Latest news with #valley
The Guardian
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Country diary: Our fields are green, but this farm desperately needs more rain
May is the greenest month and this year has been no exception, given how high the water table was after such a wet start to last winter. There's a lush depth to the valley, with the hawthorn – which blossomed early and abundantly – creating a chequered green and white idyll. But it flatters to deceive. Like recent thunder, there's rumbling concern on farms here where sunlight bounces off concrete yards and there's only one conversation – 'when are we going to get some rain?' Data is exchanged like gossip: 'Only 28mm since February'; 'Just 17mm the other night and it mostly ran off'; 'We'll be out of grass this time next week'; 'Our barley's coming into head, it could be harvested this month, in May!' The first cuts of silage have been taken already because the grass simply stopped growing, resulting in poor-quality, low yields. And the fields, now mown or already grazed down, have the balding look of Centre Court in the second week of Wimbledon. Farming is often collateral. What's happening now has a knock-on effect – provision of winter forage, viable stocking densities and, potentially, the price of beef. The cattle are unconcerned. The crossbreed calves are dozing in a separate group this morning as I seek out my favourite. The last to be born, he's a jet-black, long‑legged Angus, but with a stout pair of North Devon knees. It's not uncommon for a cow beginning labour to fixate on another calf and decide it must be hers, which is what his mother did. Notwithstanding my eventual success in getting her calved and mothering, in the preceding chaos she hurdled a fence and lacerated her teats. For weeks he suckled the one undamaged teat, but had to be supplemented by me. I made sure to feed him beside her, giving enough to keep him going but still keeping him hungry, so he would continue to look to her. Eventually, as her teats healed and he became more tenacious, I was able to wind down our jobshare. With Pavlovian response, whenever he sees me he still gives a jerk of his head, but he no longer gets up. Unlike the ground on which he lies, he at least no longer thirsts. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
The Guardian
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Wrong Gods review – absorbing drama tackles dark chapter in India's history
H aving made his name with the hugely successful Counting and Cracking – an epic three-hour work spanning multiple generations and featuring a massive set, 16 performers and many more characters – the Sydney playwright S Shakthidharan has downsized in his latest play. The Wrong Gods covers just seven years over 100 minutes, with four actors on an almost bare stage. But do not be deceived: this is an ambitious work with big ideas on its mind. It tilts at nothing less than the history of capitalism and impacts of modernity. Our setting is riverside in a valley in India, surrounded by a bountiful forest – a kind of prelapsarian paradise. Here we meet Nirmala (Nadie Kammallaweera, the star of Counting and Cracking and its sequel, The Jungle and the Sea), a farmer and the head of her village's council, and her precocious teen daughter, Isha (Radhika Mudaliyar, another Counting and Cracking alum), an aspiring scientist. Nirmala, whose ancestral roots in the valley stretch generations, believes in the old, pre-Hinduism gods – and in particular the goddess: the river. Isha does too, though her voracious mind is already questioning these belief systems and questing for greater truths. Isha longs to escape back to school in the city. Nirmala, newly abandoned by her husband, needs her daughter home to help work their patch of land. The two quarrel over their competing values and visions of the world, as mothers and daughters often do. A greater struggle is afoot: Nirmala is anxiously awaiting the arrival of 'big fat American' developers who have greedy eyes on the village, and prays to the goddess to send them packing. Isha prays to the goddess to let her go with them, back to her teacher and educational champion, Miss Devi (Manali Datar). And then, as if teleported from another dimension, Lakshmi (Vaishnavi Suryaprakash) arrives: a middle-class smooth-talker with an offer too good to refuse – and a magic packet of seeds that promises high yields with low labour. Nirmala can prosper; Isha can go to school. Worshipping different gods: Nirmala (Nadie Kammallaweera), Isha (Radhika Mudaliyar) and Lakshmi (Vaishnavi Suryaprakash). Photograph: Brett Boardman Photography/Belvoir If this smacks of fairytale or myth, it's by design and clearly telegraphed by the play's elemental set (its stone surfaces and moss-tipped concentric circles evoking an ancient amphitheatre) and by the dialogue: Isha, it is explained, is the goddess of destruction; Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth. But there may be other clues here too: in Sanskrit, Isha means strength, guardian or protector; Nirmala means virtuous. The Wrong Gods is doing double duty, working as a fable of capitalism and modernity, and as a primer on a specific chapter of Indian history: the government-sponsored Green Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, and its devastating impacts. Nirmala's village is a microcosm of a devilish pact in which an estimated 50 million farmers and Indigenous people were displaced by a network of dams that promised water for the cities, at the expense of natural environments and civilisations thousands of years in the making. At the same time, the Indian government and foreign companies induced farmers to abandon old crops and methods for new high-yield varieties of wheat and corn, and synthetic fertilisers. This also came at a cost, sending millions of farmers into crushing debt cycles that spawned suicide epidemics, and upended delicate ecosystems with far-reaching consequences. The Wrong Gods was inspired by one of the centres of this modern tragedy: the Narmada Valley, site of the Sardar Sarovar dam network – dubbed 'India's greatest planned environmental disaster'. It was also the birthplace of one of India's most successful civil resistance movements: Narmada Bachao Andolan. Isha, Nirmala and Lakshmi look on as Devi (Manali Datar) takes the floor. Photograph: Brett Boardman Photography/Belvoir Shakthidharan spent time in the valley more than a decade ago, and The Wrong Gods offers an imagined origin story for Narmada Bachao Andolan, which was substantially led by women. Perhaps in tribute to this, not only the cast and characters but almost the entire creative team of this production, which Shakthidharan co-directs with Belvoir resident Hannah Goodwin, are women. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion The Australian Ballet performs Manon – in pictures Like many contemporary plays of ideas, The Wrong Gods suffers occasionally from speechifying and on-the-nose lines, with scenes interrupted as characters spout exposition. The extent to which audiences tolerate this may depend on how much they know of the real-world issues. The play is generally successful, however, in bringing a massive, intractable problem down to the human scale, showing the emotions and interpersonal dynamics – and primal survival instincts – behind this epic tragedy. The performances are great and special credit goes to Kammallaweera and Mudaliyar, who swiftly and surely bring the mother and daughter to endearing life and make us believe the relationship on to which the play's big ideas are scaffolded. Goodwin and Shakthidharan keep the drama dynamic and engaging, and pare back aesthetics and action so as to not overwhelm the text. The result is an absorbing drama – though fans of Counting and Cracking may wish Shakthidharan lent a little less on neat parable and a little more into the human mess.
WIRED
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- WIRED
Who's Elon Musk's Biggest Fan? His Mom
Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Photograph: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 She sits in on his business meetings, defends him on X, and travels to give talks about how she raised him, the richest man in the world—but who is Elon Musk's mother? Today on the show, we learn all about the model, influencer, and author, Maye Musk, while dissecting her most recent travels to China and her possible influence on foreign politics. 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: Hey, Zoë, what does your mom call you? Zoë Schiffer: I feel like I'll erode a lot of my credibility if I tell you, so I'm just going to say that a lot of people call me Zoe for short. Michael Calore: Okay. Zoë Schiffer: Which is what my name looks like. Michael Calore: If you don't have the umlaut over the E, it just looks like Zoe? Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, because it doesn't have the Y so people always get confused. I'm like, "Oh, no, my parents call me Zoe. Don't worry about it." Lauren Goode: Oh. Right, right. Like Zooey Deschanel, she has the Y, right? Yeah, okay. Michael Calore: But she's Zooey. Lauren Goode: I never thought about that before. Michael Calore: Isn't she? Isn't she Zooey? Lauren Goode: No, she's Zooey. Zoë Schiffer: Like Franny and Zooey is spelled Zooey but it's Zooey, Franny and Zooey. Anyway, Mike, what do your parents, what did they call you when you were little? Lauren Goode: She's deflecting really hard. She doesn't want to tell us the real nickname. Zoë Schiffer: I can't. I just feel like I already have too much imposter syndrome. Michael Calore: For a very long time, my mother referred to me by my full name, Michael, and so did my father. Lauren Goode: What's your middle name? Michael Calore: Seth. Lauren Goode: Did they call you Michael Seth? Michael Calore: On very, very rare occasions. Zoë Schiffer: Seth really could be your first name, too. I feel like that feels like that almost fits. Lauren Goode: Oh, yeah. You're a Seth. Michael Calore: Do I present as Seth? Zoë Schiffer: A little bit. Seth rising, if you will. Michael Calore: Okay. Lauren Goode: Yeah. Seth goes to a lot of live music shows. Yeah. Michael Calore: Seth's a guy, you know? What about you, Lauren? Lauren Goode: My name is Lauren Goode. Michael Calore: Yes. Lauren Goode: I have a hard time pronouncing my name. You know this from years of doing podcasts with me. Whenever it comes to that moment of I'm Lauren Goode. Michael Calore: Yeah. Lauren Goode: Sometimes when I got to order coffee, they ask for my name, they end up writing it M because I struggle to say the L. I feel like I should just change my name. Michael Calore: What do you think your psyche is telling you? Lauren Goode: When I was a kid, sometimes my mom called me Wren. Zoë Schiffer: Oh. Lauren Goode: I feel like I should be a Wren. Zoë Schiffer: I really like that. I think that's a sweet name. Michael Calore: Wren. Zoë Schiffer: I feel if were at the Joe Rogan Podcast, which we're all devout listeners of, we would be asking Grok right now what your name should be, and then you would be called that for the rest of time. Lauren Goode: Or just be Wren. But the thing with Wren Goode is it's two really hard single-syllable words. Michael Calore: That's true. Zoë Schiffer: What's your middle name? Lauren Goode: Margaret. Michael Calore: It's like a spondee, though, Wren Goode. Lauren Goode: Wren Goode, it is kind of cool. Wren Margaret. Maybe I should just be Wren Margaret. Now if anyone really wants to dox me. Would you like my social security number? They're all going to be public soon anyway. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Let's talk through your birthday. Lauren Goode: Right. Some 19-year-old currently has my social security number, so great. Michael Calore: Okay. Well, here is a more topical question. What do you think Elon Musk's mom calls him? Zoë Schiffer: Little E. Lauren Goode: Oh. I don't know. Maybe? Zoë Schiffer: He did actually take over the @E handle shortly before he bought Twitter. A little scoop for you. I don't know what nickname she calls him, but I do think it's funny that she's been like, "It's insulting to call him a billionaire. He is the genius of the world and should be recognized as such." Michael Calore: That's some strong mom energy. This is WIRED's Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. Today we're talking about Maye Musk. She's a model, influencer, and an author of the memoir A Woman Makes a Plan. She's been traveling to some notable places this year to promote her work and to rep her son, Elon Musk. Who is Maye Musk? What do you need to know about her? And how much influence does she currently have over US politics? I am Michael Seth Calore, director of consumer tech and culture here at WIRED. Lauren Goode: I'm Wren Goode, senior writer at WIRED. Oh, that was easy. Michael Calore: Yeah. Zoë Schiffer: I'm Zoë Schiffer, WIRED's director of business and industry. Michael Calore: With an umlaut. Zoë Schiffer: With an umlaut. I almost said Zoe and I was like it's too many bits for us. Michael Calore: Let's get started with the big question. Who is Maye Musk? Lauren Goode: Maye is an entrepreneur, and a model, and a dietician, and an author in her own right. I think she's probably best well-known for being a model. She's been a model from a young age and continues to model into her late 70s. She's also the author of a book called A Woman Makes a Plan. This came out in 2019, but it continues to be popular particularly because it's popular in China, where it was translated into Chinese the year after it came out. She was born in Canada. She was raised mostly in South Africa, which is where she started modeling. She was 15 then, and she was a finalist in the Miss South Africa contest. Michael Calore: Hey, mazel tov. Lauren Goode: Yeah. This is also where she got married, she had kids, and then divorced. She's got three kids. In addition to Elon, there's Kimbal, who I think a lot of people have also heard of, and Tosca. It sounds like a cookie, doesn't it? I'd love some Tosca with my tea. Zoë Schiffer: She would never have a cookie. Her mom talks constantly about no cookies. Michael Calore: Yeah. Lauren Goode: Wow. Fascinating. She ended up moving to California in 1996, when her two sons started the software company that gave Elon his start. It was called Zip2. Now she bounces around the world. She's a citizen of the world, this is partly because of Elon and partly it's because it's where her work takes her. One note that's interesting about her modeling career is that she's become an advocate or representation for people of all ages and sizes. The fact that she's an older woman and still has these makeup and beauty product endorsements says a lot about her durability as an entrepreneur and as a model. In 2022, she was also the oldest woman to appear on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Zoë Schiffer: It was a good cover. Lauren Goode: Which I think then, she was later maybe surpassed by Martha Stewart. Michael Calore: Oh, really? Zoë Schiffer: Interesting. Lauren Goode: Martha Stewart was 81- Zoë Schiffer: Oh my gosh. Lauren Goode: ... when she graced the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Zoë Schiffer: The term dietician always gives me pause. What is ... Lauren Goode: That's a really good question about her dietician career, Zoë. She studied nutrition, or she calls it dietetics, from a young age. But it was after she got divorced, she was around 31, that's when she had to build up her own practice. She has said that she was, at one point, seeing up to 25 patients or clients a day while modeling. Zoë, would you call this extremely hardcore? Zoë Schiffer: I would say that's extremely hardcore. Lauren Goode: These days, she's doing a lot of speaking engagements that are often geared towards women. Women's empowerment, beauty, health. And also, parenting, because we're going to keep coming back to this, she has a very famous son. Michael Calore: Yes, she does. We all know about Elon's influence and how important he is in our world, and now in the larger world of the United States government and the world stage. But what is Maye's own personal influence? How does she move the needle around the world? Zoë Schiffer: She has a really big social presence. I think she's got about 1.5 million followers on Instagram, where she posts a lot about her family. I think one recent video, the voiceover was like, "As the mother of three billionaires." I was like, okay. But she also has 1.4 million followers on Twitter. And as Lauren mentioned, she's got her book, she's a model. She's an influencer in China, which we can get into later. Her profile has grown alongside Elon's. Michael Calore: Right. She's been in the news lately for a lot of reasons and we'll get into those later, as you mentioned. One of the most obvious is that she is Elon Musk's mother and Elon Musk has been in the news, so she has also been in the news, too. Let's talk about the two of them and what their relationship is like. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. By all accounts, Lauren, I'm curious to get your take, but it seems like they have a pretty tight relationship. Elon famously is estranged from his father, Maye's ex-husband. When I was reporting my book about Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, I would talk to executives who would say, "Yeah, we sat down for this very high level meeting, and inexplicably Elon had brought his mom along." Everyone was like, "What is she doing here?" She would pipe in and give her suggestions. People found it to be pretty odd, according to the conversations that I had with them. She also is known for going head-to-head with reporters and other people online who are critical of her son. One recent example was that CNN did a panel after Elon Musk appeared at Trump's inauguration in January. Then implied that he had done a Nazi-like salute. Maye was out there, suggesting that he'd simply sue CNN for that coverage. Lauren Goode: Yeah. There was this moment back in 2022 when it was shortly after Elon had announced the Twitter acquisition. His tweets started getting a little bit bizarre. Because a lot of these business negotiations here happening out in public. As a result, people were responding to his tweets. One of his crusades was against spambots. Maye took it upon herself to start calling people out on Twitter who she identified to be spambots or in other ways disingenuous. She was using the hashtag #nasty. She would put nasty, nasty. At one point she quote-tweeted someone and she said, "Is this a bot or a troll? 16 followers, nearly 2000 likes, makes you think. #nastynasty." She waged this one-woman campaign to be like, "Hey, one, I'm highlighting spam on the platform, which is something that my son is currently investigating. Two, stop picking on Elon." Michael Calore: Yeah. Zoë Schiffer: I find this so relatable. She's just being such a mom. But the, "No matter how rich and influential my son is, I'm still going to be out there defending him to critics on Twitter, including to accounts that might be bots and have 16 followers," is so funny. I'm like, "Yeah. Me, too, girl." Michael Calore: I do think it's kind of sweet, the way that they pay attention to each other a lot in public. They show up to events together. She's a model, she's a very glamorous dresser. She always appears very well put together. And she dresses up, I would say better than he does. Zoë Schiffer: Not hard. Michael Calore: Absolutely no shade at all. I'm wearing a camo hat right now and I have an unbuttoned flannel over a branded T-shirt. But she does, she dresses up very well. They appear together at events. At galas, at dinners, and things like that, in formal wear. Lauren Goode: Right. Michael Calore: I think it's kind of sweet. Zoë Schiffer: Totally. Lauren Goode: This is actually another great anecdote from Issacson's book, which is that they went to the Met Gala. Zoë Schiffer: Right. Lauren Goode: Which is, of course, run by our boss here at Conde Nast, Anna Wintour. All of us, of course, have been invited to the Met Gala, we just haven't been able to make it yet. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, a conflict. Lauren Goode: Yes. Scheduling conflicts. Elon and Maye were invited. Apparently he got out of a meeting at about 9:00 PM, but they had to show up at the Met Gala. Zoë Schiffer: Wow. Well, this is the sweet segment of the show. I feel like we have to talk about some of the potential issues with Maye Musk's profile around the world. But let it be said that we had a whole segment where we talked about how charming it is that they love each other apparently. Michael Calore: Yes. Yeah. On that note, let's all hold onto those feelings while we take a break, and we'll come right back. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. Maye Musk has been traveling all over the world. Most notably, she's been going to places like China and the United Arab Emirates. Why is she going to these places? Lauren Goode: Well, Maye Musk is in the business of being Maye Musk. She's known as a silver-haired influencer in China. In China in particular, she's got a lot of product endorsement ties. Makeup, massagers, clothing. She does a lot of speaking engagements. I think in order to really under her presence there, we should take a look at this ad that ran sometime in 2024. She's tied to a brand called Babycare. [Archival audio]: (Singing) I look up and think about the new. Lauren Goode: The rest of the ad is in Mandarin, but there are English subtitles. [Archival audio]: (Ad playing in Mandarin) Lauren Goode: She's asking, "How do you raise successful kids?" It's Maye, just cruising through the streets, looking as elegant as ever. With beautiful scenery of children playing in the street and everything. Zoë Schiffer: Wow. Lauren Goode: There's a little girl dancing. It's very cute. Zoë Schiffer: Wait, I love this ad. Michael Calore: The messaging here is that you shouldn't tell kids to be quiet, and sit down and do what they're told. You should tell them to be loud. You should tell them to get up and run. You should tell them to disobey authority. To be themselves. Zoë Schiffer: Let kids grow up free. Lauren Goode: Free-range kids. Zoë Schiffer: Don't obey the rules. [Archival audio]: (Ad playing in Mandarin) Lauren Goode: What's interesting about this too, is that in Issacson's biography of Musk, he writes about how Maye herself grew up where her parents took a lot of risks. They are free-range children. It is in their family DNA in a sense, to have these risk-taking, courageous kids. Zoë Schiffer: Not to make this all about my kids always, but I tend to raise very free kids, let them do what they want within the bounds of reason. The result is that my three-year-old hasn't washed her hair in four weeks. I don't know if I'm benefiting in the way that Maye Musk seems to believe is possible. Michael Calore: If you're watching Chinese television, you'll see this ad. You'll have very warm and affection feelings toward Maye Musk and her famous children. Joking aside, she is an influential person in China. Why does that influence concern some? Zoë Schiffer: We're just at a very interesting moment with diplomatic relations with China. We're in a Cold War, some have called it, related to AI and it raises a number of concerns. For example, foreign governments could conceivably use Maye Musk as a way to try to get close to Elon, and thereby Trump, almost to exert control on the current administration. That's just something to pay attention to. There's fears that her phone could be hacked while she is there. Michael Calore: Oh. Zoë Schiffer: She was riding on Air Force One recently. While these are purely theoretical, the stakes are pretty high. There's worry that foreign governments could try and curry favor with her by asking her to model or be brand ambassadors for various companies. There's, again, no evidence that this has happened with her current relationships with brands overseas, but something to pay attention to. They could retaliate if the US government does something they don't like, by pulling her books of shelves or canceling contracts. Then there's this more far-fetched, but very problematic issue, which is in a worse case scenario where China was retaliating against the US for something that the US or Trump did, if Maye Musk was in China during that time, could they physically hold her there? China is known for going tit-for-tat. If a foreign government does something that China doesn't like, China will retaliate in kind. We have Marco Rubio in the administration. He is a serious China hawk. I think the fear is that the Trump Administration would do something that China doesn't like and that Maye Musk could be in the middle of this national security fiasco. Lauren Goode: Right. It's not clear how much money she's actually making from this incredible influence that she has in China. Nor does anyone think that she's getting money from the Chinese government directly, or anything like that. Zoë Schiffer: No. Lauren Goode: We know that she's been to China at least four times in late 2024, the New York Times did report that. She's promoting her makeup products. Presumably, she's still promoting her book or using that as leverage for her brand, and that sort of thing. It's more about that influence. In particular, when you think about Elon's business. China is a huge market for Tesla vehicles. Tesla's largest production factor is in Shanghai. Tesla also built a large battery factory last month in Shanghai. Last year, Tesla's China sales hit a record high. Nearly 37% of its cars were delivered to customers in China. That's more than 657,000 Tesla vehicles. Elon has very vested interest in the Chinese market, and I think people are looking at some of his mother's activities there, and looking at the importance of his business there, and just wondering if there's a line to be drawn between the two of them. When Maye was in China last fall, she wrote on X, "China is so advanced in roads, tunnels, buildings, infrastructure, and ports. I'm always impressed when I visit." Sure, you could be someone on vacation who's just, "Wow! I'm marveling at this new place that I'm in," right? Michael Calore: Weird flex, but okay. Lauren Goode: There also could be a lot of subtext there. Michael Calore: Yeah. