Trump’s Tech Posse in China; Who’s Winning in Musk v. Altman?; Hantavirus Conspiracy Theories

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1:55That's P-R-O-T-O-N-V-P-N dot com slash uncanny for 70 % off your two-year plan. That's ProtonVPN dot com slash uncanny. Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Director of Business and Industry. I'm Brian Barrett, Executive Editor. And I'm Leah Feigert, Director of Politics and Science. Today on the show, we're diving into the final week of the Musk v. Altman trial. The high-profile testimonies we've heard this week, including from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman himself, have resurfaced a lot of past events and a lot of drama. But we're asking, will this actually be consequential to the trial's verdict?

2:38Also happening this week, President Trump is headed to China. He's accompanied by a select number of Silicon Valley's top CEOs. We'll discuss how their presence could influence conversations between world leaders at a moment when the economic and foreign policy stakes could not be higher for the U.S. We'll also get into the wild conspiracy theories that have been increasingly swirling around the Hantavirus. From wellness influencers to grifters, a lot of them have been recycling very similar conspiracy theories from the COVID-19 pandemic. We're going to tell you what they're sharing and also how to spot this kind of harmful misinformation.

3:15So we're wrapping up the final week of one of the most consequential and honestly one of the pettiest trials in Silicon Valley history, the one between Elon Musk and Sam Altman. The last time we spoke about the trial, we were still at the very beginning figuring out who was going to speak and what they were going to say. But now we've heard Musk's team put forth their key argument, namely that Sam Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman deceived him by creating OpenAI's for-profit arm instead of keeping OpenAI as a classic charity. This week, we heard from some of the key people who have been central to both the past and the present of OpenAI.

3:54We're talking about Ilya Sutskiver, who's the former OpenAI chief scientist, who was part of the effort to briefly out with Sam Altman as CEO back in November 2023. We also heard from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who is one of the earliest backers of OpenAI. And finally, Sam Altman himself took the stand. Appearing in federal court in Oakland on Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified that he believes himself to be, quote, an honest and trustworthy business person. Testifying for the first time in the landmark trial, Altman said that it was Musk who had sought to seize control of OpenAI and make money from it.

4:30Brian, Leah, I feel like I am so close to this. I have two reporters who are in the courtroom every single day. I'm curious for your perspective on everything we've heard so far. What do you think about what's happened in this trial, which could be wrapping up, at least in terms of major testimony, Thursday this week? This is must-see TV. I have been particularly taken with the business desks reporting on this. And I think it was just a few days ago, a piece that came out about Sam Altman's testimony on how apparently Elon Musk was just going to hand OpenAI to his children. Am I misstating this?

5:08Did that happen? No, that's right. What? It was a suggestion. It was a suggestion. What? So, I mean, this is crazy. Just to back up a little bit, Elon Musk has had to convince the jury of two key things. One was that he attached special conditions to the$38 million that he gave OpenAI in its very early days and that Greg Brockman and CEO Sam Altman violated those conditions. The other one, and this is really tricky, is that he only realized that it had violated these agreements in like 2023 when Sam Altman was ousted as CEO. And that's because the statute of limitations on this lawsuit like expired way before that.

5:46He left OpenAI years before. And so he's basically trying to start the clock around the time that Sam Altman left the company and then came back saying like, I didn't realize until then that things were as bad as they are. I will say that from my perspective so far, he hasn't made a really strong case. But what he has done really, really well, I think, is embarrass Sam Altman in many, many ways by forcing him to sit there as various people he worked with over the years basically called him untrustworthy. Yeah, there's been a parade of people and also text messages from the like, I think what a fun part about trials and the legal process is that there's the discovery process, which means that you get to read all kinds of emails and texts from when bad things are happening.

