this is an interesting case where the police body cam footage was ultimately used against the police department in the form of a lawsuit because the plaintiffs in this case and their legal team were able to gather, I think around 6,300 videos from protests around the New York City and use the body cam footage to document instances of police abuse in various ways against the protesters. And so they were able to win millions of dollars by doing this, and they were using the body cam footage that the police were capturing themselves. This is one instance where the system worked how it was supposed to in certain ways. They also used a tool that allowed them to go through this many, many hours of footage to be able to pinpoint instances of police use of force, use of pepper spray, other types of police infractions against the protesters. So it was really an interesting use of surveillance technology used against the police themselves as well as custom big data tools that are able to make sense of all this data because that's a lot of times when we're talking about surveilling protests, we're talking about just massive, massive amounts of data and the data doesn't matter unless you're able to make some sense of it. And so I think the tools that are used to analyze big batches of data are just as important as the tools capturing the activity or the speech or whatever it is themselves. Michael Calore: Back at the time of the 2020 protests, one of the tools that was used to identify who was in a specific location was a geofence warrant. How have geofence warrants evolved since 2020? Andrew Couts: First, let's just start with what a geofence warrant is. A geofence warrant essentially allows law enforcement to go to a tech company and ask for every device that was in a specific location and give us all the devices that were in that location at a specific time. Now, very often police departments would go to Google for this because Google's apps are on so many people's phones or Google makes people's phones, and so they're going to have the most data. They're going to probably get something on every single person who had a phone in that location, in that geofence area. Google has since said that it's no longer going to provide information that way. That doesn't mean police aren't going to still be able to get that data in some form or another, but Google isn't going to just hand over this big batch of data the way that it used to. And so that's one big change. They can also go to another company, they can go to TikTok, they can go to whatever. That said, there's been a couple of changes on the legal front as well. Last year there were two court rulings, one in the Fourth Circuit and one in the Fifth Circuit specifically about geofence warrants. And these court rulings looked almost identical from the beginning of the case, but the rulings were completely the opposite. So essentially the Fourth Circuit ruled that a geofence warrant, it doesn't constitute a search in the way that the fourth Amendment requires. The Fifth Circuit ruled that it does. Michael Calore: And as of April, the Fourth Circuit Court is actively reconsidering its stance on geofence warrants. So there's still more to come, right? Andrew Couts: There's still a lot of ambiguity around it and the changes that Google made definitely impacted police ability to get that information in such a clean one-shot way, but they're still happening. Michael Calore: What if I'm just walking by a protest going from one bus stop to another or getting a bagel? Do I get trapped in the circle that they've drawn on the map? Andrew Couts: Yeah, if you're there at the specific timeframe that the police have stipulated in their geofence warrant, then yeah, you would. Michael Calore: That's super reassuring. So we've talked a lot about police, specifically law enforcement and cities, but also the US government is collecting this information and analyzing the data that they're getting. What agencies are using these technologies to surveil people? Andrew Couts: So we know for certain that the FBI is going to be collecting data for national security purposes. We're likely seeing Department of Homeland Security collecting a lot of data. Customs and border protection are using social media surveillance. ICE is using social media surveillance. At this point, I think you just have to assume all of them are. I mean, part of the capitalism of it all is that these companies are competing and that means prices get lower. And so it's not just one company that's offering it. It's multiple companies that are offering different surveillance platforms or technologies. And so it gets cheaper for governments to get it, and then at some point it's going to make a lot more sense for a certain agency to have it, even if five, 10 years ago they wouldn't have had it. Michael Calore: Okay, let's take another break and then come right back. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . Okay, let's talk now about what our listeners can do if they want to go and protest out in the streets or if they want to tweet through it, if they want to express themselves online, what measures should they take to protect themselves if they're worried about surveillance and if they feel as though they would not want to share as much information as we now know law enforcement and the government can collect on them? Now, Lauren, you co-authored a piece a few years ago and then just recently updated it with advice for people to go out and protest safely. And I know we have a few different guides on WIRED that people can read, but let's talk through some of the high-level stuff here. This question is for both of you, what are the top things that you would recommend for people who want to go out and protest in person? Andrew Couts: I think the top thing I would consider is whether you should bring your phone with you or not or potentially put it in a Faraday bag, which can block all signals to and from the device and limit that surveillance. That's going to be one of the greatest sources of data for anybody who wants to investigate anyone who's at a specific protest. Your phone is a surveillance machine. The best thing you can do is to throw it in the sea if you want to protect your privacy overall, but that's not practical, so consider leaving it at home. I would also be really careful about what you're posting online. If you're serious about an issue, avoid making flippant jokes that are going to be misconstrued by prosecutors basically. And don't joke about spray-painting Tesla's. Don't joke about committing crimes of any kind. Don't joke about engaging in violence and because that will be used against you if something happens and you find yourself under arrest. Michael Calore: Would you recommend that people turn off biometrics on their phone? That's a tip I see a lot. Lauren Goode: Yeah, that's one of our biggest pieces of advice. Turn off your face ID. Michael Calore: Face ID. Lauren Goode: What do they call it on the Google phone? Michael Calore: They call it fingerprint detection. Lauren Goode: Fingerprint. Sure. The idea being that if you are approached by authorities, and this goes for if you're even traveling through an airport by the way, and you're concerned that you might be detained, the idea is that someone could basically hold the phone up to your face or force you to unlock it versus using a numeric passcode. Michael Calore: Okay, and what stops somebody from holding up your phone and saying, "Plug in your passcode"? Andrew Couts: You can also just say, "I am exercising my right to remain silent," and you can say, "I'm exercising my Fifth Amendment rights." That's the law, which that advice actually stems is because police can't tell you to turn over evidence against yourself, which is ostensibly what a password is if they go in your phone and find something there. I think that advice is especially important. You mentioned airports, but the ACLU has pointed out the so-called a hundred-mile zone, which is a hundred miles from any US border or any ocean where ICE and other immigration authorities can basically just search anybody for any reason. You just have to be a much more cognizant of that. And if you're in the US on a visa, I'd be really, really careful about that because we've seen people who are here perfectly legally, and then their visas get just canceled. So if for some reason you're at a protest that is deemed not within the Trump administration's okay list, you might find yourself just automatically getting your visa canceled or anything like that if you're going to a protest. So I would just add being realistic about your own personal risk thresholds and what personal risks you probably face. The answer to that is to not go, and that's also very problematic because then you are limiting your First Amendment rights yourself and it's the chilling effect, but you have to balance those two things out. We're in kind of no man's land at the moment, and so you have to be really realistic about what makes sense for your own personal life. Michael Calore: So Lauren, what are some of the other things that you would recommend people do to stay safe if they want to go out and protest? Lauren Goode: Well, our guide recommends that you don't go alone. So traveling groups. I would also throw in there avoid taking your own car. Not only is your license plate likely to be scanned, but in terms of the location of your vehicle can be pinpointed specifically to a parking spot. Also, for whatever reason, you have to get out of there sort of quickly, having to get to your car and possibly get out of a log jam doesn't make any sense. So use public transit or traveling groups. Certainly back in 2020, we saw a lot of people wearing masks during the protests because it was covid. It was covid times. It's still not a bad idea to wear a mask, not just for health reasons, but because it obscures some of your face and therefore less of your face is being recorded and stored somewhere. This is kind of social media hygiene, which Andrew has given us a lot of great tips on, but don't capture people's faces in photos and videos. Be considerate. If you are going to take an image, maybe shoot from behind, you can't see people's faces. Try not to capture any sort of distinctive outfits, tattoos, something that could sort of set someone apart because you don't want to be a narc for them basically. Use encrypted messaging once you're on the ground. I mean, I think that these are all kind of standard good safety policies. If you suspect things are really going to get pretty hairy, it's a good idea to have important phone numbers written directly on your body. We sort of joke these days about how we don't remember anyone's phone numbers in our lives. They could be the most important person in your life. It could be your partner and you're like, "I don't know anyone's phone number because it's stored in my phone." But that can become a real issue if your stuff has been confiscated and you've been detained or arrested. A couple other things. Keep in mind the ACLU says you