Joseph (4:31)

I don't think we needed to, but I think it's a fun sort of conversation and it helps people contextualize and understand. Mean, I would just stress that we are primarily a technology publication. We cover tech companies, we cover surveillance, privacy, sex on the Internet, how all of these things intersect as well. But I would say this election and this administration is probably the most techified administration it's ever been. You, you have AI and the push from there and we'll get to that, to I think our first story where we're talking about this push to have more AI in the, in the US government and that will have impacts inside government, but also, you know, just ordinary people's lives, you know. And then of course, as you say, you have the Musk connection as well. The richest man in the world and the owner of multiple tech companies, like, it's no longer. It's no longer the time where people can say, oh, you should stick to tech. I think that was stupid when people said. And nobody said that to us. To be clear. I'm even thinking like, way back to 2014 or something. You know what I mean? Or even defective being told, stick to sports or something. No one's saying that to us. All I'm trying to get across is that there is a massive amount of tech going on here and it's really, really going to impact people. Nemanja, what do you think about that?

Emmanuel Mayberg (5:56)

I think that if you don't want to hear about politics, you should become a paid subscriber and listen to our bonus section about libraries and AI.

Joseph (6:04)

That's actually a very fair point. Yeah.

Jason Kebler (6:07)

I mean, the story that Emmanuel published today is like, fantastic reporting on AI, which libraries, there's politics. There's a political angle there, too, which I'm sure we'll bring up. But yes, that was a fantastic investigation and people are reading it. So obviously people care about other things that are going on as well. But most of the free section of this podcast is going to be about Musk's takeover of the federal government.

Joseph (6:35)

Yeah. And before we talk about our story that we just published based on leaked audio that we'll get into, let's just do a really quick rundown of what is happening or what has happened recently, because, honestly, I am losing track. We were writing that article and it's just hard to remember what happened from one day to the other. So, I mean, there's a few things like Musk's allies have gotten access to sensitive treasury data. Right. Gained access to classified information related to usaid. Probably going to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is an agency we covered recently because they've started taking action against some of the companies we cover, you know, like privacy and surveillance and all of that. Some of the people associated with Musk's DOGE agency and then the agencies around that are very young engineers or coders from Musk's other companies. Jason, did I miss anything?

Jason Kebler (7:38)

I mean, you missed the government websites going down and the archiving of information, which we did talk about a little bit last week. But there's sort of like wholesale deletion of all of these big US data databases. Anything having to do with dei, broadly defined. A lot of climate stuff is coming down. And then we've covered a lot of the efforts to archive that. I did a big piece about where that stuff continues to live on that, you know, you should go check out. But there's sort of the, the dual tracks here. There's like the musk track and the like government website purge of government data, which we're actually more familiar with because that happened during the first administration as well.

Joseph (8:26)

And you covered it then for motherboards as well, right?

Jason Kebler (8:30)

Yeah, yeah. Whereas, you know, the sort of like let's bring on Silicon Valley to start up ify the and automate the government is pretty new. I mean, conservatives have always wanted to cut government programs and government funding and say, you know, the government is too big, things like that. But I think that the techification of it and the sort of like let's use automated systems and AI to do it is fully. That's new, as far as I know.

Joseph (8:58)

Yeah, that sounds about right. All right, how about we leave that intro there and then we'll have a quick break and then when we come back, we're going to talk about one of the specific stories we just published about how a musk ally is trying to push AI across the US government. We'll be right back after this.

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Joseph (12:20)

All right, and we are back. Here's the story that, that we all worked on, actually, all three of us. It was kind of a scramble. The headline is things are going to get intense. How a Musk ally plans to push AI on the government. Jason, I said we all worked on it, and that is true. But you did most of the heavy lifting here. To be clear, me and Emmanuel Moore just helped out and contextualized it, that sort of thing. I guess. First of all, what was this meeting? Who was involved? Who were they talking to? And then we'll get into what was said.

