← Uncanny Valley | WIRED
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
Why Apple Sued OpenAI; New York Takes On Data Centers; Cyclosporiasis Outbreak
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- [00:00]
NPR Shortwave Host
NBR believes in your right to be curious about the big questions and the unexpected ones. That's what Shortwave, their science podcast, is all about. When we stop to ask questions, the world gets more interesting. Shortwave spends each episode answering one big one like why do we have nightmares? How does AI affect my energy bill? And how can trash be good for the environment? Science isn't just for the PhDs of the world. It's for everyone, including those of us who didn't realize we love Science. In under 15 minutes, Shortwave follows a question wherever it leads and brings you along for the ride. It's science, but not the kind you remember from school. It's surprising, playful, and full of wonder. News podcasts are great, but sometimes you want to experience the world in a different way. Shortwave gets you out of your head and in touch with the world around you. Personally, I loved hearing about Janet Jones, horse trainer and neuroscientist, teach me about horse and human relationships throughout history. Follow NPR's Shortwave podcast and exercise your right to wonder.
- [01:06]
Leah Feiger
This episode is brought to you by Accenture.
- [01:08]
Emily Mullen
When your advertising operations fall out of
- [01:11]
Leah Feiger
sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business.
- [01:25]
Brian Barrett
The result?
- [01:26]
Zoe Schiffer
Less time spent on operations, more time
- [01:28]
Leah Feiger
connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more@accenture.com Spotify are all batteries the same?
- [01:40]
NPR Shortwave Host
That's like asking if all soccer players are the same. Take Messi, the most decorated player ever. Is there any other player who has achieved that? No, just him. Now take Duracell. Is there any other battery with power boost ingredients inside? No, just Duracell. Remember, goats only trust goats because they're built different. And Messi only trusts Duracell.
- [02:08]
Zoe Schiffer
Welcome to Wired's uncanny valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, contributing editor.
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Brian Barrett
I'm Brian Barrett, Executive editor.
- [02:14]
Leah Feiger
And I'm Leah Feiger, director of Politics and Science.
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Zoe Schiffer
This week we're discussing OpenAI's ongoing drama, both legal and reputational. Last Friday, Apple sued the company, basically alleging that OpenAI has been stealing confidential hardware secrets. And now this week, Wired learned that some OpenAI employees are launching a super PAC to push for AI guardrails. We'll get into all those details and whether these developments could further hurt OpenAI, particularly in its fight against anthropological.
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Brian Barrett
Also on the AI front, this week New York State officially passed the first statewide data center moratorium. We'll dive into what that means exactly. And whether this move could pave the way for other states to follow suit.
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Leah Feiger
We'll also talk about how some members of the so called Department of Government Efficiency, better known as doge, used AI to actually shape housing policy. And we're going to check in on the disease sweeping the nation, Cyclops sp, which is causing quote unquote, turbo diarrhea across the country.
- [03:15]
Zoe Schiffer
Okay, you guys, I'm really excited to start with this OpenAI drama because the company has been in the headlines a lot lately and not for fantastic reasons. So basically what happened was last Friday Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for allegedly stealing information like unreleased iPhone parts and prototypes, confidential designs, documents about secret projects, video. That accusation sucks for OpenAI. It's pretty intense, but it gets really messy because Apple is basically saying that this theft, this alleged theft, mostly happened through former employees. OpenAI's chief hardware officer, Tang Tan, who spent 24 years at Apple, is named in the lawsuit and accused of encouraging people who are leaving Apple to bring with them proprietary information and unreleased technology technology. Brian, I'm so curious what you thought when this dropped.
- [04:07]
Brian Barrett
I think it's fascinating. There's a lot of really interesting accusations in there. I think it's also like it's part of Apple's playbook that we haven't seen in a while, but it is something that Apple has sort of done or threatened to do before. Tony Fadell, who is a longtime Apple guy, but then went on to start Nest, the thermostat company he had also, I think he told a story recently in the wake of all this about how when he had started Nest, he hired several hundred Apple employees. Steve Jobs called him, threatened to sue, screamed bloody murder. But what I thought Fadell said was interesting and I don't know that applies directly here, but reportedly what he says is that he said, you know, it's my job to hire great people. It's your job to keep them.