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I think, Lauren, your point brings up the larger issue, which is just we don't know, but there are possibilities of undue influence. I think the fact that it's not known and there's not a lot of controls in place. Normally, if someone who is close to an advisor of the president was traveling overseas, there would have been checks on their background, there would be investigations. It doesn't appear that those things have actually happened. There was a lot of security protocols that weren't followed. I think there's just, again, the possibility that something more nefarious could happen in the future. Michael Calore: Elon Musk has been able to sidestep a lot of the requirements for security clearance, simply because he's always taken on an advisory role in the US government, or as a contractor for the federal government. We would assume that his mother is not even anywhere on that map as well. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Michael Calore: As far as getting a lot of scrutiny from security clearance people. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. We don't have any evidence that she's been through that process. Judging by how the DOGE employees went about entering government, which in many cases, they were up and working in government systems before having received security clearances, yeah, I think there's reason to be suspect that she was put under that microscope for that process. Michael Calore: When countries invite celebrities, people who have some sort of influence on the world stage, to come visit their country and hang out, and they wine them and dine them, there is some soft diplomacy happening. "We are going to invite you here, you're going to have a great time. You're going to go back home, you're going to tell everybody about how great of a time you had, how welcoming the people were. Wouldn't it be great if we were a little bit nicer to them?" We can see that being implied in a lot of the places that she's traveling, like China. She went to Kazakhstan recently to promote her book. Maye Musk has also gone to the UAE to speak and to make appearances there. You can see, if you're inviting a Maye Musk into your world, there are implications about wanting to reach out, wanting to have a better relationship with the United States, right? Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, for sure. She's not an ambassador in the official sense, but she's playing an influential role nonetheless in the United States' relationship with these foreign governments, just by simply going there and posting about it on social media. Lauren Goode: Totally. Yeah. In January, just before the inauguration, she did go to Dubai and she gave a talk. It was called How I Raised Three Amazing Children, Including the Richest Man in the World. Michael Calore: Oh. Lauren Goode: What an incredible flex. Michael Calore: Wow. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Michael Calore: I was just going to say, I would have loved to have seen that talk. Zoë Schiffer: Unironic same. Michael Calore: Can we tell where Maye Musk is just being a supportive mom and spreading the gospel of Elon, and can we tell where she might be doing a little bit more than that? Lauren Goode: I tend to see Maye as a little bit of a Kris Jenner. Michael Calore: Ah. Lauren Goode: Her children are very famous, and she's clearly very supportive of their careers, and will defend them to the ends of the Earth. But also, she's an operator to the point where she has become her own really powerful and influential brand. There are probably a lot of ties behind the scenes that we don't have full access to. I think what everyone's going to be watching really closely is to see how those ties with China develop or evolve, and if there's any possibility that they could be exploited. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I would just add to that, that as her influence has grown, she's using that influence to try and preserve Elon's reputation, to try and promote his business. Again, a Kris Jenner profile. She's not just doing that as a mom, she's also doing that as someone who's very invested in his tangible success it seems like. Michael Calore: Well, somebody's got to look out for him. Zoë Schiffer: So true. Michael Calore: Somebody really needs to step up and make sure that he remains a successful person. Zoë Schiffer: Right. Lauren Goode: I think that if Maye Musk ever shows up in the Oval Office and starts answering questions from reporters, then we'll have reached a new tipping point. Michael Calore: Do you think she'd sit on his shoulders? Zoë Schiffer: That would be really difficult. She looks really tall. Michael Calore: All right. Well, let's take another break and we'll come right back. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. It's been a while since we have done an Overheard in Silicon Valley, so we're going to play that game this week. We're going to dish some buzz, and I only want good answers. Who wants to go first? Zoë, Lauren? Zoë Schiffer: Wait. I feel like you might have the best tea. You were at South by Southwest. Lauren Goode: Yeah. Zoë Schiffer: You must have overheard the craziest things. Michael Calore: Well, it's not necessarily a crazy overheard, but there were Waymos at South by Southwest this week. Zoë Schiffer: Wait. Is Waymo running there? Michael Calore: It is now, through the Uber app. Zoë Schiffer: Oh. Michael Calore: They partnered with Uber. Lauren Goode: Interesting. Michael Calore: When you're at South by Southwest for specific parts of Austin, you can request a Waymo through the Uber app. I did not do this because I needed to get where I was going in a quick manner and the wait time for a Waymo was around 20, 25 minutes. Zoë Schiffer: Oh, wow. Michael Calore: I just chose regular Ubers while I was there. But the company was offering rides, regularly priced rides, just like the Waymos are priced in other places where they operate through the Uber app. It was kind of interesting, kind of weird. I quizzed people about them all week when I was there, and people loved it. There were people obviously from all over the world there. Everybody was, "Oh, it was so easy and it was so nice. I was scared and I didn't know what to do, and the experience was really helpful. They hold your hands," and all this. Then the other question that I would ask people from Austin is if they were aware that the Tesla Robotaxi service is supposed to be launching in Austin in June. Because last year, Elon Musk showed off the new Tesla Robotaxi. He said that, as part of this car's release, they're going to be launching a robotaxi service for Tesla cars. Zoë Schiffer: Full self-driving, like Waymo-esque? Michael Calore: Yes. Not only will you be able to order a robotaxi to show up, a Tesla-branded robotaxi to show up, but you'll be able to, if you're a Tesla owner, put your Tesla into a pool so that your Tesla can drive around and offer people robotaxi rides while you're at the office, or sleeping, or whatever. Lauren Goode: Passive income. Michael Calore: Right. He has said multiple times that this is going to be launching in Austin, Texas in June. We're all like, "Okay." I was asking people in Austin, "Have you heard of this?" And nobody had heard of it. Lauren Goode: Huh. Zoë Schiffer: Well, he famously over-promises on the delivery date of certain things. Michael Calore: Yes. Zoë Schiffer: I feel like that's fair to say. Michael Calore: Yes. I think it will be a small miracle if there is one robotaxi ride in Austin at the very, very end of June this year. Lauren Goode: Wait. Can I share an overheard that is related to your experience at South by Southwest, Mike? Michael Calore: Yes. Lauren Goode: Someone who we work with sent me a video and said, "Check out Mike." It was you getting into a baby blue Cybertruck. Michael Calore: Yes. Lauren Goode: What was happening here? Michael Calore: We called a Lyft, and the Lyft that showed up was a Cybertruck. When it rolled up, the guy had a wrapper on it, it was baby blue. Zoë Schiffer: Wow. That is a shocking turn of events. Lauren Goode: You didn't know a Cybertruck was showing up? Michael Calore: No. No, we did not know. Lauren Goode: Oh my God, incredible. Michael Calore: Yeah, it was shocking. It was very shocking. I was like, "Well, we're getting in it," so we got in it. We asked him about it. He was a little chatty and he told us why he bought it. He drove it out from San Diego to Austin. I asked him if anybody had vandalized his car or defaced it and he said, "Yes, somebody drew a swastika on it and wrote Nazi." Then he wiped it off because of his baby blue wrap makes it so that you can just wipe off vandalism. Zoë Schiffer: Wow. Lauren Goode: Did that change the way he was feeling about his Cybertruck? Michael Calore: I don't think so. I think he's still proud of it and still likes it. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I feel like you double-down if you're a Cybertruck owner. We had a recent incident earlier this week in Ventura, where a Cybertruck, I think the owner was attempting to launch a jet ski and the Cybertruck ended up in the water. Michael Calore: Oh, no. Zoë Schiffer: It was being towed out of the ocean. Lauren Goode: Oh, no! Michael Calore: Oh, no. Zoë Schiffer: In footage that was circulating on social media. Lauren Goode: When you say that, Zoë, about the Tesla being in the water and being towed out, I'm thinking of those duck boats in the Boston Harbor. Do you know what I'm talking about, Mike? Michael Calore: Did it float? Lauren Goode: Did it? Zoë Schiffer: It did not float. But we did just get a really old children's book about the duck boats in Boston. Lauren Goode: Oh. Zoë Schiffer: Okay, Lauren, what's your overheard? Lauren Goode: Well, I was going to talk about vibe coding in Silicon Valley, but now I feel like I want to keep consistent with your theme. Michael Calore: Oh, yes. Lauren Goode: Which is there's this little cottage industry popping up on Etsy, I noticed. If you type in just Rivian sticker, there are more than 1000 results that come up. It's basically the sticker for people who have a Tesla but wish they had a Rivian right now. Zoë Schiffer: Oh my gosh. Michael Calore: Oh, boy. Lauren Goode: A couple episodes ago, we talked about all of Elon's babies. Now we're talking about the woman who had Elon as a baby. We talked about how the status symbol is now having three kids and a Rivian. Now we're talking about Rivians again. Honestly, I think we're just living in a simulation. Zoë Schiffer: Okay, Elon. Lauren Goode: Right? I would be happy to talk to more people about the simulation. Some of the stickers say, "Only driving this until I get my Rivian. I identify as a Rivian. The Anti-Elon Tesla Club," that's a car magnet. "This Tesla does not endorse Musk." There's a, "Love the car, not the CEO." Yeah. If you're looking for a sticker that's pro-Rivian or anti-Tesla, there are a lot of options out there right now. Zoë Schiffer: Etsy has your back. Michael Calore: All right. That was some good overheard. Thank you. I feel so happy that we did that. I feel like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. Thanks for listening to another episode of 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 was produced by Kyana Moghadam. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Matt Giles fact-checked this episode. Jordan Bell is our executive producer. Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director. Chris Bannon is the head of global audio.