Jason Kebler (12:58)

Yeah, so maybe let's start with the agencies that are involved, which I'll try to do as quick as I can. So there's doge, which the Department of Government Efficiency, or it's called something else now to make it align with a specific acronym. But there's basically doge, which is Elon Musk's thing. And the way that that agency was created was on day one, Donald Trump issued an executive order establishing doge. And the way that he did it was he took this agency called the U.S. digital Services, which falls under the Office of Man, Budget Manager, omb, Office of Management and Budget. There's so many acronyms and remembering all of them is.

Joseph (13:46)

It's crazy, man. It's crazy.

Jason Kebler (13:48)

So it fell under O and USDS was formed in the aftermath of the healthcare.gov debacle. We actually did talk about 18F a little bit last week, I think. But basically USDS is this digital services department of coders, more or less, who hop between agencies and solve problems. And Trump renamed that, put Elon Musk in charge of it and put it directly underneath the President.

Joseph (14:19)

Let me just clarify one thing. The reason they renamed the United States Digital Services is because he can't create a new agency whole cloth. So they had to basically rebrand one. Is that right? That's my.

Jason Kebler (14:34)

That's right. And he picked a specific one that falls under this like special authority that I'm not going to get into right now because it's way too complicated. And I think I do understand it actually. But, but basically it, it is an agency that the President has a lot of control over and he put it directly underneath his chief of staff, which means that it's not beholden to specific like hiring requirements, which is why you have like random people working there more or less. You know, it has different record keeping rules which we'll probably do more reporting on. But basically like there's Elon Musk and there's DOGE and then Elon Musk's Doge. People have been going into different agencies. Like they have been essentially saying like under our executive authority, under the President, we are going to come help you cut costs. And what that means is we're going to help you like GUT agencies. So they've gone into usaid, which is the aid organization. They've gone into treasury, as you mentioned, and they've also gone into this agency called gsa, which is the General Services Administration. We did talk about GSA last week, but they basically do like a lot of coding for other parts of the government. They do a lot of standard setting for other parts of the government and they also are in charge of like government real estate and things like that. So under GSA there is this agency called TTS, which is something technological services. Yeah, so there's TTS and then under TTS there's something called 18F and 18F.

Joseph (16:14)

Is technology transformation Services. And of course we know that. It's just that when you're asked to list all of the agencies and the acronyms, it's fucking confusing.

Jason Kebler (16:23)

Yeah. And the reason that I don't have all of this in front of me right now is because we've literally been reporting around the clock constantly. Like, normally we prepare more for this podcast. So please forgive us, because it's like, we just published this story. Our hair is on fire. We're running around like crazy. So that's a huge preamble. But basically, there's this department called tts, and the person in charge of this is a former Tesla engineer named Thomas Shed. And so he's basically like a musk plant at this agency. And so even though he's not technically part of Doge, he is like an Elon Musk ally. They're working very closely with Doge, and he oversees this group of hundreds of government coders.

Joseph (17:07)

And so they're basically government software engineers in a way, and they're like project managers, and they build products for the government, basically. And I know the word product is kind of strange to some people when you're talking about government, but that's also in the same sort of terminology that, you know, intelligence agencies use and that sort of thing. We're developing a product for XYZ or something.

Jason Kebler (17:27)

Right. So Thomas Shedd had a big meeting with these government software engineers, and we got audio of that meeting. And in that meeting, he talks about what he wants them to do, more or less. And this includes things like doing changes to login.gov, which is one of those products that Joseph just mentioned that the government works on, where it's a unified login system across, like, all of the US government. So, like, I have a login.gov account that I use to do things with, such as, like, TSA pre check and things like that. He basically said, I think it's important to read the quote, more or less. But he said, you know, I'm going to need help with changes to login.gov. and one thing that he said was he wants to start using it as a mechanism to identify fraud and abuse within the government, like identify US Citizens who are defrauding the government in some way. And right now, login.gov doesn't have access to, like, any sort of government information across agencies. It's just like a login platform.

