Please Reboot Your System
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Big deck has ruined internet. A I is everywhere in elon musk. E is in the White house.

We may have high tech.

So why does that seem like our quality of life is only getting lower?

This system crash weekly technical, willing to tell the hard truths about how tech and the tightness who owned Operated is really transforming the world. I'm paris. I'll be one of your cohoes. You might know me from the tech won't save us, or from the writing that I do in disconnect or anywhere else. Or maybe you would even read my book road to nowhere.

Yeah, it's a good one. I'm brian merchant. I am a long time tech writer as well.

You may have heard me on a number of places podcast episodes over the tech one. Save us. I used to be the tech columnist at the L A times. I was a senior editor at that, the late great motherboard R I P.

And I have written some books, most recently blood in the machine, which is about the light uprising and what the letes can teach us about A I and automation today. And you're going to have to forgive me for my clumsy radio guy voice. I'm still working IT out.

I've got a few different registers. I think I can work in here. I don't have like like the polish like drive time given .

a few episodes and he'll have like a proper pod caster voice ready to go you know obviously everyone needs to pick up brian's book because it's fantastic blood in the machine know his other one is good to um but brian know on your on your voice how does that feel to be a podcast .

no i'm officially a pod caster. You know, as an elder millennial, I was doing some soul searching and you know, I went to the beach at sunset. I was kind of like thinking about my life, you know, laid off from the times during a period of mass layoffs, along with hundred plus other colleagues.

And I was reflecting, and and I just, you know, i'm approaching middle age now as a millennial, and I realized as like a White guy in media, the one thing that I just never had was was my very own podcast. So this was a IT needed to be done. I think you are not allowed to, like, depart from this earth until I do a podcast.

So it's been quite a journey for me. I think I told you when I was doing IT that I went to best pie to get a mike IT was the closest place to get one. And just like there's like literally the podcasting kit you get, like the shore if you want to get a nice microphone at best buy, like IT was either this or like kind of a cheaper crapper one. So like I had that, I was just desperately looking through the back, the shell. So I didn't like, have to go to the check out with something called a podcasting kit.

Judging IT was so hard there. Well.

the cause, like I think they like they must have some kind of prompt that whenever anyone buys one, they're like legally obligated to ask you if you're starting .

a point up on the screen, you ask if this person starting a podcast.

I am starting a podcast. I'm sorry, but this podcast is going to be great.

It's going to be a good podcast.

It's a good podcast. It's not like all those other extraneous podcasts there that the are polluting the feeds on. This is the one podcast.

It's an uplifting poddar ast that is about to brighten everyone's day with the joy that that comes with discussing the tech history these days, right?

IT is it's just have going to some pep in everyone step. We wouldn't be doing IT. I think if we didn't feel like this was actually an an important and relevant and necessary kind of thing to do, we've been we would, I don't know, a year now, maybe we first floated IT even earlier at some point after the second or third or fourth time I was on the show.

So it's always been kind of in the air. I like we have totally we've texted about IT and IT wasn't like the election happened. And then we just decided to like to pull the trigger on this.

It's been in the works for a couple months, but it's certainly, I feel like, has just underscored the I I think the necessity. Who knows? It's a little poppers to say it's like necessary zeal party. Yes, it's sorry not but it's gonna make me feel Better to but everything that's going on, I not podcast .

for the most important thing in the world. I thought they were shaping elections these days like the casters are everything that's right.

Yeah, that's how we're justifying. We need to become the liberal left, joe og, so so support us in our endeavors so we can do that.

Everyone's competing for the title these days, right? We need to throw our .

names into the ring, and we throw our name in the ring. No shape, my head.

but you'll lose out that lucious long hair like we can have. That happened. Looked me.

I, yeah, that's true. I'll put IT in a pony tale about that. We go, you need to go through about of hosting fear factor first.

That's i've got to eat some bugs. And then, but listen, we have been talking about the show for a while. We have been watching at the system crash in real time. And, you know, just deciding when to start this thing. And then I think IT really says something about what is happening out in the world that as we're preparing for this podcast to come into existence, know we have the election of a Donald trump presidency with this massive backing of the tech industry. And these, like right wing billionaire in the tech industry, IT really just plays into exactly what we are trying to talk about and what we are trying to digging to with this very short yeah I mean.

IT really just Crystalized all of the elements I think just about that we've been critical of over the last few years, whether it's like the deregulation of the attack industry. Now we have elon must gunning for the n lb. We have cyp to going nuts.

H, it's going to be high times for a cypher as bitcoin boom. Did we get a codro of rights in silicon valley tighten now in a place of sort of the highest rungs of power? Elon mosque and his network computer, tio and their defense tech companies, there's just going to be an open channel. These guys are talking about getting the government will talk about that in a second wall, certainly sort of greece, you know, the wheel for an even sort of larger silicon valley defense industry, you know, apparatus and tech monopoly. Ap arata s these are three very large figures.

