Wired’s Katie Drummond on What the Tech Titans Learned from DOGE

0:05Katie Drummond:Welcome to The Political Scene from The New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Jane Mayer, and I'm joined by my colleagues Susan Glasser and Evan Osnos. Hi, Susan. Hey there. Great to be with you. Hi, Evan. Great to see you guys.

0:25Katie Drummond:We've spent the last few weeks on the show discussing the major themes of Trump's first six months in office. Today, we're going to get into some of our favorite topics on this show about money and power and how it's changed under Trump's Washington. Our own Evan Osnos just published an incredible book about the modern Gilded Age. It's called The Haves and Have Yachts. Its release coincided with the very public breakup between Trump and the world's richest man, Elon Musk. But Evan, as you write, the oligarchs are always fighting, right? This is true. The warring oligarchs is one of the great patterns of history.

1:07I wanted to sit down with Katie Drummond. She's the global editorial director for Wired because they have done some really terrific reporting on Washington in the Trump second term, particularly around some of these important figures like Musk, like other tech tycoons who may not have as much of a public role, but are really having a dramatic impact inside. What really fascinates me is the political evolution of Silicon Valley, because we all remember when it was kind of known as a pretty standard issue, liberal democratic stronghold. That's how we thought of the technology industry during the Obama administration.

1:46And it's gone through this transformation where it is now a stronghold of really right-leaning, libertarian, in some cases quite eccentric thinking about the role of government and technology. And it took form with Doge. And that's a subject, of course, for our discussion. But that has not gone away. Doge is still having a massive disruptive influence across our government in people's lives, in their jobs, in scientific research. You know, we're talking right at a time when you have reports that Mark Zuckerberg's company Meta is offering signing bonuses of$100 million to AI specialists at the same time that this technology could end up putting huge numbers of people out of work, according to CEOs who are now becoming much more public in how they talk about that.

2:35So all of this is the topic of our discussion. Wired, of course, focuses on Silicon Valley, on tech. And Katie has been at the helm at just a crucial period in understanding the intersection of politics and tech.

2:48Katie Drummond:I can't think of anyone better to have that conversation right now than you, Evan. Your book is such a timely contribution to something I think we don't even understand. One question I am eager to hear what you and Katie get into on this is, how do we even think about, how do we call this moment? Because, you know, is it an oligarchy? Is it a plutocracy? What do we make about it? Is it just a cynical arrangement that's doomed to crash and burn in the same way that Musk and Trump and their personal relationship were doomed to crash and burn? Obviously, these are two men who know an awful lot about messy public divorces.

3:25Katie Drummond:But we can't just divorce ourselves from Silicon Valley and the world transformative technology that they're creating. And I think that's the crisis that we're in. I can't wait for this either, because really, is there any more fundamental issue and question than of what the vast concentrations of wealth in a few pockets in Silicon Valley are going to do to democracy? The amount of money and the rising economic inequality, which is going to be exacerbated by the most recent big, beautiful bill that was just passed through Congress, is such a challenge to the idea of democracy where everyone is supposedly politically equal.

4:13Katie Drummond:And the ideology of the people who are running Silicon Valley, as you say, is really strange. It's kind of nihilistic. So I can't wait to hear what kind of sense you experts make of this. Well, we tried to keep our feet firmly on the ground. I'm excited to dive into all of that with Katie Drummond. Here's my conversation with her.

4:41Katie Drummond, Global Editorial Director of Wired and co-host of Wired's Uncanny Valley podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today.

4:48Katie Drummond:Thank you, Evan. Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here. Katie, we are talking about six months into this administration, and we'll get to what Wired has explained recently as Doge 2.0 in just a second. But I want to start by going back for a moment to when this effort began, because Doge has been a hard target for journalists to pin down. It's operating very much in the shadows by design. It's not subject to a lot of the usual disclosure rules at other agencies. But Wired has really dug into this over the course of the administration very successfully. I mean, you found patterns, you found individuals.

5:30It seems like the experience of covering tech turned out to be unusually helpful to covering politics right now. And I want to know how that became clear to you. How did you and your colleagues confront this puzzle of covering Doge?

