WIRED Roundup: Satellites Data Leak, Cybertrucks, Politicized Federal Workers

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2:13Zoë Schiffer:Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Wired's Director of Business and Industry, Zoe Schiffer. Today on the show, we're bringing you five stories that you need to know about this week. including how federal workers are navigating layoffs and political interests in the continuing government shutdown. I'm joined today by senior politics writer Jake LaHutt. Jake, welcome back to Uncanny Valley. Great to be back, Zoe. And could I interest you in a cyber truck? Oh, my gosh. Could you ever? We're going to talk about that today. Our first story, however, is kind of scarier than a cyber truck, might I say.

2:47Zoë Schiffer:It's about how satellites are leaking all kinds of information from regular calls and texts to military and corporate secrets. Our colleague Andy Greenberg and Matt Burgess reported this week that a group of researchers from UC San Diego and the University of Maryland found that roughly half of satellite signals are unprotected from anyone coming in and just eavesdropping. Well, this is great. Very good to know. Yeah. A classic Andy Greenberg story right here. Also, if you want your full Amy Greenberg fix for this weekend, folks, you got to check out this YouTube video he made about hacking a poker card shuffling machine.

3:24But like what kind of data are these satellites leaking exactly?

3:28Zoë Schiffer:So the researchers developed a pretty modest off-the-shelf satellite dish that cost them like$800 to build. And they set it up on the roof of a building at UC San Diego. So for three years, they picked up the communications from satellites that would pass through the area by simply pointing at them and interpreting the signals that were being received. And they assembled this pretty alarming collection of private data. So people's texts and calls from T-Mobile's cellular network, data from passengers' in-flight Wi-Fi browsing, communications to and from critical infrastructure sites like electric utilities and offshore oil and gas platforms.

4:04Zoë Schiffer:And they even found some U.S. and Mexican military and law enforcement communications, which revealed the locations of things like Navy vessels. Yeah, like if these guys could set a dish up on a roof and do it, you got to wonder like what foreign intelligence services would be capable of doing. And it looks like they warned these companies and organizations about these leaks. And most of them, including T-Mobile, moved quickly to encrypt those communications and protect the data. But others, including some owners of vulnerable U.S. critical infrastructure, whom the researchers alerted more recently, and they declined to name those to Wired, have yet to add encryption to their satellite-based systems.

4:41So these researchers are pointing to the surveillance dangers of these unencrypted satellite connections before. This is not like a fully, fully new thing. But the scale and scope of the new disclosures appear unrivaled. And I just kind of love the idea that the researchers themselves were genuinely surprised at finding this amount of data, thinking that, you know, it would be encrypted. Did they come up with some other reasons to explain it?

5:06Zoë Schiffer:So there are a few explanations as to why all this information was available for, like, anyone to access. But the researchers agreed that the main reason is because the overall security strategy of a lot of global satellite communication systems is just hoping that no one looks up to the sky and checks out their communications. Oh, my God. Which, in fact, that's what the researchers titled the paper. It's called, quote, Don't Look Up, which is a reference to the 2021 film as well. I love how researchers name their papers. Like, on a total side note, it's so funny and charming. Honestly, it seems like one of the more fun parts of the job, you know?

5:40I'm imagining in my head that it came with a bit of, like, one of them, like, losing their mind in a meeting, like, Leonardo DiCaprio on air in that movie. Right, right, right, right.

5:47Zoë Schiffer:Moving on to our next story, and this one's from our colleague Caroline Haskins, who reported this week about this plan to rebuild Gaza that was shared with Trump administration officials. This plan is essentially a pitch deck that lays out an ambitious redevelopment plan called the Great Trust, which stands for Gaza Reconstitution Economic Acceleration and Transformation. But it's not just a random pitch because, again, it got circulated among the Trump administration. Okay, okay. Nothing wrong with a pitch deck in theory, but I got a feeling that this is going to take a turn and you're going to hit me with a curveball right here.