And on top of all of that, we now have this regime that will deregulate everything, including A I, at a moment when the bubble is kind of poised, you know, many years, and perhaps to burst with so much um you know hyper investments and an interest in in A I and a lot of questions around that. And trump's new E P A pic is saying we got to do what we can for A I. He's the E P.

A. administer. It's a dream for a guys like mark and Anderson and elon mosk guys on the tech right. In many ways this is going to be a right wing tech. Tighten presidency with elan must pushing all these button, you know, and it's the direct lined the dollar all the time. Well, that's IT right.

Like there's so many different aspects of this that we can talk about with. One of the things that really to me when we discuss this is last time Donald trump came to power, yes, he had the backing of Peter til, you know, Peter tiles behind them. He spoke at the republican convention, but you didn't have a lot more of these tax folks like coming out and vocally supporting him.

And one of the things that teel said afterward was that he kind of sweat on trump because trump wasn't willing to go hard enough on know what they would call like the deep state, and putting like total wage jobs in positions of power and stuff, because trump was, like, somewhat rained in by the republic lan party. They would like established norms, all this kind of stuff that existed before. But you can clearly see, as we've been seeing these cabinet pics kind of flowing out over the past week or so, that is gone right?

Exactly the type of thing that a Peter deal wanted to see Donald trump do, but totally like throwing the government into disarray, putting complete wet jobs in positions of power, is exactly what they are getting now. And not to mention that you have these people in silicon value, you have these tech billionaires who are boys, to really shape policy, not just how the levers of government are going to work, but to make sure that their industry is going to benefit amenity from IT and can do basically what they want over the next four years. Not just, you know, in their own, like a little fears, but to make sure that how the government works in the future, how the united states relates to the world, is going to be one that benefits.

Then this like very close to, very limited in how they view the world. Kind of people, people who are, have so disconnected from the average person, are going to be shaping so much of what we all experience. And there is no question based on the things that you were saying, what we've already seen from the tech industry, it's so obvious that, that is going to be so harmful for so many people.

You know, it's going to be a rough period is to and I think everybody understands that. I think just there are some similarities and dissimilarities between the onset of the administration between now and last time he took power. I think you're exactly right. He no longer feels restrained by a sort of a need to sort of appeal to the quorum or to you know, include some establishment pix. And we're getting just some like truly unhinged cabinet appointments like matt gates for turny general.

I love that every time like the media reports on that, they used the picture of mac gates when he's like totally botox up at the republican venture awareness IT was if I get lesa doing that too.

Yeah, he just mean, I don't think there is like a picture available of him in which he does not look like the sex pest sleeze well, that he is but this is a guy again, like yan has endorsed him too. This is a triumph of guys who have sexual allegations against them. And you're just are saying like we don't care you, right? We don't give a shit.

We are just going to you know a point. These guys, whether you like IT or not, gates may or may not turn out to be a bridge too far and may not get appointed by the senate. But the point stands, is that like sort of the thrust here to sort of enact this totally sort of transactional politics that trump has always practice, his first term was filled with transactional politics.

And now it's only going to be even more nakedly so because I think he feels like a lot of those barriers put out by the establishment that there are used to be factions that would at least grumble about trump in in the republican party. And in the interview four years since he was out of power, most of those folks have now been either sort of shed from the system, assured out, or sort of been bent to his will. So there's less opposition on every level.

And now this sort of transactional politics is going to extend, not just with insert of like the circle of political figures and trump sold business cronies and is lawyer who who he wants to appoint as deputy eternity general, you know, conflict of interest bedded, it's going to extend via elon masks. And so far as this relationship lasts to a lot of these silicon bali figures who are now, again, closer than ever IT to power. So we're already seeing this transactional nature of politics sof manifesting in itself.

We thought on day one, when all of the silicon valley CEO immediately started pledging loyalty within hours. No, sam altman, darpa, chia, google, yeah, bazo, even tim cook, they all congratulations ted, them all, given phone calls, are all looking forward to work together. Mark zuker berg, maybe more than anyone besides mosque.

And I think this part is transformative in a way that we're just beginning to see because they all know they all know how trumpet as business they saw at last time. They all know that it's a transactional game that if you say nice things about him, you sort of kissed the ring, then he's much more likely not to seek the fdc on you. He's not ideological even in the way that's like je vance sort of professors to be where he's saying things like, you know, he would keep lan icon at the ftc because he likes how she's breaking up the tech giants power like truck doesn't care about that.

Trump, I think, would only use such agencies as a tool to punish those he views as enemies. So that's why you had things like jeff bea's polling, his endorsement from the washington poster, stopping IT from running. And that looks like now from a businessman's perspective, that looks like the smart move now.

Now he's going to be in Better Graces with trump in this is the state of play. I don't think the tech monopoly are going to be chAllenged in any serious way again, unless they would run a file of trump. Somehow there's a lot of chatter about elon mosque and whether not his relationship with trump h can hold. There's some like, you know comprehends that we've seen where trumps like, oh, you learned always here we can't get rid of him or something that are funny he's joking but it's also like, are they kind of getting annoyed with him already?

