Pentagon v. ‘Woke’ Anthropic; Agentic v. Mimetic; Trump v. the State of the Union

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.

0:01

Hey, how's it going?

0:23

I feel great, Ryan.

0:25

I feel terrific. And I know Leah does too, because Survivor's back tonight. Another thing that we care about and you don't.

0:27

How do you know I don't? I mean, I don't. I don't. Except for my best friend from childhood tried to go on it and then she didn't get on. So that, you know, it's irrelevant.

0:36

Famously, one day I'm going to apply and both Brian and our colleague Tim have assured me that I can leave for a month to the beaches of Fiji and come back and still keep my job.

0:44

And, you know, I think most people would be like, leah, you're not gonna survive out there. But they don't know about your deep sea diving prowess.

0:54

I actually think I would be fine. I really, really wanna do this one day, you guys.

1:01

But Leah, it would require you to potentially kill some fish to eat them, which is not normally. Oh, okay.

1:07

No, no, no, no, no. Fishing's fine. Like subsistence living, like, that's like, very. Okay. It's like the larger, you know, institutionalization of the mass murder of our sea that I take a bit of a bigger issue.

1:14

Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Wired's Director of Business and Industry.

1:27

I'm Brian Barrett, Executive Editor.

1:33

And I'm Leah Fieger, Senior politics editor.

1:35

Okay. I feel like we have to start today with this feud that is escalating day by day, hour by hour, between Anthropic and the Pentagon. So to set the stage a little bit, Anthropic last summer scored a contract of up to $200 million with the defense Department. Are we calling it the Department of War?

1:40

No, we are calling it the Defense Department because Department of War is a secondary title per the executive order, and

2:00

a name change requires an act of Congress. There's, like, a lot in here.

2:07

So.

2:10

No, we are. We are all good on dod. I love calling it the dod.

2:10

Great. Before we get completely derailed by the name Anthropic, they won this contract. And then things have gotten pretty tense since then because basically these two sides have very, very different view on how AI technology should be used by the DoD. Anthropic has pretty strict restrictions on how their technology can be deployed. For instance, it can't be used for domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.

2:15

You know, the fully autonomous weapons thing really gets me. What Anthropic is saying here is not like some woke left wing wild thing. It's saying that machines can't be the ones to fully push the button. Right?

2:44

Right.

2:56

They can't kill people just themselves. They have to do it with the help of people. That feels reasonable.

2:57

Right. This is a stance that is not okay with certain members of the DoD, namely Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He met with Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei earlier this week and he basically gave Dario an ultimatum. The company has until Friday to comply with the Pentagon's demands, basically saying that the AI can be used however the DoD wants without restrictions, or the DoD might actually cancel their contract.

3:05

So what's fascinating to me about this, among many things, including the DoD's threat to use the power of the state to force Anthropic to give them access to its AI to do whatever it wants, the DoD has options here, right? They've got a contract with XAI. They work with all the big players. Other companies do not have these restrictions. So why is it so important to them that Anthropic specifically has to be able to do this? Can't they use Grok?

3:33

They've already signed a deal with xai. I mean, my feeling about this and Brian and Leigh, I'm curious what you think about this is it seems like a little bit performative. I think they're trying to make a point that companies that want big military contracts or big contracts with the government at all aren't allowed to put their kind of company values in those contracts. Like, basically, if you want this money, you have to do whatever it takes to win.

4:01

So I want to go back to what I alluded to before, which is that in terms of, yeah, making a show of it and demonstrating their power here, they suggested they might invoke the Defense Production act, which is normally what you do in wartime. If you say we need more tires for our Humvees, we're going to go to Goodyear and have them make more tires for us. And we saw the Defense Production act invoked during COVID to make people make masks like that. Is it is normally tied to physical goods. It is normally tied to a state of emergency. This is just, we want to play with your shiny toy and you won't let Us, which just sort of seems like an outrageous use of that potentially.

4:25

Yeah. I will say, like, it's not completely clear to me that this is a horrible position for Anthropic to be in, purely because the company is really differentiating itself in this moment. Not really because of its technology, but because of its brand. And its brand is a little bit like, holier than thou, a little more values based than some of its competitors. And so while this is a lot of money on the line and I think like Anthropic wants to be a government contractor, you know, it really is cementing this vision of the company as being like, we're different, we're better, we're willing to take a stand. Stand where, say, Sam Altman might not be.