6:23Zoë Schiffer:So the pitch deck features the names and logos of dozens of companies like Tesla, Ikea, and Amazon. But the thing is, many of these companies told Wired that they had absolutely no idea that this plan even existed. And they're definitely saying they're not involved. And got to be kind of crazy learning from a reporter, our Carolyn Haskins, that your company has supposedly been signed up to rebuild a decimated Gaza has got to be a bit anxiety-inducing, confusing? I mean, enough so that they were willing to deny it on record, which honestly I found very surprising. I was expecting a lot of crickets from this.

7:01Zoë Schiffer:But the pitch deck was reportedly created by some of the businessmen who helped create the controversial nonprofit, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is currently leading aid distribution in Gaza. The group has been criticized by organizations like Doctors Without Borders for bypassing the UN's existing systems for aid distribution. And a former security contractor has also alleged that the foundation's contractors shot at unarmed Palestinians. The foundation has denied these allegations. But as you can see, some of the people involved in the group don't have a great reputation. And the pitch deck, while a totally separate thing, it just doesn't appear to help matters.

7:40Yeah. And like this might look like a pitch deck that's kind of normal on face value. But when you really start looking at it, and this is where Karol's piece gets interesting, it doesn't really have any connection to the reality on the ground in Gaza. And that's kind of what we've seen with the rhetoric from the administration so far when they've talked about kind of this luxury redevelopment of Gaza. But then for the actual people who live there and want to return to their homes, they're talking about things like, quote, offer Gazans to place their privately owned land in the trust in exchange for a digital token that gives them the right for a permanent housing unit.

8:14So Gaza is devastated. And we're not even talking about like real money to rebuild your home or to relocate. And then more disturbingly in this presentation, the foundation would lead this, quote, U.S.-led multilateral custodianship, unquote, over the Gaza Strip. So that would essentially bring in these private contractors to be distributing aid and kind of operate whatever this would be in the interim in coordination with the Israeli Defense Forces.

8:45Zoë Schiffer:I feel like the people who are proposing this plan should have to live there. They should get a digital token and have the private contractors keep them safe. Yeah, maybe Tony Blair can pay for his foundation with digital tokens instead of Larry Ellison's money. We'll see how that goes. We'll see how this plays out as the peace treaty continues to unfold as well. We're staying in the world of politics for a little longer to briefly discuss what's been going on at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is better known as the CDC. Our colleague Emily Mullen reported that after a fresh round of layoffs this past weekend, the employees union estimates that about a quarter of the agency's workforce is now gone.

9:21Zoë Schiffer:This is putting together everyone who has been laid off and those who have accepted the buyout package offered by the Trump administration earlier this year, which you and I reported on a lot of federal employees have actually taken. Yeah, and these are layoffs in a whole host of roles across the CDC, but it's pretty concerning that there are very few left in just leadership positions at the CDC at the moment. A former staffer told Emily that, quote, at the highest level of leadership at the CDC, there are no public health or medical professionals left to help guide CDC recommendations, unquote.

9:51And that's kind of a recurring theme that what we're seeing across the shutdown is basically this gutting with a handful of people left in charge of really important teams or units or verticals with very few people left underneath them now. Or in this case, the CDC, we're just talking about essentially a decapitation of leadership. So the senior staff resignations at the CDC happened en masse after Robert F. Kennedy, the health secretary, fired CDC director Susan Minares. So she told a Senate committee in September that Kennedy demanded she sign off on this new anti-vaccine recommendations that basically were, in her words, quote, regardless of the scientific evidence, to be used to dismiss career officials without cause.

10:34So basically, if you're not with the program of this sort of anti-vax stuff, you're gone and she would not abide.

10:40Zoë Schiffer:Yeah, I mean, I was talking to someone before these recent layoffs who'd worked at the CDC previously and had been pretty involved in efforts to study the impact of certain diseases or pandemics, like specifically on pregnant populations. And this person had told me a while ago, like, that entire team was gone. They didn't have many people in place anymore who could look at, you know, particularly vulnerable populations from a health perspective, which I found pretty sad and disturbing. But now, I mean, it's just getting so much worse. It's getting so much worse. Yeah. And Russell Vogt seems to be quite happy about each additional version of this that keeps coming down the pike.

