Trump Davos Drama; AI Midterms; ChatGPT's Last Resort

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1:22Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Wired's Director of Business and Industry. Today, we're starting a bit of a new chapter here on the show, and I want to introduce you to my brand new co-hosts, Brian Barrett, our Executive Editor here at Wired, and Leah Figer, our Senior Politics Editor. Brian and Leah, welcome to the show. Hi, Zoe. Hey, guys. So thrilled to be here. So, long-time listeners know the show has taken on a bunch of different formats since it launched. We had the Gadget Lab days, the Roundtable, news episodes. We really created this podcast because we want to bring you the best stories and the best takes about what's happening in tech and politics.

2:04Brian Barrett:That's all going to stay the same, but this time we're going to go even deeper. We're peeling back the curtain and telling you what we're hearing from our sources across Silicon Valley and in D.C. What trends you should be watching for, the news that's already happened or about to break, and how we are thinking about all of it. Basically, you're going to be added to the group chat on Slack. God help us all. No, it's going to be great. Mostly what we hope is we can give you a sense of this rapidly changing world from a wired lens. We're going to be honest. We're going to be curious. We're going to be looking towards the future and taking you there with us.

2:41Okay, so we have a bunch of stuff to discuss today. The World Economic Forum kicked off this week in Switzerland, and it's already produced a ton of drama. I can't turn away from it, honestly. I can. I can, and I do.

2:55Brian Barrett:Are you able to turn it off just immediately? It's so easy just to say, nope. No, Al Gore is booing people. He's heckling the Commerce Secretary. How do we not talk about this at all times? I know, I know. But also, ChatGPT announced it's going to start pushing ads, and Leah is going to force us to start thinking about the upcoming elections in the U.S., with reports on Silicon Valley already pumping a bunch of money into the midterms. I think we should start with one of the key stories, at least Leah and I have been watching this, the World Economic Forum conference in Davos. So each year in January, global leaders from around the world, the kind of titans of business and government, they get together for a week in this very quaint mountain city in Switzerland to discuss pressing world issues.

3:46Brian Barrett:I think that this has always been something that is, you know, this is for tech billionaires and world leaders to get together, CEOs. This is really a combination of honestly so much that is wired. But what makes this Davos particularly interesting is, to me anyway, is how the U.S. has been positioning itself in the world recently. I say with like no judgment whatsoever. That is such a gentle way of putting that, Leah. How about, I'll take a stab. Get after it. It's interesting because of how the U.S. is attempting to take over a country from a NATO ally and using threats of violence to achieve its aims.

4:31Brian Barrett:Right in there. Let's get into it. We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force. But I won't do that. Trump actually went to Switzerland to address everyone in person. I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland. Look, during his speech, he did appear to rule out using military force to acquire Greenland, which is like a wild thing to say out loud because he like talked around it and didn't exactly say it like that and still just kept saying, I want Greenland. I want Greenland.

5:08Brian Barrett:Give it to me. I got to say, though, it's the same way like if you're on a playground and you want someone's lunch money. It's like, I won't punch you for your lunch money, but I could. I could punch you if you don't give me your lunch money, but I won't. But you should give me the lunch money so that I don't punch you, but I wouldn't. You know what I mean? It's like he said he wouldn't use Forrest, but it was also like, by the way, I absolutely will if I don't get what I want. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And just like talking about NATO as if it's like a t-shirt that's maybe out of style or just like not the show that you want to watch on a Saturday is wild.

5:40Brian Barrett:Like this is wild. I feel like every year there's this question of like, is this conference still relevant? Is it going through the TED cycle where like no one will care anymore? But actually this year, it feels like it's maybe more important than ever. Trump was there. All of the leaders in artificial intelligence were there. And that's kind of what we were hearing was like the big topic that everyone was talking about, even more so than Greenland. Sorry, Leah. But like all of the AI guys were there, Satya Nadella, Dario Amadei, like they spoke on the stages. And the thing on everyone's mind was AI.

6:16My favorite story so far, not to go into like complete gossip mode, was that, you know, like the tech companies have like houses. It's like what a brand activation is called at Davos. And the Anthropic house was like really the cool place to be. But they were very particular about who could get into their party. So like, you know, prominent officials would walk up to the door and the Anthropic person would be like, you're not on the list. Stop. That didn't happen. No, that didn't happen. Who got turned away? Do we know? I can say no names. What's the backup house? Is everyone just like, oh, sorry, like you've got to go to Mistral.