5:08

What you're saying really keys into exactly what Secretary Hegseth said when he was announcing this partnership with X AI. You guys have to listen to this.

5:45

We will judge AI models on this standard alone. Factually accurate, mission relevant without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications. Department of War AI will not be woke. It will work for us.

5:55

Right, right, right, right. It's bringing to mind the kind of woke AI executive order that rolled out last year. I talked to many, many people to be like, have you heard from the government on this? Are they asking you to change certain things? And the answer, at least from the sources I spoke to, was basically a resounding no. Which told me one thing that was for show, that was about making a point. It wasn't necessarily about literally changing the product that these companies are building.

6:11

I'm trying to think of a corollary. If this were not lines of code in a physical product. I feel like it's almost like going to IROBOT and saying, look, we need your Roombas to explode. We need exploding Roombas. We need to deploy them in the Kremlin. That's sort of the level of overreach here. To me.

6:41

No, this is like wild overreach. We are obviously, the news feels like it's breaking every hour or so on this. This person' said this and Amadai said this. And I don't know, this really does feel like it's going to be heading to a breaking point. And so far we haven't actually seen. Correct me if I'm wrong, this is your world. Zoe. We haven't actually seen any tech companies face down the Trump administration in any meaningful way whatsoever.

7:02

I mean, yeah, certainly it's been more normal for them to simply fall in line. I think that if Anthropic were to Cave at this point, it would be completely disastrous for the company. Like, I think the issue of setting yourself up as the good AI company me is that the second you falter, the second they said they were gonna try and fundraise in the Middle east, perhaps take Gulf State money, people are very, very quick to call you a hypocrite. And certainly the sources I have at OpenAI are like they're poised and ready because they are very sick of Dario and the other anthropic executives essentially saying that they're better than OpenAI because they're willing to have values and OpenAI and some of the other companies are not. So I'll be so curious to see how this plays out. But in my mind, there' only one way for Anthropic to play this.

7:27

There's a fun timing tidbit I wanted to share that's sort of related to all of this. I just want to note that a story came out Wednesday that a researcher named Kenneth Payne at King's College London ran a GPT 5.2, Claude Sonnet 4 and Gemini 3 flash against each other in war game simulations. Ran a bunch of simulations, like I think hundreds in all. And 95% of the time they opted to use nuclear weapons. No, they couldn't get enough of nuclear weapons.

8:16

So unbelievable.

8:50

That's not to say that that's what happened in a real world situation, but in terms of is it woke to not use nukes? We'll find out. Is that woke AI?

8:52

That's the title of Brian Barrett's new book coming at you this fall 2027.

9:02

Would read, would click.

9:08

I mean, okay, but play this out with me for just one second. As someone who does not spend a ton of time with AI models in any way, shape or form, but that makes sense to me that everything I have seen and everything like, you know, inputting make this better, actually add this to it. Of course, the final scenario here is, you know what, we're gonna just pick the best option. It's the nukes. This will fully end it. Then we will stop being asked for things like does that actually make sense? Explain to me why we would even get there.

9:10

Yeah, I think that that's what alignment is supposed to prevent. The whole idea of alignment is that you're supposed to bend the AI model in such a way that it like conforms to human values and doesn't do what's good for the AI necessarily. But I think alignment in and of itself has become seen as kind of woke. And companies have been trying to implement, like the minimum level of guardrails that they can get away with because it's, you know, frankly, politically toxic to do otherwise.

9:40

And like, when you say alignment with human values, the question is, whose values? Right. That's a broad range. And so again, getting back to this, this is the Pentagon saying, no, the alignment is with the Department of Defense.

10:11

Right. I have a question for you guys and I just want to ask it, and then I'm going to unpack it.

10:24

Do it.

10:32

Do you think that you're agentic or mimetic?

10:32

Never mind, don't do it. Take it back.

10:36

Is it because you're memetic?

10:40

Can I, can you explain what that means before I commit?