Joseph (18:35)

It's just a way to authenticate, in some ways to log in, where, as you say, for TSA or whatever, or for the IRS or whatever it is, you don't need to make a different account for every single one, which is a massive pain, I imagine. So you just have this one account, but that. He wants to add something to that.

Jason Kebler (18:54)

Yeah. So like you can't, if you, if you're on Social Security, if you're getting Social Security payments, you can use login.gov to log into Social Security like Social Security Administration to see your things. But login.gov doesn't have access to how much money you're getting from the Social Security Administration, whether you know you have another account like stuff like that doesn't have access to your personal information. And he wants to change that. So he said, quote, in this meeting with the, with his employees, he said, quote, just like a fun one we've been thinking through with login.gov, specifically in TTS is login can't access government information on individuals. And so there's no connection that login has with Social Security or any other government system, even though we're part of the government. And so part of one of the things to work through now is how do we make it so that those agencies that have information of very secure APIs that can be leveraged by login to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud. To summarize, it's like how can we use login.gov to detect fraud and identify the individuals who are committing that fraud? And then one of his employees on this meeting says, well that would be illegal because there's a privacy act that says these government agencies can't just show share information willy nilly.

Joseph (20:17)

Yeah, you can't just have one agency randomly one day start sharing Social Security information with another agency for the hell of it basically. And there would need to be some sort of opt in consent. There's actually that quote from the employee question. What was that quote exactly?

Jason Kebler (20:38)

He said, I think we were on the talk, I think we were on the topic of a login aggregating data. It's an illegal task. The privacy act forbids agencies sharing personal information without consent. And then Thomas Shedd says the idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow. But again that's an example of something that we have a vision that needs to be worked on and needs clarified. And if we hit a roadblock, then we hit a roadblock, but we still should push forward and see what we can do. Emmanuel, I think you have some like a good insight on, you know, what he's saying here and why this is, you know, notable.

Emmanuel Mayberg (21:17)

I think the notable thing about it is that he makes very clear that they don't intend to break the law. Right. He's not getting on the meeting and saying here are the laws we have to Break in order to do this, please break the law. He's responding to this question and saying, okay, I understand. We understand the legal limitations of what we're trying to do, but there is a vision. Right. And they're striving towards this vision and they sort of say, I don't know if we ended up quoting this, but at some point he even says, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Which I think just tells you a lot about the mentality of the Musk camp in the government and what they're trying to do. They are looking at the rules and they're trying to navigate them to fit this vision of a startup like streamlined organization with a ton of efficiencies. And we happen to be very lucky to have seen Musk do this very recently at Twitter. And I'm not saying that we know that it's going to look exactly the same, but we just saw him do this exact thing at a private company, and it gets pretty ugly. A lot of people lose their jobs, A lot of services go offline. The quality of services generally deteriorates, and the quality of their product overall is worse and less valuable. Right.

Jason Kebler (22:43)

So, yeah, I mean, that. That's partially true. But the other thing that seems to be happening here is they're saying, we have a vision and we're going to start doing stuff, and if it happens to be illegal, like, try and stop us or we'll figure it out. Yeah. I mean, in some cases, I think the attitude is try and stop us. I'm not saying Shed has that ethos in this, because he is. He's saying, like, oh, we'll navigate it. But Musk, certainly on Twitter, is like, we're just doing stuff. We're gutting stuff, and we're getting access to the treasury and we're doing whatever. And, you know, there's many lawsuits that have been fired, filed, but it's unclear which ones are going to stick. Which ones? Like what. What actions are going to be taken and whether they'll be stopped.

Emmanuel Mayberg (23:27)

Yeah. And that's a mode of governance that is bigger than Musk at the moment. It is representative of what Trump is doing across the entire government. Right. It's not just Musk that is laying down a goal that seems unfeasible and says, we'll figure it out. That is exactly what Trump is doing with the Department of Education, with the Department of Labor, with, I don't know, making Canada a state, whatever it may be.