- [04:53]
Zoe Schiffer
I forget that Apple is a pretty litigious company. Like they've famously sued employees for, you know, supposedly leaking stuff or taking proprietary stuff with them when they left Apple, which, you know, companies will do occasionally, but particularly for leaks, like, it is kind of rare to see lawsuits come. But this is the area that I feel like Apple cares most about. It is so secretive about its products that when that stuff starts to get out of its hands, I think they really are quick to like jump on it. My take here, and Leah, I'm curious to hear your thoughts, is that this isn't about getting damages from OpenAI. I think what Apple actually wants is to slow down OpenAI's hardware ambitions because it's really continuing. Apple is continuing to go all in on the iPhone as like the primary computing platform for the AI era. And I do think that if we see an audio first platform that works better for stuff where you do not need to look at a screen and you can just talk to an agent, that could be intimidating for them.
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Brian Barrett
I think this is what's interesting to me too is some reporting came out this week also about what the device is eventually going to look like. It's going to be like a speaker, it's going to have some motorized elements so it'll move in some capacity. Reece Rogers, I hope he doesn't mind my sharing, said it sounded like a Furby, which I think is probably right. But look, if OpenAI is banking on hardware, I am skeptical. I feel like ultimately Apple can still make a speaker and because also because Apple is sort of a more neutral party in all this. Apple can make a speaker that has a few different AI options to choose from potentially or has Siri AI which is pulling from Gemini. And ultimately I do think it's going to come down to the device that you use most of the time is going to be the phone.
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Zoe Schiffer
Well, I mean that has been true for a long time and I think we've seen even Apple try and get away from like this very screen heavy life that we're all living like with the Vision Pro. The Vision Pro. Thank you so much.
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Brian Barrett
You don't think about Vision, you don't think about Vision Pro every day.
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Zoe Schiffer
No, I have to say that it lived and died very quickly and I haven't thought about it since. But I think the issue and this has been true for other AI hardware devices like the famous like PIN from Humane AI and all of that. It's like there just are many things that are better to do on a screen and I don't think that's going to change. However, if you can get agents and voice mode that works really, really well. There are, you know, other things that you really could just ask an agent to execute for you and you might prefer not to look at a screen the whole time. And so I personally, as someone who has a very tortured relationship with my screens, I'm like ready for something that could work a little bit better, but it's hard to execute correct. I don't think we've seen a product so far that has been able to do that just to ground what we're talking About a little bit more. OpenAI has hired more than 400 former Apple employees, according to the lawsuit. And last year it paid $6.5 billion to acquire a startup called IO Products that was co founded by longtime Apple executives, including Tan, Scott, Cannon, Evans Hanke, and the most famous person, Johnny.
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Brian Barrett
I've what I am most excited about, about this whole process is we're not even really there yet is that lawsuits mean discovery and discovery. Yay, discovery. Yay. And discovery means we're going to get to read so many emails of these companies talking trash about each other and themselves and it's going to be such a delight. It's always a joy when these things happen.
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Zoe Schiffer
No one is cattier than a lawyer with an IP issue.
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Brian Barrett
Put that on a mug, Zoe.
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Zoe Schiffer
They are, wow.
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Brian Barrett
Do we have merch yet? Can that be our merch? That's our merch.
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Zoe Schiffer
Yeah, that's our merch.
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Brian Barrett
You know. OpenAI's headaches are not just limited to the Apple lawsuit. This week, wired learned that OpenAI staffers are funding a rival super PAC to advocate for tighter regulations on Frontier AI Labs. It's a rival, of course, to all of the money that people like Greg Brockman, OpenAI executive and others have put towards boosting AI and shutting down guardrails. This new super PAC called Guardrails Alliance. Catchy. It launched last month.
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Zoe Schiffer
Sounds like an insurance plan.
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Brian Barrett
It does. It really. And like not one that you necessarily want to sign up for. It's like the only one that'll give you a mortgage. It launched last month with $5 million in initial funding. It bills itself as a populist effort by tech workers, labor unions and other groups. And here's the key aspect. It's going to be a counterweight to that hundred million dollar Leading the Future fund that we talked about a second ago.
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Zoe Schiffer
Right. The way you said 5 million, it was like 5 million was a lot. And I was like, seems like I
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Brian Barrett
was, I was, I'm trying to hype. I mean, they need, you know, it's Guardrails alliance. They need a little bit of a boost.