10:41

So Silicon Valley has become obsessed with the idea of being agentic, hiring agentic people. And this is in contrast, as you might imagine, to being mimetic. So someone who's agentic is action oriented. It's a person who just like, does things. They have this inner drive. They just make things happen. They don't really doubt themselves or the process. In contrast, someone who is mimetic. I think we can all agree I'm in this category. They are hesitant. They weigh the pros and cons. They kind of wait to see what other people do before they make a move. These questions have come up a lot in job interviews at AI labs. People are kind of trying to test out, are we hiring someone who's agentic? Are we hiring someone who's mimetic? And I think the idea is that in a world where AI agents take over vast swaths of the economy, they're doing a lot of tasks. Like agentic people will succeed. Mimetic people are fucked.

10:46

This just feels like kind of another Silicon Valley way to describe something that already exists. It's like when you're like, oh, are you a kicker or a puncher? Like, these are conversations that have been, like, happening on playground since we were like, babies. I, of course, Silicon Valley, like, took a basically college buzzfeed personality test, added a couple of extra fun keywords, and we're like, we have figured out a new way to rate people.

11:43

I think the people who embrace this, is it fair to say all think of themselves as agentic, right?

12:08

Without a doubt.

12:13

Oh, for sure. But okay, here's what's funny to me about that. I mean, the reason that this has been kind of taking over Silicon Valley and Maxwell Zeph, one of our great AI writers, he's writing about this this week. But there was an essay in Harper's by Sam Kriss That I think kind of went viral last week and it kind of touched on this idea. It kind of chose three people, a few of whom, you know, really exemplified agentic tendencies and kind of profiled them, talked about kind of this new world that we supposedly. Entering into. My confusion in the piece, in addition to the fact that I think media people tend to over index the importance of things like Slate Star, Codex and the guy who started cluly and like the average tech person has no idea what you're talking about. These are completely irrelevant people. But I'm like, I feel like you're just saying we like people who are successful. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, don't we all want to hire people who can like get stuff done? Like, I'm a little confused.

12:14

Why are you a self starter, Zoe? Like, that's what this is.

13:08

I. Oh God.

13:11

I also want to say this is not the first time Silicon Valley has been captured by the idea of dividing people into categories. Who can forget the frenzy of early 2022 when everyone was either a Word Cell or a Shape rotator? Does anyone remember this? Am I the only one?

13:13

I kind of feel like you're making this up to like test if I'm going to agree with like, I have genuinely no idea what you're saying.

13:29

That's exactly what a word cell would say.

13:34

Oh, no. And then that is a word cell.

13:36

Yeah, well, they're based the kind. They're very similar concepts. It like breaks things down. Word cells are. And I'm not going to get this exactly right. It was a long time ago, but as the name suggests, like people who are more language driven and talk through things. Whereas Shape Rotators. Wow. They are action oriented. Can probably.

13:39

Where do these words even come from?

14:00

I don't know. I think wordcell probably derogatory because it maybe builds off incel. But I am not. I'm making that up as I go along. I don't remember where it came from exact. Even Sam Altman was tweeting about Word cells and Shape Rotators back in the day.

14:03

Well, Sam Altman, as this Harper's article suggests, is I think a little chronically online. He has a whole section where there was like a Twitter troll or an ex troll who's like going after people, kind of making fun of them, telling them to buy him things. And Sam Altman kind of makes the trend go mainstream by actually buying this guy a gaming laptop and like sending it to him. And then all these other famous tech people feel like they also need to Buy this random guy thing. So it becomes kind of like a tre. I hate that.

14:20

This is like a cultural talking point right now. The way that you, like, divide people becoming. It's just like one more way. One. One more way.

14:49

Yeah. Whenever people feel really passionately about the Oxford comma in their bio, they're like, I'm pro Oxford comma. Like, what? Who cares?

14:59

Oh, so you're wrong.

15:08

No, no. I mean, I do like it, but I'm like. To make your personal brand aligned with the Oxford comma. Okay. I don't know.

15:10

She hates the Oxford comma. She's also mimetic.

15:16

She's a word cell. She's a memetic word cell.

15:19

Okay, I think that we need to move on to another major bit of news that happened this week. The State of the Union address delivered by President Trump on Tuesday evening.

15:24

Members of Congress and my fellow Americans, our nation is back. Bigger, better, richer, and stronger than ever before.