5:47Katie Drummond:I would say without giving myself too much credit, because as we've talked about, I am Canadian, so I don't like to do that. But, you know, I think it's been very clear to all of us and certainly very clear to me as a journalist for the last several years that the technology industry is now the locus of power in the United States, right, and arguably around the world, right? The CEOs of major tech companies hold so many of the keys that determine the way we all live our lives, certainly the way our country is governed. And what became clear to me, I think, in the run-up to the 2024 election, even before Elon Musk really jumped in sort of in July of 2024 was that that overlap between technology, the technology industry, and politics and federal politics would be a major storyline.

6:37Katie Drummond:We were prepared because we hired a politics team. So we just said, we have to start covering this in a more deliberate way. But we had the benefit of already having really strong coverage of the tech industry. We have a business team helmed by Zoe Schiffer, who actually wrote a book, a fantastic book about Elon Musk and his takeover of Twitter. When you read a lot of our Doge reporting, you'll see several bylines on those stories, and that's because we had business reporters working with politics reporters to cover any sort of given news event. Was there an actual confluence of information coming from the West Coast and information coming from Washington?

7:15Did you ever find that these two were leading you to common destinations in a way?

7:20Katie Drummond:Absolutely, and I think we had first-mover advantage to what turned into a very, very big story, right, the story of Doge, we got a flood of tips and information from people inside of these federal agencies, right, who were watching this happen, who were interacting with Doge operatives, Doge workers inside their agencies and felt like they had to say something. And then sources, you know, close to and around Musk and sort of adjacent to this almost like right-wing faction of Silicon Valley were talking to us and who were sort of helping us understand where Silicon Valley and the tech industry stood vis-a-vis the administration and Doge.

8:00You've actually hit on what is kind of the essential point of encounter, perhaps, in this current era of politics, because there are the civil servants who represent the traditional backbone of American governance. And then you have this new group of disruptors, as they would describe themselves, coming in. and each one regards the other as a fundamental obstacle to human flourishing. You were already alert to that, that something was about to happen in Washington that local inhabitants, and I'm talking to you, of course, as somebody who lives here, really didn't fully understand about what was about to happen.

8:40Katie Drummond:I think that's right. It was Metta and Mark Zuckerberg many, many years ago who used the very cliched slogan, move fast and break things. And that is very much something that many of these people embody. And so you start moving fast and breaking things and sending emails asking for, you know, bulleted lists of productivity from people who have been civil servants for two decades. I mean, that is an extreme culture clash. This has also shown us something important, which is about the ideological underpinnings of Silicon Valley this period. You've covered the industry for years and you've seen the ebb and flow of ideas.

9:20This goes all the way back to when you started at Wired back in about 2009, I think. And back then, of course, the cliche about tech was it's fairly left leaning. It's Obama aligned, even if it was always quite hyper market oriented. And now, of course, we see this much more complicated picture, a much more overt conservative streak, to put it mildly. And my question is, was it always there and underappreciated? Was it quiet? Or has it grown, really, in this period? And if so, why?

9:55Katie Drummond:I mean, obviously, the tech industry and Silicon Valley are not a monolith. There are certainly many, many people living and working in San Francisco, in Silicon Valley, in tech, who are very left-leaning, who are looking at what's happening with great horror. And obviously, right, then there is the more conservative streak, the Marc Andreessons of the world, who certainly have taken that set of philosophical ideas and sort of that set of politics and really taken it to the extreme in recent years. What I'm seeing from leaders in the tech industry is less about an overt set of political beliefs, right?

10:33Katie Drummond:Like we are liberal or we are leftist or we are right wing or we are right leaning. We're all in on the GOP. it's much more craven and cynical and opportunistic than that. It is we are going to move in the direction that is in the best interests of our business, the best interests for our shareholders, you know, for our board, for our own pocketbooks, for our own desire to be dominant. We are going to go wherever we need to go to realize our ends. And so if that means we will be sitting front row center at Donald Trump's inauguration in the year 2025, then that is what that means. And so I think the change that I've seen since maybe 2016 to now is less about, oh, all of a sudden a bunch of them have just shifted to the right.