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Zoe Schiffer
Yeah, they do. I have been kind of waiting for this moment, I will say, since we found out that Greg Brockman was donating so much money to MAGA and Trump related causes, you know, in his view. And Maxwell Zeph, Wired reporter, has reported on this pretty extensively. Like it's really all about boosting AI and AI policy. And I think his view and the view of many others in the industry is that Trump and those aligned with him are like More favorable toward a like kind of growth at all costs like AI first policy agenda. But if you talk to like any average researcher, overwhelmingly like the companies are filled with younger employees who are pretty liberal and so that tension felt potentially really messy to me. And OpenAI still has a culture where people are willing to push back and speak out. Like if you look at their slack there, there is kind of. It has that like earlier tech feel of people really like working out the problems in public even though this stuff does tend to leak so much at the same time like the composition of the company is really changing. There are these newer employees that have been brought in over the year or two. I've heard some employees call them the MAGA blondes. I honestly don't even know if they are blonde or MAGA oriented. But I think there's this feeling that OpenAI is really changing and there is kind of like the Trump aligned contingent and then there's the. The more kind of liberal contingent.
- [11:18]
Leah Feiger
Look, this is so much to me the grassroots versus the billionaire. But it's all from within the same company, which is we talk about Silicon Valley sometimes as a monolith, but it is so clearly not a monolith. You have so many different people at different rungs. And I was really taken with the fact that one of the largest donors was a research Engineer. He gave 200k Research Engineer Juan Felipe Cerron Rube and he gave 200k and has spent years working on the company's strategies for mitigating potential societal harms caused by AI. I would love to see a performance review of him after all of this is done. And I actually really do want wonder if people are nervous about this.
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Emily Mullen
I.
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Leah Feiger
Are there, are there stop gaps Zoe, like at these kinds of companies to prevent perhaps a more Trump aligned manager from taking it out on a more liberal coded person, especially when this is playing out financially like in political races and will certainly have impact.
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Zoe Schiffer
Yeah, I mean look, OpenAI is a relatively mature company. It has processes as an HR department. Like I don't. It's not to say this stuff can't happen. It absolutely can and we've seen it happen before. But I think until it becomes a major issue, until we see this fight actually impact like the work and OpenAI's ability to ship new models, frankly, I think they're going to go with a line of like, you know, we have an open culture, people are allowed to disagree. This is totally fine and they'll try and spin it almost as a positive and we'll see.
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Leah Feiger
Speaking of AI in politics. I'm going to talk about one of my favorite topics, as always. Doge, Department of Government Efficiency, started by Elon Musk. It's still in the news. And it is in the news for a very specific reason for us this week, which is we can't get more news out about it. Members of DOGE who are working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD used AI to inform policy decisions. This is something that we were reporting on and figured out last year. But now the agency appears to be denying Freedom of Information act requests for information on the development and the use of the AI tools and the way they actually informed these policy decisions. This all came out according to documents obtained by a FOIA request from Democracy Forward, which is a nonprofit legal organization. And it's pretty concerning. You would assume that like a year after some of this dust has settled that we'd be able to get a little bit more information. And from government agency to government agency, HUD really is the latest example here. We've been just getting tons of stonewalling on additional further details as to what DOGE has been up to, the access they had, the materials they used. It's very much about the fact that they used AI, but it's also, how did they use AI? What is still left in the systems, and what were the regulations there? What got blown by, who knew about this? These are so many important details that are just missing. And especially now as people are going back and trying to untangle the spaghetti web that was, like, left in their steed. It's very frustrating for employees, understandably and frankly should be frustrating for anyone who is going to be impacted by housing policy in the next 20 years.
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Zoe Schiffer
In America, AI tools can be used in ways that are very legitimate and helpful. If you told me that they were using AI for, like, research and checking their sources, I would be like, seems smart, cool. And then it can be used in ways that are, you know, possibly introducing discrimination. It could be used, you know, in ways that some would call cheating, like the just huge range and the types of tools available. They create a lot of questions and questions that I would say, like, the public is entitled to some form of answers on. But like you said, it's right now we're being a little bit stonewalled.