6:29May it never happen to any of us. But there was a very county time, I believe, Zoe, correct me here, it was opening eyes. Sam Altman had texted Mira Marati about how things were going around the time of the lip. and she wrote back that it was directionally very bad. It was like such... This became a meme. Oh, I mean, they're everywhere. It's like the screenshots of those texts. It was everywhere. Yeah, I mean, what was going on at this time is, this is so interesting because I feel like we went from knowing Sam Altman was ousted as CEO and everyone was like, why did it happen? And literally for weeks, if not months, it was like, we probably will never know the real reasons.

7:04He was kicked out, then he came back. It's just going to be a mystery. Now I've gotten to the point where I'm like, I actually know way too much. I've had three different incredible writers describe the look on Sam Altman's face when he was on the Zoom at the racetrack realizing that he was like no longer going to be the CEO. Mira Maradi was being asked to step in as interim. She's like texting with Sam Altman on the side as she's with Satya Nadella kind of negotiating between all of the parties. But yes, at one point, Sam was, I think, very, very stressed and anxious. He was having to lay down on the floor because he was so overwhelmed with the events.

7:33Been there. And he was texting Mira what's going on. And she, yeah, classically said, directionally, things are very bad. I have to ask, obviously, like so much dirty laundry is getting aired here about the history of the company, about where things are now, about all of these different stakeholders. Who's winning? What's who? Like, I know that we are not the judges and jury here, but what what can we tell about what's been shared and how it's been received? Yeah, it's such a good question. And I think the fascinating thing about a jury trial is we just really don't know. Ultimately, it's up to the judge to decide, but the jury's kind of decisions and what it thinks about what's been said so far will weigh heavily into that decision.

8:13And so, you know, I don't know what the jury thinks so far. But in the court of public opinion, which I think is a really important aspect of this trial and the reason that Musk is moving forward with it in a lot of ways, I think it's a bit more complicated. I do think Sam Altman really has a reputation as being untrustworthy, and that reputation has only been cemented over the course of this trial. I think one interesting thing that I was thinking about yesterday when I was watching testimony was that Sam Altman and OpenAI has really been trying to position Elon Musk as this power-hungry figure who was trying to get control of a frontier AI lab and then bitterly filed a lawsuit when he was unable to retain that control.

9:01But my takeaway from everything I've seen so far is that Elon Musk and Sam Altman are actually very similar in a lot of ways. Sam Altman has this great quote about Elon Musk that he gave the New Yorker years ago where he said, Elon Musk desperately wants to save the world, but only if he can be the one to save it. I don't know, Sam Altman. I kind of get similar feelings about him. Like, I do think he has these really lofty visions of how he thinks AI can improve the lives of many people and change the world in a positive way, I think it's really important to him that he is deeply involved in that effort.

9:35I mean, not to wrench this back to politics, but like I can't help myself, it's been really fascinating. And we were quite literally just talking about this in Slack this morning, watching as OpenAI, obviously led by Sam Altman, is working to introduce these like state-level regulations for AI usage and like watching this in some ways, like level up from California and New York and Illinois from like all these like small little plants, but like seemingly level up to like this larger federal regulation landscape that is like very clearly in OpenAI's best interest. Like this is not regulatory in the sense that we're all thinking of.

10:10He has a vision here and like in all of the different ways. So like I very much hear you on the like saving the world, putting in the regulations as I see fit. It was just a few weeks ago that OpenAI published their sort of Like, here's how we think the future economic systems need to work and future policy. There's big policy paper. But also we're kind of backing off of universal basic income because we think there's probably another way. But we'll get back to you on what exactly that is. It's a little muddied. Messages from above. Yeah, Will Knight published in AI Lab his AI newsletter this week, a little piece.

10:41The whole bottom of his newsletter is new research that's coming out. And it's actually really, really interesting. But one thing that caught my eye this week was that he talked about what we know so far about regulatory capture. in the AI industry and how AI companies are really involved in shaping and slowing regulations, which is something that I think is on one level obvious, but now we're actually seeing data to back it up. I want to go back to the trial real quick. Just one more thing that I enjoyed, because again, the discovery is my favorite part. Ilya Suskover, who was an original OpenAI employee.