11:21Katie Drummond:It's much more, oh, they feel very much empowered to follow their own interests and the interests of their companies and their industry wherever that may lead them, even if it is unsavory or perhaps unethical or perhaps ethically dubious at the very least, they are opportunistic to the nth degree. And that is what we're seeing. That's immensely important. If that's the case, and I think the evidence out there certainly supports that, I want to understand how that happened. Not to glamorize the past. Let's remind ourselves that Bill Gates, after all, was brought before Congress. There was an effort to try to break up Microsoft back in its day for monopolistic tendencies.

12:06But the way in which you described, I think, this period is very persuasive. And I'm curious what you think was driving it. How did this theory of what they would describe as shareholder responsibility, where they're taking care of their investors, took on this fundamentalist form?

12:25Katie Drummond:You know, I remember working at Wired the first time around. So this was like 2008, 2009. Wired in that moment was great. It was a great Wired. It was so optimistic in its view of what technology was doing to the world. And this is not exclusive to Wired. I mean, this was tech journalism overall in that moment. and I think spoke to the view of the vast majority of just the average sort of American citizen was, wow, social media is here. Look at what it has the potential to do. Look at how the Internet can connect all of us. What an incredible global utopia we may one day soon live in where we can all spend time on Facebook or Twitter sharing ideas, building bridges, resolving conflict.

13:16Katie Drummond:Silicon Valley was telling a great story. Everyone was buying it. These companies grew to be tremendously powerful. the consequences of their actions and the consequences of what they built became very clear to all of us right as the years went on and on and on they felt that backlash right they felt the media quote unquote turning on them the public turning on them they felt this this shift in sentiment a lot of those tech leaders took that very personally I mean they felt that backlash And it led us to where we are today, which is, well, you know, if I don't sort of have the hearts and minds of the press and of the general public, fuck them.

14:00Katie Drummond:That sort of turn around 2016, sort of as the promise of social media started to crumble and we all saw what was really there and sort of what the real consequences here were, I think that that backlash led Silicon Valley leaders to this almost like futile sense of, well, I hold all the keys. I have all the money. I already have all of your eyeballs. I have all your data. So I will do with it what I wish. Consequences come what may. And the reality is, other than sort of public perception of a company like Meta or Mark Zuckerberg not being particularly favorable, what are the consequences for these companies, right?

14:42Katie Drummond:They know that they can operate with relative impunity, and they are now lining themselves up next to a president who will allow that to continue to happen, right? who will not take great effort to regulate AI, to regulate, I mean, God forbid we think about regulating social media 20 years too late, but they are lining themselves up with an administration that can create the most hospitable environment for them because they are frankly, you know, tired of hearing from the press, tired of hearing from the public, learned their lesson from those backlashes that they worked through, And I think just feel that they are of a size and a scale and a level of power that they can operate in this sort of very cynical way in this very opportunistic way.

15:27Now, we've just had this amazing moment when Elon Musk was essentially defenestrated from Washington by first, you know, his collapsing relationship with the president, but even more importantly, almost by the public in the sense that Tesla sales collapsed. You had his favorability go through the floor. Do you get the sense that the tech community takes from that any lesson of, oh, we seem to have crossed some threshold the public couldn't accept? Or do you think they just say disruption has always generated backlash and we must continue forth?

15:59Katie Drummond:No, I mean, look, I think there were a lot of lessons that they could have learned from what went wrong with Doge, with Musk. But from everyone that I've talked to, and we have some fantastic politics reporters who are talking to, you know, sources inside the GOP as well as sources in Silicon Valley. if they learned anything, ultimately, it was be quieter. Like Elon Musk is so loud. I mean, he was so out in public. He was so out in front. He was getting off Air Force One with the president. He was posting on X, you know, dozens of times a day. Like the guy would not shut up. They certainly learned a lesson there in the sense of almost like be less like Elon Musk, be more like Peter Thiel.

16:42Katie Drummond:He's a venture capitalist and a very prominent figure in Silicon Valley. There's a way to achieve your ends that involves being more behind the scenes, quieter, more strategic, spend your money. But you don't need to go on TV and talk about it all the time. You don't need to, like, be in President Trump's meetings with his cabinet, with your son. Like, don't be weird. Elon Musk flamed out because he was wildly overexposed. And he caused all kinds of headaches for himself and for the administration. I mean, he said crazy stuff. He said, we're going to cut$2 trillion out of this budget without understanding that there weren't trillions of dollars to feasibly cut in the first place.