6:55Yeah, you're more of a meta house vibe. Sorry.

6:58Brian Barrett:Okay, but like to peel that back for a second, this to me would have meant absolutely nothing like seven months ago. But tell me if I'm interpreting this wrong, even if like this is perhaps like the Davos of like, is NATO going to continue? And also, I guess we all love AI now, question mark. Anthropic is not exactly that. They might be this AI company, but they're also AI doomers in so many respects. So the fact that like they're the cool kids here, what does that mean? What does that actually mean for this conference? Yeah, it's kind of a standout because one thing that has not been a huge topic of conversation as far as the people I've talked to at Davos is AI safety.

7:33It's kind of a raw, raw atmosphere. But I feel like because Anthropic is kind of having a moment with its coding agent, cloud code, which like everyone is using and really loving right now, I feel like it's able to be kind of the lone voice in the room, being a little more pessimistic about the technology and still maintain its place as like the cool kid on the block. I've heard that the Anthropic hats are like pretty popular this year. They've got good merch. That's how you tell. I will say, I think one thing about the AI companies being here and being the cool kids and all that is that it speaks to just how geopolitical AI is at this moment.

8:08And Anthropic Like even the headlines Anthropic made were other than having the cool house and turning people away. Was their CEO Dario saying, it's crazy that we're selling ships to China. We shouldn't be doing that. Like why in the world would we do that? Which is a pretty big statement. It's in line with other things he said. But it speaks to these companies, these startups, some of which with, like, questionable finances for the future, like, are really shaping geopolitics and informing them in a really impactful way, meaningful way.

8:40Brian Barrett:Look, obviously, the AI Cool Kids Club is, like, a headline for a certain section of society. Many of our readers, I assume, the things that I couldn't tear myself away from, sorry to bring it back here, were Trump's speech. and just like the entire presence there. I mean, in terms of like what comes from this politically, I have a lot of questions. But with that in mind, when I'm looking at everything that's going on in the U.S. while Trump is over there making these overtures, ICE is everywhere, right? They're talking about expanding possibly to like other blue states. And currently the situation on the ground in Minnesota is terrible.

9:18Brian Barrett:So as we're looking at Trump talking about invading other countries quite literally, Already, there's a ground invasion in the U.S. And it's very jarring to see this go back and forth right now. Yeah, let's talk about Minneapolis a bit. It's been two weeks, a little over, it's hard to believe, since an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good. There had already been a strong backlash against ICE's presence in Minneapolis. It has only grown since then. The response from ICE has only grown since then. They've got over 2 ,000 people there now, agents there, heading towards 3 ,000. It's really a model of how the U.S.

9:59government would occupy its own cities in a way that really felt unfathomable even just a few weeks ago, I would say. Months, certainly.

10:08Brian Barrett:Oh, absolutely. Like, absolutely. Our wonderful features desk published this story on Wednesday, where they interviewed 10 different residents in Minneapolis just to kind of get into the day to day life. So they talked to teachers who had to figure out how to, you know, have kids out on the playground and bring them inside when it's time to come in. And like while also being aware of helicopters like buzzing them. And then as well as volunteers who have been detained by ICE. We got some really scary stories in there. There's some quotes that are going to stay with me forever. You know, again, we are just a few weeks out from Renee Nicole Good.

10:50Brian Barrett:and in one of the stories we have, one agent said to this group of people that was in a car, you need to stop. You need to stop obstructing us. That's why that lesbian bitch is dead. Like this is the back and forth on the ground right now. This is dire. This is like really, really dire. Do we know what support for ICE has been like? I read a report in Puck that said that support for this agency has plummeted in the wake of the shooting. does that track with what you're hearing, Leah? Yeah, it's low. This is not a popular thing to be running on right now. Like this is really not, I'm honestly not to be crass about this, but I'm very curious with Next Steps.

11:32Brian Barrett:We had reporting last week about, you know, what happens to New York, what happens to California. And I'm very curious about this stretching into the midterms, to be totally frank. This requires a lot of people to do a lot of things. It's not just enough to be a Democrat and be like, we stand with our neighbors. No, you have to say abolish ICE if you want to be elected in a lot of these districts right now. At least that's what the polling is showing right now. And that's what public opinion is showing right now. This could change in a couple of months if they're not doing these kinds of, you know, violent invasions.