Joseph (23:54)

So how does AI and automation come into this? Because Shed Talks a fair bit about that, especially at the top of the meeting.

Jason Kebler (24:03)

Yeah, I mean, he talked about a lot of things and we had audio the whole meeting. So one thing he talks about is having a team of coders. Like, he basically is like, I need volunteers to help me build AI coding agents. Meaning essentially like AI government employees that will write software for other government agencies, which is not. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg was literally talking about trying to do this at Facebook, at Meta in an all hands last week. And so this is a Silicon Valley dream where it's like we're going to have coders teach the AI how to write code, and then an individual human coder can be a hundred times more efficient, or we can just like deploy these AI coders to do a whole bunch of stuff. And then, you know, at some point, maybe there's like human oversight to say this code is good or this code is bad. I talked to one employee from TTS who is a software developer, and they were horrified by this proposal because writing government software is different from writing enterprise software in many cases. There's many more privacy laws, there's many more. You know, you're designing things to make sure that they won't break. Because a lot of times the software deals with things like Social Security payments or things that you like really need to not go down. Which is part of why a lot of government systems run on extremely old technology. So there's that. They also talk about trying to train some of these AI on or using AI to analyze government contracts to determine fraud, abuse duplicate contracts, things like that. That could also be problematic where you just take an AI and say, go analyze all this stuff and then make decisions based on that.

Joseph (26:01)

Yeah, it ends up killing some contract that's actually really important or something. We look at a lot of US Government contracts. I'm always going through procurement databases, um, and I always FOIA emails, often from gsa, because they're the ones sometimes touching the, the purchase of the product. And I mean, I don't know, they're very professional there, you know, and you go through these emails and they, they're keeping track of stuff. And I've seen people be like, oh, we're still owed to this and that sort of thing. Obviously that is anecdotal and just a snapshot and not an entire view of the US Government, but you sort of brought up motivations and that was what really stuck out to me when I was listening to this audio. And what I pulled out, which is that shed again, the musk ally really framed it almost like a private company trying to please shareholders. At one point he says, we're basically bankrupt as an agency. Tts, I believe an employee then says a question which is read out, which is something like, I don't agree with the bankruptcy claim. And then shed replies, Look, TTS is losing something like $200 million. If it was a private company, our shareholders would be telling us to do xyz. And that is just so illuminating to me because the government is not a private business. The government is not there to make money. The government is there to provide services and security and various other things to its citizens. It's not there to make a buck.

Jason Kebler (27:39)

What do you think it's literally like? It is a government service. And people make that argument about the post office sometimes where they're like, the post office loses all this money and it's like, well, first of all, the post office doesn't lose that much money there. We won't get into it. It's very. It's a very well organized run organization, but it's providing a service for millions of Americans across, you know, the entire country. And so the people who act like you can just like kill all this stuff. And it having no impact is really wild. I think there was another really illuminating question on there where an employee said, we're not allowed to work more than 40 hours a week, you know, because overtime rules and things like that. And he's basically like, yeah, we're working on that. We're working on that.

Joseph (28:27)

Consult HR policies, I think was also mentioned as well, which is like you're just turning the government from a collection of civil servants into a fucking hackathon where everybody's like going to gather around and try to churn stuff out. And I don't know, that can work for private companies and startups. It's just the motivations are fundamentally different when we're talking about government. All right, let's leave that there. We'll have a quick break and then we come back. We're going to talk about the second story we did about Doge and Musk and that sort of thing. We'll be right back after this.

Jason Kebler (29:20)

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Dena Temple Reston (30:29)

Hackers and cybercriminals have always held this kind of special fascination.

Joseph (30:33)

Obviously, I can't tell you too much.

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Joseph (30:37)

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Joseph (31:20)

All right, and we are back. This one that me and Jason did, the headline is Musk Stoge brings in HR consultant focused on non woke DEI aligned with our faith. Obviously the non woke and the aligned with our faith are quotes, I guess. Who is this person? Stephanie Holmes, I believe. Jason.