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Leah Feiger
You're 100% right, Zoe. And in this specific case, HUD employees who spoke to Wired at the time that this all was coming out found that these DOGE employees were using AI to identify agency rules for potential rescission or contract cancellations and like this was happening across government. But again, I just want to be like so clear about what this means. As they were saying, here's this massive list of contracts. What do you think we should cut here? And just kind of like, let's see what happens. Again, we don't have more details on everything that got cut. The way that it got cut, the way that it all went down. What we're missing now as a result, like it's, it's all still coming together and that makes it so much more unfortunate and especially when you're also thinking about the people that were doing this that were actually employing the AI. Wired had reported that Christopher Sweet, who was then a third year student at the University of Chicago, was one of the people really involved in this effort, as was Scott Langmach, who came to Doge from a property technology startup called Cocoon. So it's not like these were people who were a, even necessarily like that, well versed in government work by any means. But then additionally the idea of going through like massive government contract lists with AI and being like, yep, good to go.
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Brian Barrett
So they are, they're claiming this AI exemption, right? They're saying like, oh, we can't possibly release these to you because it was AI and AI is exempted from foia, which is not the case. But what's the, I guess a two parter? Leah, what are the implications of that? Like, are we seeing it beyond HUD or other agencies going to embrace this and what's the next step? Do we go to the courts with this? Not we, but like do people go to the courts with this to fight this?
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Leah Feiger
Probably if, like this is information that the American public wants to know, if this is information that Democracy Forward decides is worth their time. There is no AI exemption under foia. AI talking to people and AI talking to each other is not privileged communications, which is the argument that was being made here. There are no laws in the US that require the government to disclose if AI has been used in the creation of rules, policies or regulation. And so simultaneously a FOIA like this is the only way that you would find out. And saying that there is this AI exemption then just creates an entire black box.
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Zoe Schiffer
I would say also that it's not just like how they use the tools, but how the tools made the decisions that they made. Because anyone who's used AI agents at all knows that you can't just say like identify regulations that we should potentially do XYZ to. You have to give them a lot of context and Then, even then, it's very important to interrogate the tools and say, how did you make that decision? So you can understand what the AI is taking into account and what it's ignoring. These tools are not completely neutral. They are built by humans. They have biases baked in. And I would sincerely hope, but I don't have that much hope that like Doge was looking all, looking at all of that and not just like unleashing AI on these systems. Kind of willy nilly, 100%.
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Brian Barrett
Zoe, how much, how much hope do
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Zoe Schiffer
you actually, I mean, I. Yeah, no,
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Leah Feiger
the last thing I want to leave you guys with of this too is that Lang Mac of the aforementioned property technology startup Cocoon, he's now the Executive director of Deregulation AI at the Office of Management and Budget, which falls under the Executive Office of the President, according to his LinkedIn. So it's not like this person has now disappeared into obscurity and his decision making or, you know, we actually don't know a ton about his decision making because they won't tell us. It gets to kind of continue being in this black box. Which is again, just to say that like, it very much felt like Doge swept in and swept out in the same wave of the year, but that's really not the case. The people that got very involved and entrenched these policies from the beginning are still not just in government, but officially in government. Entrenched, serious roles, pay scales, et cetera. And it's a story we're paying really, really close attention to and big ups to a senior reporter, Vitoria Elliott, first staying in the weeds on this for us.
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Zoe Schiffer
Okay, one more AI story. So New York became the first state in the country to impose a statewide moratorium on building new data centers. The moratorium was signed as an executive order by New York Governor Kathy Hochul. And it puts into place a one year pause on the development of large scale data centers while the state develops new environmental and energy grid standards.
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Emily Mullen
The bottom line is progress shouldn't arrive with a higher utility bill, deleted water supply or noise pollution. So we have no choice but to address these challenges created by these massive facilities. That is why today I'll be signing the nation's first ever statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers.
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Zoe Schiffer
Well, there's a few caveats to just point out and then I want to hear what you guys have to say. One, this moratorium applies only to large scale data centers. So 50 megawatts or more, and it doesn't affect facilities that have already started construction. Or have existing permanent or have existing permits. And it'll also lift once the state finalizes a generic environmental and impact statement. So that could be a year or more out. The thing that I want to say is that I feel like there are two stories that this moratorium is wrestling with. There's like, the national story, which is we actually need AI in this country. It's a big part of our economy. And it's like, in so some ways the big bet we have taken. We don't have a lot else, it feels like right now.
- [21:01]
Leah Feiger
And then, I mean, EVs are done. So this is.
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Zoe Schiffer
This is it, boy. And then there's the local story, which is. It is very uncomfortable and it frankly sucks to live near a data center. It does spike your energy bill. It does suck up a lot of water. And those things are going to continue being in tension.
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Leah Feiger
I have to bring this up because data centers right now on a large scale are kind of unpopular. They're just like, ultimately unpopular. I feel like every other headline is like, and this community is rebelling against this. And this community is rebelling against this. Other states have tried and failed to actually pass a similar moratorium. So I'm kind of curious how New York's is going to go. And I also have to tell you guys that I was before we recorded this podcast, which we record on Wednesdays. This is going to be released to you all on Thursday morning. I was refreshing Truth Social convinced that Trump was going to weigh in. I was like, absolutely positive. And he did. At 12:39, Trump weighs in and goes. One of the biggest driving forces in the future for jobs are data centers. Just imagine a lot of, like, random capitalization in there. They are big, strong, bold and money machines for the state in which they are built. Governor Kathy Hochul, for political reasons, has terminated all data centers being built or to be built in New York City State. These companies are now being sought in Alabama, Florida, Texas, Arizona and many other states. But the taxes and the job amount to liquid gold. New York State has made a terrible decision. He continues and continues and continues. I mean, like, from the political side of all this. And I know that there is so much we need to unpack with the tech and the climate and everything. Whoever told Donald Trump that data centers was going to be, like, his winning issue for midterms, I want to be in a room with them like this. It's. It's incredible.
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Brian Barrett
I'm really surprised because as Zoe and I both muttered while you were saying that he's wrong, like, his Arguments are wrong. There is an argument he could make right, similar to what Zoe made, that's right in his wheelhouse. It's an America first argument. It is that it is crucial. Like AI is the next space race. We need to be China. We need data centers to do that. Ask not what you can do for your country.
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Leah Feiger
He gets there in the end.
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Brian Barrett
Wait, other way around. Other way around.
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Leah Feiger
By the end, he gets there. The radical left Democrats must not be allowed to cause us to lose data centers, AI and all of this incredible new technology to China and other countries. President Donald J. Trump, he does get there again, however, littered with errors and also, I think, missing like a really key part of his electorate that is not just in blue states. That's going, how on earth am I supposed to pay for this and live with this?
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Zoe Schiffer
Right? And that, I mean, that is the issue. And we've seen other states pass regulations. Ultimately, this is my take. I think we need to focus on making data centers safer, better, less impactful to the communities that they're near. We need to put them in areas that aren't directly adjacent to where people are living as much as we're able. We need to make them less energy intensive to the extent that we are able. I personally would say like a blanket moratorium, which again, it's not exactly what this is, but is a mistake just because of how dependent the entire economy is on AI right now and how important these AI data centers continue to be for the AI race. And boom.
- [24:15]
Brian Barrett
I disagree. I think, I think the carve outs here make sense. Like anything under, you can still build anything up to 50 megawatts, you can still build some pretty decent sized mega centers. The data center is not like huge huge, but like you can get a pretty good data center. And look, I. They're building, someone's building a data center 10 miles from my house, right? It's going to be pretty big. It's going to be right next to where the animal shelter was going to move. It's like, bad. And to have watched that process, it sort of happened before anybody realized it was happening. And I think that's the story. That's true a lot of places in this country where as a community, these deals were made a while ago, or when they do happen, you don't necessarily know until the permitting's done that this is even coming in. So I do think some sort of pause, some sort of moratorium, some sort of restrictions on until we sort of figure out a, a way to inform people what's going on. B, a better plan of attack for where these things go and the impact they'll have. And again, I have a dog in this fight, so I'm not saying I'm, I'm an unbiased perspective here.
- [25:20]
Zoe Schiffer
Well, no, I think that that's a fair point to make. I will just say, like, talking to a lot of industry people, it really surprises me how constrained startups feel in particular by compute. Like there is, you know, you hear about SpaceX, OpenAI, you know, these places that have a lot of access to data centers, a lot of access to computers. Everyone else is like fighting tooth and nail to get access and they need a lot more than they're currently able to get. It makes me like a little less stressed about AI bubble talk because I'm like, I don't know, like, if you're in Silicon Valley, at least, it still just feels like the appetite is enormous. Brian, I can see you taking a big sigh.
