Elon Musk’s A.I.-Driven Government Coup

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

#Politics #News #WNYC Studios and The New Yorker #WNYC Studios #President #Obama #Barack #Washington #Lizza #Wickenden #New Yorker #WNYC

40:48

In this episode of the Innovators and Investors Podcast, host Kristian Marquez welcomes Ralph Groce, an angel investor and partner at Scroobious. The conversation dives into the systemic challenges faced by underrepresented founders—especially women and people of color—in accessing capital. Scroobious aims to bridge the gap between these talented founders and a vast network of angel investors, tackling misconceptions about perceived risks associated with diverse entrepreneurs. Ralph shares his journey into angel investing, which was influenced by his father’s early investment education and his own entrepreneurial experiences. He emphasizes the importance of team dynamics, problem-solving relevance, and execution capabilities when assessing potential investments. Additionally, the discussion touches on the growing significance of AI in various sectors, especially financial services, indicating it as a transformative force for the future. Listeners will gain insights into investment philosophies, the role of mentorship for founders, and the influential strategies behind Scroobious’s mission of democratizing access to funding for innovative ideas. Learn more about Ralph's work at https://www.scroobious.com/ and https://thedarkoptimist.com/ Connect with Ralph on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhg3d/ Think you'd be a great guest on the show? Apply at https://finstratmgmt.com/innovators-investors-podcast/ Want to learn more about Kristian Marquez's work? Check out his website at https://finstratmgmt.com…

about a year ago 38:35

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The New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Elon Musk’s seizure of power within the U.S. government, the tech industry’s slide into right-wing politics, and how the ideology of techno-fascism is taking root in Silicon Valley. Can the populists and the technologists coexist in Donald Trump’s Washington?

This week’s reading:

“Elon Musk’s A.I.-Fuelled War on Human Agency,” by Kyle Chayka
“The Second Trump Administration’s New Forms of Distraction,” by Kyle Chayka
“Make South Africa Great Again?,” by Isaac Chotiner
“Elizabeth Warren Fights to Defend the Consumer Protection Agency She Helped Create,” by John Cassidy
“A Fistfight Over Donald Trump at the Evangelical Version of Harvard,” by Emma Green

To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

154 episodes

Elon Musk’s A.I.-Driven Government Coup

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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published about a year ago

MP3•Episode home

This week’s reading:

“Elon Musk’s A.I.-Fuelled War on Human Agency,” by Kyle Chayka
“The Second Trump Administration’s New Forms of Distraction,” by Kyle Chayka
“Make South Africa Great Again?,” by Isaac Chotiner
“Elizabeth Warren Fights to Defend the Consumer Protection Agency She Helped Create,” by John Cassidy
“A Fistfight Over Donald Trump at the Evangelical Version of Harvard,” by Emma Green

To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

154 episodes

#Politics #News #WNYC Studios and The New Yorker #WNYC Studios #President #Obama #Barack #Washington #Lizza #Wickenden #New Yorker #WNYC

All episodes

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
Examining Trump's War on the Media, and a Warning from Hungary 48:04

3 days ago48:04

48:04

This is the second installment of “How Bad Is It,” a recurring series in which the staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt to conduct a health check on American democracy. They discuss how Donald Trump has bullied media companies, why it’s troubling that some outlets are seeking to settle lawsuits with the Administration, and how the role of social media in public discourse has changed during the second Trump Administration. Plus, an interview with the prominent Hungarian journalist Márton Gulyás, who’s on the show to discuss a new bill making its way through the Hungarian parliament which is designed to quell the free press, and what a potential crackdown may tell us about the future of American media. This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump’s Politics of Plunder ,” by Evan Osnos “ Donald Trump’s War on Gender Is Also a War on Government ,” by Paisley Currah “ The Criminalization of Venezuelan Street Culture ,” by Oriana van Praag “ J. D. Vance Warns Courts to Get in Line ,” by Ruth Marcus “ In Chicago, Will the Pope Bump Last? ,” by Geraldo Cadava To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
How Experts Became the Enemy 41:26