11:12Leah, do you want to guess what his stake was there? His stake is worth, I'm assuming in the billions. Correct. Right? Correct. Three billion, four billion. $7 billion. Wait, is he with them anymore? No, he is not. He's got his own thing. And he is actually, if anything, he split with Sam Altman pretty publicly. Why is there so much money here? Like, not even just like for all of this, there's just so much money. I can't even comprehend how much money is involved here. It's so much money. And we're not even talking about Anthropic at this point, which borderline valuation could be even higher than open AIs on any given day.

11:48I personally loved on Wednesday when OpenAI brought a small statue of a donkey's ass to court and tried to include that in the official record. The judge said, I don't want it. We can talk about it, but please don't give it to me because then the court has to take possession of it. Apparently, Elon Musk, when he left, had a tense interaction with an OpenAI employee and called the employee, I think it's the current chief futurist of OpenAI or something like that, a jackass. And then this guy's colleagues gave him the trophy as a joke. Now it's part of the official record. So I love that. Wow. Iconic.

12:26Elon Musk has been very busy. This is not the only thing on his agenda. He is also one of just a few CEOs that are joining President Trump to his state visit to China. That's the administration's first one since almost a decade ago. In addition to Musk, you've got Apple's Tim Cook, or Tim Apple, as Trump likes to say, Larry Fink of BlackRock. And my favorite story around this, NVIDIA is Jensen Wong, who was not included on the trip. There were lots of news reports about Hayley was not included on the trip and how he had volunteered to go on the trip and was still not included on the trip until finally he met them in Alaska and got on the plane just in time to make it to China.

13:03Persistence. As Air Force One refueled in Anchorage. It's just incredible stuff. You can't make it up. You can't make it up. The trip was originally scheduled to happen about two months ago, but it was postponed because the U.S. and Israel went to war in Iran, and that obviously complicated all kinds of things. Now the visit comes at a time when the war is still ongoing, in addition to all kinds of other hot-button issues, trade, AI regulation, you name it, that involve both China and the U.S. You know, the timing, they were going to do this trip at some point, right? But the timing still seems a little bit odd to me in that, you know, China is one of Iran's key economic and diplomatic partners.

13:43There are so many tensions on so many levels between these two countries. And it doesn't feel like there's any real progress in the works. You know what I mean? It doesn't feel like we're at a moment where, oh, we're finally going to figure out trade. We're finally going to figure out AI. We're finally going to figure out how to stop hacking into each other's systems and stealing everybody's personal identity. None of that seems to be imminent. And I guess you only get there by talking, but I don't know. It seems like a strange time to do this if you actually want to get anything done. So I guess, Leah, my question to you is, does anybody actually want to get anything done here?

14:18What are we doing? It's such a great question. I guess like the first thing that I really, really want to talk about, though, is regardless of what the plans are here, obviously, we have Iran happening. You have the strategy machinations. But what's really, really interesting to me as well is that I'm very much getting, in some ways, inauguration vibes. Like when Trump surrounded himself with like the tech leaders, everyone's lined up in a row. And that's like not dissimilar to what's happening right now. And it's very, very hard to argue that it's like, no, no, no, it's just the tech people because we're only focused on tech.

14:53You know who else was on this plane? Fox News personality Sean Hannity, filmmaker Brett Ratner. Like he has assembled a motley crew of like... Symbritus. Yeah. And so I'm just like, no, no, no. This is clearly like not just about tech. This is like about showing very specifically who Trump's allies are and being able to like position himself in front of a country and leader that he hasn't spent a lot of time with recently. Since we're still talking about the people that he is going to China with, what do we know about why Jensen Huang was left off the list and then re-added last minute? Because my thought when I saw it was, oh, this is about export controls and I think it's going to be kind of like weird and complicated to have him on the trip.

