Apple’s Next Chapter; SpaceX and Cursor Strike A Deal; Palantir’s Controversial Manifesto

Summary

Uncanny Valley | WIRED | Episode Summary

Episode Title: Apple’s Next Chapter; SpaceX and Cursor Strike A Deal; Palantir’s Controversial Manifesto
Date: April 23, 2026
Hosts: Zoë Schiffer, Brian Barrett, Leah Figart (WIRED writers and editors)

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Overview

This episode of Uncanny Valley explores several major developments in the tech world:

• The retirement of Apple CEO Tim Cook and what incoming CEO John Ternus signals for Apple’s future.
• SpaceX's staggering $60 billion prospective acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor and what it reveals about today's AI priorities.
• Palantir's release of a controversial 22-point manifesto, sparking debates about Silicon Valley's political and cultural impact.
• Further, the episode delves into the fracturing of support for Donald Trump within MAGA circles, and rounds off with a darkly comic look at AI-generated influencer scams that perfectly lampoon the digital era.

The tone is sharp, witty, often critical, and frequently self-aware—especially as the hosts rib each other and reflect on the weirdness of contemporary tech culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Apple’s Leadership Shift: Farewell Tim Cook, Hello John Ternus

[02:54–13:09]

• Tim Cook Steps Down: Announcement that Tim Cook will step down as CEO on September 1, 2026. John Ternus, a longtime hardware engineer, will replace him.
• Cook’s Legacy: Focused on scaling Apple’s financials into the trillion-dollar range, optimizing supply chain, and pivoting toward services and subscriptions (App Store, iCloud, Apple Pay).
• AI Era & Apple’s Unique Position:
  • Some see Apple as lagging in the AI race; others note Apple’s strategy to avoid costly AI chasing.
  • Quote (Zoe): “I think what’s really interesting about this moment is Apple…does feel like it has missed the boat in the AI era. And I think John Ternus’s job will be in part to figure out what is Apple’s place in the AI race.” [05:35]
  • Ternus is a hardware person, reinforcing Apple’s traditional stance as a “platform” rather than AI-first company.
  • Discussion of Apple partnering with Google to embed Gemini in devices – is this pragmatism or a sign they're bowing out of the "frontier model" competition?
• Comparisons to Industry Trends:
  • Apple’s approach contrasted favorably with overzealous AI pivots (e.g., “sneaker companies…pivot to AI”).
  • Quote (Brian): “I think Apple’s bet is that by building relationships with OpenAI, with Google, again with Anthropic, at some point, who knows, it can have that similar. We’re just the vessel, right?” [07:30]
• Apple & Politics:
  • Cook’s diplomatic navigation of relations with Trump—"the only one who presented Trump with a custom trophy."
  • Ternus’s future relationship with political power is seen as unknown but likely pragmatic.

Memorable Moments:

• Quote (Tim Cook in prior interview): “I’ll do it until the voice in my head says it’s time. And then I'll go and focus on what the next chapter looks like. My life has been wrapped up in this company…since 1998. This is a long time. It's the overwhelming majority of my adult life. And so it's tough to envision life without Apple.” [05:03]
• Banter about the perpetuity of major platforms (“everyone had a BlackBerry at some point, everyone had a MySpace account. Things come and go.” [12:55])

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2. SpaceX’s $60 Billion Cursor Deal: The AI Coding Arms Race

[13:09–17:49]

• Deal Overview: SpaceX announces a $60 billion option to acquire AI coding company Cursor or pay $10 billion for work, aiming to build “next-generation coding and knowledge work AI.”
• What Cursor Brings: Cursor specializes in enterprise AI coding tools, an area XAI (owned by SpaceX) is weak in.
  • Quote (Zoe): “They put so much into making anime women and non consensual porn that they couldn’t [focus on enterprise code]…people...won’t pay as much for those anime girlfriends as they will for enterprise code.” [14:25]
• Unusual Structure & IPO Timing: Cursor’s own announcement omitted mention of the acquisition, focusing only on access to XAI’s compute, suggesting either haste or uncertainty.
  • The deal’s completion is timed to follow SpaceX’s impending IPO, suggesting careful financial maneuvering.
• Industry Implications:
  • Intense focus in AI right now is on enterprise coding, not consumer playthings.
  • General consensus among hosts: This is weird, risky, but reveals the current thinking among tech giants that B2B code is where real money is.

Memorable Moments:

• Quote (Brian): “We’re just putting it all under this weird umbrella. I mean, yes, so weird. Elon circus.” [15:38]
• Quote (Zoe): “This is the thing about getting too rich is you don't have people around you that will tell you your ideas don't make sense…” [15:58]

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3. Palantir’s Manifesto: Techno-Authoritarianism in Plain Sight?

[17:49–25:41]

• The Manifesto: Palantir publishes a 22-point summary of CEO Alex Karp’s book, “The Technological Republic,” articulating a vision of tech, state, and American supremacy.
  • Key Points Quoted:
    • “The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.”
    • “No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one.”
    • “The draft” (refers to potentially reviving military conscription).
    • “Some cultures have produced vital advances. Others remain dysfunctional and regressive.”
• Backlash: Critics online call it fascist; even inside Palantir, employees reportedly worry about the effect on global business prospects.
• Context: Palantir’s origin post-9/11 as analytic arm of U.S. power, close association with Peter Thiel and defense.
• Comparison to Other Companies: Contrasts with recent episodes of AI firms like Anthropic publicly objecting to military use of their tools—Palantir instead doubles down on close cooperation with government.
• Philosophy vs. Business:
  • Quote (Zoë): “I think Alex Karp benefits from being someone who speaks like a philosophy major. Like when you hear him talk, you're like, this man sounds very smart. But, like, literally, what is he saying?” [20:57]
• Internal Tension:
  • Quote from Palantir employee (via Leah/24:14): “I'm curious why this had to be posted, especially on the company account…every time stuff like that gets posted, it gets harder for us to sell the software outside of the U.S. and I doubt we need this in the U.S.”

