The Bots Have Won The Web!

Summary

Tech Brew Ride Home: "The Bots Have Won The Web!"

Date: June 5, 2026
Host: Brian McCullough
Podcast: Tech Brew Ride Home

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Episode Overview

Brian McCullough delivers a rapid-fire breakdown of the day’s most consequential tech stories, with a primary focus on bots outnumbering humans in global web traffic for the first time—a milestone moment in internet history. Additional stories tackle IPO eligibility in major stock indices, the evolving partnership (and contention) between Anthropic and the U.S. government, Meta’s covert facial recognition rollout, an AI-designed vaccine breakthrough, and thoughtful perspectives on AI consciousness to set up the weekend’s long reads.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Bots Outnumber Humans on the Web

(01:51 – 04:05)

• Milestone Moment:
  Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince confirms that “bots have now passed human traffic online for the first time in the Internet's history.” (01:56)
  • Not just traditional crawlers, but "agentic" AI bots that navigate the web as digital assistants for humans.
• Quote:

  “Welp, that happened faster than I predicted.” — Matthew Prince (01:56)

• How We Measure:
  Cloudflare’s data counts HTTP requests (page loads), not time spent, so humans still dominate in engagement-heavy activities (streaming, scrolling feeds). (03:08)
• Global Extremes:
  Places like Gibraltar (92.1% bot traffic), Singapore (76.4%) and Iran (76.4%) top the list for bot-driven web activity—due either to local infrastructure or heavy VPN and scraping use. (03:28)

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2. S&P 500 Stiff-Arms Fast-Track Mega IPOs

(04:05 – 07:11)

• Status Quo Maintained:
  S&P Dow Jones Indices refuse to relax requirements for immediate IPO inclusion, meaning firms like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI face a minimum 12-month “seasoning” period before joining the S&P 500, regardless of size.
• Industry Contrasts:
  Nasdaq and FTSE Russell have fast-tracked eligibility, potentially adding pressure.
• Market Implications:
  Immediate inclusion would have forced about $14B in passive fund buying for SpaceX, $8B for OpenAI, and $4.6B for Anthropic. (04:55)
• Investor Debate:

  “Rules around profitability, float and trading history exist precisely to prevent benchmarks from chasing hype.” (05:29)
  Supporters say indices should reflect market realities more quickly when companies reach massive valuations pre-IPO.

• Quote:

  "I'm genuinely surprised... But S and P is the market leader and they can buck the trend." — James Seyffart, Bloomberg Intelligence (06:18)

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3. Anthropic and the U.S. Government: Cautious Warming

(07:11 – 10:28)

• Embedded Engineers:
  Anthropic has embedded engineers at the NSA to help deploy its “Mythos” system for offensive cyber ops.
• Potential Use:

  “The best way to build a good defense is to build a good attack.” — Unnamed Anthropic source (07:42)

• Ongoing Legal and Political Tensions:
  Litigation continues over “supply chain risk designations,” even as CEO Dario Amodai meets the White House to smooth relations ahead of Anthropic’s planned IPO ($1T target valuation) (08:14, 09:23)
• Executive Order Drama:
  Trump signs an AI order after canceling a more public event due to disagreements with the provisions (09:12).
• Quote:

  “Anytime the government signals that it's washing its hands of a company, that's a major problem for that company.” — Franklin Turner, government contracts attorney (08:50)

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4. Meta Quietly Ships Face Recognition Code

(12:36 – 14:09)

• Wired Scoop:
  Meta has been shipping dormant facial recognition (“Nametag”) code for its smart glasses inside widely downloaded Meta AI app updates since at least January.
• Public Promises vs. Private Moves:
  Meta previously promised not to deploy such technology without careful deliberation; however, key code elements were already present earlier in the year. (13:00)
• Technology Details:
  If enabled, Nametag would convert captured faces into biometric signatures (“face prints”), matching them to a growing on-device (and updatable) database. Unrecognized faces are saved to a “pending” folder. (13:24)
• Historical Background:
  Meta’s previous attempts at facial recognition cost the firm billions in legal settlements in Illinois and Texas (14:02).