15:39

It was the longest State of the Union address to date. It lasted almost two hours, and it was exactly what you would expect. Trump was boasting about his performance in office. He doubled down on immigration. He said the US's economy was going swimmingly. Did not obviously talk about his very low approval numbers right now, but really spent a lot of time just celebrating the Republican agenda. He brought in members from the US hockey team celebrating their victory. He talked about immigration and what an important thing this was going to be. Going into the midterms. He really went after the Supreme Court and after their decision to deny him the tariffs he so deeply wants. It was honestly, you guys, so boring. I was so boring. What were your reactions? Did you watch? Did you just see the news that came out the next day? Tell me what you're thinking.

15:52

I not only watched, I made my kids watch.

16:50

Oh, that is unkind.

16:54

Yeah. At least.

16:56

Well, they watched the first hour or so, which is a lot, and then we switched over to an old episode of the Muppet show as a palate cleanser.

16:57

Nice.

17:04

Yeah, I think they got more out of the Muppet show than they did out of the State of the Union. Other than that you mentioned he was, like, boosting Republican talking points. I was more struck by how venomous his comments were. Vitriolic towards Democrats and anyone he doesn't like. It was more aggressive than I think we've seen on this stage in a long time, which it's not surprising, and it's boring by now, but I think through the eyes of a child who has not watched Donald Trump as much as we have. I think they were pretty shocked by it, that this was how our president

17:04

acts and that's 100% fair. You know, when I say boring, I'm coming at this from. We're looking at what he's posting on Truth Social on a daily basis. This is, it's so much more of the same that like perhaps the most complimentary thing I can say is that like while parts of this were, you know, just like streaming on and on and vaguely nonsensical, he very much stuck to his talking points that he has been saying throughout his term, throughout the last month. Nothing was shocking. You know, he didn't bring up too many pieces of like exact legislation he was going to, but did we actually think he was gonna do that? I'm more interested in like some of the forward looking things he promised again of which there were very few. But like a couple things that we can look at. For one, he said that J.D. vance, Vice President J.D. vance was going to be taking the lead on fraud investigations. Was that new to you guys? How did you feel about that one?

17:40

This is obviously not my area, but my immediate reaction was like, that's the job you give someone you hate. I just feels like, am I wrong? I'm just like that feels.

18:31

Hasn't the Trump administration also fired or not rehired people who resigned? Like they had a bunch of people who were actually responsible for finding and prosecuting fraud who no longer work there. Right. So to say, oh well, JD's gonna do it is a kind of hilarious like backup plan in practice. Yeah, that's not gonna go anywhere other than a bunch of posts on X. Oh yeah.

18:39

But all to say it was, there was, there wasn't a ton of new information. Like I didn't come out of this going like, ah, perfect. I know the day that we will be going to war with Iran. And so it was like very, you know, he hit, he hit the talking points we thought he was going to hit. And I think if anything probably showed as chaotic as so many different parts of this administration appear, it's focused.

19:04

Can I ask? It feels a bit like they're attempting a bit of a rebrand. I'm not sure if this is just because they had so much success being like anti establishment and now they're the establishment. I know this is well trodden ground, but like it feels like Nicki Minaj getting the trump card and appearing at the White House and all of that. Like we're seeing these attempts to say like, no, no, no, we're still cool. We're still fun. Like, to rebrand MAGA a bit in

19:28

this moment, the rebrand is not going well if you're looking at so many different, you know, polling numbers, et cetera, at least in this moment. But it feels like they're pushing it in some different ways. Brian, what do you think?

19:56

I don't know. I. The point is taken. But rebrand, to me, feels like it suggests that these cultural touchstones, the US Men's hockey team, other spots weren't already maga, like, I. You know what I mean?

20:09

So reinvigoration, maybe. Maybe. Maybe the word isn't rebrand, but it feels like they're talking about things that aren't just, like, how much Trump hates immigrants right now.

20:23

Yeah.

20:30

There was just a long spread there when they were not, like, MAGA was not talking about anything that someone who is not reading the news every single day would be able to relate to.

20:31

I think that's fair. Yeah. I think it's maybe more. They are highlighting the pockets of cultural relevance that they have. There is this sort of broader effort of culture capture through the Ellison empire, you know, through the acquisition of TikTok, through the potential acquisition of Warner Brothers by Paramount. So there is a lot of, like, we are the cool ones, which, as you. As we all know, the coolest thing you can do is insist to everybody how cool you are. That's what got me through high school. Guys, before we go to break, there's something that very near and dear to my heart that Wired wrote about this week. It's something I love even more than biathlon. It is undersea Internet cables.