12:04Brian Barrett:I'm very curious how the Trump administration will play this when it comes to the midterms. I mean, it doesn't seem like they're going to back off from anything. And, you know, they've got an infinite budget to work with practically. In our own reporting, we broke a story just this week. They're planning to spend up to$50 million to create a center based out of Minneapolis where they can ship detainees hundreds of miles away throughout the Midwest, depending on where they need it. These kind of procurement plans are ongoing. It's a ton of money. The recruiting continues. A ton of money to people signing up.

12:38So, you know, I think there is not enough of ICE to actually occupy in New York or Los Angeles right now, but they're building towards having enough resources to do something like that. And I think the election point is really serious, not to doom it too much, but you could imagine easily a bunch of ICE agents in masks and no ID standing outside of a polling station in a politically sensitive district.

13:01Brian Barrett:Absolutely. The Trump administration and DHS is encouraging citizens and residents to think of them as police now. Like, these are your friendly neighborhood policemen. And that's not true for a variety of reasons, one of which is that, like, they don't live in these communities. They are not your neighbors. They are employed by the federal government. They are not city. They are not state. And even just requirements for, like, accountability are incredibly different. The nameless, faceless, you know, agent is becoming ubiquitous in American society right now, which is wild. You know, the U.S.

13:38Brian Barrett:has dealt with police brutality for many, many years. But the nameless facelessness of it all has taken a very different slant, I would say, this year. Also, too, the nameless facelessness I find interesting, too, because ICE has also taken away so much privacy. Like, ICE values so much of its privacy, and they're always wearing masks, and they're always not showing ID. At the same time, they are using facial recognition on anybody they stop for whatever reason. They are following people to their homes to intimidate them. They are using all the levers of the state to really dig into people's – if you speak out against ICE, there is a decent chance you will get an audit or a visit from someone.

14:19So, yeah, it's sort of this mirror world that they're creating for themselves where they get complete immunity from identification. and everyone else is totally subject to deep dives into whatever you've got in your past. I think that's often the case with privacy. I feel like it kind of reminds me of asynchronous privacy relationships in the tech industry where, you know, for a company like Apple that takes its customers' privacy really seriously, if you talk to people at the company, they'll often tell you that internally they have very little. They're encouraged to do things like linking their Apple ID to their work account and stuff.

14:54And so there's a lot of kind of perceived surveillance that the company does at the corporate level to enforce the kind of brand it wants externally. So it's interesting to see that playing out in politics. And not to switch us, you know, so hard to the tech of it all, but I have been really curious about the situation or how tech leaders and tech workers are speaking out or not about this situation. We have seen tech leaders in particular stay notably silent about ICE, about the shooting, the killing. It really feels different from, you know, the George Floyd protests years ago when we saw a lot of these same people speaking out pretty forcefully.

15:39You know, whether you think they meant those statements or were forced into it and kind of walked it back later, like they were being much more vocal about politics then. And I really feel like we're in this era now where they've made their decision and their decision is I'll do what I have to do to put my company first. And right now that's staying quiet, whereas the layer kind of one under them, people are being a little more vocal. We're seeing managers and tech workers speaking out, signing letters saying this is untenable. The situation has to change.

16:13Brian Barrett:I mean, which CEOs, again, in Silicon Valley were actually at the airport in, what was it, 2017 with the Muslim ban protesting themselves against Trump's policies? Like, this is a different world. It's shocking to me that that was less than 10 years ago. I think what's interesting, and so you mentioned that the people under the CEOs, sort of high-level managers, are starting to have, find more of a voice in this. That was a big part around the George Floyd protests as well, and the Black Lives Matter protests, whereas internally within their own companies, there were these huge worker movements that were promoting social justice, promoting Black Lives Matter.

16:50And I think there was, to a certain extent, CEO response was both advantageous to them politically at the time, but also internally they had to respond to their employees sort of revolting over this. Until we see something similar, I don't know that we're going to get, well, I don't know that we're ever going to get Tim Cook saying. I don't think we're ever going to get it. I think we're in a really different moment. In fact, I think in some ways, just in terms of tech culture, the current moment we're in is a reaction to that earlier moment in 2018. Like, I think in 2018, if you talk to tech leaders, they will say, like, look, we did the things that our employees wanted us to at the time.