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4. MAGA Fractures: Influencers and Pundits Turn on Trump

[25:41–33:24]

• Trend: High-profile MAGA personalities, including Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, have recently criticized or distanced themselves from Trump. Even conspiracy theorists are alleging the 2024 assassination attempt was staged.
  • Quote (Leah): “Polls are lower than they've ever been for Trump. The Republican Party is like already distancing from him on certain elections...I can think of following all of this that I'm going, oh gosh, people are shaking.” [29:41]
• Underlying Causes:
  • Disillusionment over the handling of the Epstein files (“The rollout’s been super disappointing. No one’s really believed what he’s had to say.” [28:44])
  • Frustration with the Iran war, inflation, immigration, and broken promises.
  • Loss of support from “manosphere” figures and a “new base” that is finally beginning to waver.
• What's Next for the GOP:
  • J.D. Vance is discussed as a Trump successor, but none of the hosts believe he connects with “the base.”
  • Quote (Leah): “No one likes J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance is beloved by, like, our Silicon Valley folks...when you're talking about, like, J.D. Vance, man of the people at the truck stop...that's not him.” [32:28]

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5. Scammer Makes Bank With MAGA AI Girlfriend: The Polarization Grift

[35:26–38:31]

• Story Recap: Medical student in India creates “Emily Hart,” an AI-generated MAGA-coded woman using Google’s Gemini image generator, then sells bikini pics on FanView. She rapidly amasses 10,000 followers and paying subscribers.
• Why It Worked: Gemini itself advised the scammer to lean into polarizing, MAGA-coded imagery (rifle range, Coors Light, anti-immigration messaging) for traction.
  • Quote (Brian): “Would you believe that it took off like a rocket?” [36:19]
• Cultural Implications:
  • Left-leaning AI influencers do not catch on; the grift only works with MAGA-coded content.
  • Quote (Leah): “No, it only pays to be polarizing…which is such an interesting part of this whole grift, right…It’s a scam. Like, this is entirely a scam…from someone who clearly has no horse in this race.” [38:12]
• Underlying Message: The confluence of polarization and gullibility; social media’s inclination towards controversy and identity performance.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|---------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 05:03 | Tim Cook | “I’ll do it until the voice in my head says it’s time..." | | 07:30 | Brian Barrett | “I think Apple's bet is…we’re just the vessel, right?…I like their odds…” | | 12:55 | Zoe Schiffer | “Everyone had a BlackBerry at some point, everyone had a MySpace account. Things come and go.” | | 14:25 | Zoe Schiffer | “They put so much into making anime women…people...won’t pay as much for those Anime girlfriends…” | | 15:38 | Brian Barrett | “We’re just putting it all under this weird umbrella. I mean, yes, so weird. Elon circus.” | | 20:57 | Zoe Schiffer | “When you hear [Karp] talk, you’re like, this man sounds very smart. But, like, literally, what is he saying?” | | 24:14 | Leah Figart | “I'm curious why this had to be posted, especially on the company account…every time stuff like that gets posted, it gets harder for us to sell the software outside of the U.S…” | | 36:19 | Brian Barrett | “Would you believe that it took off like a rocket?” | | 38:12 | Leah Figart | “No, it only pays to be polarizing…this is entirely a scam…from someone who clearly has no horse in this race.” | | 32:28 | Leah Figart | “No one likes J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance is beloved by, like, our Silicon Valley folks…that's not him.” |

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Timestamps of Major Segments

• Apple CEO transition & AI strategy: [02:54–13:09]
• SpaceX–Cursor deal, AI coding focus: [13:09–17:49]
• Palantir’s controversial manifesto: [17:49–25:41]
• MAGA movement splintering: [25:41–33:24]
• AI-generated MAGA OnlyFans grift: [35:26–38:31]

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Concluding Tone

The hosts mix skepticism, informed industry perspective, and biting humor in exposing both the earnest and absurd sides of Silicon Valley’s influence on tech, business, and politics. The episode exemplifies WIRED’s blend of “comprehensive, witty, speculative, critical, and wide-ranging” reportage—never shying away from both the weird and the consequential.

Transcript

[Outshift by Cisco Narrator]

This show is supported by Outshift, Cisco's incubation engine. Today's AI agents operate in silos, limiting their true potential. We've been focused on building bigger, smarter models, but scaling up is just one approach. To reach superintelligence together, we need to do more, we need to scale out, and we actually have a blueprint from 70,000 years ago. Humans didn't just get smarter individually, they the cognitive revolution transformed society because we began sharing knowledge, goals and innovation. Agents are now at that same inflection point. They can connect, but they can't think together. That's why Outshift by Cisco is building the Internet of Cognition, transforming AI from isolated systems into orchestrated superintelligence. By creating an open, interoperable infrastructure, Outshift by Cisco is enabling agents and humans to share intent and context and reasoning. The cognitive evolution for agents is here. Explore the Internet of [e-mail] that's outshift.com

[NPR Shortwave Promo Host]

NPR 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? It's science, but not the kind you remember from school. It's playful and full of wonder. Science is for everyone. On shortwave, the hosts take your questions very seriously without taking themselves too seriously. They follow your curiosity wherever it leads so you can discover something new right alongside them. I personally really loved the episode about where the moon came from. That's something I'd always wondered about, and now I don't have to wonder anymore. Short wave makes me curious and then gives me the answers. Follow NPR's Shortwave podcast and exercise your right to wonder.

[Brian Barrett]

Hey, it's Brian. Zoe, Leah and I have really enjoyed being your new host these past few weeks and we want to hear from you. If you like the show and have a minute, please leave us a review in the podcast or app of your choice. It really helps us reach more people and for any questions and comments, you can always reach us@ uncannyvalleyired.com thank you for listening onto the show.

[Leah Figart]

Zoe, welcome back.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[Leah Figart]

I missed you so much.

[Brian Barrett]

And I missed you the exact same amount.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Wow.

[Brian Barrett]

This is not a contest.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Oh my gosh, I feel so loved. I'm going to go away more often. Absence makes the heart go. Ponder. As we all know And I'm thrilled to be here. Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Director of Business and Industry.

[Brian Barrett]

I'm Brian Barrett, Executive Director, Editor.

[Leah Figart]

And I'm Leah Figart, Director of Politics and Science.

[Zoe Schiffer]

This week on the show, we're saying goodbye to Apple CEO Tim Cook, who announced that he is stepping down from the top gig at the company. And more than just talking about his legacy at Apple, we'll be looking into what this long awaited shift actually means for the future of one of the world's biggest companies.

[Brian Barrett]

We'll also get into why SpaceX and Cursor's potential $60 billion deal announced this week is pretty staggering. And we'll get into Palantir's controversial 22 point manifest. I feel like Manifesto is inherently controversial, otherwise they'd be memos that they posted on X this week.

[Leah Figart]

And slowly but surely we have been seeing certain MAGA leaders and supporters move away from Trump. We're going to break down whether these instances are actually building to something meaningful or just some wishful thinking on the behalf of our Blue sky followers.

[Zoe Schiffer]

So let's kick it off this week with the news that grabbed all of our attention on Monday. It had Brian Barrett calling me, I don't know, 15 times in the span of two minutes. Tim Cook officially stepping down.

[Brian Barrett]

If you'd picked up Zoe, I wouldn't have had to, right?

[Zoe Schiffer]

I was trying to fill out the goddamn art request. It was really stressful. He has officially stepped down as the CEO of Apple. I think the official transition is September 1st, but the announcement is out there. John Ternus, a longtime executive at Apple, is taking over the CEO gig. This is a pretty pivotal moment for the company. I mean, Cook's legacy, I think will be twofold. One in just like honing in on Apple's financials. The company was doing really well, but he took it into the trillion dollar range. And he's also perfected its kind of operations and supply chain. He went all in on making Apple a services and subscription business with things like The App Store, iCloud, Apple Pay, all of that. So this doesn't sound quite as sexy as like launching the iPhone, but in many ways, he's the person that shaped Apple into what it is today. And rumors about Tim Cook stepping down have been swirling for a really long time. Back in 2024, Wired Stephen Levy asked him if retirement was on the horizon. And Cook responded like this.

[Tim Cook (clip)]

I'll do it until the voice in my head says it's time. And then I'll go and and focus on what the next chapter looks like. My life has been wrapped up in this company, as you mentioned, since 1998. This is a long time. It's the overwhelming majority of my adult life. And so it's tough to envision life without Apple.

[Leah Figart]

I'm also going to do this [e-mail] until the voice in my head tells me to stop. Wow.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Okay. Well, we're going to table that for another time. I think what's really interesting about this moment is Apple obviously is doing phenomenally as a company again. Trillion dollars, et cetera, et cetera. However, it does feel like it has missed the boat in the AI era. And I think John Ternus job will be in part to figure out what is Apple's place in the AI race.

[Brian Barrett]

Well, I think the fact that it's Turnus in general already sort of speaks to that a little bit. Ternus is a longtime hardware engineer. Right. That's continuing Apple's history of sort of product people versus AI people, software people. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I think on the one hand, yes, Apple is behind in this AI race. On the other hand, Apple hasn't set fire to hundreds of billions of dollars in pursuit of a race it maybe doesn't even need to win. Right?

[Zoe Schiffer]

Yeah, it doesn't think it needs to. Its answer to this, I mean, Stephen Levy interviewed Turner somewhat recently and asked again, what are you gonna do in the AI era? And his response was very much, we have the iPhone. We think AI apps will exist in the App Store on iPhones. And that's going to be in many ways our answer. Not to say they're not going to try and embed AI in different ways, but I still think they think the primary computing platform is going to be Macs and iPhones, the devices that they create.

[Leah Figart]

I kind of love this because in an era where we're seeing, you know, sneaker companies shout out allbirds like pivot to AI, I like that there is this massive, very successful tech company that's saying, like, yes, we're going to live with this. We're going to make sure that our subscriptions, our products are adaptable to this clearly very important and instrumental technology. But we don't need to blow up, like Brian said, our entire business plan to make this, like a core structure here.

[Zoe Schiffer]

I like that for allbirds, because those shoes are absolutely hideous.

[Brian Barrett]

A parallel might be. So Apple never made a search engine, right? Like, search is one of the biggest business in the world. Apple never made a search engine. Right. But Google pays Apple's billions of dollars to be the primary search engine on the iPhone. I think Apple's bet is that by building relationships with OpenAI, with Google, again with Anthropic, at some point, who knows, it can have that similar. We're just the vessel, right? We're just the thing. And I like their odds because all of the AI hardware that we've seen so far, I know that Sam Altman and Jony I've are cooking something up. I know that everybody's got somebod sort of pendant or speaker or whatever that they're trying to make happen. At the end of the day, I don't think that AI computing is going to replace your phone. I just, I think fundamentally you're always going to need something with a display and apps and the broader Internet versus just something you could talk to and get answers back from.

[Zoe Schiffer]

I sincerely hope you're wrong. I'm really wanting an AI hardware device that could be like headphones that you could just speak to and you wouldn't have to look at a screen. But I think you're right that like there will always be certain things we need screens for and that humans are better at just doing ourselves. And then I would like to think there will be a whole slew of tasks that we can eventually offload to AI agents and that would make more sense for like a voice computing paradigm. I do think to the partnership point that you made, Apple has already partnered with Google and it's going to embed Google Gemini into its devices. I think some people saw that as a stopgap, like, okay, it doesn't have Frontier models up and running, it's going to use Google in the interim. I saw that as like Apple admitting we're not even going to try and get into this race in a full throated way. Like, Google's right there, we can use Gemini and that's what we're going to do.

[Brian Barrett]

Yeah. Now there's another part of Tim Cook's legacy that I want to ask Leah about. Because you know Tim Cook, of all the Silicon Valley titans who have been friendly and made nice with Donald Trump, Tim Cook kind of stands out in a couple of ways. One is that I think he's the only one who presented Trump with like a custom trophy designed by his company's engineers.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Embarrassing.

[Leah Figart]

I was waiting for you to bring this up, but Brian, just so you know, in my world, we don't call him Tim Cook, we call him Tim Apple.

[Zoe Schiffer]

This is, that's true.

[Brian Barrett]

Rightly so.

[Leah Figart]

Just like my president. He is Tim Apple to me now and forevermore. No, this is such an interesting point and I actually, I'm going to throw this back to you guys. What's Turner's relationship with Trump admin people? We have been seeing their colleagues in the tech industry fawn over the administration in the last year and a half. Apple has simultaneously, while, you know, placating, has also managed to like, stay out of the fray in some ways too. I'm very curious to see how that changes.

[Zoe Schiffer]

I think that Cook is a diplomat first and foremost and he used that diplomacy to position Apple to get deals that were favorable to the company. I think there was a surprise factor with Trump because he reads as more liberal. There was a feeling that behind closed doors he wasn't as complimentary of Trump as he was in public, but nonetheless, he was at the inauguration. He was appearing in photo ops. I did actually hear something funny. I mean, this I'll caveat, like is a rumor, but from people who are in these types of circles and said that he wasn't aware that he was going to be placed directly behind Trump in the inauguration. And when that placement was put forward, there was a moment of slight panic because they all realized like, what the photo is going to look like. But nonetheless, that's the photo.

[Brian Barrett]

I think two things about the Turnus question, specifically, one, I think we just don't know other than I will say, like, he is going to be the CEO of a major company that has lots of shareholders and he has a fiduciary responsibility to make this number go up. Right. And the way that you do that is you're friendly with Donald Trump. That's just kind of the way it is. I'm not saying that's the way it should be, but I think the idea that he would take a stand against this administration feels far fetched, regardless of what his personal feelings are. The other thing I would say is Tim Cook's not disappearing. He's going to be the executive chairman and as part of the announcement, Apple said he is going to be. I don't have the exact phrasing, but something like he's going to be working with leaders across the world. He's going to continue that diplomacy role. Basically. I think he's stepping out of his CEO role and into more of a shaking more hands, making nice with world leaders, trying to keep up that sort of diplomatic cadence that he had already established over the last several years.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Yeah, I think the last point that I wanted to make just Going back to like the iPhone of it all is if AI hardware continues to disappoint, I think that Apple is in a really strong position and the bet that it's making is correct. But I do think that if this like, you know, mysterious Jony I've Sam Altman device comes on the scene and is good, or if something else comes up that is able to like execute voice commands in a reliable way, then I don't know, like, I think that could be a problem for Apple down the road.

[Brian Barrett]

Well, Zoe, they've got the Vision Pro.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Oh, right, right, right, right.

[Leah Figart]

Like, is this the dumbest take, you guys? Like everyone has an iPhone. Yes, of course. All of these companies have so much to lose, but there is this actual engagement with product that I find so hard to separate even intellectually. Like, yeah, you can come after a company, they're still going to be like taking their iPhones out on the campaign trail.

[Zoe Schiffer]

I mean, everyone had a BlackBerry at some point, everyone had a MySpace account. Things come and go.

[Leah Figart]

Things come and go.

[Zoe Schiffer]

That's true. If a better thing comes out and everyone hates being on their phone.

[Leah Figart]

Yeah, I'm waiting here for the iPhone replacement, please.

[Brian Barrett]

Going to another corner of the tech industry. This week SpaceX announced a deal with the popular AI startup Cursor to either acquire the company for $60 billion later this year or if an acquisition doesn't happen, they'll pay him $10 billion for whatever work that they've done together. They said they're going to work closely together to build, quote, next generation coding and knowledge work of AI, which is AI coding tools. Basically that's what Cursor is known for. It's a little weird. It was unexpected and the arrangement is strange. Zoe, help me understand why. It's a potential deal for a rocket ship company buying an AI coding company that relies on other large language models who are competitive. Zoe, help me, help me.

[Zoe Schiffer]

I mean. Okay, well first I just want to say it wasn't unexpected to me because five minutes before this news came out I got a call that the news was coming and I thought I had the biggest scoop of my month, if not year. And then sadly the press release came. So tragic turn of events for me.

[Brian Barrett]

Biggest almost scoop I know.

[Zoe Schiffer]

However, I think this actually makes some level of sense. Might you recall that SpaceX now owns Xai and that Xai is not incredible at coding models and so it does need Cursor's help.

[Brian Barrett]

They put so much into making anime women and non consensual porn that they couldn't Right, Yeah.

[Zoe Schiffer]

The anime Girlfriends took presidents and. And people, you know, and companies won't pay as much for those Anime girlfriends as they will for enterprise code. I mean, I really think that this is an understood thing that is happening in the AI industry right now. You talk to a lot of people, a lot of investors, a lot of, you know, the Andreessen Horowitz circle, and they're like, dario Amadei gets up every day and he thinks, enterprise code. That man just prints money. He is so focused. He is laser focused on this actual business model, and it is working. Sam Altman has a goddamn robotics division. What is he doing? Like, there is the sense that enterprise code is the thing that is working and that if you're going to be a serious AI company, you need to go all in. So, like, I don't know, crazier things have happened. However, I think a Cursor is in a difficult moment because it has to compete with the major labs. A company agreeing to go into a deal like this with Elon Musk, who famously tried to buy Twitter and then back out despite the very expensive kill fee on that deal as well. Like, I would be hesitant. I don't know what they're kind of thinking right now.

[Brian Barrett]

Two things. One, the weirdness to me is deeper. Just the fact that SpaceX owns XAI, which owns X, is all just like. We're just putting it all under this weird umbrella. I mean, yes, so weird. Elon Circus.

[Leah Figart]

I have to say, seeing SpaceX AI, like, actually written out, whenever this was this week was. It was jarring. It was a little bit jarring.

[Zoe Schiffer]

This is the thing about getting too rich is you don't have people around you that will tell you your ideas don't make sense and that they're bad. And I think that that becomes a problem.

[Brian Barrett]

This is why I never want to have money. But Cursor's announcement I thought was interesting because Cursor didn't announce the acquisition part of this at all. They put out like a pretty terse, I thought, statement. Short either because it was rushed or short because they were. I don't know. But all it said, we don't know.

[Zoe Schiffer]

We don't know. Allegedly.

[Brian Barrett]

Allegedly rushed. All we know is that they just said, you know what we're excited about? Getting access to xai's compute. That was basically it. Like, nothing about a deal, nothing about the money.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Yeah. You know what it made me think of is when Elon Musk told the world that Walter Isaacson was going to be writing his biography And Walter Isaacson said what? And then agreed to write said biography. And that man can make things happen by just telling his many millions of followers that things are happening in terms

[Brian Barrett]

of making things happen. So this deal's not going to happen until later this year. It was reported recently that the reason was then. This part makes it. This is what makes most sense to me, is SpaceX is gearing up for an IPO. They're getting close to it, and they didn't want to close this deal because it would delay the ipo. So there's sort of an order of operation. Things like we need to go public before we try to close a $60 billion deal. Which, again, feels like everything about this feels, I'm not gonna say cursed. It just feels like likely to derail at some point.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Yeah, I, you know, the reporter in me is like, really excited for IPO year because I feel like this is when companies really need to get their act together. They need to have their operations, internal processes, like really, really, really, really dialed. You're going public, there's going to be a lot of scrutiny, there's going to be a lot of shareholders. SpaceX is trying to do it. Anthropic's trying to do it. OpenAI is trying to do it. I think it's going to be a wild, wild time and stuff's going to get weird along the way.

[Brian Barrett]

Have either of you read Palantir CEO Alex Karp's book the Technological Republic? Or rather, how many times have you read it?

[Zoe Schiffer]

Right. That's the operative question.

[Leah Figart]

I have to admit. I haven't read it, but I have read way too many things about it. Unfortunately, I feel like I've read it at this point.

[Brian Barrett]

Well, and everybody sort of should by now. If you follow Palantir on X, and if you don't, that's okay. Just to be clear, it's not an endorsement, but this week, Palantir on X, unprompted. Nobody asked them to, but they shared a 22 point summary of Alex Karp's book. They prefaced it with because we get asked a lot. Here's the Technological Republic in brief. And it goes on to list Karp's ideal vision of tech and the state working as one. There are some points in there, some highlights. Quote, the engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. And also, quote, no other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. There's one more in there that I do want to call out the draft.

[Leah Figart]

You gotta talk about the draft.

[Brian Barrett]

The draft is a good one. I was gonna go with. Some cultures have produced vital advances. Others remain dysfunctional and regressive.

[Leah Figart]

Yes, it's hard to not read every single point of this manifesto out loud. By saying strong reactions ensued though, we're kind of missing the big one, which is critics online called this fascist. They were like, you are just giving us the point by point of like Palantir's descent into fascism. Basically. We spend a lot of time talking about this company. We don't really talk a lot about its origins and like how it views itself in the entire American dream or whatever that means. You know, it was founded after 9, 11. It was supposed to be like after this big national consensus we're fighting terrorism abroad. Was the be all, end all. The company was co founded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Data aggregation analysis tool powers like everything from businesses to the US military's targeting systems. And more recently that's meant like targeting systems specifically on immigrants. So the way that CEO Alex Karp talks about this company as this like extended arm of the US government isn't necessarily new. I think that it's just like hitting this very specific point for critics and critics internally as well that are going, wait a second, that's not the country that I actually signed up on. You know, especially this year, ICE and DHS surveillance, its support of military actions in Iran. The company has doubled down on all of these positions. We actually have a story coming tomorrow from politics reporter McKenna Kelly about how internally that's not being received super well either. And then you have Alex Karpu kind of doesn't really appear to care. And he's like, no, no, no, we're, we're, we're on track. We're going to keep going here.

[Brian Barrett]

Yeah. And Al Karp says a lot of stuff all the time and this feels like an extension of that. So it's. Maybe I think it hit a nerve because it was the first time people had seen so much of it collected in one place that it was like not something off the cuff on CNBC or at a conference. It was like, no, this is a very intentional statement of values.

[Zoe Schiffer]

I think that Alex Karp benefits from being someone who speaks like a philosophy major. Like when you hear him talk, you're like, this man sounds very smart. But like, literally, what is he saying? So when comms translates that and is like, okay, we'll break it down for you. You don't have to open the book like, here's what it all Means like, that's what I think catches people by surprise.

[Leah Figart]

Yeah. And it's philosophical ramblings that are packaged in what appear to be like an authoritarian, ultra nationalist, like, game plan here, which is no surprise why people call it fascist.

[Brian Barrett]

So here's one thing I, I know we could quote from this all day. There's a line in there. The. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite's intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. Now, what I would say that feels like a very one sided view of what religious intolerance is, is right. I think there is the idea that, like, are people intolerant of religion or are they tolerant of all religions.

[Leah Figart]

Sure.

[Brian Barrett]

And reject the idea of one religion becoming the predominant religion within a government structure, which it should. You know what I mean? Like, I think there's a certain. Like, the perspective is very clear here. And it's sort of one. The sort of defensive crouch, I think doesn't really. It's not very self aware, I guess I would say.

[Leah Figart]

Yeah, it doesn't hit. And maybe that's part of it. Ryan. And this is a bad take. So this is my episode of bad takes, I suppose. Give me an authoritarian who really, really believes this stuff and isn't doing it to line their pockets. I'm looking at this and Palantir is making money hand over fist right now. So of course they're just gonna repeat anything that keeps them in the good graces with the administration. You're watching the administration be at war with companies that even like, remotely speak out, whether that's anthropic or whomever. And just like the idea of that being in the air. No, Palantir is like this institution of choice right now. And we've watched that happen since, like, week one of the Trump administration. We watched so much of Doge come from that. So it's like very hard for me to look at all this and not go, okay, you're also thinking about how this reads to these people that are giving you these contracts.

[Zoe Schiffer]

I mean, I think that's true, but I think Karp is a true believer. Like, I do not get the sense from hearing that man talk or looking at his history that he is, like, opportunistically spouting these beliefs now when he didn't believe them before. Like, he seems like someone who has really drunk the. Not even drunk the Kool Aid. Has someone who really believes this stuff.

[Brian Barrett]

He's sort of like making the Kool Aid. He's mixing, stirring in the powder to the water he's getting. He's bringing his own pitcher in.

[Zoe Schiffer]

I really tried to land that. Yeah, he's the one giving the Kool Aid to everyone else.

[Leah Figart]

But you can't separate that, though, from like, how successful that's going for him business wise. And I.

[Zoe Schiffer]

And I think that's like, where I

[Leah Figart]

keep getting back to when we're talking about, like, Palantir's activities here, I suppose.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Well, I would just. When you listen to someone like Joe Lonsdale, I'm like, that seems a little more apparent to me. Like, that is someone who seems like he also really believes this type of thing. And yet, you know, he kind of grew up in an environment where he was being heavily rewarded for espousing these beliefs. And so it's no surprise that they have gotten more hardened over time, I guess.

[Leah Figart]

Well, something that's really interesting that comes up in McKenna's article that you can all read on Wired.com is is in Slack. People are having these, like, kind of intense conversations, right, about what Karp is saying in public, about, like, their actions in public, all of these different things. And there's this one quote following the post of the manifesto that I can't stop thinking about, which reads, I'm curious why this had to be posted, especially on the company account. On the practical level, every time stuff like that gets posted, it gets harder for us to sell the software outside of the U.S. and I doubt we need this in the U.S. which is, I guess, like, brings back to the business point of who is this benefiting? How is this benefiting them? How long will this benefit them? And at the very least, employees are starting to kind of freak out about it.

[Brian Barrett]

And I'm curious if that actually leads to any kind of material change if people actually leave the company, if it's harder to recruit there, or if they get a lot of like Diehard usa. I think too, like, you can't look at this in a vacuum. The fact that this is being released at the same time that Anthropic is having that very public fight with the Pentagon saying, actually, we don't think the government should use these tools for certain things. Like, we do have a line where we are not just doing this in service of US Supremacy is a really interesting dynamic. And this feels almost like you're putting it out there if you're Palantir as a sort of. No, actually, you should get in line. Anthropic. And anyone else who thinks that they should have boundaries with the government.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Leah Figart]

You got to do what you got to do to keep those government contracts rolling in. Talking about the government, I want to keep us there because there are actually possibly maybe perhaps some changes afoot coming midterm season. Guys, we have to talk about the most recent trend. We've all been noticing it over the last couple days, couple weeks involving the current Trump administration and more specifically how very important factions of the MAGA movement have been shifting away from Trump. We're talking like major figures here. We're talking. Tucker Carlson this week quite literally apologized for misleading people on Trump, said everyone's implicated in getting him elected. We're looking at Candace Owens, another major pundit who's been going all against Trump. We're looking at Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in recent weeks and months has been moving against Trump. But everyone's been going really hard on this in the last couple days and weeks. Everyone's a critic now. And it's not just these like high profile conservative figures who have like gone through their big abandoning phase. Conspiracy theorists are also abandoning Trump, which has been traditionally his bread and butter for so long. David Gilbert had an excellent piece late last week about how a number of like big folks in the MAGA movement are actually all starting to say that the assassination attempt on Trump's life in Butler, Pennsylvania during the 2024 presidential election was actually staged. Tim Dillon, a podcaster that has historically supported Trump, went in on this.

[Brian Barrett]

Maybe the assassination was like, not something that we, we don't know the full story. So maybe it was staged, maybe it was faked.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Why does he talk like that?

[Brian Barrett]

Should we be talking? Wait, should we? He's very popular. Should we be talking like that?

[Zoe Schiffer]

Could you try, Zoe?

[Leah Figart]

This is, this is your pivot. I mean, but he wasn't alone. That's what's so crazy. Like influencer Candace Owens, who I mentioned earlier, she also spoke about this too.

[Outshift by Cisco Narrator]

I find it very strange that Donald Trump is not interested or has appeared to be completely disinterested in determining who fired that shot.

[Leah Figart]

To be clear, all of this is being shared without evidence. There haven't been any significant reports that show that any of this was in fact staged. But that really hasn't stopped this wave of MAGA folks in some ways repeating the exact same claims that a lot of like blue pilled people did in 2024, which was like, this is staged. This was all like against Harri. So this was against Biden this was against all of this. So it's been fascinating watching, like, truly, like the handshaking emoji come together in that moment. But also to me, I think is a pretty indicative of the party is in a weird place going into the midterms. Polls are lower than they've ever been for Trump. The Republican Party is like already distancing from him on certain elections. I don't know how serious are you guys taking this? What are you seeing in your circles?

[Zoe Schiffer]

Well, I mean, I guess before we even get there, I wanna back up and ask you, like, why is this happening? Is it a bunch of small things that are just like culminating? Is it the Iran war? Like, why are people so pissed right now?

[Leah Figart]

Epstein was big, full stop. Epstein. Epstein was really big. He promised to release like everything. Epstein wise, the rollout's been super disappointing. No one's really believed what he's had to say. The like, little specific drops from the Department of Justice, especially, like everything with Trump's names getting redacted from stuff. So that's been messy. So people have not loved that. And he got a lot of people on his side with a big promise to campaign against like pedophilia in the United States. And like this was a whole Democratic plot. And until, you know, have the Epstein stuff be like, so bungled has screwed him for sure. That then combined with Iran, combined with rising prices, combined with all of this stuff, all of a sudden people are just looking at this going, what are we doing here?

[Brian Barrett]

I'd say too, that he even lost some of his manosphere support. Rogan and Theo Vaughan and over immigration, Andrew Schultz, like, like there's, there's been like pushback there too. I think he keeps doing things that he promised he wouldn't do. And that is finally catching up, right?

[Leah Figart]

Anyone's base is solid, right? Like when you're talking about the Democratic base, the people that are coming out to support Dems year in, year out, they might be mad about certain actions, but they're gonna keep voting for the Democrats. What's really interesting here in what we saw in 2016 is that Trump created a new base and that's why it was so wild for Republicans to watch this, like, you know, former celebrity, like, take the stage in a really, really big way. And uniting conspiracy theorists and independents from across different camps. Yes, Republicans voted for him en masse, but he brought a lot of new people under the tent. But over the last, you know, 10 years, at this point, the base hasn't wavered. They didn't waiver during January 6th. They didn't waiver during a variety of different investigations in his first term. So to watch the waiver now, this really is the first time that I can think of following all of this that I'm going, oh gosh, people are shaking. And this is very different than I've seen before. And it's hard to say if it's like a ramp up to the midterms, if it's a ramp up to 2028, are we picking JD Vance? Are we picking Marco Rubio? Are we finally distant, like moving on from Trump as the head of the party? I don't know and I don't think that the party has decided that yet. But to hear these rumblings is really interesting.

[Brian Barrett]

I guess my question is how far is this contagion spreading? Trump has been very vocally attacking back very long true social rants against Tucker and against Candace Owens and all that. Do you have essentially, and it's too early to say, well, I guess I assume, but do you have a sense of this is if he's going to be able to contain this or if this is going to turn into a real four alarm fire for him, especially as the midterms come up?

[Leah Figart]

Great question. I think that it's going to take a little bit more time to see. I think we're going to have to see what happens, frankly, with the US Economy in like the summer months. Are people going to be able to take road trips or are gas prices going to be just too high because of the Iran war simultaneously? And I have to say this, even though this was like the news last week, but I have to bring it up again, staunch Trump supporters, including many of those that we just talked about, are asking if he's the Antichrist. Trump got into fights with the Pope. He has been banking on Catholics in very specific ways to the point that his actual supporters are going on like YouTube lives and saying is this person that we voted for the Antichrist? So it's all to say that like this isn't necessarily something that is containable, that it takes like truly just another moment, just another Trump truth social, another missive, another war question mark for this to really, really get out of hand.

[Zoe Schiffer]

And do we think that the fallout hits J.D. vance at this point or is he positioned to like take on the MAGA mantle?

[Leah Figart]

Okay, I'm saying this, but I'm saying this to you guys and pretending that we don't have however many listeners we have right now.

[Brian Barrett]

Millions.

[Leah Figart]

Millions. No one likes J.D.

[Zoe Schiffer]

vance.

[Leah Figart]

No one likes J.D. vance. J.D. vance is beloved by, like our Silicon Valley folks. Like, that's, that's who's thrilled that he's in office right now. And like, that was been a very clear part. He is like, in so many ways the figure in between Trump and like so many of these folks. And that's been like, there's been some great reporting on that in the past, but when you're talking about, like, J.D. vance, man of the people at the truck stop, giving, shaking, shaking hands, holding babies, et cetera, like, that's not him. And I don't really see how he's able to shake, like, the Trump stink off of him.

[Brian Barrett]

I live in the deep south and the midterm races, the advertising's already started and they are still overwhelmingly who is the most Trump Republican is still what people are running on. Very curious to see if that changes. And I cannot imagine a world in which that becomes who is the most. J.D.

[Leah Figart]

vance, Republican yeah, that's just, I, I don't, I don't know if I see that either. As we know. I could talk about this forever, but we're gonna take a quick break and when we're back, we're gonna be getting into a fun slash bizarre story about how, how a scammer made bank by creating an AI generated woman perfectly tailored for a very specific kind of audience. Stay with us.

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[David Remnick]

This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, Steve Kerr, one of the best coaches in the NBA and certainly one of the most outspoken, calling the president a buffoon.

[Brian Barrett]

I kind of regret that, even though I felt it in my heart, because I'm representing a large group of people not only for our organization, but our fans too.

[David Remnick]

Steve Kerr joins us next time on the New Yorker Radio Hour from wnyc. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Brian Barrett]

Before we wrap up for today, I want to get into a story from E.J. dixon that we published and got a lot of attention this week. It's a story that honestly kind of perfectly encapsulates the times that we are living in. So EJ talked to a medical student based in India. We call him Sam, it's not his real name, who was trying to make some money to cover expenses and hopefully migrate to the US after he graduated. After trying a few things, he tried selling his med school notes. He tried making YouTube videos. He landed on a more specific and potentially more lucrative idea. He decided he was going to create an AI generated woman using Google's Gemini nanobanana Pro. It's an AI image generator service. And sell bikini photos of her online because you can't find those anywhere. It's a rare commodity.

[Zoe Schiffer]

I really want to hear Leah Figar have to say Google Gemini nanobananapro. I just feel like that set of words. I won't say it.

[Leah Figart]

I just won't do it. Not for me.

[Brian Barrett]

We'll get there.

[Leah Figart]

Oh, thanks.

[Brian Barrett]

Hold on. He makes this AI generated woman but finds out that none of the content is picking up steam. It's not going anywhere. So he goes back to Gemini to ask the chatbot for advice. Gemini goes back and tells him that the pictures were too generic, but maybe he might get some traction if he tailored his AI generated model to be more MAGA coded. So you put her in a rifle range, you have her pounding some Coors lights, posting anti abortion, anti immigration messages. You get the idea. Would you believe that it took off like a rocket?

[Zoe Schiffer]

Oh my lord. This really is like the story of the times. And it's so funny that Gemini was the one to suggest it.

[Brian Barrett]

Well, and here's the thing. It's also this is not. There are so many of these accounts. This one was named Emily Hart. Within a month had more than 10,000 Instagram followers who then also subscribed to her soft core AI generated content on OnlyFans competitor FanView. But there are so many of these everywhere.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Wait, but Brian, do people know that it's an AI model or do they think it's a real woman?

[Brian Barrett]

A lot of them don't seem to know.

[Leah Figart]

And the one, they seem very, very unsure.

[Brian Barrett]

And some of them are like, I know, but I don't care.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Right. Okay, okay, okay.

[Brian Barrett]

But they're all, I mean they're. Because it's all, it's not like you're ever going to meet this person in real life. And I feel like at a certain point this kind of customer content consumer, it's all an abstraction anyway at a certain point. But it is interesting how the MAGA specific and I want to say his MAGA focused creation, hugely successful. He tried making a left leaning counterpart. He tried doing the Democratic version. No one cared. Didn't work. Did not work. Didn't pan out. Everyone was like, this looks like dumb AI.

[Leah Figart]

No, it only pays to be polarizing.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Like that's the.

[Leah Figart]

Which is such an interesting part of this whole grift, right? Like the idea that like it's, it's a scam. Like this is entirely a scam. And I'm, I'm so taken with the fact that this is from someone who so clearly like has no horse in this race.

[Zoe Schiffer]

That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show. Notes Uncanny Valley is produced by Kaleidoscope Content. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. It was mixed by Amar Lal at Macrosound. It was fact checked by Matt Giles. Pram Bandy is our New York studio engineer. Mark Leita is our San Francisco studio engineer. Kimberly Chua is our digital production senior manager. Kate Osborne is our executive producer. And Katie Drummond is Wired's global editorial director. Comprehensive, witty, speculative, critical, insightful, profound, wide ranging. Hopefully doesn't take itself too, too seriously.

[David Remnick]

I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts, the thoughtful,

[Zoe Schiffer]

exquisite just, you know, real. From prx.