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5. AI-Designed Vaccine Milestone

(14:20 – 15:59)

• Breakthrough:
  University of Cambridge scientists have trialed the first vaccine to feature “a key component designed entirely by AI” (14:34).
• All-Coronavirus Aim:
  The vaccine’s AI-engineered ‘super antigen’ trains the immune system to recognize a broad family of coronaviruses—protection not only from COVID variants, but also as a preemptive guard against animal spillovers. (14:50)
• Implication:

  “This is a fundamental shift in how we prepare for pandemics.” — Professor Heaney, University of Cambridge (15:59)

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6. AI Weekend Long Read Suggestions & Consciousness Debate

(16:08 – 18:29)

• Mark Gurman’s WWDC Preview (Apple’s developer conference)
• Atlantic Feature — Ted Chiang on AI Consciousness:
  • LLMs (like ChatGPT, Claude) are “cleverly disguised examples of sentence continuation” rather than conscious entities. (16:20)

  • “Being open to the possibility that LLMs are conscious is the same as being open to the possibility that Microsoft Word is conscious.” — Ted Chiang (16:40)

• On Intention and Anthropomorphism:

  “We are accustomed to reading intention into sentences, whereas we are not accustomed to reading intention into amino acid protein folding.” (17:50)

• Philosopher’s Caution:
  Just because consciousness isn’t well understood, that’s not a reason to assume chat transcripts are conscious. (17:12)
• Reading Recommendation:
  Brian recommends Ted Chiang’s stories: “You do owe it to yourself to do so.” (18:06)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Matthew Prince, Cloudflare:

  “Welp, that happened faster than I predicted.” (01:56)

• S&P Fast Entry Commentary:

  “Rules around profitability, float and trading history exist precisely to prevent benchmarks from chasing hype.” (05:29)
  "I'm genuinely surprised... But S and P is the market leader and they can buck the trend." — James Seyffart, Bloomberg Intelligence (06:18)

• Anthropic Insider:

  “The best way to build a good defense is to build a good attack.” (07:42)
  “Anytime the government signals that it's washing its hands of a company, that's a major problem for that company.” — Franklin Turner (08:50)

• Ted Chiang on LLM Consciousness:

  “Being open to the possibility that LLMs are conscious is the same as being open to the possibility that Microsoft Word is conscious.” (16:40)

• Vaccine Breakthrough:

  “This is a fundamental shift in how we prepare for pandemics.” — Professor Heaney (15:59)

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Timestamps Key Segments

• Bots Take Over Web Traffic: 01:51–04:05
• S&P 500 Index Rules & Mega IPOs: 04:05–07:11
• Anthropic, NSA, and White House Warming: 07:11–10:28
• Meta's Surprise Face Recognition Rollout: 12:36–14:09
• AI-Designed Vaccine Milestone: 14:20–15:59
• Weekend Reads & AI Consciousness: 16:08–18:29

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Episode Tone & Language

• Conversational and brisk, blending summary with direct quotes for color.
• Occasionally dry-witted (“Welp, that happened faster than I predicted.”), but focused on hard news and critical analysis.
• Alternates granular technical explanation with market context and policy angles.

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Conclusion

This episode marks a technological and cultural inflection point as bots eclipse humans in web activity, explores shifting rules for blockbuster IPOs, and reveals tensions—plus warming ties—between Silicon Valley and government. Breakthroughs in AI-driven vaccine design and the demystification of LLM “consciousness” round out a comprehensive, expertly curated tech news briefing.

Perfect for anyone seeking a succinct yet richly detailed scan of the day’s most important developments in the tech world.

Transcript

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[Brian McCullough]

Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Friday, June 5, 2026 I'm Brian McCullough Today, bots passed human web traffic for the first time ever the S&P

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

500 rejected fast entry for mega cap

[Brian McCullough]

IPOs like SpaceX, anthropic embedded engineers at

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

the NSA Meta hid face recognition code in its app, and of course, the weekend long read Suggestions here's what you missed today in the world of tech.

[Brian McCullough]

Today's episode is brought to you by Doppel Social Engineering attacks don't bother to knock.

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well, it happened. The web is officially now more bot than human.

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince says agentic traffic is growing so fast that bots have now passed human traffic online for the first time. Quoting Tom's Hardware the rapid increase in agentic Internet traffic means bots have now passed human traffic online for the first time in the Internet's history, according to the CEO and co founder of Cloudflare, Matthew Prince. Welp, that happened faster than I predicted. Prince awkwardly admitted making his previous expectations of the crossover happening sometime in 2027 seem way off the mark.

[Brian McCullough]

Before going on, it's important to differentiate

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

this new surge in Internet traffic from the traditional bots. Most will be aware of things like website crawlers, search indexers, and bad stuff like fraud or abuse bots. It is different now as Cloudflare is charting agents that browse the web much like humans on behalf of humans, and it is already at a massive scale. You might wonder what all these AI agent bots are actually up to, particularly if you're not running your own army of digital helpers.