17:26We gave them a mental health day every month. We made political statements. We, you know, tried to kind of signal that we were supportive in these different ways. And their perception was that employees only got more demanding, they'll say, more entitled, kind of behind closed doors, off record, off record. They didn't feel like they got a lot from that moment. And so now they're making a very different calculation to kind of say, look, we're in a moment where Trump is extremely transactional. If you give something to Trump, you may actually get something in return. That wasn't true with Biden.

18:00It didn't feel true with our own employees. And so they're choosing.

18:03Brian Barrett:I'm not even sure that was true with Trump 1.0 either. Like, this is a different presidency. This is a different president. Right. But all to say, like, everything that you guys are saying is absolutely right. But they're still political. They're still making these political choices. I think, like, can we talk about how Silicon Valley is already involving themselves in the midterms? Like, this to me is, we are in January. Midterms are in November. Get ready, guys. I'm going to be the worst. I need more time. I need at least until Groundhog Day. No, no, no. When everyone said goodbye to me for the holiday break in December, I was like, see you in midterm year because I chose violence.

18:42Brian Barrett:but this is these tech companies and silicon valley investors are still choosing politics even if they're not doing the 2016 27 even 2020 they are making these decisions um max zeff wrote this excellent piece for us this week um for wired about pro ai super packs already that are all in on the midterms wait so talk to me about that leah are they choosing issues and candidates that are specifically about tech, tech issues, tech policies, or is it a little more diffuse than that? It's interesting. I think we're going to get closer to that point. We're very much at the starting point here. And I am like vaguely ill to say this.

19:25Brian Barrett:The starting point is still like tens of millions of dollars. So there's lots of cash going around. But basically, and I know you guys already know this, in the absence of like a lot of federal action and like regulatory action when it's come to AI, state lawmakers in states around the country, New York, California, Colorado, et cetera, passed laws in the last year requiring these large AI developers to disclose safety practices, assess risks, and a variety of different issues. As we know, the Trump administration is super anti-AI regulation, as are a bunch of Silicon Valley's largest companies and investors, which argue that all of these kinds of state laws could really hamper AI progress.

20:07Brian Barrett:So that's really one side of it. And then on the other, you have concerned lawmakers, AI researchers, safety-focused startups, nonprofit groups that are pushing for more AI regulation. So the battle lines are very much drawn there. And I think that everyone's been kind of inching towards them for a while. They remind me a lot of how we were talking about crypto in the lead up to the previous election cycles. And I guess the super PAC that I really want to draw your attention to is Leading the Future, which is they have more than$100 million in backing from Venture Capital Powerhouse Andreessen Horwitz.

20:41Brian Barrett:I knew it. Leading the Future was giving techno optimism so hard. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. It had to. And then, you know, OpenAI, President Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna Brockman, they're involved. The group has launched television ads that have targeted a couple of congressional races, not races that are, I would say, like the most battleground-y right now, but they are in like a couple of really interesting states. We're looking in Texas, we're looking at New York, and I'm very curious where they're going to go from here. Like this is very clearly the beginning. This is the test case. We mentioned crypto earlier and how it's reminiscent of that.

21:17A lot of the same people, right, are working for, you know, a fair shake, I believe was the... Yep, exactly. And we're just having a... So a lot of those same people are now working for leading the future. I think it's interesting too that we've seen Meta get more directly involved saying that we're going to go... Like companies, that I think is relatively new, especially for a company that for a long time said like, we can't be political because like people get mad about it in their news feeds. They've really gone all in. Yes. When it's expedient for them. And then lastly, can I say, we have gotten this far without mentioning Elon Musk, but this is like a perfect opportunity.

21:50I was just going to say. So we do it. So we do it. Go, Zoe, go. Okay. So, Musk donated, was it$10 million last week to a super PAC affiliated with Republican Kentucky Senate candidate Nate Morris, basically the person running to try and replace Mitch McConnell, who is retiring. I mean, this is a lot of money to give to this one race, is it not?

22:13Brian Barrett:It is so much money. It is such a like, it's like a very, very interesting look at this particular race and McConnell's history and also Elon Musk's history in funding races. I mean, we have to talk about how Elon Musk's America PAC raised more than$170 million for Trump's 2024 bid. And obviously Wired spent all of 2025 covering Musk's, you know, incursion into the federal government and what that's meant. And we have spent a lot of time as a society, I'd like to say, talking about how Musk and Trump had their big fallout, how he fully left government, X, Y, and Z. He said he was going to start America Party.