20:39

I love when you talk about this. I think that the first time you brought this up to me was approximately one week into your tenure as executive editor. And you're like, leah, do you know what I love? And it's undersea Internet cables.

21:20

Yeah. I was like, number one, undersea Internet cables. Number two, my children, number three. That was sort of the gist of it. That's how I always introduce myself. I want to take Everybody back to December 14, 1988. The top movie in theaters is Twins, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.

21:33

Legitimately never heard of that. Wait, Zoe. What?

21:52

Anyway, Arnold is agentic and Danny DeVito is memetic. The top song.

21:55

Now I get it.

22:00

The top song is Look Away by Chicago. Now that I also am not. I don't remember that one at all. And the first undersea fiber optic cable connecting the United States, UK and France went live. This was the day that The Internet went global, which is crazy. That is crazy that it was, like, relatively recent. The reason we're writing about it now is that that original cable, which is called TAT8, is being pulled up. It's out of commission. It's old, it's decrepit. So I identify. And it's being pulled up and put out to pasture because the technology's gotten better. But in this great feature that we published, it is a look at how this change the world, basically. And we take for granted. The reason I care, like, I am so into undersea cable stories, is because it's so easy to forget that the Internet is a physical thing and that the maintenance of those things is really what makes all this connectivity happen. So, yeah, TAT8. Any other fond memories of TAT8 or no? What did you guys think reading this feature?

22:01

Well, famously, we were not alive in.

23:08

Sorry, Brian, you're older than us.

23:10

Just to remind you. But the part of this story that I wanted to talk about, which felt like a real intersection of both of your interests, was the myth of the shark attacks.

23:12

Oh, yeah.

23:24

Okay. So to back up a little bit, these cables, at the very beginning, when they were put in, Brian would be able to talk about this way more because he's kind of a freak about cables. If you haven't realized already, these cables would sometimes have, like, unexplained damage. And looking back on it years later, engineers figured out, right, that, like, this kind of happens. That, like this, you know, if you are putting cables under seas, like, there, there will be wind, there will be changes, things will get moved around. Like, of course there will be damages, but that is not how they felt at the time. These engineers assumed that it was sharks, that sharks were biting their cables, that they were destroying the Internet. The cables were reinforced with all these protective layers, all of these things, because they were like, oh, my God, the sharks are quite literally ending all of this for us. But this article goes into great detail of how they figured out it wasn't the sharks. And by thinking that it was the sharks, it actually helped make all of this technology that much better and stronger. But the sharks were innocent, you guys. The sharks were innocent.

23:25

Justice for sharks. If there's one thing this podcast is about, it is justice for sharks.

24:26

They're so wonderful. They didn't disrupt the cables. But it is such an interesting thing. Cause obviously this. This piece, it gets into so much of, like, the physical building of all of this and having to, like, grapple with the natural world and changing currents and temperatures. And like, what does that look like?

24:30

This is still how it kind of runs, right? Like satellites and wireless networks are there, they're relevant. But the actual physical cables, this is still the backbone of the Internet and

24:49

they're still being deployed. I think Google and Meta both have their own giant undersea cable projects. They're still launching new ones, faster connections, and they're also very political. I think in 2024 there was a spate of severed undersea cables that people have traced back to allegedly Russia sort of severing ties to Finland, Estonia as they it was around the time that the EU was just gearing up to support Ukraine and there was a little bit of like infrastructure mayhem going on at the bottom of the ocean. These are, you know, integral to all kinds of geopolitical. And again, that wasn't sharks. So it's another time the sharks didn't do it. Coming up after the break, we'll share our wired tired picks for the week. Stay with us.

24:59

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25:56

You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from. Whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton or some of my extraordinarily wonderful, well informed colleagues at the New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts,

27:32

It's time for our Wired Tired segment. Whatever is new and cool is wired. Whatever is passe is tired. Are we ready?

28:02

So ready. So excited.

28:12

Wow. Okay, Leah, you go first.

28:13

So my Wired is the show Survivor, which is airing Wednesday night. So excited. This is going to be incredible. It is season 50, so we have Survivor players of eons past that are coming back to compete for the million dollars. I am so excited. It's gonna be incredible. Zoe, my goal in the next few months is just to make you watch one. One of the episodes. Like this is very important to me.