10 days ago41:26

41:26

The Northwestern history professor and New Yorker contributor Daniel Immerwahr joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the ways in which the COVID crisis deepened Americans’ distrust of institutional experts and propelled R.F.K., Jr., to the height of political power in the Trump Administration. Plus, they talk about how Anthony Fauci’s clashes and eventual reconciliation with AIDS activists in the nineteen-eighties and nineties could serve as a guide to repairing the rift between Americans who are skeptical of experts and the officials who set public-health policy today. This week’s reading: “ R.F.K., Jr., Anthony Fauci, and the Revolt Against Expertise ,” by Daniel Immerwahr “ Who Gets to Be an American? ,” by Michael Luo “ The Stakes of the Birthright-Citizenship Case ,” by Ruth Marcus “ Donald Trump’s Culture of Corruption ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ The Mideast Is Donald Trump’s Safe Place ,” by Susan B. Glasser Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on President Joe Biden’s Decline, and Its Cover-Up 49:30

13 days ago49:30

49:30

Nearly a year ago, a Presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of CNN, began the end of Biden’s bid for a second term. The President struggled to make points, complete sentences, and remember facts; he spoke in a raspy whisper. This was not the first time voters expressed concern about Biden’s age, but his decline was shocking to many, and suddenly Trump seemed likely to win in a landslide. New reporting by Tapper and Thompson reveals that the debate was no fluke at all. In “How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump” (an excerpt from their new book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again”), they lay out a case that the latter half of Biden’s Presidency was carefully stage-managed by his top aides; Biden would often end the workday as early as four-thirty. “What [aides and] others would say is, ‘His decision-making was always fine.’ The job of the President is not just decision-making. It’s also communication,” Tapper tells David Remnick. “If you are a President . . . and you’re not able to go into a room full of donors and speak extemporaneously for ten minutes, then there’s something wrong. And that was happening in 2023.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
Biden, Trump, and the Challenges of Covering an Aging President 43:51

15 days ago43:51

43:51

The Washington Roundtable discusses new information that has emerged about Joe Biden’s decline while in office, and his advisers' efforts to downplay it, as chronicled in several new books . The group also discusses the challenges faced by members of the press as they report on Donald Trump’s signs of aging and his long-standing incoherence. “I think that’s where we run into trouble,” the staff writer Susan B. Glasser says. “Donald Trump has always been quite ignorant. He’s always been a fact checker's nightmare. He’s always rambled. He’s always lied. And, yes, he’s always not known basic facts about the American system of government. So where do we discern a trajectory with him? How does age factor into it?” This week’s reading: “ The Mideast Is Donald Trump’s Safe Place ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump ,” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson “ The Real Audience for Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Spectacles ,” by Jon Allsop “ Donald Trump’s Culture of Corruption ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ Justice David Souter Was the Antithesis of the Present ,” by Jeannie Suk Gersen “ How an Election Denier Became the U.S. Treasurer ,” by Charles Bethea “ The Astonishing Threat to Suspend Habeas Corpus ,” by Ruth Marcus To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
What Is Jeff Bezos’s Plan for the Washington Post? 42:17

17 days ago42:17

42:17

The New Yorker staff writer Clare Malone joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the changes that Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post , is making at the paper. They talk about why Bezos decided to purchase the paper, in 2013, how his recent exertion of editorial influence has caused the paper to hemorrhage both staffers and subscribers, and the future of a news media dependent on the support of “benevolent” billionaires to support it. This week’s reading: “ Is Jeff Bezos Selling Out the Washington Post ? ” by Clare Malone “ How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump ,” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson “ How an Election Denier Became the U.S. Treasurer ,” by Charles Bethea “ Will the First American Pope Be a Pontiff of Peace? ” by Paul Elie “ Brazil’s President Confronts a Changing World ,” by Jon Lee Anderson To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
Elissa Slotkin to Fellow-Democrats: “Speak in Plain English” 28:11

20 days ago28:11

28:11

When Elissa Slotkin narrowly won her Senate seat in Michigan last fall, she was one of only four Democratic senators to claim victory in a state that voted for Donald Trump. It made other Democrats take note: since then, the Party has turned to her as someone who can bridge the red state–blue state divide. In March, Slotkin delivered the Democrats’ rebuttal to Trump’s speech before Congress , and she’s been making headlines for criticizing her own party’s attempts to rein in the President and the Republican Party. She thinks Democrats need to start projecting “alpha energy,” that identity politics “needs to go the way of the dodo , ” and that Democrats should drop the word “oligarchy” from their vocabulary entirely. Slotkin prides herself on her bipartisanship, and she believes that Democrats must use old-school collegial collaboration in Congress. And, as different Democratic leaders have appeared on The New Yorker Radio Hour in the past few months, discussing what the next four years might have in store, Slotkin tells David Remnick about a different path forward. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
Decoding Donald Trump’s Love of A.I. Imagery 27:51

