Uncanny Valley Episode Transcript: New Co-Hosts, Davos Chaos, ICE’s Minneapolis Expansion, and ChatGPT Ads
Welcome back to Uncanny Valley, WIRED’s weekly podcast digging into the intersection of tech and politics. This week, we launch a new era of the show: longtime host Zoë Schiffer (WIRED’s Director of Business and Industry) is joined by two new permanent co-hosts: WIRED Executive Editor Brian Barrett and Senior Politics Editor Leah Feiger.
This week, we break down the chaotic buzz from the 2025 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where top AI leaders rubbed shoulders with Donald Trump—who used his keynote to double down on his public push to acquire Greenland. We also unpack the escalating crisis of expanding ICE activity across the U.S., starting with the ongoing fallout after an ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Next, we cover how big tech and Silicon Valley investors are already pouring millions into this year’s midterm elections, largely to roll back state-level AI regulation. We also dive into why OpenAI’s decision to roll out ads for free ChatGPT users has been a long time coming, even after CEO Sam Altman once framed ads as a last-resort business model.
Articles Mentioned in This Episode
Pro-AI Super PACs Are Already All In on the Midterms
‘I’m Witnessing a Lot of Emptiness’: How ICE Uprooted Normal Life in Minneapolis
Ads Are Coming to ChatGPT. Here’s How They’ll Work
Follow Our Hosts
Find all three hosts on Bluesky:
Brian Barrett: @brbarrett
Zoë Schiffer: @zoeschiffer
Leah Feiger: @leahfeiger
Reach the show team by email at [email protected].
How to Listen
You can stream this week’s episode directly via the audio player on this page. To subscribe for free and get every new episode automatically:
On iPhone/iPad: Open the Apple Podcasts app, or tap this link to subscribe.
You can also search for “Uncanny Valley” in podcast apps like Overcast or Pocket Casts, or stream the show on Spotify.
Full Episode Transcript
Note: This automated transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, and may still contain minor errors.
Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED’s Uncanny Valley. I’m Zoë Schiffer, WIRED’s director of business and industry. Today, we’re starting a brand-new chapter of this show, and I want to officially introduce my new co-hosts: Brian Barrett, our executive editor here at WIRED, and Leah Feiger, our senior politics editor. Brian and Leah, welcome to the show.
Brian Barrett: Hi, Zoë.
Leah Feiger: Hey guys, I’m so thrilled to be here.
Zoë Schiffer: Longtime listeners know this show has gone through a lot of iterations since it launched—we’ve had the Gadget Lab days, roundtable discussions, weekly news deep dives. We built this podcast to bring you the sharpest reporting and hottest takes on what’s happening at the intersection of tech and politics, and that core mission isn’t changing.
Leah Feiger: That’s right, but this time around, we’re going even deeper. We’re pulling back the curtain to share what we’re hearing from our sources across Silicon Valley and Washington DC, break down the trends you need to watch, unpack breaking and upcoming news, and walk you through how we’re processing it all. Basically, we’re inviting you into our internal Slack group chat.
Brian Barrett: God help us all. No, really, this is going to be great. Our main goal is to help you make sense of this fast-changing world through a WIRED lens. We’ll be honest, we’ll be curious, and we’ll bring you along as we look ahead to what’s next.
Zoë Schiffer: Alright, we’ve got a ton to talk about this week. The World Economic Forum kicked off this week in Davos, and it’s already delivered no shortage of drama.
Leah Feiger: I honestly cannot look away from it.
Brian Barrett: I can. I can and I do.
Leah Feiger: You can just turn it off immediately?
Brian Barrett: So easily. I just say “nope” and that’s that.
Leah Feiger: C’mon! Al Gore was booing people, he heckled the U.S. commerce secretary! How do you not talk about this nonstop?
Zoë Schiffer: I know, right? But we also have the news that ChatGPT is rolling out ads, and Leah is already making us all start thinking about this year’s U.S. midterms, because Silicon Valley is already dumping huge amounts of cash into the races. Let’s start with the biggest story that Leah and I have been tracking: the World Economic Forum in Davos. Every January, global leaders, business titans, and top politicians gather for a week in this tiny, picturesque Swiss mountain town to talk about the world’s most pressing issues.
Leah Feiger: Davos has always been the place where tech billionaires, CEOs, and world leaders mix—and that makes it inherently WIRED catnip. What makes this year’s Davos so interesting, to me anyway, is how the U.S. has been positioning itself on the global stage lately, and I say that very gently.
Brian Barrett: That’s extremely gentle, let me rephrase that for you. It’s interesting because the U.S. is openly trying to take over territory from a NATO ally, and is using threats of violence to get what it wants.
Leah Feiger: That’s the straight talk. Let’s dive in.
(Archival audio: Donald Trump) We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, but I won’t do that. I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland.