- [26:06]
Brian Barrett
No, no, no. Yes, always. But no, I did want to, before we move on, because I want to make sure I asked Leah a question, which is that this is shaping up, at least to me, to be a real issue in the midterms, at least in some places. And I want to know what your sense of like, but, but also what's, what's interesting about it to me too is it doesn't seem necessarily, despite Trump's post, that clearly divided among party lines, like, like, how is this going to play out? I like it feels like an issue. I don't know for who or where or how.
- [26:43]
Leah Feiger
The reason I was clicking refresh on Truth Social is because I'd had a government source tell me that this was a priority of President Trump's going forward. And I wasn't 100% sure if that was going to actually bear out. Sorry to my source, if you're listening, just because this has, like you said, this has really been a not down the line issue. You have Republicans and Democrats that have been opposing data centers in their communities asking for reform, asking for moratoriums again because, like, community impact is just community impact, whether it's a blue state or a red state.
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Brian Barrett
Coming up after the break, we'll be diving into the cyclospiriasis illness outbreak. That's the nicest possible way I can put it. That has a lot of people wondering whether they should skip that salad for lunch. Stay with us.
- [27:36]
Leah Feiger
This next story is not for the faint of stomach, but it's an important public health story, so bear with us. It's especially Zoe.
- [27:43]
Zoe Schiffer
My stomach is Faint in knots.
- [27:46]
Leah Feiger
The US is in the middle of its worst outbreak on record of a nasty parasitic infection called cyclospiriasis, which causes explosive weeks long diarrhea. It is spreading fast with cases now confirmed in more than 30 states. And to break down what's actually going on, what officials know and still don't know, and where we're going from here, we're joined by Wired's Emily Mullen. Emily, thank you so much for being here.
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Emily Mullen
Hello. I'm sorry to be here on this occasion.
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Leah Feiger
Could you just start by explaining what Cyclospora is and why this year's outbreak is being called the worst on record?
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Emily Mullen
Yeah, so there's no good way to talk about this. Cyclospora is a microscopic parasite that causes pretty bad intestinal illness and the illness is called cyclospiriasis. So people get it by consuming food or water that's contaminated with this parasite. The CDC suspects there may be close to 7,000 cases already nationwide. Michigan makes up the bulk of those. And on Wednesday, their case count was just updated to more than 3,700 cases. Just for context, in a typical year, states might report like a handful of cases to a few dozen. So this is really unusual. The actual case count is almost certainly higher. Both the CDC and outside experts have said this. And it's because most people don't seek medical care when they get diarrhea. We're not all going out and calling our doctors about our bathroom habits. And even when they do, labs don't routinely test for this parasite. But now that there's awareness about it out there, if you do have symptoms, you should definitely be asking your doctor to get tested specifically for this.
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Leah Feiger
I mean, I have to say there's diarrhea and there's diarrhea, like what we're hearing. This cause is just like something.
- [29:46]
Zoe Schiffer
I feel like we had bad intestinal illness. That was a beautiful way to put it. What happened to that?
- [29:53]
Leah Feiger
No, no, no. I need everyone to really understand this is so much more than that. This isn't like a couple of bad bowel movements. This is, I heard accounts of one man who said that he was on the toilet 40 times in one day. I, this is, this is beyond what, you know, a casual bout would, would do to a, do to a human.
- [30:14]
Emily Mullen
Yeah. So this is not like a one and done type of thing. This, this is like, you know, can be days, possibly up to a week or two of diarrhea. And one of the big concerns with this prolonged diarrhea is Dehydration. So people should just be aware of that if they think they have symptoms of this and just keep hydrated. One of the things that experts say is that if you are older, if you are immunocompromised, if you are particularly at risk for severe dehydration, you should really, you know, be concerned about this and be on the lookout for dehydration.
- [30:59]
Brian Barrett
EMILY the cause is kind of a mystery still too, right. I've heard people say tainted lettuce could be a culprit, but also maybe raw fruits and produce. All the things that are supposed to be good for you are now this. Is there any food that's safer than not? What should people look out for? Do we even know yet?