24 days ago27:51

27:51

The New Yorker staff writer Katy Waldman joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Donald Trump’s fondness for A.I.-generated memes and what it tells us about our current political climate. They talk about how Trump uses these images to bend the cultural narrative to his will, why the MAGA aesthetic is tailor-made for the age of A.I., and how the proliferation of A.I. slop is damaging our brains. This week’s reading: “ Trump Is the Emperor of A.I. Slop ,” by Katy Waldman “ My Brain Finally Broke ,” by Jia Tolentino “ How Is Elon Musk Powering His Supercomputer? ,” by Bill McKibben “ Is This the End of the Separation of Church and State? ,” by Ruth Marcus “ Twelve Migrants Sharing a Queens Apartment ,” by Jordan Salama “ How Russia and Ukraine Are Playing Trump’s Blame Game ,” by Joshua Yaffa To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
How Donald Trump Is Trying to Rewrite the Rules of Capitalism 17:34

27 days ago17:34

17:34

For a long time, Republicans and many Democrats espoused some version of free-trade economics that would have been familiar to Adam Smith. But Donald Trump breaks radically with that tradition, embracing a form of protectionism that resulted in his extremely broad and chaotic tariff proposals, which tanked markets and deepened the fear of a global recession. John Cassidy writes The New Yorker’s The Financial Page column, and he’s been covering economics for the magazine since 1995. His new book, “ Capitalism and Its Critics: A History ,” takes a long view of these debates, and breaks down some of the arguments that have shaped the U.S.’s current economic reality. “Capitalism itself has put its worst face forward in the last twenty or thirty years through the growth of huge monopolies which seem completely beyond any public control or accountability,” Cassidy tells David Remnick. “And young people—they look at capitalism and the economy through the prism of environmentalism now in a way that they didn’t in our generation.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
Donald Trump Is Using the Presidency to Get Rich 29:03

29 days ago29:03

29:03

The Washington Roundtable discusses the unprecedented corruption of the federal government, including Trump Administration members’ self-enrichment through cryptocurrency schemes and the inaugural committee, and the gutting of parts of the government that are responsible for rooting out self-dealing from public life. It is a level of corruption so “outright” and “brazen,” the staff writer Evan Osnos says, that it constitutes “a new phase in American politics.” This week’s reading: “ Mike Waltz Learns the Hard Truth About Serving Donald Trump ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ How Donald Trump Is Expanding His Authority While Shrinking the Government ,” by Jon Allsop “ What Canadians Heard—and Americans Didn’t ,” by Adam Gopnik “ Trump’s Deportees to El Salvador Are Now ‘Ghosts’ in U.S. Courts ,” by Jonathan Blitzer “ Will the Trump Tariffs Devastate the Whiskey Industry? ,” by Charles Bethea “ A Life-Changing Scientific Study Ended by the Trump Administration ,” by Dhruv Khullar “ The Bureaucratic Nightmares of Being Trans Under Trump ,” by Grace Byron “ How Trump Is Helping Tycoons Exploit the Pandemic ,” by Jane Mayer (July, 2020) To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
How Bad Is It?: Andrew Marantz on the Health of Our Democracy 55:28

4 weeks ago55:28

55:28

In a new recurring series on The Political Scene, the staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt to assess the status of American democracy. How does one distinguish—in the blizzard of federal workforce cuts, deportations, and executive orders that have defined the first hundred days of Donald Trump’s second term—actions that are offensive to some, but fundamentally within the power of the executive, from moves which threaten the integrity of our system of government? Marantz applies the lens of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary to analyze where we may be in a potential slide toward autocracy, exploring ways in which Trump has even gone beyond the “Orbán playbook.” Marantz and Foggatt also discuss what it would take to reverse democratic backsliding. This week’s reading: “ Is It Happening Here? ,” by Andrew Marantz “ One Hundred Days of Ineptitude ,” by David Remnick “ The Bureaucratic Nightmares of Being Trans Under Trump ,” by Grace Byron To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
Cory Booker on America’s Crisis of “Moral Leadership” 30:00