11:19Zoë Schiffer:Right. Okay. Okay, we'll talk more about these federal layoffs and how they've affected other agencies too in our next segment. But before we go to break, I've got a fun and very tech bro scoop for you, Cybertrucks. Yeah, honestly, I should be paying you to be on the show today, Zoe. So tell me more about it. Okay, well, I found this story so charming because essentially our features director, Ray Han, had said, let's do a photo essay of Cybertruck owners. And I was like, I volunteer as tribute. I really want to do this. So I contacted a bunch of people. I was actually like going around And when I saw Cybertrucks, I would like leave little notes on their car.

11:53Zoë Schiffer:Not a single person ever responded to me. I was like, okay, all right. But eventually I got in contact with this guy who runs Cybertruck Owners Only, which is this 50 ,000 person Facebook group. That's really, really active. And he, while very suspicious of the media, like many Cybertruck owners, was like, I'm game. If you come to Palm Springs on this weekend, we can like have a Cybertruck meetup and you can go. You can meet people. You can take photos and interview them. I love reporting where your original thesis is completely disproven in the course of the reporting. And the Cybertruck owners really see themselves as the victims of this campaign.

12:32Zoë Schiffer:They're being spit at. They're being targeted. People yell that they're Nazis. And to a lot of people who I talk to, they don't see their purchase of this car as at all political. They're like, I just like the car. It's a cool car. It's fun. And all of these crazy liberal people are screaming at me all day. I have my kids in the car and they're like chasing after me, calling me a Nazi. The article came out today. There's some really cool photos. I'm curious to hear what you thought. Okay. So first of all, I just kind of want to know, like, what are like the psychological profiles we're dealing with here?

13:07And then just, you know, tell me about like what's going on with these guys and their cars. It sounds like both the boys and the cars are characters in this story.

13:16Zoë Schiffer:Yeah. I mean, to say the least. Yeah, you really do have to check out the photos. But yeah, I mean, Michael Goldman, who runs the Facebook group, he told me this story. I was kind of like asking people, you know, what's the craziest experience you've had while you're driving the car? And he told me this story about being in a Whole Foods parking lot. He was dropping off an Amazon package and a woman left a note on his car that read, this is an extension of your small dick. And the cars record 24-7. I also didn't know this until he started talking to me about it. I was like, this is why those people like didn't respond to me because they saw me like creepily walking up to their car.

13:47Zoë Schiffer:But anyway, so he like comes back to the car. He sees the note. He replays the video and sees that it's actually a woman who's still in her car across from him. And so he walks over and he's like, hey, why did you write this? And they get into this conversation where she essentially says, according to him, that she thinks he's a Nazi and she finds what he's doing offensive. And he's like, well, my last name is Goldman. I'm Jewish. And she was like, oh, my wife is Jewish. And he was like, have you ever been profiled because you're gay? And she was like, yes, I have. And he said she started crying and she apologized.

14:22Zoë Schiffer:And he was like, I'm a really big supporter of the LGBTQ community in Palm Springs. And so the idea that I was being called a Nazi or someone insinuating that I'm homophobic was really offensive. And they kind of had this reconciliation right there in the Whole Foods parking lot. Wow. Wow. God bless America. I know. I talked to another man who was really surprised that people find the car to be political. And actually, then during fact-checking, it came out that this person was arrested and pled guilty to obstructing an official proceeding in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. But he was later pardoned by President Trump.

15:01You know, it all works out for the J6ers in the end.

15:04Zoë Schiffer:It does. Yeah. The article came out. I, like, wasn't sure how the Cybertruck boys were going to feel about it, but everyone was very, very positive and excited. I have a group text with a lot of them now. But then I have gotten some really wild emails this morning from people being like, I'm canceling my Wired subscription. How dare you interview a Nazi? This is pathetic. I mean, look, there are people in this country where politics is just not a dominant constant in their lives. Right. But also, Zoe, have you ever heard of the term partisan sorting? Oh, no, I have not. I felt like when I was reading your Cybertruck piece that it's very much adjacent to this concept, only you're kind of looking at the sort of underbelly of it, which is basically that as American politics have become more polarized, our purchases have also started to fall along kind of partisan ideological lines.