Yeah, I don't know. I'm certainly two minds about IT. But more than anything, I feel like this is people who really wanted to fell apart, who are like, this is gonna happen, right?

When it's gonna happen. We need this to happen so that like this worst case scenario that we're seeing of this alliance between trumping muss does not continue for the next four years, right? This, this, hopefully like a little bit of hope that you can find them. This stark time is like, obviously, these two arcesius can't work together for any period of time. They're gonna hate each other.

But I tend to think that is probably not going to be the case because even though, yes, they are total narses sis, even though tromp is probably gonna get get annoyed with the fact that musk is kind of stealing some of the spotlight and things like that. I tend to believe that they both have enough interest in this staying together that they will make sure IT does right. Because on trump side, he has the Richie's man in the world on his side who has contributed a lot of money to make sure he gets elected.

And from what we've seen, IT seems that amErica pack is planning to keep collecting voter information and planning to keep, you know, kind of funding races and things like that like IT. It's not just going away because trump is elected now. IT seems like this is going to be kind of an institution to help republicans maintained power into the future as well.

And so you don't want to totally give that up. AmErica packed being islands super part. exactly. exactly. yeah. And then there's the other piece of this where trump, in having this relationship to must gets like, you know, the kind of influence and elan has this culture around him, right? And so he gets to associate himself with this cold.

But also this idea of like this is the future that the tech industry is building, like he gets rapped up in this whole project, which is a project that we would be against them think is like quite bad. But for someone like chop in this right wing movement that is like glooming on to elon us, it's a positive thing, right? And then on elon side, it's like, okay, his companies are facing all these investigations by being close to trump in the government.

A lot of that will go away. He'll make sure he's not heavily tax. He will make sure that the government is giving his companies is very favorable treatment, know the subsidies the space acts are gonna keep flowing.

And you know, NASA in the U. S. Space industry is just going become even more dependent on the so after four years, like trying to unwind, that is basically going to be impossible.

Listen, I I would love for this alpha apart. I would love for these people to get in this big like row in this big public. Nothing would be funder exactly. But I just think that the interest are aligned in such a way that is not going to happen.

Yeah, that's my fear too. I think that more than you know, can they work together? I think that's the wrong question. It's like can they work like over each other like can trump you know sort of just tolerate islands on new present, right?

Yeah, ella maybe needs the move vote of mario go, but like still even contact right now.

And that's a thing, is will like, I think he's gonna get bored, like some of these bureaucratic projects are just not going to be satisfying in a way to him that launching a rocket and you know is going to be and you can't like really tweet about that tweet about, you know, I mean, he's saying he's going to in fact, we should probably start digging into that a little bit because just today, as we're speaking, mask and vivek ra swami ran against trump in the primary, almost kind of as a joke. No one really, really took him seriously and you know of course and pledged beauty.

And I think that all in pocket guys took seriously for a while.

I guess that some people that all that matter but yeah to those who aren't aware, they were put in charge of the doge department, the department of government efficiency.

I was hearing department of government efficiency. And like for a few weeks I had not made the connection .

that I was doge until someone pointed out to me, IT started as a joke is a ad joke. It's doge. It's a meme coin that everybody would have forgotten about ten years ago unless elan musk thought I was funny but they went and you know, trump sort of it's not a government or organization.

It's going to advise the government, not a real department. It's not a real department, but it's going to propose killing a bunch of real department. That's what it's going to do.

And so you so must can ROM while we have this ipad in the wall street journal today, where they outline what they intend to do, which is to two trillion dollars from the government, that would mean the firing of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of of government workers they've put for the most asinine, you know, means doing this from a swamping was saying, well, you could just pick every government worker whose name starts to the consequence, or like every other, a letter in the alphabet and then just fire that, boom. These guys, like they have no understanding of government function, nor do they care to obtain much understanding about government function or the biocon tic function. It's all kind of a game and chess pieces to be moved around to them right now while you know they've got some twitter followers worked up about IT.

I do think that like they could do some real damage or they could just kind of run into the first wall, something else presents itself and off they go but yeah no, it's a long way of saying I think that you're right. Like I could see this world where trump and mask is what the one thing that trump really respects is celebrity and wealth. Elan musk s is the apex of both of those things is maybe the most famous man apart from trump h on the planet and his a fabulous ly wealthy.

And so he has those two things in his corner. And therefore there's a degree of sort of an approach ability or he's beyond approach in a sense, to trump. I thinking, you know, just from watching their appearances and like he's tolerating more where I don't know I could be wrong to trumpet does really first inform most care about his ego and he could just finally decide that he wants taking too much of the spotlight, especially if left, there's an opportune time to push him out. But if there is not, they both have so much to gain from this simbo is and and that's a fear that IT doesn't done travel. We should be preparing for IT to not unravel and just looking at the next four years as though elon mosque is going to continue to be able to wield this level of power, which is beyond the considerable power he already do.

Yeah and I I think that spotted on right. I think we should be pairing as if it's not going to fall l apart and and hope that IT does but make sure we're ready if IT doesn't end. I would say as well, you know, on the department of government efficiency, i'm not making a prediction here like it's possible that IT is a mean that just kind of like peers out over time and doesn't achieve very much.

But I do think that there's another aspect of this or or another version of this where IT plays out that yes, musk is like figure head is a popular person who is you know pushing some of these ideas. So not just his people, but also like a broader republican base, is kind of buying into these sort of things. But he is not the one who is like day to day kind of like going through the documents and and seeing what's .

happening here.

Ma sani has less going on and would be more open to like doing a more data day thing.

you on T, V, issuing edicts and whatever exactly.

But musk also has this big quota of people who he can like, pull some of the men and assign them to like, do some of this were so like, just like with the rockets and with the cars must will not actually be doing this stuff. He will be taking credit for stuff that other people are doing. And I think that is where the potential for IT to be something that actually is Carried through has an impact. And I would just say one more thing on that is that they're talking a lot about heavier mili, the prime minister, president of argentina, as they're talking about this because apparently he is like cut a lot of regulations in public sector workers and also like totally crashed the argentinean currency and and stuff like argentino is not doing good under him but he's one of these people who they absolutely love right and who are holding up is like this example that they will sort of emulate with this department of government efficiency and its interesting he have you I was on next freeman very .

recently which is very odd right another part of the sort like that right wing coded and the Alice freeman is not like over political actor but yeah it's it's become clear just through his guests and and what kind of use he shares and he's always one of the top pod casters and he's part part of the network there.

There is a funny set of photos going around because the g twenty meeting is happening in brazil right now. And so the brazilian president lula is like taking photos with all of the world leaders and like with every single one, he's like smiling the french president, the U. S.

President, like all these sort of people. And then there's one photo of him with haier mili. And like he's like, has the biggest frown you can .

like never ever get having a yeah I argentina was an actual economic crisis that precipitated his election. It's not anything remotely comfortable to hear. They just like that political project. They just they like the concept of IT. I gets again like the same way that must fired whatever IT was.

You know eighty percent of his staff when he bought twitter and and turned IT into ex IT was just sort of the functionality of the site tanked the popularity of the site. IT was a terrible business for a while. And you can add that to the list of things that you listed up earlier.

I'm not sure americans can handle the functionality of the U. S.

Government tanking even further. That would think and I that's my is for this doge thing is that we will probably do some cosmetic stuff. Um you know there's a lot of fear around IT and again, the the truth about any trump presidency is that you never really know how afraid you should be, how seriously you should take him and I think it's smart to take uh you know them at their words when they say they are going to do these things um if only you know for political purposes for of only to prepare.

But just the amount of bureaucratic manuvers that would be necessary and the amount of economic tumut that would result from firing that many people from laying them off during all these people into poverty IT would be absolutely insane. Both would face intense sort of court chAllenges and bureaucratic resistance. And therefore, IT might not be know all that interesting for them to do for very long.

But the fact that they want to do IT and the ideological position that IT represents, I think, is still extremely important. And this is what we're working with now. You know, an apparatus that's going to be hostile to public institutions and favorable chronister and even in transactional with those companies that kissed the ring yeah in .

in speaking of transaction, I know that we want to talk about IT, about the relationship between drop and silicon, bali and defense, that and things like that. But on the point of transactions, one of the things that has really stood out to me and all that has been written about all this stuff over the past week or so is, you know, one of the things I remembered from the first trump presidency is the ways that people tried to get influence with him in his administration, in ways that were kind of underhanded and kind of shady. But like, we're able to pass because it's the united states in these things.

you know and that he responds to them, right? He responds, if you stay at the trauma hotel.

that's exactly IT, right? yeah. So like a bunch of world leaders and foreign leaders would like stay at the trump p hotel in dc and like run out these huge bills.

And you know, you couldn't say directly that they were giving money to trump, like they were giving money to trump. And i'm sure when they were meeting him, more like men. Trump, your hotel is so nice there. I really like my stay. right?

Mora logo attractive like you have to pay to go to the club and see room.

And so I was like, okay, how is this going to play out in this like new second trump administration? And so there's the story in the financial times where they are speaking to media executives who are like, so advertisers who left twitter or ex are going back now because they want to be in ella musk good books to make sure that when they are trying to do stuff with the government, hopefully elon is .

like not mad at them.

And also at least you make sure that you're not in the crossers of ella mask and by extension, Donald trump but like hopefully also means that elon mosques there, elon mosques in the room, elon musk is talking to Donald trump and holly is like, this company is is good, you know, because they they are paying for .

advertising and he is there and he is there like, so far like he has his own, like walk on music when he enters a room monolog. One of that from grandchildren was saying he's .

got uncle status. Oh my god. Well, he was in the family Victory.

So there there's that story about the google CEO sarpa chi calling trump and you like. And then just like much is there like on the call and he had no idea that he was going to be up. So he's just like taking calls with the president.

And this is a member like trump is to some extent sundowner. His mental health was very gently interrogated. Question compared to the treatment that by and get because it's you starting from such a certain point of arrangement that makes IT hard to really kind of differentiate, I guess.

But he's just I think that's another thing that happened. This go round is like, like trump, even like liberals, and left this, i'll say, like, trumpet used to be funny. He he was funny.

He would like his tweet are funny, like all of that, like all of that goal or that fabling even in earth. Some is that that's gone and it's been kind of replaced by this the dark core that I think more people respond to. And I think that's also kind of enabled musk. It's kind of take up some of the space, right, like he's this kind of like surrogate that millions of people around the world clearly admire. Clearly love has all this power, has all this wealth. But it's another reason, I don't know if this relationship sw all that fast cause he says, okay, fine, like i'm fine being on equal footing with this guy who clearly you know, admire and is willing to further my politics but yeah, nothing good is is going to have any of this yeah I hardly even .

want to imagine a president jd vans at this point you know, you say Donald drummed his son downing unlike you have to imagine at some point, like he's gone in J. D. Vance succeeds him. Know whether that happens during this term, like whether he dies within four years, or whether they somehow managed to like run trade advanced presidential candidate in in four years and he wins, which again, I think is like something that is probably not going to happen. But oh, man, I would be even worse than trump in my view.

Yeah, I don't know though, because I think like the permission structure around the vanes is different IT droops gone. And it's going to leave a big sort of vacuum, a big void. And j events will be one of many players trying to provide for power, including perhaps on mask.

That is a good point.

Yeah I you know I don't know there's think trump is gula in a lot of ways. I mean, everything that he stands for has been built up and enabled by decades of republican politics and new liberal economics. But his ability to sort of command such adulation and his carma is pretty unique. I think you know jd vans might inherent power at some point, but whether he's not he's able to wheel that is another question .

together I find him more like ideological right and and that's why I feel like he's potentially more uh you more willing to try to push some of these things forward if you could execute them yeah I think the point that you say about trump having like the leniency to actually push these things in a way that other people wouldn't I think that is actually released, bought on like I don't think vans would so easily get away with appointing a bunch of wake jobs to cabinet.

But it's like a trump. This is what he does. He has the support of all these people like, yeah.

people are afraid to question him. Push back in a way. And that I think I know just did earlier. But another thing that we're going to see quite a lot of and that we're already starting to see is this sort of boom in defense tech companies coming to the White house and getting already sort of signals for me on and trump. They're gonna be more prominent and play larger role, just like bitcoin, boom to its highest Price ever into the ninety thousands after trump was elected because he has his own like grifter coin now that he's all in encysted to he's I haven't seen the story yet. That's like how much trump world has profited directly from their stupid you know trump in or the trump benefits since the boom of at all.

When is trump coin gonna become like one of the currencies .

of the united states? I'm telling you that's a story though because I ve like it's all up like bit going is up insane. it's.

IT was looked like he was headed towards one hundred k for a second. And this is a currency that is just, you know, crashed multiple times, wiped out whole savings. But just like that happening, I feel like a lesser told story has been the boom.

And like defense tech stocks like polenta, for a while, its market cat boom passed lock, ky. Martin, one of historically the largest defense contractors. You know, it's up there with boeing in the united states.

IT is so wild how the valuations of the corn companies can be so out of sink with like traditional companies that do so much more like it's just another example of that. I think tesla is like worth more than almost all the other car companies combined or maybe even more than all the combine. Now like it's wild.

but that's true a while. I mean, yeah, tesla has always been this mystery for that reason is all narrative and that's why elon mosque tell so many bold face lies about the future, about going to mars, about self driving cars, about fully self driving cars, about robot taxes, about robot bullers over. It's thought you're buying into this story.

And the insane and frustrating thing so far is that he has been born out so far. Now he's sitting next to the presidents of the united states. If you invest in his companies, like now, you have invested in this guy who has more power than anyone except trump himself.

IT is truly a deeply insane moment, even though half of his companies, if not more, have, by any traditional metrics, failed x is a failure. Who knows what's going on with his A I company? That's all in the start of pitch, but just basically lives on x and is like A A D list OpenAI.

We could pick them all off. But that's another element here where elan must stands to directly benefit just government contracts in all this stuff. Here we go with police departments, with cyber trucks, ice departments with cyber trucks. Tesla for government agencies, I know, I don't know, at least their .

vehicles know ice vehicles itself. The bar trucks will break down and and you know, that's one outside baby, right? A problem.

So IT really is a great moment of swing, uncertainty and madness. And something like this, a situation like this, is what so many people were worried about. Silicon valley, sort of just assending to this level of power. It's, you know, I mean, when I say silicon valley, I don't mean all of like the rank and file tech workers who are now kind of just worried about their jobs, worried about if they you know protest, will they get fired.

There's a new climate in silicon valley that's much more button up, much more sort of authoritarian leaning, but we have the same collection of tech monopoly that are, you know, more powerful, more wealthy than ever, another tech monopolist or aspiring one, you know, right at the White house. And this this nexus in this conjoining of power in a way that that at least presents in a new way. We have been talking about defense tech, and some battle at the intercept has a great piece about how the warrior class of tech, tightly, Peter tile, these types are among the most to benefit in trump world.