15:32But then obviously he is now on the trip. So someone, who I cannot name, someone said to me, oh, I think the president may have just forgotten him. Yeah. To which I laughed. You remembered Brett Ratner and you forgot? No, I was like, this is not true. Like this is just not it's just like not even sort of true to the point where I was like, I'm I'm sorry, you you're expecting me to entertain this right now. I would absolutely buy that Trump forgot this man. But I'm like, Trump has other people around him. His team didn't forget this man. Yes, please. No, there's no way on earth. I was very much just like, uh-huh.

16:05Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep it moving. And obviously, guys, we have to talk about the musk of it all. I know that Elon has been making his appearances back at like a variety of White House or White House adjacent events. But this this does feel like such a big moment for him to be on the international stage again by Trump's side. Did you know that Elon Musk's mother is like low key a celebrity in China? May Musk, international model May Musk. Wait, new information. People are obsessed with her there. What? Just a little fun fact. I want to take a moment to not to not to get away from May Musk. I can talk about my mask all day long.

16:41About a year ago, when the Pentagon set up Musk for a war briefing about what would happen if the U.S. went to war. Do you remember this? I do. My gosh, I fully forgot about this. Yes. The Pentagon invited Musk over to check out what the war plans would be if we went to fight China over Taiwan. And that got scuttled, apparently, before he went. This is a New York Times report. But it is how far we've come and how not far. I don't know. If I'm China, I don't think I want to see Musk anywhere near this coalition. And if I'm Musk, I'm feeling pretty great about the level of influence I now have again.

17:20And then, you know, maybe I get a chance to look at those war plans again. Maybe I can sweet talk Pete Hexeth. It turns out that you can imply the president is a pedophile and still get invited to China if you have enough money. 100%. Like, did they? I mean, maybe they also forgot those ex-posts, too. So just a lot of forgetting happening all over the place. Beautiful for them. They're just moving right along. Also around this time, maybe a little bit more than a year ago, but we're also talking about the tariffs that the Trump administration worked very hard at levying against China. So the fact that there's an expectation of a discussion between Trump and Xi about like the U.S.-China Board of Trade, the U.S.-China Board of Investment, etc., etc., is very, very interesting to me.

18:03And I'm sure like if this all works out, Trump is just going to say that the tariffs were all like he was playing hardball. And you should just read that in chapter four of his book. But I'm very curious about how this will be received in China. Yeah. And it gets back to are we actually going to see anything happen here? I think like it seems very unlikely that a board of trade or board of investments, I'd be happy to be wrong, I guess. You know, Jensen Wang is making the trip. it seems very unlikely that we're going to have any kind of cooling off period in terms of export controls or in terms of, you know, China is investing very deeply in building up their own ship infrastructure and going it alone.

18:39Like that is a major priority for them. And I think the idea that they could be, I don't know, it just seems like we are pretty well stuck, which again, you know, that's what diplomacy is for is to get past these moments. But I don't think Brett Ratner is going to get us there. I don't know. How dare you? Did you see that Milano documentary? Sorry. Apologies. Apologies. That's true. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. Brian. I know you guys are huge rat heads. Rush hour's my life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I had to say it. I had to speak my truth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I appreciate that about you always.

19:10Well, I'm really excited to keep an eye on how this trip unfolds. And I'll obviously keep you posted if anyone continues to try and spin me in whatsoever direction. But in the meantime, there is so much to talk about U.S. side, including, obviously, my favorite topic of the moment, the hantavirus outbreak. Leah, what's your concern level right now? Before you keep going, where are you at? Because you've been... Yeah, I would honestly say I'm less concerned right now than I was a week ago, but it is still definitely something I'm thinking about. Okay, I'll take it. Like a 7 out of 10. Maybe like 6 out of 10, even.

19:45Whoa! Maybe 6 and a half. Obviously, like my baseline for life is like a five. So I feel like if you're just like a notch above that, that's great. You're doing amazing. I think part of it for me is, you know, look, this is a developing situation. We had a really helpful check-in about it with Wired's Emily Mullen in last week's episode. And she's put out some really good reporting in the last few days as well, talking to an infectious disease expert and also looking very specifically about Hantavirus test developing that's happening in Nebraska, where some of these people who have perhaps contracted the virus are being sent from the ship.

20:20So other people are thinking about this too, which is perhaps all I wanted, Brian. Like this was like two weeks ago when I was like, guys, this is happening. Where is the CDC? Where is the US response on this? Like what is happening? And now finally this week, I'm like, oh good. There's like a shit ton of international concern. And that's kind of all I wanted here. I wanted attention on this. So that's perhaps what's making me feel slightly better about it. But I will say there's another pattern that has really been bringing up, especially like in the last, I would say, five, six days or so, which is the rise of conspiracy theories around it.

20:51Look, conspiracy theories around health are nothing new. I think that we all experienced a very intense rash of them during the COVID pandemic. Wired's David Gilbert. This week, he reported on how conspiracy theorists, wellness influencers, and grifters have all started promoting wild claims about the outbreak, a lot of them that are really using the same playbook as COVID, saying that it's another way to control the global population, pushing this false narrative that the COVID vaccine caused Hantavirus. And also, in a very fun and not totally unexpected twist, some people are even promoting and selling ivermectin, yes, the horse deworming drug, as a treatment.

21:33It's back. It's back, with no evidence, obviously, whatsoever to back this claim. This has really been spreading all over the internet and all of the usual places. it's taking on a really interesting life that while the COVID conspiracy theories very much did as well, something that's a little bit interesting and a little bit different, at least in this very specific moment, is you're not actually, we don't have a Fauci that's going, no, no, guys, this is not what's going on. The CDC and HHS are not built for that anymore. Like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., our lovely HHS secretary is not getting on like a public radio program every day.

22:13He's not sitting in on the news going like, don't worry, here are the steps that we're taking X, Y, and Z. So this lack of communication gives so much space for conspiracy theories to grow. And experts that David spoke to were just like, this is obviously going to continue with a lack of information, even if other infectious disease experts are going, this is not COVID, like we're slightly more ready for this, this is going to be okay. But that gap is huge. Leah, you mentioned the playbook that they ran out, which I think is absolutely the right way to describe it. I also think of it as almost refrigerator magnet.

22:45It's like anytime something like this happens, it's just like, well, we'll grab ivermectin and COVID and vaccine and whatever, and we'll just jumble it up in some combination that sounds scary and bad. And then we'll sell people pills to make sure that they are fortified against whatever the thing is that's also a fake thing, but you still need to buy this thing to protect yourself. I don't understand how people can sort of live that way on the, like people who are clearly huckstering this, right? I think there's like a class of people who are opportunists, who, you know, foment this in order to sell supplements.

23:18People are selling like$325 contagion emergency kits, Brian. Like this is, I'm sorry, that$325, that's what's going to be what saves you. And there's something so upsetting about that too, because like you have at the root of so many conspiracy theories is like, unfortunately, like very understandable, like kernels, if not of truth, but like a fear, right? So like of people being like, I already am having health issues. The idea that like the government is not telling me the truth and not sharing that information. Yeah, maybe I should get this$300 kit. That's going to do it. Like I already, I already have, you know, asthma, like I can't take anything else.

23:55And that's like so upsetting to watch happen because it's like, People, everyday folks who are just being taken in by this. I mean, this is terrifying. The only reason I'm not having a full panic attack is because I talked to a random AI researcher who told me that, I think the words were the R value of Hantavirus is much lower and less scary than it was for COVID. I had no idea the words he was saying, but I thought, this man doesn't know anything. I don't know what he's talking about. There's so many reasons I hate that. R value is, I believe it's the rate of transmission related to that. Great.