Jason Kebler (31:45)

Yeah, Stephanie Holmes is an HR lawyer who created a consultancy firm called Brighter side hr. And by her own explanation in these videos we went and watched, she created it as a non woke version of hr. She said basically like leftist ideals were infiltrating corporate America and were, you know, pushing diversity, equity, inclusion. And so she was like, I'm going to teach corporations how to play that game, more or less. She calls it a game at some point and like, redefine what DEI is to better align with the Christian faith, is what she says in one of these videos. And she's become this kind of star on the right where she shows up at like Heritage foundation events who, you know, they did Project 2025, the Federalist Society, which is another conservative think tank, and then this group called the Napa Institute, which is a Catholic organization in California that is, it's like a religious organization that funds conservative causes more or less. And she for years has been going to these events and basically Saying like, I am teaching companies how to be non woke, more or less. And she was brought into DOGE to be the head of HR for Doge.

Joseph (33:15)

More or less, whatever that means. Exactly. I mean, one of her quotes. So just to clarify, we learn that she's appointed as the head of hr, we then go away and we look at other talking, speaking engagements she's done because that gives some insight into who is now involved with this agency. One of the quotes is, I do workplace training, discrimination, harassment training, how to do workplace investigations. It's simply just a non woke version offering employers an alternative approach to diversity inclusion. I mean, maybe, maybe you don't even know Jason and maybe it's just me not being able to parse this sort of language. And I think you and Emmanuel are a lot better at that than me. What does it even mean to be non woke? Hr. What does that mean?

Jason Kebler (34:08)

Well, HR is not super woke. In my experience, HR is like corporate.

Joseph (34:14)

Lackeys protecting the company.

Jason Kebler (34:16)

Yeah, maybe does some nods at caring about diversity and things like that. But like by and large, HR at companies that I'm aware of do things like help cover up employee harassment and things like that. You know, not always, but that's part of what they, they've done. But basically, like Stephanie Holmes, like in these videos that we found, she said that very often employees are asking companies to diversify their work force, which is true. Like, very often the push to hire more people of color or to like have a more inclusive workforce comes from employees themselves who have seen, you know, like, hey, everyone who works here is a white male. Like, let's diversify in some way, which for many, many reasons leads to better corporate outcomes. But she was basically like, if you are an HR person or like a CEO who is under attack from your WOKE employees asking you to hire more black people, I will teach you how to like implement DEI programs that favor diversity of thought, which is a code word that, you know, the right has been using for many years that basically.

Joseph (35:42)

Like, yeah, yeah, that's why I find it so difficult. And again, you and Emmanuel so much better because it's all code words and I don't follow the right close enough to be able to translate what they're saying. Basically. I mean, just to elaborate a bit, she says she advises employers to move away from defining diversity exclusively focused on employees, race, sex or other protected category, and instead bringing together employees with diverse backgrounds, viewpoints, perspectives and beliefs to achieve common workplace goals. I mean, on the face of it, that sounds good, but it's A code word? Is this what you're saying?

Jason Kebler (36:16)

Yeah. I mean, for people who really care, maybe it goes back even further than this. But at Motherboard, we were the first people to report on the Google Memo, which was this memo written by a software engineer named James Damore at Google, like back in 2017 or 2018, that was about Google attempting to hire more women software engineers. And he was arguing that there were like these biological differences between men and women and women don't want to become software engineers, blah, blah, blah. Like, that's what he was arguing. And he said, we have this goal of diversity at Google where, you know, we'll hire more people of color, we'll hire more trans people, we'll hire more women to diversify our workforce. And this is all a means to like, check a box saying that you have a more diverse workforce, but what we should really be going for is diversity of thought. Meaning he was arguing that Google had become a monoculture, like a leftist progressive monoculture that was left leaning more or less. And so he was saying, like, you need to hire more conservatives, more or less. And this idea of diversity of thought has become something that conservatives have said, like, institutions need to do more of. So when like the New York Times hires like a Republican to say that Donald Trump is good actually on its, you know, opinion pages, that's like the New York Times seeking a diversity of thought, I believe. And it may, it may predate James Damore, but that was the first time I was exposed to it. And when we wrote about that memo, it became like a huge, it became really like the beginning of the culture war in Silicon Valley. And I think that this idea that companies need to hire more conservative people is like, that's what they mean by diversity of thought. Like, that's literally what they mean is like, we need, you need to hire more like, religious people, more conservatives, more people from rural areas, so on and so forth. I mean, Emmanuel, you've edited many, many stories about this sort of thing. Do you think that's right?

Emmanuel Mayberg (38:37)

Yeah, it just, it's a, it's a pivot where you simply argue that rather than your workplace making an effort to hire more people of color, you should hire more Republicans. I mean, that. It's as simple as that. Or I think in her case, in Stephanie's case, more religious people or have more respect for Christianity in your workplace. That, that's just kind of the, the pivot that she's making and all these people are making when they talk about diversity of thought.

Jason Kebler (39:12)

So I know that's a lot about Stephanie's background. The reason that this is important, why anyone should care is because she is now in charge of HR at doge, which is this agency that's tasked with gutting the federal government, like that's its specific reason for existing. And so someone who's thinking through that lens is going to go into other agencies, presumably, or could and have an impact on, you know, the federal workforce. I think the other thing that was very interesting to me is we've been talking about how DOGE and different parts of the federal government have been taken over by Silicon Valley types and Elon Musk's, you know, proteges and people who work at his companies and how like, like all these people who worked at Neuralink and SpaceX and Tesla are part of the government. Well, as far as I know, Stephanie doesn't have any connection to any of Elon Musk's companies. And yet she is part of this agency that Elon Musk is running, which suggests that there is some aspect to the Department of Government Efficiency that is an alliance between Elon Musk and Silicon Valley. And this like, Christian. Right, which, that, that's me. I don't know exactly what the relationship is, but it's like she's essentially like a Heritage Foundation Federalist Society type person and she is now at this agency that is like a Silicon Valley type agency. And that's very interesting to me.

Joseph (40:55)

Yeah. And I think, just to stress that I think some people might be like, oh, why do we care about this person being involved with this? Or it also goes to Wired's coverage of the young Musk aides and associates from other companies coming on. Well, why do we care about the individual, individual people. We should care about policies and stuff. Well, it's important to know who these people are because they are directly going to impact policy which is directly going to impact a ton of other people's lives, both government workers and, you know, civilians as well. Right. So I imagine will, if not us, you know, or probably including us as well. But other outlets will keep reporting on. Well, now this person involved. This person's involved. Sort of like when more straightforward political outlets will do, well, this person's been nominated for the head of the FBI or something like that. We wouldn't probably cover that as much unless there was some sort of tackle surveillance thing or something like that. But here I think the through line to the Google memos you say does pull it in a much broader context. And that's why people should care.

Emmanuel Mayberg (42:09)

Sorry. I think, yeah, People should also care because of the content of what is being said and done in these meetings that we talked about in the previous segment.

Joseph (42:19)

Right.

Emmanuel Mayberg (42:19)

Like there's been a lot of ink spilled over the fact that these guys are young and are from Elon Musk's tech companies, which are both certainly interesting and notable facts. But I don't think any of us are thinking no one who is 22 should work in the government. You know, like if, as the, as, as the AI enthusiasts like to say on Twitter these days, if you get a, a group of cracked 22 year olds that are really good at their jobs and they're working in the government, that's a win for the government. And I tend to agree with that. But again, the issue and the thing that we are trying to highlight and the thing that the public needs to be aware of is that there is a vision and there is a goal. It is very new and untested and concerning. Given everything we know about AI and everything we know about the revolving door between government and private companies and now having this titan of industry and tech running seemingly large parts of the government, that is what is notable. I don't care that they're 22. That, that is not a.