And know, he points out that there's always been the symbolic relationship betwen silicon, bali and the state but now now its its brain the politics have changed to write facebook, apple, google these startups and do real like they don't feel like they have to stay in the shadows. Mark eaker can call trump a bas. It's just an all on board moment and you know they're not afraid of just saying, yeah, we have more money than god and now as we're going to a peace one guy and we don't care if we a peace are our our users are certain the public yeah I still .

have this image in my head of a cyber truck leg around the border in like the south of texas like going off road chasing on the immigrants and like getting stuck on something like doing or something like that. But I think what you're saying is, is totally spotted on and I feel like when we're talking about this relationship to the defense tech industry, I feel like it's important to say that those connections have started to be cemented under the wide administration in large part because of, you know, this growing hostility or division between the us and china and how much the technology has been able to take advantage of that to make sure that they are saying, look, not just you need us to like compete in this new geopolitical game that you're embarking on, but to make sure that the chinese aren't getting ahead of us in military capabilities, we need the pentagon to be buying a lot more of you know this stuff from these new defense startups, not just from like the old lucky Martins and things like that. And so that's why you're seeing palling to your eyes.

You're seeing Andrew rise in a bunch of other companies that are getting started, whose whole goal is to say we are making A I solutions for war or we are making new weapons technologies that take advantage of A I piloting or targeting or whatever. And we often talk about this kind of stuff as though like israel is doing IT or china is doing IT or something like that. But like tons of american companies are getting in on this. And the pantages on is increasingly turning its firehose of money to those companies to make sure that they can rise, to make sure they're getting a tone of public contracts. We talk a lot about elon musk, like the moneys base acts and stuff gets, but like there is a ton of these companies that are getting a lot of public money.

Yeah, OpenAI has a defense contract. Now any of those attitudes, uh you know around doing no evil or sort of public facing good will or that's gone, I feel like in this election has quite potent tly sort of wiped them clean. And it's been clarifying both for us, the public and for the companies themselves that we don't need to do this shit anymore.

We don't need those slogans. We don't need to say that we're going to form oversight committees. We're just gonna do. And that's the world that we're gonna living in for the next four years at least. Silver lining. I think maybe you a little european, but if we can you pull ourselves out of the wreckage after four years, I think IT will at least be a more interesting environment to sort of go after the tech companies afterwards.

I think the democrats like you were saying, like IT wasn't just bitten IT was obama before him IT was decades worth of sort of this relation ship between silicon valley in the state and obama being a big booster of of airbnb and uber and being very friendly and basic. Two yeah space sex. Yeah tesla big yeah not um you know sort of vowing not to regulate, presenting them as though they were uh, progressive companies doing good and they kind of coasted on that reputational ara for a long time.

And I think that too has been wiped clean. I don't think it's going to you go away willingly, but people to be reminded that all these companies just lined up behind trump. But we can just say now and we can see them for what they are.

There are these big extractive firms that have a monopoly over search and are just intensely uninterested in, you know, the quality of the user experience at the expensive, taking as much information and data and ad dollars as they can from you. Laying that bear might have its utility in the future because now there are still some really, I think, awful parties. And to the democratic project, you are saying, like, oh, we should have been nicer to elon muskets are we drove them away.

I struck me as a really grow task. I forget who was on that panel. I know care swish er was there's this like CNN round table IT might have even been like roca who is good on some other things. They're like, you know we really should have invited uh e on to the White house more and not been so hard on him with but it's like, no that's not IT .

rock is good on some things but like because he's the silicon valley guy, like he's really bad on other things.

Well, that's true of a lot of california politics. You'll see right on .

up to to the governor, right on up to commoner Harris.

to a and her body body. Tony worked the chief legal council of uber, who was her major campaign adviser, and who told her to go easy on big business. And and to sort of and some of those attacks so that they could win over corporations rather than sort of talking about what people were actually feeling, which is being gouged red by them and higher Prices in the fact that they can't pay rent. And instead sort of seems like his voice really was one of the major contributors to this sort of a very tepid campaign that you know, as we know now, you know, failed pretty dramatically.

Now all the corporations are thrilled, uh, because they have done all trump and they're going to enable IT em. When you are saying there there's a silver lining here. I thought you were going to say the left can see as all of these new AI military technologies and build fully automated militarized communities to bring on the fairly that's not .

IT know very gram you were in the acceleration ist. I will never never be an exaggeration.

yes. But you know, I think this has been like a good conversation to dig into what is going on with trump. But I I know the end of these episodes, what we're gonna to do is also go through some of the kind of big topics of the week, some of the bigger stories that have been on our radars that we want to go into. And I know that you in particular have been focused on one that has been looking on how AI is being used with screen plays, in particularly what's going on there.

Yeah, there was a great piece in the atlantic this week by alex razer, who's done a number of these sort of data driven deep dives into what is in some of these database that are being used to train A I. And you know, few of these reports are surprising or revelatory in the sense that, oh, wow, like these books were used to train.