15:55So like for example, the Cybertruck is just a great stand-in where you would assume if you see one, these guys have got to be Elon Musk fans. Or if you see someone driving a pickup truck, you assume, OK, they're probably republicans. You see someone in a Prius, you're going to assume they probably vote for democrats, right? And you start to get to the point where just these little consumer signifiers, the Lululemon pants or the Stanley mug, they tend to indicate subconsciously to people. And there's research that backs this up that they are largely skewing to people who, you know, vote one way or another.

16:28But this story was just incredible, Zoe. I really I'm also just struck by one. You made a lot of friends along the way, it seems. But also the way that these folks seem to be genuinely going through it for how the public perceives this purchase that they were just really excited about at one point.

16:45Zoë Schiffer:I think that's what I found. So, like, delightful and charming. Again, like I think it's always really fun when your mind is changed in the course of reporting. I get that a lot of Wired readers have their preconceived ideas and they found the reporting offensive. But for me personally, it's like if you just bought the Cybertruck because you thought it was a cool kind of sci-fi looking car and then all of a sudden people are screaming that you're a Nazi on the street. To you, you're like, those people seem unwell. Like, I'm totally fine. Yeah, and, you know, I think some of our listeners out there might want to remember the Marc Maronism that, you know, kind of a half-serious joke he told that progressives at times may have annoyed the rest of the middle of the country into fascism.

17:21Zoë Schiffer:So, you know, you just kind of sometimes check yourself on that. Coming up after the break, we'll dive into how federal workers are finding themselves in the middle of a political storm during this latest government shutdown. This show is supported by OutShift, Cisco's incubation engine. Today's AI agents operate in silos, limiting their true potential. We've been focused on building bigger, smarter models, but scaling up is just one approach. To reach superintelligence together, we need to do more. We need to scale out. And we actually have a blueprint from 70 ,000 years ago. Humans didn't just get smarter individually.

18:00The cognitive revolution transformed society because we began sharing knowledge, goals, and innovation. Agents are now at that same inflection point. They can connect, but they can't think together. That's why Outshift by Cisco is building the Internet of Cognition, transforming AI from isolated systems into orchestrated superintelligence. By creating an open, interoperable infrastructure, Outshift by Cisco is enabling agents and humans to share intent, context, and reasoning. The cognitive evolution for agents is here. Explore the internet of cognition at outshift.com. That's outshift.com.

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19:06Zoë Schiffer:Our journalism is by humans for humans. Find the 404 Media Podcast wherever you listen and on YouTube too.

19:16Zoë Schiffer:Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer. I'm joined today by senior writer Jake LaHutt. Okay, Jake, let's dive into our main story. And this one comes from our colleague, McKenna Kelly, who published in your newsletter, Inner Loop, this week. She wrote that federal workers are trying to navigate a fresh batch of layoffs and ongoing political pressures during the ongoing government shutdown. Jake, what has been going on here? So McKenna got some incredible quotes in this story, which I would just recommend reading all the way through. But here's what we're looking at. So as of July, more than 150 ,000 federal workers had resigned from their roles since President Trump took office for the second term, according to The Washington Post.

19:55We got tens of thousands who've also been fired over the arc of Doge and afterwards. And for the past few months, it seemed like this bloodletting was largely over. The federal government was actually trying to bring people back. But that all changed on Friday. So suddenly, when this government shutdown is in full swing and there's this kind of wait and see period where are these layoffs, you know, what we'll call rifts, reductions in force. When are they going to happen? Russell Vogt promised them in the first couple days of the shutdown. They didn't happen. And then we get to Friday and thousands of employees at eight government agencies were subjected to these rifts and the government's formal process for laying off workers during a shutdown.