Zoë Schiffer: Trump actually showed up in Switzerland to speak in person this year.
Leah Feiger: Look, during his speech, he technically ruled out using military force to take Greenland—which is an absolutely wild thing to even have to say out loud. He danced around it, never said it clearly, and just kept repeating “I want Greenland. I want Greenland. Give it to me.”
Brian Barrett: It’s exactly like being on a playground asking for someone’s lunch money, right? It’s “I won’t punch you for your lunch money… but I could. I will punch you if you don’t give it to me, but I won’t… so you should just give me the lunch money so I don’t have to.” He said he wouldn’t use force, but it was totally clear he’s leaving that option on the table if he doesn’t get what he wants.
Leah Feiger: 100% agree. And the way he talks about NATO like it’s an out-of-style T-shirt or a show you don’t feel like watching on Saturday? That’s wild. This is all wild.
Zoë Schiffer: Every year, people debate if this conference is even still relevant, if it’s going the way of TED where everyone will stop caring soon. But this year, it feels more important than ever. Trump was there, every top AI leader was there, and AI was actually the biggest topic people were talking about—even more than Greenland, sorry Leah. Satya Nadella, Dario Amodei, all of them spoke on stages, and AI was top of mind for everyone.
My favorite gossipy little story from this year is about the brand “houses” tech companies host at Davos, which are basically big event spaces for parties and networking. This year, the Anthropic house was the cool spot to be, but they were super picky about who got in. Big name officials would show up at the door, and the Anthropic staff would just say “sorry, you’re not on the list.”
Leah Feiger: No way! That didn’t actually happen.
Zoë Schiffer: I swear it did.
Leah Feiger: Who got turned away? Do we know?
Zoë Schiffer: I can’t name names.
Brian Barrett: Where do rejected guests go? Do they just head over to the Mistral house instead?
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, it’s like “sorry, you’re more of a Meta house person. Have a good night.”
Leah Feiger: OK, let’s back up for a second. This would’ve meant nothing seven months ago, right? Am I getting this right? This year, we’ve got all this chaos around NATO’s future, and everyone is suddenly pro-AI, but Anthropic isn’t just any AI company—they’re famously aligned with AI safety/doom views. So what does it mean that they’re the cool kids at Davos this year? What does that signal for the industry and the conference?
Zoë Schiffer: It stands out because from what I’ve heard from people at Davos, AI safety isn’t actually a big topic of conversation this year—most of the vibe is just unapologetic AI hype. But Anthropic is having a moment right now with Claude Code, its new coding agent that everyone is using and loving right now. So they get to be the lone voice in the room taking a more pessimistic view of AI risks, and still be the most popular kid on the block. Also, I heard their branded swag (especially the Anthropic hats) are super popular this year. They’ve got good merch.
Brian Barrett: That’s how you win Davos, honestly. But beyond the cool house and turning people away, what this really shows is just how geopolitical AI is right now. Beyond the parties, Dario Amodei made a big splash saying it’s insane that we’re still selling chips to China, that we shouldn’t be doing that. That’s a huge statement, and it lines up with what he’s said before, but it shows that even these startups, some of which don’t even have a clear path to long-term profitability, are shaping global politics in really meaningful ways.
Leah Feiger: Look, obviously the AI Cool Kids Club is a big headline for our readers, but I can’t stop thinking about Trump’s speech and his whole presence at Davos. While he’s over there talking about literally invading another country, there’s already a kind of occupation happening right here in the U.S. by ICE, and it’s incredibly jarring. They’re talking about expanding operations to other blue states, and the situation on the ground in Minneapolis right now is terrible.
Brian Barrett: Yeah, let’s talk about Minneapolis. It’s been a little over two weeks since an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, and backlash against ICE’s presence there has only exploded. ICE has responded by ramping up their presence even more—they now have more than 2,000 agents in the city, and that number is heading toward 3,000. This is really a test case for how the U.S. government would occupy its own cities, something that felt unfathomable even a few months ago, let alone a few weeks back.
Leah Feiger: Absolutely. Our features team published a fantastic story this week where they interviewed 10 Minneapolis residents to get a sense of what daily life is like right now. They talked to teachers who have to rush kids in from the playground when ICE helicopters are circling, and to volunteers who’ve been detained by ICE. We got really terrifying stories, some quotes that I’m not going to forget. One agent told a group of people pulled over in a car, “You need to stop obstructing us. That’s why that lesbian bitch is dead.” That’s the reality on the ground right now. It’s dire, really dire.
Zoë Schiffer: What’s public support for ICE looking like right now? I saw a Puck report that said support for the agency has plummeted after the shooting. Does that match what you’re hearing, Leah?
Leah Feiger: Yeah, support is really low. This is not a popular policy right now. To be blunt, I’m really curious what happens next. We reported last week about plans to expand to New York and California, and I think this is going to be a huge issue in the midterms. A lot of districts right now, you can’t just win as a Democrat by saying “we stand with our neighbors”—polling and public opinion right now show you have to come out in favor of abolishing ICE to win. If ICE pulls back these violent raids in the next few months that could change, but I’m really curious how the Trump administration will play this issue in the midterms.
Brian Barrett: It doesn’t look like they’re going to back off at all. They basically have an unlimited budget to work with. We broke a story this week that they’re planning to spend up to $50 million to build a new detention center in Minneapolis, so they can ship detainees hundreds of miles away across the Midwest. They’re moving forward with these procurement plans, spending tons of money, they’re still recruiting heavily, paying huge signing bonuses. Right now they don’t have enough agents to occupy New York or LA, but they’re building up the resources to do exactly that. And the election point is really serious—you can easily imagine a bunch of masked ICE agents with no IDs standing outside polling stations in key swing districts.
Leah Feiger: That’s exactly right. The Trump administration and DHS are trying to get Americans to see them as just regular local police, your friendly neighborhood cops. But that’s not true for so many reasons: they don’t live in these communities, they’re not your neighbors, they work for the federal government, not the city or state. And their accountability rules are totally different, way weaker. We’re seeing nameless, unidentifiable agents become commonplace across America right now, which is wild. The U.S. has dealt with police brutality for decades, but this whole nameless, faceless dynamic has taken a really dark turn this year.
Brian Barrett: That namelessness is extra insidious because ICE prioritizes its own privacy so much—they always wear masks, never show ID. But at the same time, they use facial recognition on anyone they stop for any reason, they follow people home to intimidate them, they use every tool of the state to dig into people’s lives. If you speak out against ICE, there’s a good chance you’ll get a tax audit or a visit from authorities. It’s a total double standard: they get complete anonymity, and everyone else is subject to full background checks and surveillance.
Zoë Schiffer: It reminds me of that asymmetric dynamic we see around privacy in tech all the time. Like Apple talks a big game about user privacy, but internally, employees have almost no privacy. They’re encouraged to link their personal Apple ID to their work account, so the company can monitor what they’re doing. It’s interesting to see that same dynamic play out in politics.
Switching gears a bit, I’ve been really curious how tech leaders and tech workers are speaking out (or not speaking out) about the ICE situation in Minneapolis. Tech leaders have been noticeably silent about ICE, about the shooting, about the killing. It feels really different from the George Floyd protests a few years back, when all these same leaders were speaking out pretty forcefully. Whether those statements were genuine or just performative, they were way more vocal back then. Now it feels like they’ve made a calculation: “We’re putting our companies first, and right now that means staying quiet.” One level down, though, rank-and-file tech workers and managers are more vocal, signing letters, saying this situation is untenable and needs to change.
Leah Feiger: Think about it: how many Silicon Valley CEOs showed up at the airport to protest Trump’s 2017 Muslim ban? That was less than 10 years ago, and it feels like a totally different world now. It’s shocking.
Brian Barrett: It’s interesting that you mentioned workers and managers are finding their voice now. That’s what happened during the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests too: internal worker movements pushed for action on social justice, and CEOs responded partly because it was politically convenient at the time, and partly because they had to respond to their employees revolting. Until we see that same kind of pressure here, I don’t think we’re going to see top CEOs speaking out… I don’t know if we’ll ever see Tim Cook say anything about this.
Zoë Schiffer: I don’t think we ever will. We’re in a totally different moment now. In fact, I think this whole moment in tech culture is a direct reaction to that 2018 moment. If you talk to tech leaders off the record, they’ll say “we gave employees what they wanted back then: we added monthly mental health days, we made political statements, we signaled support for these causes. But all that happened was employees got more demanding, and we got nothing out of it. They call us entitled behind closed doors.” So now they’re making a different calculation: “We’re in an era where Trump is super transactional. If we give him what he wants, we get something in return. That wasn’t true with Biden, and it wasn’t true with our employees, so we’re choosing this path.”
Leah Feiger: That’s all true, but they’re still making political choices—they haven’t stepped out of politics, they’re just choosing different sides. Can we talk about how Silicon Valley is already inserting itself into this year’s midterms? It’s only January, the midterms are in November, but everyone get ready, I’m making you talk about it now.
Brian Barrett: No! I need more time, at least until Groundhog Day.
Leah Feiger: No, no, no. When everyone left for holiday break in December, I said “see you in midterm year” because I chose violence.
Even if they’re not doing the loud, public protests they did in 2016, 2017, or 2020, they’re still pouring money into politics. Max Zeff wrote a great piece for WIRED this week about how pro-AI super PACs are already all in on the midterms.
Zoë Schiffer: Tell me more—are they only backing candidates focused on tech policy issues, or is it more spread out?
Leah Feiger: It’s still early, but even the starting line involves tens of millions of dollars, which is wild.