28:15

Which if you were to make Zoe watch a historical episode of Survivor in isolation, what one hour of Survivor would you show her?

28:41

Wait, can I say a season or does it have to be an episode?

28:48

I want to go with that because I don't think you're going to get it for a whole season.

28:51

So I'm going to do the second to last episode of the Micronesia season of Survivor. Absolutely incredible season. Known for the black widow brigade. Zooey, I actually think you would really like it. Well, anyway, that is my Wired, my tired. And I'm like, kind of devastated to say this is Love is blind, which is. I know that my theme was reality shows this week. Look, I have a lot. I wouldn't say love for love is blind, but I have a lot of interest in love is blind. I am an avid Love is Blind watcher. I think it is a super interesting concept and a very weird show and produces a lot of very weird people. But there is a excellent Wired article coming out about how MAGA it's gotten and that those are the people that are going on the show right now. And the conversations that are happening between these couples who met behind a wall and are off to get married several weeks after knowing each other. The conversations are, like, quite sad. They're making me sad. There's like a lot of body shaming and like some. It's just like very. It's weird. There's so this season it's not doing it for me, which that's okay because Survivor is here to lift me out of the doldrums that is my Wired and tired. I stand by it. I swear that I read books and stuff too. I do not want this to be my only brand on this show.

28:53

Certainly not. Brian, drag us out I need to get on firmer ground.

30:13

Okay, well, I'm gonna go tired. Samsung just announced some new phones. Those aren't tired, but tired is AI overload in phones, there's too much. So at this point, the new Samsung Galaxy S26 smartphones, similar to Google's Conversational photo editor, they have a photo assist thing that lets you use natural language so you can just type in. If you have a photo that you took, you can say like, hey, give my dog a party hat and then there will be a party hat on the dog. What's the point of taking photos anymore? Why not just prompt something instead, like from scratch or just go touch some grass? I am curious about. They've got agents built into the phone, so you can use the phone. You can just say, hey, order me a pizza, and the phone will just do that for you. We'll see if it works. I don't know. It seems like it might go off the rails anyway. Too much too soon for me. That's my tired. I didn't plan a wired. I was so caught up on the phone. But because it came up earlier, I'll say the new Muppet show episode with Sabrina Carpenter is really quite good. And I hope that it got a good enough response that Disney makes more of them.

30:18

Further proving that I'm barely on the Internet, but I really like this. Okay, my tired is. This is what I wrote. Calling yourself a bestselling author. I just don't know what it means anymore when someone talks about this. But I did pick up my first Agatha Christie book the other day. I've never read her. Flipped to the back and her author bio. You guys says Agatha Christie is a bestselling author, blah, blah, blah. Has been only outsold by the Bible and Shakespeare. And I thought, boss, move. Lady Agatha's incredible.

31:33

I'm. Wait, did you start reading? Which book is it?

32:07

Yeah, I'm reading and then There Were none, which previously had a more offensive title that I think was changed.

32:09

Oh, it sure did.

32:15

Yeah, it really, really did. I went through an Agatha Christie. Christie. Yeah, no need. I went through a really intense Agatha Christie phase in high school. I really think that you're gonna enjoy this.

32:15

I'm having fun.

32:24

Wait, what's your tired?

32:25

I said tired is calling yourself a best selling author. Wired is being Agatha Christie and being like, I'm actually the best, most bestselling author of all time. You get it?

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I get it.

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It wasn't great. Yeah, I get it. Didn't I accept it?

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Yeah, that's fine.

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It was. You know what? It was mimetic.

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It was so mimetic.

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Oh my God.

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That is our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show Notes. If you have any comments, you can find the episode transcripts@wired.com to discuss. 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. Jake Loomis is our New York studio engineer, Kate Osborne is our executive producer and Katie Drummond is Wired's Global Editorial director.

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This week on the Political Scene from the New Yorker, Trump's rupture in the

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world order, Europe caught between two adversarial great powers. That's basically dialing back the clock to

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not only Pre World War II, but

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really it's a pre 20th century view of the world and I would say

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it's a world of permanent insecurity that we're looking at.

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Join me, Evan Osnos and my colleagues Jane Mayer and Susan Glasser every Friday on the Political Scene. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

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From prx.

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