[Brian McCullough]

Thankfully, Cloudflare has addressed the scope of AI bot activity in previous articles and blogs.

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

Also last year it started classifying traffic according to these new website visitors, for example signed agents and verified bots, which is why the charts don't go back very far.

[Brian McCullough]

However, Cloudflare metrics measure HTTP requests, not engagement.

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

Flesh and blood folks remain the primary users of the web in terms of total time spent in app, US streaming and infinite scrolling feeds.

[Brian McCullough]

These mediums simply don't generate the same

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

volume of rapid fire page load requests as automated agents do.

[Brian McCullough]

We were also interested in looking at

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

Cloudflare's breakdown of human bot traffic by country. The most bot ridden traffic comes from the tiny island of Gibraltar at 92.1%, followed by Singapore at 76.4% and then Iran at 76.4%.

[Brian McCullough]

While some of these places have a

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

lot of data centers and hosting infrastructure compared to population size, Iran's high bot count may rather come from the heavy use of VPNs with automated scraping and bypass tools. Cloudflare has also previously flagged Iran as a hotspot for malicious bot activity. End quote.

[Brian McCullough]

The S and P is not just going to roll over for these new

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

mega cap IPOs coming down the pike. Quoting Bloomberg S and P Dow Jones

[Brian McCullough]

Indices will keep its existing eligibility requirements for benchmarks including the S&P 500, closing the door to fast entry for big tech IPOs like SpaceX, and delaying billions

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

of dollars in flows from passive funds.

[Brian McCullough]

The index provider, in a press release Thursday said it will not shorten the 12 month seasoning period for newly public companies it currently has or waive existing

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profitability and public float requirements based on

[Brian McCullough]

a company's size diverging from a broader

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industry shift embraced by rivals Nasdaq and

[Brian McCullough]

FTSE Russell for new listings like Elon Musk's SpaceX, the denial means they won't be greeted by a Wal from funds

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that track the S&P 500. Their fast inclusion in the benchmark would

[Brian McCullough]

have led to about $14 billion in forced passive buying for SpaceX, more than $8 billion for OpenAI and about $4.6

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billion for Anthropic, according to Bloomberg Intelligence estimates.

[Brian McCullough]

The decision arrives as Wall street grapples with a new reality. Some companies are reaching unprecedented sizes before they ever enter public markets. The consultation launched earlier this year, effectively asks whether index rules written for a different era should bend to accommodate companies

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

that now arrive once reserved for mature

[Brian McCullough]

blue chips in what has become known

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

as the fast entry in industry parlance.

[Brian McCullough]

The push for quicker inclusion has raised concerns among some investors who say rules around profitability, float and trading history exist precisely to prevent benchmarks from chasing hype. Furthermore, adding IPOs too quickly, they say,

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

could expose passive funds to greater volatility and force them to buy shares before reliable market pricing is fully established.

[Brian McCullough]

Meanwhile, supporters say indexes should include massive companies as quickly as possible to reflect

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the market investors actually own, adding that these trillion dollar firms can be economically significant long before they satisfy traditional index requirements.

[Brian McCullough]

The outcomes mean that SpaceX, which is

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preparing what could become the largest IPO

[Brian McCullough]

in history, would not be eligible for inclusion in the S&P 500 until at least one year after its listing.

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

The company would also need to satisfy the index's existing requirements for profitability and public float.

[Brian McCullough]

I'm genuinely surprised, said James Seyffart, ETF

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

[Brian McCullough]

But S and P is the market leader and they can buck the trend. Nasdaq changed its rules recently so Space

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

Exploration Technologies Corp. As the company is

[Brian McCullough]

formerly known, can Join the NASDAQ 100

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

index, a cohort of the largest non financial companies listed on its Exchange, in just 15 trading days, down from a three month minimum.

[Brian McCullough]

FTSE Russell adopted a similar approach, shortening

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

the waiting time to five trading days. The S&P 500 is the most heavily

[Brian McCullough]

tracked equity benchmark in the world world. About $7.5 trillion in passively managed funds

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

follow it and another $3.4 trillion in actively managed assets are benchmarks against it, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data.

[Brian McCullough]

Things might be cooling off in terms of Anthropic's relationship with the US Government. First of all, sources say that Anthropic has embedded around half a dozen forward deployed engineers within the NSA to help that agency deploy Mythos for offensive cyber operations.

