Uncanny Valley Podcast: Weekly Episode Transcript
Episode Overview
In this week’s episode of WIRED’s Uncanny Valley, your hosts break down three headline-making stories: the renewed escalation of the legal battle between OpenAI and Elon Musk, dropping just as SpaceX submits its confidential IPO paperwork. They also unpack the troubling revelation that a Department of Justice attorney misrepresented the agency’s handling of confidential voter data to a judge, and explore why the Artemis II lunar mission captured the world’s collective awe this week.
Articles Referenced in This Episode
The DOJ Misled a Judge About How It’s Using Voter Roll Data
Artemis II’s Breathtaking View of the Far Side of the Moon
Connect With the Team
You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett and Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger. Send questions, comments, or feedback to the team at [email protected].
How to Listen
You can stream this week’s episode directly via the audio player on this page. If you want to subscribe for free to get every new episode automatically, follow these steps:
- If you use an iPhone or iPad: Open the native Apple Podcasts app, or tap this link to subscribe instantly. You can also find the show on third-party apps like Overcast or Pocket Casts by searching for “Uncanny Valley.” We’re also available to stream on Spotify.
Full Episode Transcript
Note: This transcript was generated automatically, and may contain minor errors.
Brian Barrett: Hey everyone, it’s Brian. Over the past few weeks, Zoë, Leah, and I have loved stepping into the role of your new hosts, and we want to hear from you! If you’ve enjoyed the show and have a minute to spare, please leave us a review on whatever podcast platform you use. It really helps new listeners find us. For any questions or comments, you can always reach out to us at [email protected]. Thank you for listening, now let’s get into the show. Welcome to WIRED’s Uncanny Valley. I’m Brian Barrett, executive editor.
Leah Feiger: And I’m Leah Feiger, senior politics editor.
Brian Barrett: This week, we’re talking about why the court battle between OpenAI and Elon Musk is heating up all over again. Sticking with Musk, we’re breaking down key takeaways from SpaceX’s recent confidential IPO filing. Then we’ll dive into rising concerns over how current administration agencies are handling sensitive voter data. Finally, we’re stepping away from all the chaos to head to outer space, and talk about why the Artemis II launch felt like such a landmark moment for everyone watching.
Leah Feiger: Before we jump into our planned lineup, we have to briefly touch on what unfolded between the U.S. and Iran over the past few days.
[Archival Audio]: President Trump is threatening Iran again, writing online this morning that quote, “A whole civilization will die tonight never to be brought back again.”
[Archival Audio]: Moments ago, President Trump once again reiterated his threat to devastate Iran if no deal is reached before his 8 pm Eastern deadline tonight.
[Archival Audio]: Breaking news from the White House: The U.S. president has agreed to a two-week ceasefire.
Leah Feiger: The whole situation was incredibly strange. I guess this is just how global politics works now. I’m really curious what your take is.
Brian Barrett: Yeah, exactly. We’re talking about what did — and more importantly, what did not — happen this week: potential World War III. We came right up to the brink, and while there was a good chance Trump was bluffing, right? He’s done this over and over: set a hard deadline, then push it back. But the thing he’s bluffing about has gotten so alarming, and a bluff is only a bluff until it isn’t. Threatening to wipe out an entire civilization is terrifying, even when it’s just empty bluster. It’s terrifying bluster.
Leah Feiger: What’s so wild about pushing this out two weeks is that late last night on Slack, you made such a perfect throwaway line, Brian. Sorry for calling you out, it was something like…
Brian Barrett: Wow.
Leah Feiger: “See you all in two weeks, if we’re still here.” Something along those lines.
Brian Barrett: I even said it in that deadpan voice, too.
Leah Feiger: Exactly! It might as well have been typed in Comic Sans.
Brian Barrett: 100 percent.
Leah Feiger: And we’ll check back in on this in two weeks. Frankly, I’m not sure how much of the world, broadly, was 100 percent paying attention to this anyway, and in two weeks I think attention will be even lower. This is just another Trump bluff. But the “boy who cried World War III” problem is so scary — at some point, this won’t be a bluff anymore.
Brian Barrett: And it makes the whole situation so unpredictable. You’ve probably heard of the madman theory of politics, right? Richard Nixon famously thought that if other world leaders thought he was erratic and unpredictable, they’d be less likely to call his bluff…
Leah Feiger: This is a theory people in the Trump administration actually joke about openly.
Brian Barrett: And the big difference is that Nixon was pretending to be a madman. Trump feels like he’s fully settled into the role. We saw similar stuff during his first term with North Korea, where he openly threatened to “press the big red button” and said his button was bigger than Kim Jong-un’s, that he’d nuke North Korea. In retrospect, people just wrote it off as “that’s just Trump being Trump.” But when Trump being Trump means bringing the world to the brink of nuclear conflict, and he seems fully capable of following through, it’s incredibly alarming. I want to circle back to your point about people tuning out — can you expand on that? Do you think there’s just so much noise coming from Trump’s Truth Social that people have desensitized to it by now?
Leah Feiger: Yes and no. Obviously this was a top headline, CNN ran a countdown clock, a specific group of people were watching this very closely. I could barely work yesterday because I kept checking my phone and updating my sources. That said, when I talked to politically engaged friends, their reaction was basically “yeah, that’s wild” but it’s just another Trump tweet, another Trump scare. I haven’t seen the widespread outcry you’d expect, even globally. The world is already reeling from the impact of the ongoing war in Iran; Madagascar just declared a state of emergency over energy costs yesterday. I guess what I’m getting at is, when we actually do need everyone to pay attention to a real crisis, will people be able to? I keep thinking about how quickly everyone moved on from Venezuela. The U.S. kidnapped the sitting president, and…
Brian Barrett: Oh, he’s still in jail in New York.
Leah Feiger: Exactly, still locked up in New York City, literally blocks from where I’m sitting right now. It’s just so hard to sustain attention on every crisis. What do you think? Am I being too cynical here?
Brian Barrett: It’s a weird dynamic. Most people I’ve talked to IRL know what’s going on, but they’re kind of resigned to it as just another thing we have to deal with. I think that’s just where we’re at as a country right now. The last thing I’ll say here is this is so classic Trump: it doesn’t even feel like a real deal, just a vague framework that’s supposedly on the right track. Meanwhile, bombs are still flying in the region that the U.S. is involved in, there’s random talk about Bitcoin being part of the agreement… it’s that perfect mix of vagueness and shadiness that’s the hallmark of any Trump deal.
Leah Feiger: And they’re claiming the U.S. will financially benefit from it! Supposedly, the strait that used to be free for shipping will now charge a toll split between Iran and Oman, and maybe the U.S. gets a cut. The news changes by the minute, it’s so hard to keep track of what’s actually happening, and it all feels so sleazy. Did we wage war just to collect a toll? What is going on here?
Brian Barrett: Sounds like that might be exactly what’s happening. Shifting gears to something that’s not exactly sleazy, but definitely tawdry — and incredibly entertaining to watch: the OpenAI-Elon Musk feud. A trial is set to start later this month, but earlier this week on Monday, OpenAI sent a formal letter to the attorneys general of California and Delaware urging them to investigate what they call “improper and anti-competitive behavior by Musk and his associates,” including Mark Zuckerberg, who’s allegedly tied to this effort. All of these claims are unproven, for the record, so we have to make that clear. For anyone who doesn’t know the backstory here: Musk is a co-founder of OpenAI. He sued the company and its CEO Sam Altman back in 2024, accusing them of abandoning OpenAI’s original founding mission when the organization restructured from a non-profit to a for-profit company. When OpenAI launched, its whole premise was that it would be a non-profit researching AI for the public good, ensuring the powerful technology was aligned with human interests and harnessed for good. Once the company started making billions and investing trillions into growth, that original mission fell by the wayside. Altman and Musk have a long history of taking public jabs at each other.
[Archival Audio]: OpenAI, you seem pretty frustrated with them. You were one of the biggest early backers.
[Archival Audio - Elon Musk]: I am the reason OpenAI exists.
[Archival Audio]: Do you think Musk’s criticism comes from a place of insecurity?
[Archival Audio - Sam Altman]: Probably his whole life comes from a place of insecurity. I feel for the guy.
[Archival Audio]: You really feel that?
[Archival Audio - Sam Altman]: I do, actually. I don’t think he’s a happy person. I do feel for him.
Brian Barrett: Musk’s legal team doubled down on Tuesday, demanding that if Musk wins the case later this month, Sam Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman must be removed from their leadership roles, and the company must revert back to being a non-profit. It’s unclear what actual power Musk has to force these changes, but the fact that he’s going all in shows just how vicious this feud has become.
Leah Feiger: I’m obsessed with this drama, I’m sorry. It’s just so entertaining. The billionaires are fighting! We’re talking about multi-billion dollar companies here, there’s so much money on the line.
Brian Barrett: It’s such a mess. And OpenAI has been messy in general lately, for anyone who’s been following. We’ve talked about the revolving door of executives leaving and coming back, they had another big leadership shakeup this week, they bought a podcast this week. It’s total chaos over there.
Leah Feiger: Shoutout to TBPN, the other tech podcast.
Brian Barrett: There’s chaos everywhere, and then Musk comes in to stir the pot even more. To add context to all this: SpaceX confidentially filed for an IPO last week, so we’re in a make-or-break moment for Musk right now. Every big AI and space company is rushing to hit the IPO market right now — OpenAI, SpaceX, Anthropic — and SpaceX is the first one across the finish line. So there’s a lot going on all at once.
Leah Feiger: Musk is betting SpaceX will be valued at nearly $2 trillion, which would make it the largest IPO in history. This backyard brawl feels way bigger than just two guys fighting. Do you think this back-and-forth marks a major turning point in the case, or is it just more posturing?
Brian Barrett: I think this is just Elon twisting the knife a little more. He’s taking every chance to dig in and maximize pressure if he can get a win. I do think this case will be really interesting if they don’t settle — which they might, this whole thing could go away, but both sides seem really dug in. This could be the first real moment that puts the brakes on the whole AI industry, because up until now, all these AI companies have operated with basically zero oversight. The only pressure they face is from each other, fighting over top talent, because there’s infinite money and infinite room to grow. If Musk somehow wins this case, it could be the first big check on their power.
Leah Feiger: Is now actually a good time for SpaceX to go public?
Brian Barrett: That’s a great question. There’s definitely pressure to go public now — the market can only support so many $2 trillion IPOs. And when we talk about SpaceX, it’s not just rockets anymore. It’s tied to xAI and X (Twitter) too, it’s basically the core of Musk’s entire empire. Going public would unlock a ton of capital for them to keep building data centers and expanding their computing power. It would also make them the first major new AI company to go public, not counting long-public giants like Alphabet/Google. So there’s a big first-mover advantage here. One wild side note that shows how Musk extracts value from everything he does: any bank that wants to pitch services for the IPO is required to subscribe to Grok, and become an xAI customer.
Leah Feiger: That’s such a wild strategy.
Brian Barrett: On a large scale, that’s actually a ton of money. These banks have thousands of employees, so they all have to sign up for Grok. It’s not how these things usually work, but this is Musk’s world, we just live in it.
Leah Feiger: There’s no “normal” in Musk world, that ship sailed a long time ago. That’s still crazy to me. I’m curious how this all plays out. It’s also impossible to ignore that Musk and Altman are major political players, not just business leaders. This business fight is playing out on a national stage, not just because of how much money is involved, but because they both have the ear of different factions in the Trump administration.
Brian Barrett: You’re exactly right. Just last week, OpenAI released a huge policy document laying out what they think post-AGI policy should look like, laying out their agenda to prepare the world for what’s coming. There’s a real audacity to that, it’s clearly an effort to control the narrative, and it just proves what you said: these are incredibly powerful political players.
Leah Feiger: Let’s shift to another messy part of modern politics: voter data. Brian, you love voter data, right?
Brian Barrett: I love voter data when it’s kept private, controlled at the state level, and not misused for bad purposes.
Leah Feiger: Well, I have bad news for you.
Brian Barrett: Of course you do. That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?
Leah Feiger: Last week, during a court hearing in Rhode Island, we learned that a Department of Justice lawyer lied to a judge about what the agency is doing with sensitive voter roll data. The lawyer, Eric Neff, acting chief of the DOJ’s voting section, told the judge the agency hadn’t done anything with the collected data. But after our colleague David Gilbert reported on the discrepancy, Neff backtracked and admitted that the DOJ had already started preliminary internal analysis of non-public voter registration data. Put plainly: your voter data from multiple states has been seized and is being processed. The DOJ says they’re looking for anomalies, and trying to flag people they claim shouldn’t be allowed to vote. This is part of a broader voter roll purge campaign the DOJ launched last year, when the agency sent letters to election officials in almost every state demanding full unredacted voter rolls. That includes social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, dates of birth, and home addresses. Dozens of states have pushed back, so the DOJ has already sued 30 states to force them to comply. Neff also disclosed that the DOJ plans to share this state voter data with the Department of Homeland Security, to run it through DHS’s SAVE system to check for non-citizens and deceased voters. I need to be really clear here: every major study on non-citizen voting has found it is extremely, extremely rare. We’re talking about 30 cases out of hundreds of millions of votes cast. This is not a real problem. Obviously the Trump administration has made it a political wedge issue, and now the DOJ is pushing it forward, which is really alarming. This isn’t just partisan data on who voted for which party — this is your most sensitive personal information, being pooled together in a way it was never meant to be, and most states are furious about it.
Brian Barrett: I want to step back for a second. Beyond the data privacy concerns and the misuse of this information, there are really only two explanations for Neff’s statement, and neither is good. Either he intentionally misled the court, then corrected it the next day when he got caught. Or, equally alarming, he had no idea what was actually happening with the data. That suggests the agency is incredibly casual about how it uses this sensitive information, and there’s basically zero oversight. That’s incredibly concerning no matter where you fall politically.
Leah Feiger: I completely agree. David Becker, head of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and a former DOJ lawyer himself, told David Gilbert the exact same thing for our story: this small moment in a Rhode Island court case is a symptom of a much larger, much scarier trend.
Brian Barrett: This also comes as the DOJ’s acting chief privacy officer recently resigned, and the role doesn’t seem to be a priority for the administration to fill. We talked about this a little last week: this is a full-court press from the Trump administration to get access to this data. The whole reason this data is split up state by state is because voting is fundamentally a state and local issue. That actually makes our elections more secure, because there’s no single lever someone can pull to “steal an election,” no matter what Trump claims. It all comes down to local election workers, local governments, and state secretaries of state running secure systems independently. As you said, there’s no proof this is a real problem, but they’re going to keep pushing until they turn it into one.
Leah Feiger: And this isn’t just something that’s happening quietly in the background. Last week, after Trump effectively fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, WIRED reported today that election deniers are pushing for more extreme candidates to take over the role,