can protest at government buildings, but you should maybe try to stick to traditional public grounds like public streets and the sidewalks outside of government buildings. Don't block access to a government building if you're protesting. Don't do what January six protesters did, and Andrew mentioned your immigration status as well. But basically you really do have to consider the risks quite carefully if you are someone who is here on any kind of student visa or any kind of non-immigrant visa like an H-B or an O-I. I spoke to an immigration attorney who just said, really think twice about going. And she said, "It pains me not to tell people to exercise their First Amendment rights, but you're much more vulnerable in that situation and the risks are much higher for you." Michael Calore: Okay, well, this is all very good advice and I would just add to all of that hydrate, because it's going to be a very long summer and it's going to be very hot summer, and you need to make sure that you don't pass out while you're out there. Lauren Goode: That's good advice. Michael Calore: Andrew, thanks for joining us today for this conversation. It was filled with a lot of great info. Thank you. Lauren Goode: Thanks, Andrew. Andrew Couts: Thanks so much for having me. Michael Calore: And of course, everybody should check out Andrew's YouTube series on WIRED's channel. It is called Incognito Mode, and it's all about surveillance and it's all about digital privacy. Thanks for listening to Uncanny Valley . 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 with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, write to us at uncannyvalley@ Today's show is produced by Kyana Moghadam. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Page Oamek fact checked this episode. Jordan Bell is our executive producer, Katie Drummond is WIRED's Global Editorial Director, and Chris Bannon is the Head of Global Audio.
WIRED
05-03-2025
- Business
- WIRED
DOGE's $1 Federal Spending Limit Is Straight Out of the Twitter Playbook
By Katie Drummond and Zoë Schiffer Mar 5, 2025 2:27 PM On this special episode of Uncanny Valley , we talk about Elon Musk's move to put spending limits on US government employee credit cards, plus how DOGE is embracing AI. 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 WIRED's Director of Business & Industry Zoë Schiffer and Katie Drummond, Global Editorial Director, talk about credit card freezes and AI technology at DOGE, and how each is a move from the Twitter playbook. Articles mentioned in this episode: You can follow Katie Drummond on Bluesky at @katie-drummond 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. Katie Drummond: Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley . I'm WIRED's Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond. Today on the show: credit card freezes and how DOGE is using AI. I'm joined today by WIRED's Director of Business and Industry, Zoë Schiffer. Zoë, welcome to Uncanny Valley . Zoë Schiffer: Thank you so much, Katie. Katie Drummond: And we obviously know you well on this show because you cohost our Thursday episodes with Mike and Lauren. Zoë Schiffer: Exactly, yes. I'm switching sides this week. Katie Drummond: And let's get right into it. So Zoë, two weeks ago on February 20th, you published a story on about a $1 spending limit being placed on government employee credit cards. Walk us through that first story. You've subsequently published more reporting on that topic this week, but tell us sort of where this came from at the outset. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, OK. So like you said, on February 20th, employees at the General Services Administration received this memo abruptly telling them that most of the credit cards used by their office as well as every federal employee across the government, were going to have a $1 spending limit. There's basically two types of credit cards that are used by most federal employees. There's travel cards, which are used for all sorts of work travel, and then there's purchase cards which are used for everything else. So think basic supplies, trainings, software licenses, all of that sort of thing. So this was almost immediately going to have a pretty severe impact on the ability for a lot of these people to do their jobs. Katie Drummond: And what was the premise by which DOGE mandated this credit card freeze? I mean, they are sort of ostensibly in theory, according to their mandate, trying to reduce government waste, excess spending, fraud. Was it all of that? Was the thesis of this credit card freeze was that they would root out fraudulent spending? Zoë Schiffer: That was the inference. They actually said, I think the word they used was that they were trying to simplify the credit card program. And then they hinted that there was a lot of wasteful spending on these cards. In fact, there was a study that was commissioned, I believe in 2002 that found that by bypassing the typical procurement process needed to get goods and services at the federal level, the federal government was actually saving 1.2 billion. Katie, does the term zero based budgeting mean anything to you? Katie Drummond: It means less to me, Zoë, than I think it does to you. So why don't you walk us all through what that actually means. Zoë Schiffer: OK. Yeah. There's basically a punch list that I have at this point of all of the things that happened when Elon Musk bought Twitter, and I'm kind of going one by one and saying, "Oh, OK. Yeah, this is happening at the federal level. Oh, this is