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

Quoting the fte, it remains unclear whether

[Brian McCullough]

Anthropics engineers are assisting the NSA in active operations. However, one person close to the situation said Mythos would be useful for infiltrating

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

the networks of nations such as China or Iran.

[Brian McCullough]

The best way to build a good defense is to build a good attack,

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

said a person close to Anthropic, who

[Brian McCullough]

argued that adversaries are probably building their own AI driven offensive technology. If Mythos is not used to build attack agents, adversaries will find a way to do it.

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

The arrangement comes despite the Silicon Valley

[Brian McCullough]

startup's legal battle with the Defense Department, which includes the nsa, over how its

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

technology is used in war fighting, end quote. And then this is from Reuters, quote A months long dispute between Trump administration

[Brian McCullough]

officials and AI firm Anthropic is showing signs of easing across parts of the

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

US Government as the company prepares to go public, according to sources familiar with the relationship.

[Brian McCullough]

The relationship has improved since Anthropic CEO Dario Amodai visited the White House in mid April to discuss working together together for the first time since the dispute erupted. Even though Anthropic is still challenging the

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

supply chain risk designation in court, the

[Brian McCullough]

Department of Defense is still vigorously defending itself against Anthropic's lawsuit, said Franklin Turner,

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

an attorney specializing in government contracts.

[Brian McCullough]

Any broader damage to the company's business is unlikely to ease until the department's

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

dispute with the company is resolved, he said.

[Brian McCullough]

Anytime the government signals that it's washing its hands of a company, that's a

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

major problem for that company, turner said. One of the biggest signs of a

[Brian McCullough]

thaw was symbolic but important. The White House invited Amudai to Trump's planned May 21 signing of an executive order on artificial intelligence, according to two sources familiar with the matter, even though the event was later canceled because of

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

Trump's dislike for some of the order's provisions.

[Brian McCullough]

Trump signed the order on Tuesday. Anthropic, in a statement posted on X,

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said it looked forward to collaborating with

[Brian McCullough]

the White House on implementing the order.

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Anthropic's relationship with the Trump administration is

[Brian McCullough]

warming as it gears up for a

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

stock market debut that could value it at $1 trillion. CEOs of large corporations have tried bolster relationships with the White House to avoid Trump's anger.

[Brian McCullough]

Stronger ties could help bolster investor confidence in the short term, said Harrison Rolfs,

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

a senior research analyst at PitchBook who covers AI companies.

[Brian McCullough]

It's a near term bruise, rolfs said, referring to the dispute. Anthropic employees met with US Treasury Secretary Scott Besant this spring to talk about Mythos and potential presidential actions on AI,

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

according to a US official. The discussions helped Trump's team develop June

[Brian McCullough]

2's executive order, according to the official, where Trump asked leading developers to hand over their most advanced models for cybersecurity testing.

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The tensions with the Pentagon have not faded entirely.

[Brian McCullough]

Both sides are still arguing over the supply chain risk designation as of Thursday,

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when they submitted briefs to the court.

[Brian McCullough]

At the same time, Anthropic employees were not part of an April 27 army run AI simulation on cyber attacks, according to army spokesperson Sean Minton, which included cyber executives from leading AI developers including

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

Google and OpenAI, according to an army statement. End quote Foreign.

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Wired says Meta discreetly added code for an unreleased name tag face recognition system for its AI Smart glasses over multiple Meta AI app updates earlier this year. Quote the discovery of name tag in the live Meta AI app shows that Meta had begun shipping face recognition code to users phones while publicly describing it

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

as something the company was still thinking

[Brian McCullough]

through In April, Meta said that if it were to utilize face recognition, it wouldn't be rolled out without first taking

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

a very thoughtful approach. But Wired found that as early as

[Brian McCullough]

January, core components of the system had been integrated into software distributed to millions of people. Though not yet enabled, Nametag sits Inside a Meta AI companion app that's been downloaded over 50 million times and is

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

necessary for use of key features of

[Brian McCullough]

its smart glasses, including Ray Ban and Oakley models. If activated, it will transform faces captured by Meta's glasses into unique biometric signatures, commonly known as face prints, and check each one against face prints stored on

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

the user's phone, a database that's currently configured to receive updates from Meta. Recognized faces will trigger notifications, while the

[Brian McCullough]

rest are cropped, indexed and saved to a folder marked Pending. Nametag would revive a type of technology Meta said it had sunsetted in 2021 when the company announced it would delete more than a billion face prints belonging to Facebook users following years of controvers over its photo tagging system. Meta ultimately paid $650 million to settle

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

a class action lawsuit brought by Illinois

[Brian McCullough]

users and in 2024 agreed to a separate $1.4 billion settlement with Texas over

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allegations it had unlawfully collected biometric data from users. End quote.