Jason Kebler (43:33)

Well, some, something about that. Like I lived in Washington D.C. when I was 22, fresh out of college, and I knew many, many 22 year olds who work for the federal government. And the way that the federal government works by and large is they have very strict bans, they have like different levels and I don't remember the exact way that it works, but it's like you start at level one and you're like an intern. You're not really an intern, but you're hired and you're like the lowest person on the totem pole. And what's different here is you have 22 year olds who are re interviewing lifelong civil servants and are like in charge of them and don't have any sort of experience in the government. You know, the government hires lots of young people, it's just that they hire them at low levels and then you work your way up and coming in.

Emmanuel Mayberg (44:19)

With assumptions about how things should work.

Jason Kebler (44:21)

Right, right, right.

Emmanuel Mayberg (44:23)

They're not coming in and saying like, tell me about your job and how can we make things better? They're like, we know how to make things better. AI, how do we get there? And that I think is the difference.

Jason Kebler (44:32)

They're also like, justify yourself to me and if not like, I will fire you.

Emmanuel Mayberg (44:39)

Justify yourself. 50 year old who has given his life to the federal government.

Jason Kebler (44:43)

Right. I mean, well, literally there is report reporting that's not ours, but you know, Wired's reporting. I have no, no reason to doubt it. Where it's like you have Elon Musk, you know, 20 something year olds pressuring people in the treasury to give access to very sensitive information and, and systems who have been there for a long time and have security clearances and things like that. And then when they refuse, they're, they're pushed out. And you know, I don't have his name in front of me right now, but one of them is like a guy who's worked at the treasury for like 40 years or something. So not, not great. And then the very last thing I'll say about Stephanie Holmes is that I believe a lot of the meetings that she's taking have to do with this fork in the road email about, I was gonna please resign if you don't want to be here.

Joseph (45:34)

And what's the deadline for that? Because the dead way before that deadline and it would have happened for the.

Jason Kebler (45:38)

The deadline is Thursday. Right. And I don't think we talked about it, but the. By and large, it's like Elon Musk sent an email to everyone at the entire federal government saying if you don't want to work here, respond, resign to this email and you'll get a severance more.

Joseph (45:59)

Which he, which he did at Twitter.

Jason Kebler (46:00)

Which he did at Twitter.

Joseph (46:01)

He didn't directly send this email, but it's like the same subject line and the same vibe.

Jason Kebler (46:05)

Yeah, yeah. And like at these meetings they just started calling it fork, which I think I just find that to be interesting. I know someone who works in the federal government who I've talked to about this, just like casual acquaintance and they're, they're like, everyone's just calling a fork. Fork is Thursday, Fork is Thursday. Which is kind of interesting. And they're like, it's pretty wild how banal this has become because you're talking about potentially thousands and thousands of federal employees losing their jobs or leaving or quitting.

Joseph (46:40)

Yeah. And the ones I've spoken to in the government, you know, either themselves or their colleagues, they're terrified for their livelihoods, for their health insurance, for them and their kids. And the deal is basically, as you say, okay, Thursday, that's the deadline you have to decide whether to stay for this very intense season. As shed pull it from the earlier story, which is a very funny term to me as well, like, is that a football thing or whatever or like a TV thing? Anyway, you either have to resign then or you're in. And I don't think we really got into this, but in the audio that we got before as well, it was like, you know, you're going to have to come into the office. And a lot of these software engineers and coders working for the government are remote, and remote first, typically. So they might not live anywhere near an actual office. And like, do I want to uproot my family and get pushed basically by someone trying to put AI into the government? Doesn't sound like a nice decision, you know. All right, let's leave that there. If you're listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you are a paying 404 media subscriber, we're going to talk about how AI slop is probably already in your public library. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404 Media co. As a reminder, 404 Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you do wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404 Media co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You also get to listen to the Subscribers Only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. Here is one of those reviews from Cosmographia. I've been binging all the episodes after discovering this podcast. The journalism is fantastic. It's thorough and in depth, and there's a lot the 404 Media team are reporting I haven't heard about anywhere else. Thank you so much. We'll see you again next week.