WIRED
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- WIRED
The Showdown Between Elon Musk and Sam Altman
PHOTOGRAPH: WIRED STAFF; GETTY IMAGES 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 The relationship between Sam Altman and Elon Musk goes back to the early days of OpenAI—then, a non-profit research lab. But now, the two men find themselves in a very public feud over the billion dollar AI company. Today on the show, we catalogue their friendship-turned-feud and how the company that started it all still remains core to their beef. You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on Bluesky at @laurengoode, and Zoë Schiffer on Threads @reporterzoe. 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: How is everybody doing? What are we working on this week? Zoë Schiffer: I feel great you guys. I had a meeting with Steven Levy just now, and I was really having a moment where I was like, wow, it's so cool that I am regularly meeting with one of my literary heroes who I would read when I was desperately wanting to become a tech journalist and now we work together. So cool. Lauren Goode: I bet if you told Steven that he would really appreciate it. Zoë Schiffer: I didn't. I wanted to play it a little bit cool. This was only our second one-on-one, but maybe he can tell. Lauren, how are you doing this week? Lauren Goode: I am doing okay. I'm a little under the weather, but I'm hanging in. It could be a lot worse. And I actually had a delightful time appearing at a BBC show recently in which they were asking all about the Brologarchy. We absolutely cannot take credit for coining the phrase, the Brologarchy. It's widespread at this point, but just so you guys know, it has spread across the pond. Zoë Schiffer: Great. I actually feel like because we're a podcast, we could take credit for that. We can say we coined whatever term. Lauren Goode: It's true. Who's fact-checking? Mike, how are you doing? Michael Calore: Well, we've been very, very busy here at WIRED, and all of the teams have been cranking, and it's the end of the week. We're recording this on a Friday, and my brain is like a pineapple floating down a river and I'm ready to fish that pineapple out of the river and sell it for 9.47 Dogecoin. Zoë Schiffer: Wow, that analogy. Incredible. Lauren Goode: Yeah. Is that a well-known metaphor or something? Zoë Schiffer: You're not a pineapple floating down a river, Lauren? Lauren Goode: No. That sounds like something out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book, which I'm into. Zoë Schiffer: I feel like it's because Mike partied all last weekend and then went into the week really strong and had a really busy week. So it's the combo platter of burning the candle from both ends, if you will. Lauren Goode: Well, Mike, if you can't do the show today, we got you. We're all friends here. Zoë Schiffer: That is very on theme because in some ways we're talking about friendship this week, except it's a friendship that has gone very, very sour. And thus- Michael Calore: As sour as a pineapple. Zoë Schiffer: As sour as a sour pineapple. Oh, yeah. Michael Calore: That's right. This is WIRED's Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley. Today, it's a showdown. Sam Altman and Elon Musk. We're talking about the relationship between the two of them and the company that started at all, OpenAI. 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 Zoe Schiffer, WIRED's director of Business and Industry. Michael Calore: Okay, it's story time. Let's go back to the early days of OpenAI because the two men that we were talking about today, Elon Musk and Sam Altman, have a long history, some of which began around the founding of OpenAI. Zoë Schiffer: Okay. Taking us back to 2015 when OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit research lab with the goal of getting to artificial general intelligence, AI that can meet or exceed human intelligence. So yeah, Elon and Sam start the company together, but within three years, Elon Musk basically thinks that OpenAI has fallen way too far behind Google and isn't going to be able to catch up. And so he has a solution to this problem, and most Elon Musk solutions, it casts him in the role of Savior. So he goes to Sam and he says, "Hey, what if I actually take over OpenAI and I run it?" And Sam and Greg Brockman, another OpenAI co-founder, say, "No, we don't like that solution." And so Elon Musk ends up walking away. He had said he was going to donate money over the next few years, but he ended up not doing that. And so by 2019, we see Sam Altman in the role of president of OpenAI and Elon Musk stepping away from the board of directors. Lauren Goode: And they weren't just disagreeing about the funding. They reportedly were disagreeing about OpenAI's status as a nonprofit since it was started as a nonprofit. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. So this is a really important part of the saga because again, it starts out as a nonprofit, but really quickly as you're alluding to, Sam Altman and Elon Musk both realize the computing power that is needed to power artificial intelligence and make these enormous leaps in the progress of these large language models is so high that you basically have to have a for-profit arm of the company. And so they do create a for-profit entity. This is the beginning of OpenAI's super bizarre structure where it's a nonprofit with a for-profit subsidiary. This happens in 2019, and this gets us into the growing tension between Elon Musk and Sam Altman. But before we go too far down that road, I'll just say to answer your question, Lauren. Yeah, they both, according to emails that have since come out between the two of them, Elon Musk does seem to acknowledge that OpenAI is going to need a for-profit entity. And in fact, he suggests at one point that maybe Tesla just acquire OpenAI or OpenAI merge with Tesla, and that could be a possible solution. And again, Sam Altman's like, "No, I do not like that solution." And so, growing animosity, growing tension behind the scenes. Lauren Goode: And there are power dynamics at play here, too. I think at this point, in the mid-2010s, Elon Musk was a little more well-known because of PayPal, SpaceX, founding or buying his way into founding Tesla. And Sam at this point is the YC Combinator guy who then got into AI. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Although it also is worth pointing out that the field of artificial intelligence did not have the standing and reputation that it currently does. When they started OpenAI, the idea that you would start an entire nonprofit or company to go after AGI was pretty fringe, I think it's worth saying. We didn't have a bunch of AI hardware products on the scene in 2018, did we? Michael Calore: No, because there wasn't really the back end. The chatbot revolution had not yet come. Zoë Schiffer: Right. Okay. So what they're doing, it's like Lauren, to your point, there are a bunch of power dynamics. There's a bunch of hierarchy, but I feel like it's not until OpenAI launches on the scene with ChatGPT that this becomes an incredibly important question and people's egos get much more involved because suddenly AI is the story in Silicon Valley. It's the future of technology. It's seen as this enormous shift rather than like, oh, our interesting nonprofit research lab idea. Lauren Goode: Yeah, this feels like one of the bigger shifts that we've witnessed, I think, as tech journalists. The AI world was aware of these developments because of the research papers that Google and OpenAI and others put out around 2017, 2018, but it was really that November 2022 moment, I think, when ChatGPT launched that everybody wanted to get into AI. Michael Calore: So right around that time, Lauren, when ChatGPT was shown off to the world, OpenAI had established a business partner in Microsoft. Microsoft put some money into the company. Zoe, what role did Microsoft play in making OpenAI a household name? Zoë Schiffer: A huge role. I mean, so we mentioned that in March 2019, OpenAI, the nonprofit launches a for-profit subsidiary, which allows it to raise money. Months later, Microsoft, to your point and question, puts in a billion dollars. So at this point, OpenAI is basically off to the races, and within a couple of years, it launches ChatGPT. So it's a big moment for OpenAI. It's a big moment for Microsoft. It also is a big moment for the tension that's going on between Sam Altman and Elon Musk, and within OpenAI itself. The board of directors at OpenAI, the nonprofit board, has said, according to some reporting that came out after that, they didn't actually know, or some members didn't know that ChatGPT was launching until they saw Sam Altman's tweet about it. And not all of them were super happy with this new direction because if you can imagine, you start a nonprofit research lab, suddenly it's becoming like a consumer-facing app powerhouse, that's a different direction for the company, and not everyone was happy about that. Michael Calore: So that tension leads to an event that, again, we talked about on our Sam Altman episode, but it's something known as the blip. Lauren Goode: The blip, okay. The blip refers to that three to four-day period in late November 2023 when Sam Altman was ousted by the board as CEO of OpenAI, and this became, in a way, representative of at least two schools of thought around AI. There are people who think we need safety guardrails for it, and there are people who just want to accelerate it as quickly as possible. The whole thing backfired, I guess, is the best way to put it, because Microsoft swept in, they offered to scoop up Sam, they offered to hire a bunch of OpenAI employees, and at the same time, a lot of OpenAI employees signed a letter in support of Sam. So Sam ended up being reinstated, and the rest is history. The people who tried to oust him immediately left the board. Sam stacked the board with a bunch of friendlies, and Sam remains CEO of OpenAI. Zoë Schiffer: Yes, incredibly dramatic few days where Sam leaves and comes back, the board of directors changes, every newsroom, your boss is coming to you saying, "Who do you know on the board of directors at OpenAI?" And you're in a panic. I mean, that's stressful. But yeah, I mean the thing that comes out of all of this is that Sam Altman is back on top, back in the leadership role at OpenAI, and he has arguably a lot more power because like Lauren said, the board is stacked with people who are more loyal to him than what it was previously. Lauren Goode: And Zoe, did Elon Musk pipe up during any of this? What was his take on this? Zoë Schiffer: So yeah, I mean, right around the time that OpenAI launches ChatGPT, the feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman that had been brewing in the background starts to become more public. A month after ChatGPT launches, Twitter, which Elon Musk famously owns, cuts access. OpenAI had access to the firehose of data from Twitter so it could feed into its large language models. Elon Musk cuts that access. Then he starts tweeting about how it was created as an open source nonprofit, and now it's doing something else. And this is a big problem, and he starts to hint publicly that he doesn't think this transformation of OpenAI from nonprofit to having a for-profit arm is above board. He hints that it might be, in his view, illegal. Michael Calore: All right. So that pretty much brings us up to speed on the tension between these two gentlemen and the company that they're arguing over. So let's take a break and we'll come right back and talk about the latest events. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. So today, OpenAI is still a non-profit with a for-profit subsidiary and is in the process of converting the for-profit arm of the company into a public benefit corporation. What does that mean and why are they doing it? Zoë Schiffer: I feel like the company has been, not mysterious, but the way they've talked about this switch from non-profit to for-benefit corporation is like, this is what's needed to move OpenAI into its next era. I think it's also true that the company just had a very confusing structure before, and it doesn't really make sense because it's changed so much as a company. It just isn't a non-profit research lab anymore. It has such a big part of it has millions and millions of ChatGPT users and a bunch of different product lines. And so I think in a lot of ways this new structure might make more sense. I also think there's a huge competition for talent within the AI community, and so it makes sense that employees would want to benefit from getting more typical stock grants like they would at a normal tech company. So I think there are a bunch of different reasons for it. Lauren Goode: The question I have also is where does xAI play into this too? Now that Elon and Sam are direct competitors, Zoë Schiffer: Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, okay, not to take us on too big a tangent, but obviously Elon Musk started xAI, an artificial intelligence company that directly competes with OpenAI and ChatGPT. xAI launches a chatbot called GROK that it's like the unwoke chatbot is how it's branded. It's like ChatGPT, but it'll make bad jokes and swear at you and maybe can teach you how to cook cocaine in your kitchen or whatever. I'm not sure. Lauren Goode: Now we know what Zoe's been using it for. Zoë Schiffer: No, I feel like on the podcast whenever Lex Friedman and Elon are talking about it, they're like, "Ha ha ha. Let's, on air, ask it how to make a drug or something." I don't know. They'll do some little bit and I'm like, I feel like we've been over this. It'll tell you how to cook meth. I get it. Anyway, xAI has enormous resources, or I had this perception that it's way behind OpenAI, but in fact, Elon has connected a hundred thousand GPUs in a cluster. Previously they thought the most you could connect was 30,000, and so if scaling laws hold, xAI could really be in the lead. But it's clear that Elon Musk is still pretty seemingly, in my opinion, bitter about OpenAI's success. And so earlier in February, he launches this unsolicited bid with a group of other investors, including people like Antonio Gracias, who is a private equity guy, and one of Elon's closest advisors, helped advise him on the Twitter bid, is very involved with DOGE as well, and they come forward with an unsolicited offer to take over OpenAI for more than $97 billion. Lauren Goode: How did he arrive at that number? Zoë Schiffer: Do we ever know? I was just impressed that it wasn't- Lauren Goode: 420. Zoë Schiffer: 420. Lauren Goode: $690 billion. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, exactly. I was like, wow, we just got an actual number? I'm shocked. Michael Calore: Well, the company is actually valued more than that. Correct? Zoë Schiffer: I think their last valuation was like 157 billion and they're in talks with SoftBank right now that SoftBank would lead another funding round of 40 billion, which would bring the valuation up to 300 billion, some sources have said. So yeah, we're not a hundred percent sure how they got to the 97 billion number, but suffice to say that Sam Altman comes back immediately on X, he's posting, "No, thank you, but all by X for 9 billion if you want." And then Elon Musk responds to that. What does he say? "Swindler," or something? I don't know. They're just like- Michael Calore: Swindler, yes. Zoë Schiffer: ... fighting in public. It's super messy. But Sam also behind the scenes at OpenAI is telling employees really clearly, I am not interested in this, and the board isn't interested in this either. Michael Calore: So why would Elon throw out a number that he knows is less than the company is actually worth? Zoë Schiffer: So this is the interesting thing because you would think it's still a nonprofit. It's in the process of switching, but because the board isn't like a typical for-profit board, it doesn't have a fiduciary duty to maximize profit for shareholders. So maybe they can just reject this offer. But in fact, a nonprofit board, as I understand it, does have a fiduciary duty to get the fair market value for the company's assets so that the nonprofit can achieve its mission, which is a little bit convoluted, but what it means is that maybe Elon Musk's goal in this was not literally to take over OpenAI. Maybe his goal was to set a floor on the value of OpenAI's assets so that Sam Altman has to pay more than $97 billion, and he can't come in and say, "Oh, I think the assets are just worth 50 billion," and get a sweetheart deal, because now there's a public number attached to it that's much higher than that. Lauren Goode: I don't know, Zoe, I mean, Elon was quoted as saying, "It's time for OpenAI to return to the open source safety-focused force for good it once was." And Elon the savior here. Clearly in this case, we should take this at face value. Zoë Schiffer: I think everything Elon says he falls to us. So I take it. Michael Calore: I just think it's really brash because it's an unsolicited bid. The company was not out there looking to sell itself, and it's essentially somebody walks up to your $1 million house, there's no For Sale sign out front, knocks on the door and says, "I'll give you 300 grand for it." Zoë Schiffer: Right, right. Yeah, exactly. I mean, when Sam was talking about this internally in messages that I saw, he was putting the word bid in scare quotes, which I thought was pretty funny and saying, "Yeah, basically Elon says a whole lot of things." The insinuation was we're not taking him very seriously. He said, "This is frankly embarrassing to watch." Lauren Goode: Sam said that? Zoë Schiffer: To his employees. Lauren Goode: Interesting. Michael Calore: He also came out on X and said something about, "I wish he would compete." Zoë Schiffer: Oh, yeah. He was like, "I wish he would compete in the marketplace, not in the courtroom." Lauren Goode: Yeah. Sam said in a Bloomberg News interview, "I wish he would just compete by building a better product. Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity." Shots fired. And he said he didn't think that he was a happy person. Zoë Schiffer: Oh my gosh. Is Sam Altman trying to compete to write the next Elon Musk biography? This feels like some Walter Isaacson level psychology. Lauren Goode: I don't know. Zoe, I have to say, every time I see something like this breaking in the news, these two guys fighting something with OpenAI, I quite literally hear your voice in my head from one of our earlier episodes going, "Messy, messy, messy." Zoë Schiffer: It is. It is so messy. I really had that this week when they were this whole swindler back and forth thing. I was like, you guys. I mean, I appreciate it. I like that we can see all of it, but at the same time, no comms team. Wow. Yeah, you can tell. Michael Calore: Yeah. Lauren Goode: Now, we should probably just put out there too, that there are critics of OpenAI that think it's completely over-hyped and overvalued who would look at that $157 billion valuation, even though it is based on private funding, that then just equates to a certain valuation and just say, there's no way they're worth that much. There's no way that they can generate enough revenue in the next three to five years to justify that valuation. Zoë Schiffer: I mean, have those people looked at Silicon Valley startups before? Do they know how this whole industry runs? Lauren Goode: Right, exactly. Michael Calore: Well, a big part of that conversation over the last month or so has been DeepSeek, right? The Chinese-owned chatbot competitor to ChatGPT. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Another moment where our bosses said, "What do we know about DeepSeek?" And we panic saying, "No idea. What is it? Never heard of it." But yeah, I mean, this is a chatbot that launched on the scene. It's basically made a model that competes very directly with OpenAI's best reasoning models, but the company says that it trained it with a fraction of the specialized GPUs that OpenAI used, and at a fraction of the cost. Again, I feel like, Lauren, we need to put in the caveat. A lot of people dispute this. They don't believe it, but that's the idea. And the market reacts pretty intensely. Nvidia, which Lauren you have reported on extensively, their stock takes a bit of a hit. Lauren Goode: Yeah, a bit of a hit. I forget how many billions they lost in value that day. It was like, whoops. Yeah. All of a sudden, Jensen Huang was going to Supercuts for his haircuts. Hold on a second. Stock drop after DeepSeek. Yeah. Supposedly it stock fell by around 17% on the news of DeepSeek, which I haven't calculated how many billions that was, but it was a lot, $600 billion off of its value. People were very nervous about this, whether or not they could trust the information that was coming from China is a different question. But if it was true, then yeah, it rattled the AI market. And as a result, I think it was a week later, that's when OpenAI decided to launch its o3-mini reasoning model, which means very little to people who aren't following this very closely, but it was a way for them to say, look, we're advancing the boundaries of what these smaller models can achieve, and smaller typically means less expensive. It apparently responded 24% faster than another mini model that OpenAI had put out. Its answers included 39% fewer mistakes. It was supposed to do more reasoning. And so I think we're going to be seeing a lot of this. I also think we're going to be seeing some of the big players in AI look to make strategic acquisitions of smaller AI companies as a rapid way of getting their tech up to speed to match whatever DeepSeek is doing. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Sam Altman went real founder mode in that moment. I mean, the company did say, "We'd been planning o3-mini for a long time," but the framing of it definitely becomes like, "Oh, yeah, DeepSeek? Well, look at us." Because the idea is, and the reason that Nvidia stock took such a hit is the whole way that the industry is heading is based on the idea that we need tons and tons of computing power. So if in fact there's this big innovation and you can make these models more and more intelligent with a fraction of the chips and not a fraction of the cost, then it's like, whoa, are we going to need as many chips in the future? Have we dramatically overestimated the AI infrastructure investments that we need to make? So a bit of an open question, although a lot of people would say, no more chips is more better. Lauren Goode: Zoe, what are the rank and file inside of OpenAI saying about this skirmish, this messy, messy, messy between these guys? Zoë Schiffer: Well, I think actually both moments, the DeepSeek moment and the Elon moment have galvanized people. I think OpenAI employees have a lot of pride in what they're doing. They have a lot of pride and loyalty towards Sam Altman. And so when these players come up and they're trying to unseat OpenAI as the leader in the space, you see employees really rally around and be like, okay, no, we're going to do more. We're going to go faster. We're going to work harder. Which I mean, these people work really long hours. They work all the time. Lauren Goode: How long are we talking here? Zoë Schiffer: They work much more than us in the post inauguration period, which, if- Lauren Goode: Wow. Zoë Schiffer: ... anyone knows how this newsroom was doing during that time, a lot. Lauren Goode: Zoe just assume you have a live stream into their office that they don't know about. You tap on the live stream and you check in. Zoë Schiffer: There are people who've just done incredible reporting on this. But yeah, I think in the employee gossip reaction zone, I'm like, I've got a good handle on things. Lauren Goode: And Zoe, where does Bret Taylor stand in all of this? Zoë Schiffer: Oh, my gosh. I can't even believe I was about to skip over this. Okay, so when we're talking about the OpenAI's board's reaction to Elon Musk's unsolicited bid, we have to talk about Bret Taylor, former co-CEO of Salesforce, who was also chairman of the board at Twitter when Elon Musk tried to and then successfully acquired the company. So this is someone who had to put up with a lot of back and forth with Elon, a lot of public and private fights, and suddenly he's installed as the board chair at OpenAI. And what happens, Elon Musk makes an unsolicited bid to buy that company too. So I imagine Bret Taylor is having quite a time right now, but arguably is also better equipped than most to handle this situation. Lauren Goode: That's right. Bret Taylor is also running his own AI startup now. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, they're doing like agentic chatbot, Lauren Goode: Agentic customer service chatbot. But yeah, so he's deep in the AI world. Fun fact. I first interviewed Bret Taylor years ago when he was working on a little word processing app called Quip. Do you guys remember Quip? Zoë Schiffer: No, but I'm incredibly jealous because I've reached out to him for a comment 5 billion times. Never a word. Lauren Goode: I think he's a lot busier now, maybe. Zoë Schiffer: You're saying he doesn't have time for me? Lauren Goode: No, this is years ago that I spoke to Bret. Yeah, Bret, we're open to re-engaging. Michael Calore: Okay, let's take another break and we'll come right back. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. So Elon Musk has made this bid to purchase OpenAI for $97.4 billion, even though the company has a valuation that is much higher than that and is close to closing another round with SoftBank, that will change its valuation yet again. So does Elon's bid change anything about OpenAI's position in the market and its transition into this public benefit corporation? Zoë Schiffer: I think we can just say that it makes it more complicated. Now, like we said before, there's a floor on the price of OpenAI's assets. Sam Altman as an insider in the space is going to have to come up with more money than that, or it could look a little bit weird. And I think we have yet to see, there's a lot of speculation and the experts that I talked to when reporting on this story that Elon Musk's goal is to just set a floor on the price of those assets to force Sam to pay more, but there's also the possibility that he's completely serious about this and is really going to try and force the issue. So I think it's still a little bit TBD. Michael Calore: Isn't he busy? Doesn't he have some things going on in his life right now? Zoë Schiffer: No idea what you're talking about. Michael Calore: It definitely feels like the proverbial shot across the bow. Like Elon Musk and Sam Altman have been trading barbs. I think Elon is probably the spicier of the two of them with regards to the veracity of his barbs and the seriousness of his actions. To me, this does not feel like a genuine bid. It's obvious from his past actions that he still wants to take control over the company, and this just feels like the latest move that he's deploying to try and get control. Lauren Goode: Yeah. This isn't related to AI specifically, but did you guys hear how Tesla sales are cratering in Europe? Zoë Schiffer: I did hear that. Lauren Goode: Last month Norway recorded a 37.9% slump in Tesla sales. France sales fell by 63.4%. Spain, it gets worse, or better, Tesla sales plummeted by 75.4%. Zoë Schiffer: Wait, and why do they think this is it? Lauren Goode: It's really hard to say. Companies are calling their fleet models. Some fan forum owners are selling their cars. Some people who were really big Tesla fans are selling their cars. It is hard to attribute it entirely to this, but people are saying that Musk's increasingly alt-right stance, his various antics are starting to seriously impact his EV business there. Zoë Schiffer: It's so interesting because it's the very thing that allowed Elon to stay on top, even when Tesla wasn't doing as well from a business perspective. It was like his reputation was so tied to the company that the stock price would stay pretty high even when the company was going through bad periods. Now it's like the fact that his reputation is tied so close to the company is really coming back to bite him a little bit, it looks like. Lauren Goode: Yep. One of the sources quoted in the WIRED article said that, "While Musk might get away with a Nazi-like salute in some parts of the world, European markets reject such behavior." Good for Europe. Michael Calore: That really says a lot about us in the United States, doesn't it? Lauren Goode: Yeah. Although I was driving down Sand Hill Road the other day and was driving behind a Tesla that had a circle sticker on the back of it with Elon with a red line slashed through his name. Zoë Schiffer: Interesting. Michael Calore: Yes, those are very popular. There are a lot of people who are using the rear bumper of their Teslas to virtue signal that they do not support Elon Musk's politics. Lauren Goode: Yes. And up north of the city here in Marin, I saw a large sign on a store window that said, "Tesla is MAGA." Michael Calore: And I think it's fine that we veered into politics because we can't talk about Elon Musk without talking about the politics in the United States. And I have to wonder if Elon Musk's position in the federal government right now has anything to do with why he's interested in taking control of OpenAI. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I'm really curious to see how this plays out. Trump has appointed David Sacks, who's a close Elon Musk ally, worked at PayPal with him back in the day, as the US AI and crypto tsar, so presumably someone that will be in charge of shaping AI regulations in the United States. And I think there's concern from people who run competitive AI companies that perhaps these people will pass regulations that advantage xAI and disadvantage other companies. But this is all speculation right now. Michael Calore: Well, wherever it goes, it's probably going to play out in public. Elon Musk loves to go on X and shout at people and call names and retweet things that he agrees with or things that he disagrees with and comment on them. So we're probably going to see more spicy tweets get fired between these two guys, and I am looking forward to that. Zoë Schiffer: Well, the other thing that I was going to say is that Elon's position in the government puts Sam Altman in a very interesting position, and I think because Sam Altman was pretty publicly anti-Trump. And then of course, Trump is reelected. The whole industry, at least the tech elite become more MAGA friendly, if you will. Sam Altman is now really trying to play nice. And one way that he does this is shortly after the inauguration, OpenAI announces Stargate, which is this planned $500 billion AI infrastructure project with a bunch of partners, including Nvidia and Microsoft and other players. And he allows Trump to take the credit for that project to get to announce it and talk about how important it's going to be for jobs in the United States and the war to beat China and all of this stuff. Even though the project was underway during the Biden administration, they strategically plan it so that Trump can get credit. And to me it was like, oh, Sam Altman is trying to bypass Elon Musk and get right to Trump to make sure he's not left out of the equation as stuff moves forward from a regulatory politics, all this stuff, perspective. Michael Calore: It's just a big game of chess. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Michael Calore: Well, Silicon Valley has had a lot of feuds between large ego-ed people, usually men, over the years, and I'm just wondering if there's anything that we can compare this to. Is there anything that rises to the same level of wildness as this particular feud between Sam and Elon? Zoë Schiffer: Large ego-ed people is the euphemism we use instead of saying men from now on. Michael Calore: Having a large ego is not necessarily a bad thing. It just depends on how you apply it, right? Lauren Goode: I mean, I think Gates and Jobs are probably the most famous ones, right? Because from pretty much the early days, Microsoft was making software for Apple computers, but then I think it was around the '80s when Microsoft launched Windows and Jobs said that Microsoft was ripping off the Macintosh, right? Michael Calore: Yeah. Lauren Goode: And that continued for a while. And what was the big fight over Flash, Mike? Michael Calore: The big fight over Flash was that Steve Jobs hated it. He thought it was buggy. He thought it was a security risk, and he wanted the world to just use HTML embedded video instead of Flash and use the new spec for building web pages for interactions, because everybody had these Flash interfaces in the browser. And he went on this public campaign. He started blogging about how Flash was bad and how it should go away. And I think his big adversary at the time was Kevin Lynch, who was the executive at Adobe that ran the Flash software department, and they got into this public spat, and they were speaking on stage and they were both blogging and they were both being interviewed in the press talking about how the other company was wrong. And eventually Apple won. It said video and interactions on the open web is better than video and interactions through this janky plugin and Flash died and is no longer a part of the web. And now Kevin Lynch works at Apple and he runs the Apple Watch program. Lauren Goode: I was going to say, is that the same Kevin Lynch at Apple? That's hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg have been feuding lately too, although they're not bloggy about it. Can you imagine Tim Cook writing a blog? I just- Zoë Schiffer: No. I feel like Elon and Mark Zuckerberg also have their feud and the whole cage match thing. Lauren Goode: That's right. The cage match. Yes. And then this is also same category, but not as contentious. Evan Spiegel from Snapchat and Mark Zuckerberg, they don't seem to be on super great terms. And then recently Evan Spiegel changed his LinkedIn bio to say that he was the VP of product for Facebook, which was making fun of how Facebook slash Meta steals all of Snapchat's product ideas. The fact that Evan Spiegel actually took to LinkedIn to do that really says something. LinkedIn. Do you think that he got, what is it called when someone gives you accolades on- Zoë Schiffer: Endorse. Lauren Goode: ...LinkedIn? Endorse. Do you think he got endorsements for that? I endorse Evan Spiegel for his sense of humor. Michael Calore: That feels like as good of a place as any to end. I look forward to coming back and recording a follow-up episode when this saga continues in, I don't know, three weeks. Zoë Schiffer: I'm really excited for when this podcast is a booming success. And then later they're like, "They all used to run a podcast together, and then there was this falling out." And it was like we go to war, and then, they were having competing podcasts and, yeah, yeah, yeah. Michael Calore: Yeah, I'm going to try to convert Uncanny Valley into a nonprofit public benefit corporation. Lauren Goode: Yeah. And going to come in and I'm going to try to buy your podcast for a fraction of what it's worth. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, $9 specifically. Michael Calore: I'll sell you a pineapple. 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. And if you'd like to get in touch with us to ask us any questions, leave a comment, or suggest a topic for the show, write to us at uncannyvalley@ If you want more great content from WIRED's teams, we've got a great rec for you. This week, WIRED's Global Editorial director, Katie Drummond will be joining Kara Swisher on the Pivot Podcast. Check it out. It goes live first thing on Friday, February 21st. Today's show is produced by Kyana Moghadam with help from Gianna Palmer. Paige Oamek fact-checked this episode. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed 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.
WIRED
30-01-2025
- Business
- WIRED
The World According to Marc Andreessen
Photot-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Photograph: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 it wasn't that long ago that one of Silicon Valley's most prominent and influential venture capitalists, Marc Andreessen, was a major supporter of the Democratic Party. So how did he, in such a short time, transform into a top advisor to the Trump administration? This week, we retrace Andreesen's steps–from his early days at Netscape to his current role of 'unpaid intern' at DOGE. You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on Bluesky at @laurengoode, and Zoë Schiffer on Threads @reporterzoe. 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: So, true or false? Silicon Valley is a liberal bastion. Lauren Goode: Formerly true, currently false. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I would say the same. I feel like it's different whether you're talking to the really, really rich people in Silicon Valley or the rank-and-file workers, but there's definitely been, as New York Magazine would say, a vibe shift. Michael Calore: A big vibe shift, and obviously, a big part of that is the leaders of Silicon Valley, some of the CEOs and the billionaires we've been talking about on the show, and we're going to talk about another one of them today. Lauren Goode: Let's do it. Michael Calore: This is WIRED's Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. I'm Michael Calore, Director of Consumer Tech and Culture here at Wired. Zoë Schiffer: I'm Zoe Schiffer, WIRED's director of Business and Industry. Lauren Goode: I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a Senior Writer at WIRED. Michael Calore: Today, we're talking about Marc Andreessen. He is one of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capitalists. He's also the co-founder of the early web browser company Netscape and until not that long ago, he was a top democratic donor, but in recent years, Andreessen has fully changed his political stripes. These days, he is an advisor to the Trump administration and has been helping recruit people from Silicon Valley to bring ideas into Trump's Department of Government Efficiency. He's even called himself the unpaid intern of DOGE. Lauren Goode: How is he eating at night? Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I feel like that's such a thing that's someone who's never been an unpaid intern would say, like, "Ha, ha, ha." Michael Calore: Picture Andreessen eating a lot of ramen noodles, and I think you can get there. Now, Andreessen isn't just somebody with a long and successful career in tech. He's also a godfather-like figure in the industry who's known for setting the tone for the culture in Silicon Valley. So, how does Andreessen end up making a sharp turn toward the right in his fifties? How did he go from formerly supporting the Clintons/Gore, Kerry/Obama, to being an essential part of Donald Trump's transition back into the Oval Office? Zoe, let's start this conversation with you. I want to ask you to tell us about Mark Andreessen's worldview. Zoë Schiffer: Happily, and I will just say that we're going to slap a big "allegedly" onto every single comment that we make on this podcast, because in this here political climate, we should do that. Okay, so I want to start by telling you about something that Mark Andreessen calls the deal. Have either of you heard about this? Michael Calore: Yeah. Zoë Schiffer: Do you know what I'm talking about? Lauren Goode: Enlighten us, please. Zoë Schiffer: Okay, so the deal is a concept that Mark Andreessen has talked about on a number of podcasts, including Honestly with Bari Weiss Back in December. Marc Andreessen [Archival audio]: The deal was somebody like me basically could start a company. You could invent a new technology, in this case, web browsers and all the other things that Netscape did. Everybody would think that that was great. Zoë Schiffer: He says it's basically an unspoken agreement wherein if you're an entrepreneur and you make a company and that company does really, really well and you make a lot of money, and eventually you give all that money away, you are seen as an impressive figure in society and you enjoy a sterling reputation. Marc Andreessen [Archival audio]: And then at the end of your career, you would be left with this giant pot of money, and then what you would do is donate it to philanthropy. That washes away all of your sins, reclassifies you as from a sort of suspect business mogul to a virtuous philanthropist, and that's the arc, and it's all great and wonderful. Zoë Schiffer: And also, part of the deal is that you're a Democrat and you support democratic causes. You accept the fact that you are going to be taxed at a pretty high rate, but it's kind of all worth it because again, you're enjoying enormous wealth and people look up to you. Michael Calore: Yeah, and he talks often about the fact that you're just making so much money that you're not even really thinking about taxes and you're not even really thinking about the last chapter of your life. You're just collecting 10X profits on everything. Lauren Goode: Is the idea that you have this sterling reputation predicated on the fact that you are giving your money away? What happens if you're just a billionaire who hoards it? Zoë Schiffer: I think that in his mind, it's like society treats entrepreneurship as a good. Capitalism isn't seen as an evil, and so you're already kind of an impressive figure in society, but then the fact that you're giving some of this money away kind of ensures that when you die, everyone's like, look at what an incredible person that was. Lauren Goode: Got it. Okay. Zoë Schiffer: Except he says that during Obama's second term, this starts to break down a little bit. Marc takes pains to say that he actually supported and voted for Obama. He really liked him during his first term. You guys will remember that Obama's campaign had used social media pretty effectively to bring him to the White House, and this was also around the time of the Arab Spring. So, the tech industry was getting a lot of positive coverage for its perceived influence on democratic revolutions around the world, but suddenly, the vibe inside the tech companies, and particularly some of the companies that Marc invested in and was really involved in starts to shift because employees are coming in and they're asking really pointed questions to the executive team. They're getting really mad about the tech companies working with the government on AI projects, and drones, and things that they feel like run counter to the liberal ethos of Silicon Valley. Marc starts to feel, along with a lot of other tech elites, that there's this sense that suddenly they're not seen as the good guys. If you're a white man, a capitalist, those are evil words and he feels like everyone's essentially turning on him. Lauren Goode: So, is the deal referring to this time period that includes Obama's first term in the early 2010s? Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I think the deal is the unspoken agreement that used to be in place for entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and then the deal broke down and there was this big vibe shift where it was like you doing all of the things that a successful entrepreneur was supposed to do were suddenly seen as bad things. Marc Andreessen [Archival audio]: Then the thing that really shook me was when I realized that the philanthropy was being redefined as evil. Zoë Schiffer: Then he actually cites the fact that Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan were going to give away 99% of their wealth, a fact that they would've been lauded for historically, but suddenly they're being criticized. Marc Andreessen [Archival audio]: They just got hammered with criticism and attacks on that, and the line of argument was literally, oh, they're just slimy rich people and they're only doing it for the tax break. Zoë Schiffer: To Marc Andreessen, he's like, whoa, the deal has completely broken down, and so this is what started to change his worldview. Lauren Goode: Yeah, completely. Zoë Schiffer: When Trump is elected in 2016, there is this kind of major reckoning in Silicon Valley. The public people in Washington and tech employees felt like social media was to blame for Trump's rise specifically because these companies hadn't done enough to combat disinformation and foreign influence. Honestly, the research I've looked at suggests that just isn't really true. Those things are just less influential than people previously believed, and Marc Andreessen and others definitely didn't buy it at the time either. Andreessen starts to feel like he was lied to by the media. His views really start to shift. Lauren Goode: Yeah, it's interesting, Zoe, that you say that. I think we all thought that social media was definitely to blame for that time period. I happened to listen to the Upstream podcast when we were preparing for this episode, and Andreessen went on that podcast a couple of years ago to talk about how that time period around 2015, 2016, how it, I'm quoting, "broke his mental model of the world". He says that things started to change for him as far back as 2012 when he says that people in authority started saying things that just didn't make sense to him. Then with Trump winning the nomination and the general election in 2016, also he mentions Charlottesville, the George Floyd moment, January 6th, 2021, basically, a whole bunch of events in society that changed the political spectrum. He does say, "Look, as you get older, you don't know if it's the world changing or you are changing", but basically, he lost all faith in his ability to understand politics. It's funny because I think we talked about this in the Sam Altman episode too. He did what rich men with some extra time do, which is he went on a reading journey. Marc Andreessen [Archival audio]: So, I decided to read my way out in both directions, both all the out to the left, all the way to Lenin, and Marx, and communism on the one hand, and then all the way out to the right on the other hand, and see if I could at least reconstruct a worldview for at least some sense of context for what's happening today. Lauren Goode: At that time, this is 2022, when he did this Upstream interview, he says he's somewhere in the middle. He acknowledges that he's a prime beneficiary of globalization, says he also works in an industry that's been incredibly enriched by immigration, but you can also get a sense from this podcast at this time that he's starting to get tired of some of the messaging and the social demands of the left. Zoë Schiffer: I feel like we're going to get trolled for talking a lot about other podcasts on our podcast, but let me just say that it is journalism to listen to these extremely long interviews. Oh, my gosh, we're not just looking at the clips. Lauren Goode: I know. Can I just say, I used to really enjoy my walks along Ocean Beach and now I'm just like, well, let me pull up another three-hour podcast. Michael Calore: Honestly, if you're going to get inside of the mind of somebody like Marc Andreessen who is constantly thinking about 18 different things at once, then listening to him talk for a couple of hours is a good way to get a very complete picture of where his mind is at. Lauren Goode: Yeah, absolutely, or at least as complete of a picture as we're likely to get. Michael Calore: So, through the Biden administration, Marc Andreessen was meeting with the White House in his capacity as a venture capitalist in order to help steer government regulation into territory that would be more favorable to his investments, and things really started to shift with his relationship with Biden. Were there specific issues that they weren't seeing eye to eye on? Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, for sure, but one thing that has really stuck out to me when we've been listening to Marc Andreessen talk about these meetings and the issues that they were fighting over is, I guess it's obvious that billionaires meet with high-ranking government officials, but every time I hear it, I'm like, oh, wow, I guess that is how the world works. They're just sitting down talking about their grievances. They get the direct line to the White House. Lauren Goode: They're talking about meme coins, basically. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, that's what they do. Literally though, Lauren, that seems to be what's happening. Okay. So yeah, the three areas that the Biden administration and the Marc Andreessens of the world seemingly really do not see eye to eye on are content moderation, crypto, and AI. So, with content moderation, Mark Zuckerberg has talked about this a lot recently, but there's this sense that the Biden administration is calling tech companies, putting pressure on them, this is actually called job owning, to take down posts or suppress certain narratives. Marc Andreessen, he's implied that he's quite uncomfortable with this. Then with the crypto industry in particular, Marc says that the Biden administration starts a terror campaign against crypto, and this is obviously personal because his venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, has 7.6 billion in crypto assets and Biden's doing things like issuing executive orders, directing federal agencies to assess the risks of crypto. He appoints SEC chair Gary Gensler, who ramps up crypto enforcement actions pretty significantly, and then the real breaking point is with AI, so leading into the 2024 election between Biden and Trump, Marc Andreessen again has these closed door meetings, he says, with the Biden administration, and they say that they're going to get very involved in AI. They're basically, according to Marc, not going to allow AI startups to flourish, they're going to have just a few big tech companies that are doing AI, and the government will basically control them. Sam Altman has come out publicly and said this is not his view of those meetings, which he apparently maybe attended, but Marc is like, we cannot allow this to happen. We have to come out in full force for Donald Trump, and that is what he does. Michael Calore: Another one of Marc Andreessen's keywords is "debanking". He talks about this a lot when we hear him on podcasts and he blogs about it. What is debanking? What's he talking about? Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, so debanking, this is the process wherein if you're a crypto company or an entrepreneur, you're cut off from the US banking system. So, literally, you'll have a bank account and then the bank will close that account. You might have to go to a cash economy, and sometimes the banks will literally say, according to Marc, that they're facing regulatory pressure from the US government, and so they need to cut off business. Of course, from the bank's perspective, they'll say that crypto has a track record of scams and fraud, and working with these companies exposes you to a lot of risks that could harm the bank and other customers, but it's a pretty personal issue for Marc Andreessen and his friends, obviously, and he says it's ruined people's lives, people that he knows specifically. He cites 30 founders backed by Andreessen Horowitz who have been debanked. Lauren Goode: So, it sounds like what's really changed Marc Andreessen's worldview, to bring it back to Mike's original question, over the past several years... A couple things, and one is this reaction from society collectively to the incredible power and wealth of some of these tech folks and this shifting idea around tech entrepreneurs as rock stars. That's one thing, and then the second part is he just really, really doesn't like some of the regulatory efforts of this most recent administration in particular around crypto and AI. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, exactly. Michael Calore: All right. So, now we're up to speed on where Marc Andreessen's mind is in 2025. Let's take a break, and when we come back, we'll go back in time and examine how he got into his position of power in Silicon Valley. You're listening to Uncanny Valley. So, let's back up and talk about what Marc Andreessen was like at the dawn of his career. Lauren, I would like to ask you to chart the early Marc Andreessen years for us. Lauren Goode: Well, first I'm going to start off by saying that I've listened to a lot of podcasts now with Marc Andreessen and a signature of listening to Marc Andreessen podcasts is that you're constantly checking to see if you accidentally hit the 2X button because he talks- Zoë Schiffer: So real. Lauren Goode: ... so fast. He says a lot and he says it quickly. Okay. Just for some context, Marc Andreessen was born in 1971. He grew up in Wisconsin. He went to the University of Illinois to study electrical engineering. He ended up switching to computer science, which was really more of his jam. He has said that basically, his timing in life has a lot to do with his success. He said in early interviews there were a couple of federally funded programs happening around the time that he went to college that really supported what became the consumer internet. One of those was the National Science Foundation's NSFNET and his university, University of Illinois, was receiving funding through that. So, he really was sort of in the right place at the right time. Zoë Schiffer: Seems like a uniquely humble stance for a Silicon Valley billionaire to admit. Lauren Goode: Easy to say when you're just swimming through your billions every day. You look like that guy from Breaking Bad, just sleeping on the pile of money, and then you're like, yes, I owe my success to the NSFNET grant. Zoë Schiffer: That's big, magnanimous. Lauren Goode: So, it's while he's at the University of Illinois that he and some other people develop Mosaic. Mosaic was a web browser, and we all know what a web browser is now, but at the time, Mosaic was doing something really different. It was different from the super nerdy text-based internet systems like BBS or bulletin board systems, and it was different from the closed portals or stove-pipes, as Andreessen himself has called them, like AOL, or Prodigy, or CompuServe. Mosaic was a graphical user-friendly portal to the open web, and this really was a huge innovation at the time. This actually ends up playing into Andreessen's ideas around Little Tech, which I think we're going to talk about, because at the time, he really was the Little Tech. He has said that if Apple or Microsoft had developed the browser first, we would probably be even more entrenched in what we think of as Big Tech today because they were Big Tech at the time and what he was trying to do was Little Tech. Zoë Schiffer: Mike, do you remember using Mosaic? Michael Calore: I do. It actually came out while I was in college. Marc Andreessen is a few years older than me, so around the time he was leaving college, I was entering college. I remember being in school and within a matter of months, everybody went from checking their email in Pine, a text-based interface, and that's all they were using the computer for, to all of a sudden hanging out for hours, and reading news, and checking the weather, and visiting the libraries of other universities around the world who were putting their hypertext pages into this interface that you could just click and you were just using your mouse all the time to click around instead of just typing commands into a keyboard. There was also graphics in Mosaic, so you could go to a page and click on something, see an image. It sounds really rote and basic now, but this was the birth of the web and it was kind of astonishing how quickly it just flowed in, and I think it's because Mosaic was free. It was easy to get. Everybody sort of, "Oh, do you have the browser? You go here, you download it, you install it." Everybody was kind of helping each other out to get onto this new system. Zoë Schiffer: Feels like a nice era of the internet and also the beginning of the end for us. People used to just live their actual lives, and then we all started spending a shit-ton of time online and look where we are now. Michael Calore: They did, and I think it's hard to overstate the importance of a piece of software like the first few web browsers because it was really an empowering technology. So, for me, in the early part of the web, Marc Andreessen was this amazing figure who brought us this wonderful gift. So, after the success of Mosaic, where did he go from there? What did he go on to do? Lauren Goode: Well, Mosaic was built within the University of Illinois, and he really wanted to commercialize the browser. So, he ended up moving away from the Mosaic project to co-found Netscape and then called that browser the Netscape Navigator because the university owned the rights to the Mosaic name, and he ends up selling Netscape. It gets acquired by AOL. He and Jim Clark sell it for 10 billion dollars. I think the time the deal was announced in 1998, it was a 4.2 billion dollar deal, and by the time it went through a year later, it somehow became 10 billion dollars. So, I guess never just take the first offer, folks. I don't know what you're supposed to take away from that, just billions of dollars in difference. So, they become very rich. I think Jim Clark was more rich, but Andreessen certainly made his millions too, and then a few years later, this is a big moment. He becomes an early investor in Facebook and he joins the board. There's one point in Facebook's history where Facebook is considering getting acquired, and Andreessen talks Zuckerberg away from this. He tells him to keep growing the company. This is quite literally where Andreessen makes billions of dollars. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, that seems like a good decision for Mark Zuckerberg. Lauren Goode: Right, and Marc Andreessen. Good decision for all the Marks. Michael Calore: So, the Facebook investment is around the time that he starts getting serious about becoming a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. So, what happens next? Lauren Goode: So, in 2009, he and Ben Horowitz start a venture capital firm and they call it Andreessen Horowitz. A lot of people refer to this as a16z. That's what the firm calls itself because it's the letter a, 16 letters, and the letter z. a16z is interesting because it is absolutely one of the premier firms of Silicon Valley. It sets a lot of the culture of the valley. It has tens of billions of dollars invested across all kinds of companies, but it also really set new standards for how VCs interact with startup founders. I was talking with a friend recently about... We were talking broadly about workplaces where people feel supported and workplaces where there tend to be these misaligned structures, and we ended up talking about a16z and the fact that early on what they did in the Valley was create this kind of support system for founders. The partners at the firm there get really involved with some of their investments for better or worse, because sometimes founders don't want all that meddling, but that really kind of compelled other VC firms to start thinking about these wrappers of support that they can provide when they're also giving money to a startup. Guys, this firm has everything. They have invested in every possible company you can think of, not just Facebook and Twitter, but Airbnb, Slack, Instacart, Oculus, Databricks, Lyft, Roblox, Pinterest, GitHub, OpenAI. It is crazy. They also, as Zoe mentioned earlier, have funds dedicated to crypto investments. They're very big on crypto. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, the BeamPro founder feels like a real hallmark of Andreessen Horowitz because I feel like previously, or maybe it's just other VC firms, they'll invest in a founder that they really believe in, but then they'll bring in a professional CEO at a certain point. I feel like Andreessen Horowitz is very big on the founder is the person with the vision, and we should support them and help them grow. Lauren Goode: Right. They might recommend a COO or a CFO that's going to take them public at some point, but yes, they really do invest in and believe in their founders. I think in some ways they all want them to feel like they're the micro celebrity of their company world, and Andreessen's own celebrity has only grown through this firm. He has a really, really strong personality. He says a lot. Like I said earlier, he talks really fast. Let me just say what Zoe said earlier too. He allegedly gives off feral vibes on the internet. Zoë Schiffer: Exactly. It's my personal view. Lauren Goode: He talks in podcasts about how he learned some things about management and how to handle sticky situations as he got older, but he also has gotten edgier. He tweets a lot. Michael Calore: Yeah. Lauren Goode: We should talk about Twitter. Michael Calore: Yeah. He's PMARCA on Twitter and everywhere else and he loves Twitter because he loves stirring the pot, so to speak. Lauren Goode: Is he actually still tweeting today because I haven't gone on Twitter in so long. Zoë Schiffer: We can't know because one of the core parts of his Twitter usage is that he blocks journalists with abandon. Lauren Goode: He's tweeting sporadically now it appears. All I can see is November 7th, 2024, November 12th, December 20th, and then another one on January 19th. So, wait, we have an update. Our producer just jumped in to say that she can see a lot more tweets, so we're not going to say her name because then Marc Andreessen is going to go block her, but apparently, I am still blocked and I can't see all the tweets. So, to me, it looks like he's tweeting sporadically, but he is still a very prolific tweeter, this guy, and for some reason that we have never quite fully understood, he started blocking journalists. Do you guys know why he blocked you? Michael Calore: I think just in general, Marc Andreessen is hostile towards the media. He doesn't really like to sit for interviews with people that he doesn't consider already ideologically aligned with him. From the outside looking in, that's what it looks like. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I agree with that. He really does seem to have this view that a lot of Silicon Valley now has that the idea that you would invest all of this time and money in a startup and then one New York Times article could tank it is completely uncomfortable and unacceptable. For me personally, my old beat was labor in Silicon Valley, so I think that that was probably a no-go for me and Marc's relationship. Lauren Goode: Yeah, I'm not quite sure of the moment when I was blocked. Obviously, he's entitled to do what he wants, but it is funny to think of him as this... He is a godfather figure in Silicon Valley to a lot of people, and we write about these companies and the culture of Silicon Valley where you have people like his pal, Mark Zuckerberg, who kind of ironically now leans so heavily on the idea of free speech and opening up communication. Meanwhile, Andreessen is someone whose tweets we as journalists can't even really access directly. We see them posted elsewhere and we sort of have a sense of where he's coming from, but that direct access to journalists is cut off in some cases. Michael Calore: Andreessen Horowitz famously likes to go direct, as they say. He's tweeting constantly. He is making his ideas known. He also blogs a lot. His firm, Andreessen Horowitz, has its own blog platform. The founders and other partners often seed op-eds at other publications. There are three key memos that Marc Andreessen has made. I want to call them blog posts, but really they're memos that I think we should talk about. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. On a side note, I think it's really funny that they're very anti the mainstream media, but then when they want to write on op-ed, the mainstream media is not the enemy anymore. Lauren Goode: Well, I think the most famous one was in the Wall Street Journal, and that's the one that people cite all the time now. Software is eating the world. Mike, tell us about this one. Michael Calore: Yes. So, in 2011, Marc Andreessen published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. It is called Why Software Is Eating the World, and if you don't have a Wall Street Journal subscription, you can just read this on the Andreessen Horowitz website because it's also published there. It was written in 2011 at a time that is really an interesting time for Silicon Valley because it's a few years after the financial crisis. It's also a few years after the launch of the iPhone, but it is before many of the big technological revolutions that we know happened in the 2010s. What he posits is that we're at a point now where technology has reached the point where you can run a big company completely online, and all of the next big companies are going to maintain their dominant positions in the marketplace through software. So, the world is moving from the physical world of business into software as a service, and he says this is going to create a fundamental shift in the world economy because all of these big companies are going to be doing their business online. They're all going to be using cloud computing, and it's going to just change the structure of how business works in the world. It's kind of fascinating to read it now 14, 15 years later because he was right. If you look at what happened after that memo came out, Netflix basically ate Blockbuster, and then it completely changed the way that we consume content through our televisions. Airbnb ate the hotel industry. Uber ate the taxi service and car service industry, and you can just look at a lot of examples that software did actually take over a complete sector of the business. Lauren Goode: Mike, when you were going back and reading this and acknowledging that he was right, did it change the way you thought about Marc Andreessen from a decade ago? Because we're obviously coming into this today talking about this very particular political moment, but going back to Netscape, and Mosaic, and early Facebook investment, and software is eating the world, he is right about a lot of things. Michael Calore: Yes, absolutely. I would say there are a lot of things that he says on podcasts, and in his memos, and on social media that I just do not agree with. He has this view of who CEOs are as people, that they're really just trying to be better people and that they're not really as concerned about profit as everybody seems to think they are. The idea that if you have any disagreements with how venture capital works and how capitalism works, that you are a Marxist and you are a far left individual. There are all these things that I'm just like, no, that's not the way the world works, man. He sees things as very black and white and he sees things from his point of view, and I don't share those views, and I certainly don't look at the world the same way that he does. However, he's very smart. He completely understands how technology works in business, and he was right about a great many things. So, Marc Andreessen intends to come along at these times of crisis in the country and in the world and put out these missives about how we should move forward. Lauren, I want to tee you up for this next part because I know that you want to talk about it's time to build. Lauren Goode: It's time to build. Yeah, so this was the early pandemic era, and the whole world is in this position of being caught flat-footed by it. In the US, you all remember, we're in this place of scarcity. Where's the toilet paper, but also more critically, where are extra hospital beds and ventilators, and where are the vaccines, and also the stimulus checks and bailouts to help American enterprise and the American people? Andreessen uses these examples as framing for why America just has to build more in general, like schools and housing. He critiques the ideologies of both the left and right in this manifesto, but ultimately, he's a staunch capitalist. He says if the left can prove that the public sector can build things faster, sure, have at it, but he really believes that more solutions are going to come from the private sector. This does resonate with some people and not a year later, a lot of the stuff he was crowing about in this April 2020 essay is no longer as much of a critical problem. America did in fact race to find solutions, particularly around the vaccines, but really these solutions were only short term, but it is also clear from this manifesto that he still has this kind of romantic notion of capitalism, this idea that capitalism is how we take care of the people we don't know. I could see how you believe that to be true when you are this innovator directly responsible for creating jobs for millions of people you'll never actually meet, but I think we also have to acknowledge some of the societal imbalances that come from pure capitalism. But once again, this essay lands at a moment. He's really good at hitting that moment with these manifestos. Zoë Schiffer: You know, that one sounds a lot like the Techno-Optimist Manifesto, which I really hope that I never have to talk about publicly again, but this was his most recent blog post where he talks about the idea that growth is progress and technology is a primary driver of economic and social advancement and basically pits people who are negative about technology, and growth, and capitalism against people who are positive about it. Techno-optimists like Marc Andreessen believe in Free Markets, and he says in this blog that they, meaning techno-optimists, have a lot of enemies. He says, "Our enemies are not bad people. They are bad ideas." The ideas that he views negatively in this are things like ESG, so environmental, social, and governance, social responsibility, tech ethics, trust, and safety. So, content moderation is kind of said quietly here, and he ends the manifesto by saying, "It's time to be a techno-optimist and it's time to build." Lauren Goode: Oh, so he says, "It's time to build" in this one too? Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Lauren Goode: Well, it's almost like he needs an editor just to point out there's some redundancies there. Zoë Schiffer: No, no, no. Michael Calore: There's an echo. Lauren, to your point, here's a memo, a manifesto that is filled with a lot of interesting and good ideas, but that just feels misguided because the things that he's telling us to stay away from are the things that I think are a net positive for society, and he feels are a net negative for society. I think a lot of people sort of felt that way when they read this. They were like, what is this guy talking about? It felt kind of unhinged because it felt like, but you're talking about tearing down these things that we've set up to protect people. Zoë Schiffer: It doesn't seem to me like he's gotten less smart. He's obviously a very smart dude, but in my reading, it definitely feels like he's become a little less tethered to the reality that regular people live in because he's not going to be impacted by Meta rolling back its commitment to trust and safety and content moderation the way other people are. Michael Calore: Okay. I think we have a pretty clear picture of his worldview, and for anybody who wants to read more, you can follow the show notes to read all of those manifestos. Clear off a couple of days on your calendar, because you will need it. Let's take another break and we'll come back with more Uncanny Valley. So, before we end, we have to look forward. Marc Andreessen has his thumb on the scale in Washington. What is his relationship like with the Trump administration and how is that going to change our future? Zoë Schiffer: I think we're still kind of seeing how it's going to shape up. As we said at the beginning of the show, he's a close advisor to now President Trump, and he's really working to reshape the US government to be optimistic about tech, to be a techno-optimist, if you will. He's focused on deregulation, specifically with crypto and AI, and efficiency, which is a huge tenet of DOGE, Elon Musk's government project. I think on a more subtle level, although I don't know if you could call it subtle, he's resetting the culture so that being a rich capitalist is once again seen as a good thing, not a bad thing, except I don't see them giving away their money this time around. What about you guys? Lauren Goode: It is my personal opinion that Marc Andreessen is very allegedly going to have huge influence over this administration's policies. Hot take. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Based on his unpermanent residence at Mar-a-Lago. Michael Calore: Lauren, I agree with you because as we've talked about and as history has shown, his ideas definitely do shape the way that technology and business and government all work together, and I don't see that changing, especially now that he has such a large platform. Lauren Goode: I just think for guys like Marc Andreessen, there's probably no amount of power, or land, or money that's ever really enough. It's hard to say exactly what the outcome of his influence on the current administration is going to be. We're probably going to see a lot of pro-tech policies and regulations, or lack thereof I should say, that really support the tech industry. It feels like what a lot of these rich and powerful guys are very good at and have gotten very rich from is world building, and the world that they're building right now is probably great for them, but like Zoe said earlier, not really applicable to the rest of us. Michael Calore: Yeah. Our country has just rolled back a bunch of green energy initiatives and gone hard into fossil fuels again in order to create boom times for the energy industry. That's also going to be boom times for crypto and for AI, which require a lot of computing resources. So, you can see the influence that these tech leaders, not just Marc Andreessen, but all of them who are crowding around the White House right now are having on policy, and you can see them sort of shaping the world that is going to be very beneficial towards them and their investments, to state the obvious. Lauren Goode: Well, I don't know, Mike. How much do you have in crypto right now? Because I got to tell you, I'm going to open my Robinhood app and look at the... Did you know that you guys can also trade the Trump coin now on Robinhood? Michael Calore: Oh, gosh. Okay. So, here's the real question that we need to answer. Is he ever going to unblock us? Zoë Schiffer: No. Lauren Goode: No. Don't hold your breath. Zoë Schiffer: It depends on how many positive profiles you write about his founders I think. Michael Calore: Probably. I can say that I'll never know because I'm not on X anymore, and I know that's where he primarily hangs out because that's his crowd. I hang out on the platform that he loves to make fun of, which is Bluesky. He says it's the place where all the libs go. It's the blue zone. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, we're happily in our respective echo chambers now. Lauren Goode: Yeah. Zoë Schiffer: We won't have to interact. Michael Calore: And may it forever be thus. All right, that is our show for this week. Thank you for listening to Uncanny Valley. If you like what you heard today, make sure to follow our show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. If you'd like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, write to us at uncannyvalley@ One more time for Mr. Marc Andreessen, that is Uncannyvalley@ Today's show is produced by Gianna Palmer and Kyana Moghadam. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Jordan Bell is our executive producer. Conde Nast's Head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon.