[Brian McCullough]

This is the inverse of yesterday's scary stories. The University of Cambridge say they have developed the first VACC key component entirely designed by AI and subsequently trialed it in humans.

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

Quoting the BBC, the team at the

[Brian McCullough]

University of Cambridge say it is the first time a vaccine's key component has been designed entirely by AI and then trialed in people.

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The vaccine was engineered to work on

[Brian McCullough]

all coronaviruses, which would include all COVID variants, as well as viruses that currently

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

infect animals, yet have the potential to start the next pandemic.

[Brian McCullough]

The work is still in the early stages, but the team is already developing separate vaccines that could tackle both flu and Ebola.

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

Normally, vaccines are designed using a current

[Brian McCullough]

strain of a virus. The Cambridge researchers took known genetic codes, the instruction manuals of life, from a range of coronaviruses that had been recorded

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

by surveillance programs hunting for potential viral threats.

[Brian McCullough]

These genetic codes were analyzed by an artificial intelligence. It then designed a super antigen that could train the immune system in such

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

a way it gave protection against a

[Brian McCullough]

whole family of viruses, even if they mutated or a new infection jumped from animals to people. Antigens are the critical components of vaccines, as this is what the immune system learns to attack, Heaney said. This was the first time an antigen designed by AI had been trialed in people, he said. The technology was surprising all of us and it was amazing what we can do with it for the good of humanity, heaney told BBC News. This is about making vaccines that protect us not just from today's viruses, but protect us from what can cause the next outbreak or disease. This is a fundamental shift in how

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

we prepare for pandemics End quote.

[Brian McCullough]

Time for the weekend Long read Suggestions? I'm not going to quote from this

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

one, but the first link is from Mark Gurman on what we can expect from wwdc, which starts on Monday.

[Brian McCullough]

And then this has gotten a lot of chatter in the Atlantic. The dude who wrote the book that the movie Arrival is based on took a long look at AI consciousness debates. He says LLM conversations are cleverly disguised examples of sentence continuation.

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

But that doesn't deny how impressive LLMs can be.

[Brian McCullough]

Being open to the possibility that LLMs are conscious is the same as being

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

open to the possibility that Microsoft Word is conscious. Or more precisely, that multiple distinct consciousnesses

[Brian McCullough]

are dormant in every Word document containing a conversational transcript, and that they are

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

awakened every time the document is loaded. Should you consider consider the possibility that

[Brian McCullough]

every time you open a Word document you are bringing multiple conscious interlocutors into existence, and every time you close one

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

you snuff their existence out?

[Brian McCullough]

No. Contemplating that scenario is not a good

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

use of your time.

[Brian McCullough]

Even if the Microsoft Office team employed

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

a philosopher who said you shouldn't be so certain because consciousness is not well understood, that would not be sufficient reason for you to take this idea seriously.

[Brian McCullough]

We don't need to fully understand the nature of consciousness to definitively say that certain things are not conscious, and conversational

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

transcripts fall in that category.

[Brian McCullough]

The neuroscientist Anil Seth has noted that no one claims that AlphaFold, the program

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

developed by Google DeepMind to predict the folding of proteins, is conscious, even though

[Brian McCullough]

its underlying architecture is in many ways similar to that of LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude. This indicates that it's not any intrinsic property of so called neural networks that

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

leads people to believe that LLMs are conscious.

[Brian McCullough]

It's simply the fact that LLMs emit grammatical sentences, and we are accustomed to reading intention into sentences, whereas we are not accustomed to reading intention into the

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

way that amino acids fold into their protein molecules.

[Brian McCullough]

By the way, if you've never read any of Ted Chiang's stories, you do

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

owe it to yourself to do so. As mentioned, get ready for WWDC on Monday. We'll see what Tim alleged Apple has for us.

[Brian McCullough]

The show will be late as always,

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

because I have to actually watch the

[Brian McCullough]

keynote myself, so be prepared for the

[Co-host or Guest Analyst]

show to drop a few hours later than normal.

[Brian McCullough]

Talk to you then.

[Wired Podcast Narrator]

The Wired newsroom is known for award winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On WIRED's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories and tech while speaking directly with the people. Building, challenging and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance? Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts.