On today’s episode, our host Zoë Schiffer is joined by WIRED’s senior politics writer Jake Lahut to run through five of the most important stories we published this week—from how bitcoin miners have been racing this year to beat the tariffs, to how AI was used to find a missing hiker in the Italian Alps. Then, Zoë and Jake discuss the details around OpenAI’s latest partnership with the federal government.
Mentioned in this episode:
OpenAI Announces Massive US Government Partnership, by Zoë Schiffer and Will Knight
Trumpworld Knows Epstein Is a Problem. But They Can’t Solve It, by Jake Lahut
Charter Planes and Bidding Wars: How Bitcoin Miners Raced to Beat Trump’s Tariffs, by Joel Khalili
Google Will Use AI to Guess People’s Ages Based on Search History, by Dell Cameron
US Coast Guard Report on Titan Submersible Implosion Singles Out OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, by Mark Harris
A Hiker Was Missing for Nearly a Year—Until an AI System Recognized His Helmet, by Marta Abbà
Get tickets to our live show, happening on September 9th, here.
You can follow Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer and Jake Lahut on Bluesky at @jakelahut.writes.news. Write to us at [email protected].
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Transcript
Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Zoë Schiffer: Hey, this is Zoë. Before we start, I want to share some exciting news with you. We're doing a live show in San Francisco on September 9th in partnership with KQED. Uncanny Valley cohosts Lauren Good and Michael Calore will sit down with our editor in chief, Katie Drummond, and a special guest for a conversation that you really won't want to miss. You can use the link in the show notes to grab your ticket and invite a friend. We can't wait to see you there. Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley. I'm WIRED's director of business and industry, Zoë Schiffer. Today on the show, we're bringing you five stories that you need to know about this week. And later we'll dive into our main topic, which is about how OpenAI just announced a massive partnership with the US government to make its models available to federal employees. I'm joined today by WIRED senior writer Jake Lahut. Jake, welcome to Uncanny Valley.
Jake Lahut: Hey Zoë. Good to be back.
Zoë Schiffer: OK, so our first story is actually from your newsletter Inner Loop, and it's yet another Jeffrey Epstein saga. It just won't quit. So sources have been telling you that the damage done by the Jeffrey Epstein saga is just not going to go away anytime soon. As listeners may know, conspiracy theories around Epstein's death received a lot of fresh fuel in recent weeks when the DOJ released what they called raw footage from the night of his death, but then WIRED analyzed the video and found that it had been modified after all. These conspiracy theories have been at the core of the MAGA base for years now, and you wrote really smartly about how sources say there's simply nothing that can be done to salvage the ongoing catastrophe that is the MAGA base fraying over the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein. So tell us more. What is going on?