too." So zero based budgeting is this idea that you take a budget, you slash it down to zero, and then you force the people under you to justify every single expense. At Twitter, what this looked like is that people were kept in a conference room on Saturdays for 12 hours at a time, and they were arguing directly to Elon Musk about why a critical security software was needed at the company. And if he didn't agree with them, he would often fire them on the spot. At the federal level, what it means is that DOGE is trying to again slash the budget down to zero and then basically see who screams. The way that they talk about this is that often the biggest grifters are the one who scream first. And so you shut off all payments and then you see what's breaking. Katie Drummond: First of all, what a fascinating way to run not only a company, but the entire federal government. Second, the screaming has started. So since you published that story two weeks ago, that spending limit has rolled out across federal agencies across the government. And last night, Monday night, March 3rd, you and Emily Mullin, a reporter at WIRED, published another story about how this spending limit is essentially paralyzing federal agencies. And you have a ton of specific instances in here across federal agencies documenting what the impact of this spending freeze has been. Can you walk us through a little bit more about how this is disrupting the federal apparatus? Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, for sure. There's basically two big buckets that I'm putting the disruptions into. There's kind of the chaos and confusion bucket, which is that employees all just receive this memo saying you're not going to have access to money anymore. And it's not clear whether or not if you put expenses on your personal card, you'll ever get reimbursed. And so suddenly, people who work at the Federal Aviation Administration and have to travel to airports around the country to test out security and safety kind of software aren't sure, like, wait, that's literally my job, but am I allowed to make that trip? If I do, do I put it on my personal credit card? So it's just stalling work that was previously done with a lot of ease. And then there's the real tangible impacts, which are a researcher at the National Institutes of Health who tests new vaccines and treatments in rodents, says he's had to put experiments on hold because his lab isn't able to get antibodies, which are critical to do this sort of research. Or I talked to employees at the National Park Service who said they were literally stockpiling toilet paper because they weren't sure that they would have access to funds. And this is obviously critical infrastructure for federal lands, for public parks. Similarly, like NPS, the National Park Service said we put a lot of our expenses like internet and cell service on credit cards. And so if those get shut off and there's a bathroom that needs to be fixed at a national monument, suddenly we're not going to be able to put in the work order. Work will just grind to a halt. But we had tons and tons of these examples. Employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, scientists aren't able to buy equipment used to repair ships and radars. Employees at the FDA said labs are experiencing delays in ordering basic supplies. So really what it looked like is that many people are already unable to carry out the very basic functions of their jobs. And this again, is all in the name of efficiency, but the people we talk to are saying it seems like our lives have become much, much less efficient. Katie Drummond: And you wrote an excellent book about Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, now X. So you have sort of this really interesting point of view on him and his playbook. Do you get a sense that Musk and DOGE leadership that the president know about just how sweeping these credit card freezes have been? Where do we sort of position federal leadership in all of this? Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I think it's a really good question. I think when we talk about Elon Musk and people in DOGE, and this could apply to Trump too, it's really important to keep in mind that they absolutely conceptualize themselves as the good guys. They don't see themselves as coming in and making people's lives worse or more complicated. And so while it's clear that they're hearing from people who are unhappy with what they're doing, I think that they're hearing more about the good that their changes are doing at the federal level. We know that people in DOGE are highlighting examples of, look at all of the fraud we've found. Look at all of the way waste we've eliminated to Elon Musk. And so I think that the credit card change, like a lot of the changes DOGE has made is really being seen as like, wow, the way that government functioned before was broken, it was wasteful, it was inefficient, and we are coming in and we're doing all this good. And yeah, it might be annoying for people along the way, but the greater good is really what in their minds, they're kind of keeping as the north star. Katie Drummond: Well, good for them. Where do federal workers go from here? Is there any hope of them being able to resume some version of business as usual, some version of using credit cards or some other process to obtain, whether it's the travel they need, the materials they need to do their jobs? Zoë Schiffer: I think it's really unknown. And honestly, what we heard from a USDA official for example, is the longer this goes on, the more the systems are going to break. Some agencies did have a little bit of warning that this change was coming down, and so people literally did go out and labs were stockpiling reagents and workers at the National Park Service were stockpiling toilet paper like we said. So I actually think that right now the change might not be felt as acutely as it will be in about two weeks when a lot of those supplies run out. Katie Drummond: We're going to take a short break. We'll be back with Zoë Schiffer in a minute. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . So Zoë, I want to talk to you about how DOGE appears to be using AI in one instance, editing proprietary government software that could actually fire government workers on mass. The notion that AI could actually be used to conduct mass layoffs. As it turns out, and this was surprising to me, this is actually not a new concept for the federal government. Talk us through that. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, so this software, what we're talking about right now is a program called AutoRIF that was developed by the defense department like decades ago. And this story is by our wonderful reporter, Makena Kelly, and what she found was that DOGE is taking that old software and kind of repurposing it to maybe conduct mass firings of federal workers. AI is really at the heart of the DOGE agenda in a lot of ways. And it makes sense on a philosophical level because if your whole stance in coming into government is the way things used to run is inefficient, backwards, doesn't make sense, we're going to come in, we're the technologists, we're going to make everything run really, really smoothly, then it makes sense to use AI for that purpose. But it also makes sense on a practical level because if you're going to mass fire people and you've already laid off the people who would conduct those firings, then you do need to automate parts of that process. You need to offload work that was previously done by humans and give it to machines or large language models in this case. So it looks like a former Tesla engineer appears to be overseeing AutoRIF's development based on Makena's reporting again. And his involvement really shows how deeply embedded Elon Musk is in every part of this process. Even ones where his fingerprints aren't as clear, his people are the ones developing these tools and rolling out these new programs. It also touches on this story that WIRED has reported on pretty extensively, which is employees were asked to submit five bullet points detailing their accomplishments from the previous week. Katie Drummond: There's been so much chaos around these bullet points in these emails, and I think we're seeing reporting indicate that those bullet points would potentially be fed into an AI to determine whether or not someone should keep their job. Is that correct? Zoë Schiffer: I think the way to think about this is that at the most basic level, it is a loyalty test. And Elon Musk is constantly conducting these sorts of tests on the workforce. He did this again at Twitter. It was like, let's ask employees to do something that is both simple. Just respond to this email. Tell me what you did last week. And also kind of offensive or paternalistic to employees based on what they're telling us. But the kind of goal of it is to see who complies. And right away if you have people who don't respond to the email, you can bucket those people in a category of maybe they're not loyal to the new regime. Down the road, employees are already being asked to do this at some agencies every single week. And so then you can see how it would become more of a question of who is productive? Who is working on things that we find to be important? And again, who isn't, and could we lay off in a next reduction in force? Katie Drummond: Absolutely surreal, I will say. Now DOGE is not only editing existing government software like AutoRIF, DOGE is also exploring custom chatbots, for example, sort of developing its own AI to use within the federal government. That's a story that WIRED broke a few weeks ago, but tell us what we know about that, about sort of the idea of developing new AI to be used across the federal government. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, so what we're hearing from federal employees is that especially employees who worked at the United States Digital Service, this part of the government that was kind of repurposed to become DOGE and GSA, the General Services Administration. So again, kind of the technology arm of the government is that right away after Trump's inauguration, they start hearing from DOGE all the time, and a lot of the requests are, can you do this with AI? Can you slap AI on this? Can you upgrade how you're working with machine learning and large language models? So it felt kind of like this onslaught of requests about how much can we embed AI into the work that we're doing. The line that you hear a lot when you're talking to these people is a lot of these projects seem like they would actually take years, but DOGE thinks in days and weeks. And so the chatbot interestingly is kind of this … It's not that difficult to spin up a chatbot. And so I think in some ways it was kind like it made sense because a chatbot is an easy way for workers who might not be as familiar with this technology to interact with a large language model. And so if you deploy it across the federal government, maybe it can be a new search tool that employees use. Maybe it can help them boost their day-to-day productivity, but also it's a way for the employees who are having to build these AI products to say, OK, DOGE, we'll do this in the next few weeks. We'll do this really, really fast. At the same time, we're going to kind of keep an eye on the longer-term projects that they clearly want, which seems to be about how do we kind of process government data and automate the processing of that data with large language models. Katie Drummond: And now, just to be sort of clear and generous in spirit for a minute, if I may, the federal government is a massive set of agencies. It is the largest employer as of now in the country. There's a lot of bureaucracy, there's a lot of data. There is sort of a lot flowing through that infrastructure. There are certainly valid and credible uses of AI within federal agencies. I don't think anybody would argue with that. I don't think we at WIRED would argue with that. But what potentially goes wrong? What concerns you as you sort of see the editing of existing government AI or the development of new AI projects, sort of this idea of spinning something up in days and weeks? Where should we be concerned here? Zoë Schiffer: I think it is worth saying that if DOGE had come in and worked with government employees, so long-standing civil servants to roll out some of these projects, I think a lot of people would've seen this as a positive. Government is inefficient. It can be quite wasteful, and a lot of work can be successfully automated with large language models with AI. But that's not been their stance coming in. They've come in with a fair amount, I think it's OK to say with hostility, with mistrust to the people who ran the government previously. And so they're kind of pushing those people aside. They're coming in at times without a lot of knowledge about how the system functioned previously, what the quirks were of this software, and then they're kind of rolling out their projects. And the issue is that AI already makes mistakes. There can already be biases baked in. And so I think you need to do this really methodically with a willingness to roll it back if it's not working with an eye toward what mistakes are being made, what's being lost. And it just seems like DOGE is working quite fast and according to some people, a bit carelessly. Katie Drummond: Right. Move fast and break things as we've been saying a lot at WIRED in the last few months. We're going to take a short break, when we come back, what you need to read on WIRED today. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . I'm Katie Drummond, WIRED's Global Editorial Director. I'm joined by WIRED's Director of Business and Industry, Zoë Schiffer. Now Zoë, before I let you go, tell our listeners what they absolutely must read, must read on today, other than the stories we talked about in this episode. Zoë Schiffer: OK. I wish I had a nice, joyful, uplifting story to talk to you about, but I have another doom and gloom story, and it's by— Katie Drummond: Aw-shucks. Zoë Schiffer: I know. It's by Caroline Haskins, who is a freelancer for us, and actually we just announced she's joining the business desk. So exciting. She's incredible. She's so good. I'm so excited. And she wrote a piece that we published yesterday about how Trump and Elon Musk's cuts at the FDA, so another administration that has experienced severe budget and staffing cuts is already putting drug development at risk. And she got this from dozens of SEC filings from pharmaceutical companies. Katie Drummond: So between those SEC filings and what you and Emily reported yesterday about these credit card freezes, it certainly seems like we are seeing federal agencies ground to a halt here in some really consequential ways. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because the drug companies, the pharmaceutical companies aren't even saying, "The FDA isn't approving our drugs, and so these drugs can't come to market." They're saying this agency was already so slow moving by design because the stakes are very, very high when you're talking about drugs and medicines. And so staffing cuts, budget cuts. The worry is that this will grind to a halt. And if you're a pharmaceutical company that's deciding between continuing to produce a drug that's already been approved or putting a lot of time, energy, and resources, money behind the development of a new drug that you're not sure will get FDA approval, suddenly you're going to see less of that and more of the kind of, OK, we'll just pour money into the existing product pipeline. And that has really serious implications for people who might need these new therapies. Katie Drummond: Zoë, thank you for all of the joy that you brought to our show today. Thank you for joining me. Genuinely though, fascinating stuff and so grateful for your reporting and the team's reporting. Zoë Schiffer: Thank you so much for having me. Katie Drummond: That's our show for today. We'll link out to all the stories we talked about today in the show notes. Make sure to check out Thursday's episode of Uncanny Valley , which is all about Silicon Valley's pro-natalist movement. 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 any of us for questions, comments, or show suggestions, write to us at uncannyvalley@ Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Jake Lummus is our studio engineer. Jordan Bell is our executive producer, Condé Nast's Head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon. And I'm Katie Drummond, WIRED's Global Editorial Director. Goodbye.