17:19Katie Drummond:But ultimately, if anything, if I'm being totally honest, I think that the tech industry in Silicon Valley, if they've learned anything from what Elon Musk was able to accomplish, it's that this is open season. Like this is an invitation from the president, from his administration for these tech elites to ascend to wherever they want to in this country, provided they play by the GOP and Trump's rules. And maybe the political equivalent of stealth wealth may be the next chapter. All right, we're going to take a quick break. But when we come back, I want to talk to you about the future of tech and AI and things that our listeners might be concerned about.

18:00The political scene from The New Yorker. We'll be right back.

18:06Hey, listeners.

18:08Katie Drummond:This is Liz Mainz-Amanzadi, the New Yorker's Puzzles and Games editor. If you're someone who likes making lists and organizing your bookshelf, we think you'll love Catalogs, our new daily game that challenges you to put things in order based on a hidden rule. You might be asked to sort peppers by spiciness, world capitals by population, or Martin Scorsese movies by release date. You can play Catalogs every day at newyorker.com slash games and in the New Yorker app for iOS or Android. Here's a helpful hint. The app gives you free access to our entire archive of catalogs, along with our word scramble game Shuffalo and the mini crossword.

18:46Katie Drummond:So download the New Yorker app for new games to play every day.

18:58Katie, I want to talk about AI. We can't have any conversation apparently in 2025 without bringing that up. But in all seriousness, it's connection to some pretty big societal questions that are just over the horizon, or I would argue actually now already upon us. The big difference here, it seems to me, between this generation of technology and what's come before, you know, whether it was the mechanization of agriculture or electricity, it's the speed of diffusion about how fast this is sweeping through our lives. Just the sums of money involved are eye-watering already, the amount of money that AI is hoovering up, and we're about to see big changes.

19:36How are you sensing that these companies are talking about their role in the societal implications of this?

19:46Katie Drummond:Ultimately, they see their role and they see what's happening with AI as an inevitability. And I think that that's interesting because they are not saying or thinking, well, we're creating this incredible technology and we look forward to seeing whether or how or to what end it's adopted. they are seeing this, talking about this, positioning themselves and positioning their companies in a way that very overtly says, this is here and more is coming and there's nothing that you can do about it. And are they right about that? Is there an inevitability? They would argue, of course, well, look, if we don't do it, China is going to do it.

20:27And so we have to get there first and we have to claim the moral high ground and so on. I have a lot of reasons to be skeptical of that argument. But this idea of inevitability seems to be directly at odds. And I've heard them voice it. It seems at odds with the other thing that they said for years, which was we must make sure that the worst consequences and powers of AI are contained and prevented. How did they suddenly go from saying this thing is a dangerous entity to saying it's coming for us, so let's just try to manage the downside?

21:00Katie Drummond:Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of that catastrophizing, not all of it, but a lot of it was marketing. They want these models and they want this technology to sound as big and daunting and powerful and impressive and scary as they possibly can, right? I think that that is by design. I think it's important if you are spending billions of dollars and raising billions of dollars to make what you do sound not only inevitable, but really, really, really powerful. Their PR tactics change as the market changes. And I think the doomsday scenario stuff was a very effective way to inculcate, to establish to Americans and to the rest of the world and to the CEO of every company who is like sipping AI Kool-Aid somewhere in their office right now that this is serious stuff.

21:58Katie Drummond:You know, a lot of these AI leaders talk using that sort of dystopian doomsday language, or they talk about the potential crises that AI will unleash, whether it's like 50 % unemployment or, you know, Sam Altman this week said AI is going to usher in this era of, you know, widespread rampant fraud because of, you know, the ability to imitate a person. A lot of that language and that hyperbole masks the fact that these individuals have a stake in exactly the scenarios that they are outlining. So Sam Altman oversees something called World ID as part of his, you know, enormous empire, which is designed to use biometrics to literally scan your iris and give you a number.