Because, I mean, most people are Operating under the assumption that if it's available on the internet in any form, then these companies have found a way to adjust IT into their systems, yet they've stolen. They have done is useful to know and is to be able to point to the details. And so I think he's really doing god's work here.

And so he determined that one of the database that has been used to train some of the the top systems like metas lama apple system that showed up in anthropic IT looks like, but hey, that fifty thousand film screen plays and in eighty five thousand teller plays, turned up in these databases he was able to identify. And so the AI models were trained. But all of this dialogue from films and from TV shows, and of course, the company is didn't seek any permission or to license this material or to pay the creators, it's the same story over and over again.

And when I shuit this out on twitter, you know, I see in the native great writer, guardian colum made the point. It's just like, IT is stunning that even after all of these revelations, this keeps happening. Revelations keep happening like this.

There has been no ramifications whatsoever for the companies. There has been no attempt to hold them accountable by government, right? There have been class action lawsuits. It's fAllen to the creators, the artists, the writers, the authors to sort of band together and try to fight on behalf of uh, all other writers and artists and creators to try to claw back some of what was essentially stolen. And he's being used again around the world in four profit software.

There is maybe a moment, you know, years ago where they would lean on this this sort of ultro isc sort of framing, where, you know, like we're building A G S. For the good of everybody. We know what they are doing with IT now.

Now IT is just bluntt obvious. You're building enterprise software to sell the consulting firms, to sell the marketing companies, to sell to fortune five hundred companies to try to automate the production of text. That is what you guys are doing with IT and sometimes images.

That is the chief aim of this project and the fact that we have and again, under trump now it's really hard to imagine anything beyond these more local fights. Certainly, there's going to be no meaningful regulation put in place to protect creators rights are certainly not on a federal level. Even the sort of, can you know, humor and bitten A I stuff is gonna be at the door.

I still think we need to be outraged about IT. I still think we have to try to organize about IT. The artistic community is really pretty incredible on this stuff, and they are pushing back.

Ways that are forceful and very public. And yeah so IT really is a travesty. Every detail we learned the picture just gets a little bit worse.

Yeah just on that point about like you to push back to IT and how these companies are trying to automate text, there have also been stories more coming out recently about publishers also trying to sell their books to A I companies, you know, to get some money for licensing them for, you know A I training and things like that.

Harper Collins was the big this week here.

exactly. And you know, just before we were recording this earlier in the day, I got an email from the writers union of canada, which a part of where they were expressing their cautious optimism about the A I licensing market and how much authority might be able to make from IT.

And the first thing that came to my mind was the speech that arsa cala guin gave in two thousand and fourteen, where he said that we should never let quote literature get sold down down the river. And I feel like that is exactly what they are doing in being open to taking this money for A I draining because they're completely budding this profession and just to make a few bucks in the short term. And I just think it's so growth .

on the one hand, I empathy, right, like the media world, especially the tax base media world, journalism, magazines, newspapers, they're all just a thanks in large part to conditions brought about by major tech companies like meta and google and sort of their cloying away of the ad revenue from publishers over the years. And crags listen on ebay before that. They are desperate, right? The publishers are desperate for anything.

And compared to sort of past deals, maybe this one doesn't look as bad. I think you know what, we've already sort of turned everything else over. You know, we've let our content sort of live on these platforms, assured on these platforms.

They just want to use IT to train and we can at least make a few bucks in the process. There's always onna be a need for original reporting, original writing. That kind of tends to be how IT goes.

But once again, sort of the outcome of this election, to me, that calls that sort of thinking very much into question. You know, map peers, a former colleague of mine at the time, has been doing really great work writing about sort of the economics of digital media and sort of media infrastructure. He tried to lead the charge to get, you know, google to pay its fair share in the ad dollars that it's taken from journalism earlier this year in an f that wound up fAiling. Look at all these themes coming together, crushed by Gavin newsom, who threatened A V because he is so close to silica.

I hey, well, that's that's down there in the united states. Up here in canada, we got one hundred billion .

dollars from google. That's I mean, by no people have problems with IT. It's not perfect, but it's Better. It's something it's at least a means of cloying back a little bit of that value that google and facebook have taken away. And here now we have this ecosystem where we have been shown that maybe people don't really care that much about original reporting and journalism. That's been one of the storylines in the the election post mordants is that the new york times endorsements and the August magazines and newspapers didn't really matter as much as the joe rogan.

And the stuff that's cheaper and easier to make, the stuff that is friendly to the tech platforms, the stuff that you know you know, you can upload a bunch of stuff IT doesn't really matter if it's fact checked, true or not in IT goes to the ecosystem, which is in many ways, like sort of this blogger sound bite. You cheap and easy ready made content factories are really just sort of paving the way for A I. And so maybe I think it's kind of foolish to think that we won't be competing with a lot of this A I, A I content.

So just letting them have all the materials at relatively low Prices, just letting them have this data and the rights to use IT, we're basically out of giving them access to materials to make stuff that they can turn out now for cheap that we're not going to be competing with in the media. I do think that I get IT again. You want a little bug, you want to stay a flow.

You also don't want to look like you behind the times. What is A I maybe it's cool, but we've seen this story play out so many times. We've seen what happens when you see the ground to silicon valley. We've pivoted to video before. I think it's just I just think we're gonna regret that I think most major media companies that sort of hand this work over are going to find all kinds of unforeseeable, quote, you, problems with the arrangements a few years down the line. And I think that we should be resisting this stuff if we really care about human generated art or human generated work or writing.

I would say I think it's a whole discussion that we can maybe have on a different episode. But I feel like this narrative of that yeah pod casters are so influential now is maybe a bit overblown to kind of take some of the blame away from the democratic party, just not running a great well that until ours gets out there. Yeah exactly.

You know this is going to be the next big influences, bug gas. But you were talking about platforms. And the other story that we wanted to get to IT around this episode off is, of course, the takeoff of blue sky, which has now surpassed twenty million users and seems to just have these usual kind of tech adoption charts that you took kinds.

See where you see like this kind of shoot up of adoption. IT feels like blue sky is on this trajectory now where the number of daily users is adding just keeps like kind of expiratory growing as there's this growing exodus away from twitter x in particular. And i'm sure some of the other platforms as people kind of come over there as well.

I've really been enjoying blue sky. You know, to me, IT just feels fun again, like I like engaging with people on there. I think IT has some fun features that bring people in, you know starter packs in particular like allowing people to follow you know people who you think are interesting in different you know kind of types of on different subject matters or or what however you want to put IT together.

You know like whatever theme you want to make a pack on his school um you can have these these fees that no can be put together in many different ways. So you don't just have this algorithmic feed that like facebook or twitter is throwing at you with its kind of hidden algorithm there IT feels different and IT feels like the people who are making IT a responsive to the user base and kind of the expectations that they have. And so obviously, we know we have seen the story with social media platforms. IT looks great in the beginning, and then things turn. Of course, blue guy doesn't have a monetization plan yet, but after seeing everything that has happened with twitter and x recently, trying to be of IT hopeful that maybe blue sky will be like our new digital home to have some fun.

But Lucy, well, we wanted them to show and like on a hopeful note here, and I think the fact that blue sky is so popular, IT has gained twenty million active users so quickly.

I argued my newsletter this week that IT really shows that there is a hunger for this and that that blue sky is so popular, in large part because it's giving users what big tech has taken away or is taking away everything you're talking about, customization, user control, ways to block and to sort of shape your online experience, things that if a company that is trying to sell you a product that doesn't hate you, things that you might want to give you. So you will spend more time there other than the fact that you're just locked in and you have to be there because everybody else is there. Now there's going to be paid tears where you can get boosted in replies.

And now we're going to harvest your data for our A I system. Blue sky doesn't do any of that. It's just very user focused, very user forward and has its problems. Like you said, IT has taken VC money from block chain capital, which is just right on his head and ominous thing name to a lot of tech watchers I loved in the post where they explain that .

they took his money where they were like, don't worry, we're not going to be implementing crypto stuff or nf.

Okay, good. I don't believe you. Yeah, but it's a small team there in mixing IT up. They're talking to people, they're listening. When I ve shared the story that I wrote, one of the lead dev's interacted with the post and so they're taking notes and that's IT just feels very different.

And it's a reminder to me, I think, in what's otherwise a very moment that like these spaces and these structures are possible and by looking at, you know what is possible and what can feel good and what can facilitate some actually, you know, funny, meaningful interactions online rather than just sort of hostile ones, I think it's a reminder that IT is worth, you know, pushing on. IT is worth fighting for these things. There are alternatives that are possible to get that widely.

You may need to peel apart big deck. You may need to break up these monopoly. You may need to actually hold facebook accountable for some of the things that is done, but IT shows that there is another way and IT has just been fun to be on there to commiserate. Uh, you should come on there if you're not already the knock gets is that it's all homogeneous and it's i'd say that only a little bit true.

I love my echo chAmber.

yes. Yeah, I think there's there a lot, a lot of good folks on there. Listen.

I get replies from cyp to people that I block right away. You know, there's still people I don't like on there.

There you go. Plenty of an actual diversity, us and cyp to people.

Well, bryan, I think that is episode one in the bag. How are you feeling as a pod caster with one ever so done?

I feel like i've wheeled my podcasting kit quite Gracefully. I don't know what.

What do you think the best by cash year will be very proud of you right now?

I'll go back and tell tell him out what have like a little key work code you can dow .

up the podcast I love. I love that. Well, this has been system crash episode.

System crash is host by paris smart and brian. Margin production is by eric h. wicken. Our thin music is this topia by our good friends in yet support the show, a patch on a com slash system crash pod.

To get a monthly bonus episode yeah that's right. And stay tuned in the future will have all kinds of interesting things to dive into, will do interviews and some reading series from ara and silicon valley overlords and all kinds of interesting commentary and journalism. Can't wait to keep this thing rolling with your pairs.

Me too. More to come. But for now, goodbye, 拜拜。