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Emily Mullen
We do not know the exact source of the outbreak right now. The CDC is still investigating several food products, although Michigan health officials have said that lettuce keeps coming up as a common product during their investigation. Just in general, we know that lettuce and leafy greens are a common source of other foodborne illnesses. We know that romaine lettuce, for instance, is always linked to E. Coli outbreaks. Salmonella. Other leafy greens are linked to norovirus. So it would not really be a surprise if lettuce does end up being the culprit here. And one of the reasons lettuce is problematic is because you know it's eaten raw. You don't hear about disease outbreaks from Brussels sprouts because we cook them. Another reason is that lettuce and other leafy greens have these small folds and crevices that make it difficult to wash off pathogens completely.
- [32:18]
Zoe Schiffer
So how do you get, get rid of it then?
- [32:22]
Emily Mullen
Yeah, well, this is a great question because the Cyclospora parasite is resistant to bleach and chlorine. And also, you know, vinegar does not kill it. So one thing you should know is that if you're buying the bagged lettuce that says it's pre washed, still wash it. You know, it's, it's. This parasite is very good at latching onto the surfaces of fruits and vegetables. So right now you really need to like, get in there and give your greens a good scrub. You should be scrubbing down all of your raw vegetables, but especially lettuce.
- [33:00]
Leah Feiger
That is great news for those of us who are avoiding lettuce this summer and just really leaning into fried food that you.
- [33:09]
Zoe Schiffer
LEAH wide moratorium on lettuce.
- [33:12]
Leah Feiger
Leah wide moratorium 100%. So you, I mean, like, we, I feel like we can't really talk about this without talking about government cuts in the healthcare space? You reported on CDC's food net cutbacks last year. The HHS has pushed back a bit on the idea that these kinds of funding cuts are to blame. They've said that this reporting has continued throughout their systems, et cetera, et cetera. To what extent, though, do cuts actually play a role? Can we blame Doge for how bad this has gotten? Please let me blame Doge for how bad this has gotten.
- [33:45]
Brian Barrett
Can we coin the phrase dojorrhea?
- [33:49]
Zoe Schiffer
I was gonna say we should replace the word diarrhea with cocoon just to be funny, but I felt like it was a little too obscure.
- [33:56]
Leah Feiger
Full circle, you guys. Thank you so much.
- [33:58]
Emily Mullen
So a former CDC official told the Washington Post that FoodNet was not designed for this real time outbreak detection or response. Its function is more in tracking longer term trends. But I think the bigger issue here is the huge staffing cuts we've seen to the cdc. We reported last year that about a quarter of the CDC has been cut under this administration, and that is going to have ripple effects across all of public health. So in this situation, it means fewer people conducting outbreak investigations, which can really hamper response efforts.
- [34:36]
Zoe Schiffer
Okay, so for people who are listening right now, perhaps me among them, what is the actual practical guidance? Should people be avoiding salads? Should we be avoiding lettuce altogether?
- [34:46]
Emily Mullen
I mean, my personal opinion about salads, you probably don't want to hear, but I think there are more nutritious vegetables out there. I'm just saying, oh my gosh, we
- [34:58]
Zoe Schiffer
need a whole other podcast on that.
- [35:00]
Emily Mullen
I mean, it's, if you're buying lettuce, you should be scrubbing it clean. I think in terms of eating at home versus out, maybe, you know, you don't eat salads out because you just don't know what the cleaning process was like. And, you know, if you trust yourself to do that more, then I would say, yeah, still go for the salad. If you like salad. If you want to risk it, that's sort of up to you.
- [35:27]
Brian Barrett
The good is you can, you can still eat as much ranch dressing as you want. And to me, that's what a salad is.
- [35:33]
Emily Mullen
Absolutely.
- [35:35]
Leah Feiger
Emily, thank you so much for joining us today. This was the best.
- [35:39]
Emily Mullen
Thanks for having me.
- [35:41]
Zoe Schiffer
That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show. Notes. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. It was mixed by Pran Bandy, who's also our New York studio engineer. It was fact checked by Matt Giles and Daniel Roman. Mark Leda is our San Francisco studio engineer, Kate Osborne is our executive producer, and Katie Drummond is Wired's global editorial director.