5 weeks ago30:00

30:00

As Donald Trump continues to launch unprecedented and innovative attacks on immigrants, civic institutions, and the rule of law, the Democratic response has been—in the eyes of many observers—tepid and inadequate. One answer to the sense of desperation came from Senator Cory Booker, who, on March 31st, launched a marathon speech on the Senate floor, calling on Americans to resist authoritarianism. Booker beat the record previously held by Senator Strom Thurmond’s twenty-four-hour-long filibuster of the Civil Rights Act, in 1957, and he spoke in detail about Americans who are in desperate straits because of federal job cuts and budget slashing. “We knew . . . if I could last twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes, that we could potentially command some attention from the public,” Booker tells David Remnick. “That’s the key here . . . to deal with the poverty of empathy we have in our nation right now.” Yet Booker bridles as Remnick asks about Democratic strategy to resist the Administration’s attacks. Instead, he emphasized the need for “Republicans of good conscience” to step up. “Playing this as a partisan game cheapens the larger cause of the country,” he argues. “This is the time that America needs moral leadership, and not political leadership.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
A Politics of Fear Defines Trump’s First Hundred Days in Office 30:38

5 weeks ago30:38

30:38

The Washington Roundtable discusses the first hundred days of President Trump’s second Administration, and the fear, pain, and outrage reverberating through U.S. politics. The clinical psychologist and longtime Department of Justice official Alix McLearen is helping distressed government workers connect with service providers during this time. She joins the roundtable to discuss how a politics of fear is shaping the lives of federal employees and ordinary citizens alike, and strategies for coping when psychological forces like fear and trauma become governing principles. This week’s reading: “ Waiting for Trump’s Big, Beautiful Deals ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ The Conservative Lawyer Defending a Firm from Donald Trump ,” by Ruth Marcus “ The Immigrant Families Jailed in Texas ,” by Jack Herrera “ The Cost of Defunding Harvard ,” by Atul Gawande “ Donald Trump’s Deportation Obsession ,” by Jonathan Blitzer “ The Guerrilla Marketing Campaign Against Elon Musk ,” by Anna Russell “ The Supreme Court Finally Takes On Trump ,” by Ruth Marcus To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
Pope Francis’s Legacy and the Coming Conclave 31:17

5 weeks ago31:17

31:17

Paul Elie, who writes about the Catholic Church for The New Yorker, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the life and legacy of Pope Francis, his feuds with traditionalist Church figures and right-wing political leaders, and what to expect from the upcoming papal conclave to determine his successor. This week’s reading: “ The Down-to-Earth Pope ,” by Paul Elie “ Pope Francis’s Tangled Relationship with Argentina ,” by Graciela Mochkofsky “ The Mexican President Who’s Facing Off with Trump ,” by Stephania Taladrid “ The Cost of Defunding Harvard ,” by Atul Gawande “ The Supreme Court Finally Takes On Trump ,” by Ruth Marcus Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
How Science Fiction Led Elon Musk to DOGE 19:06

6 weeks ago19:06

19:06

Elon Musk, who’s taking his chainsaw to the federal government , is not merely a chaos agent, as he is sometimes described. Jill Lepore , the best-selling author of “ These Truths ” and other books, says that Musk is animated by obsessions and a sense of mission he acquired through reading, and misreading, science fiction. “When he keeps saying, you know, ‘We’re at a fork in the road. The future of human civilization depends on this election,’ he means SpaceX,” she tells David Remnick. “He means . . . ‘I need to take these rockets to colonize Mars and that’s only going to happen through Trump.’ ” The massive-scale reduction in social services he is enacting through DOGE, Lepore thinks, is tied to this objective. “Although there may be billions of [people] suffering here on planet Earth today, those are miniscule compared to the calculation of the needs of the billions of humans that will one day ever live if we can gain escape velocity from planet Earth. . . . That is, in fact, the math that lies behind DOGE.” Lepore’s BBC radio series on the SpaceX C.E.O. is called “ X-Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story .” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
Will the Supreme Court Yield to Donald Trump? 27:31

7 weeks ago27:31

27:31

Ruth Marcus resigned from the Washington Post after its C.E.O. killed an editorial she wrote that was critical of the paper's owner, Jeff Bezos. She ended up publishing the column in The New Yorker, and soon after she published another piece for the magazine asking "Has Trump's Legal Strategy Backfired?" "Trump's legal strategy has been backfiring, I think, demonstrably in the lower courts," she tells David Remnick, on issues such as undoing birthright citizenship and deporting people without due process. Federal judges have rebuked the Administration's lawyers, and ordered deportees returned to the United States. But "we have this thing called the Supreme Court, which is, in fact, supreme," Marcus says. "I thought the Supreme Court was going to send a message to the Trump Administration: 'Back off, guys.' . . . That's not what's happened." In recent days, that Court has issued a number of rulings that, while narrow, suggest a more deferential approach toward Presidential power. Marcus and Remnick spoke last week about where the Supreme Court—with its six-Justice conservative majority—may yield to Trump's extraordinary exertions of power, and where it may attempt to check his authority. "When you have a six-Justice conservative majority," she notes, there is"a justice to spare." Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
Donald Trump Gets a “Spanking” from the Bond Market 35:21

7 weeks ago35:21

35:21

The Washington Roundtable is joined by Mark Blyth, a professor of international economics and public affairs at Brown University, to discuss how the bond market forced Donald Trump to retreat on some tariffs, and the risks of the President’s escalating trade war with China. “Ultimately, they can take the pain more than you can,” Blyth says, of the Chinese government. “They have locked down their cities for a year or more. They can deliver food through the window through drones. They don’t care if you cut them off from certain things. So getting into that fight is very, very destructive.” This week’s reading: “ Trump’s Do-Over Presidency ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ The Conservative Legal Advocates Working to Kill Trump’s Tariffs ,” by Cristian Farias “ At the Smithsonian, Donald Trump Takes Aim at History ,” by David Remnick “ The Trump Show Comes to the Kennedy Center ,” by Katy Waldman “ The Other Side of Signalgate ,” by Rozina Ali To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
Sherrod Brown on Trump’s Tariffs and the Future of Economic Populism 30:33

7 weeks ago30:33

30:33

The former senator Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the tumult that Trump’s tariffs have inflicted on the global economy, and why progressives should not merely oppose the President’s trade policy but offer a clear alternative. “I've heard economists talk about these tariffs upending the global order on trade. Well, to a lot of workers, anything’s better than the global order on trade. It’s our policy problem as a country, and it’s our political problem for Democrats,” Brown says. They also discuss his latest project, The Dignity of Work Institute , a think tank dedicated to advocacy for the working class. This week’s reading: “‘ I Am Seeing My Community of Researchers Decimated ,’” by E. Tammy Kim “ The Other Side of Signalgate ,” by Rozina Ali “ The Trump Show Comes to the Kennedy Center ,” by Katy Waldman “ At the Smithsonian, Donald Trump Takes Aim at History ,” by David Remnick To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
Why the Tech Giant Nvidia Owns the Future 31:23

8 weeks ago31:23

31:23

The microchip maker Nvidia is a Silicon Valley colossus. After years as a runner-up to Intel and Qualcomm, Nvidia has all but cornered the market on the parallel processors essential for artificial-intelligence programs like ChatGPT. “Nvidia was there at the beginning of A.I.,” the tech journalist Stephen Witt tells David Remnick. “They really kind of made these systems work for the first time. We think of A.I. as a software revolution, something called neural nets, but A.I. is also a hardware revolution.” In The New Yorker , Stephen Witt profiled Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s brilliant and idiosyncratic co-founder and C.E.O. His new book is “ The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip .” Until recently, Nvidia was the most valuable company in the world, but its stock price has been volatile, posting the largest single-day loss in history in January. But the company’s story is only partially a business story; it’s also one about global superpowers, and who will decide the future. If China takes military action against Taiwan, as it has indicated it might, the move could wrest control of the manufacturing of Nvidia microchips from a Taiwanese firm, which is now investing in a massive production facility in the U.S. “Maybe what’s happening,” Witt speculates, is that “this kind of labor advantage that Asia had over the United States for a long time, maybe in the age of robots that labor advantage is going to go away. And then it doesn’t matter where we put the factory. The only thing that matters is, you know, is there enough power to supply it?” Plus, the staff writer Joshua Rothman has long been fascinated with A.I.—he even interviewed its “godfather,” Geoffrey Hinton, for The New Yorker Radio Hour. But Rothman has become increasingly concerned about a lack of public and political debate over A.I.—and about how thoroughly it may transform our lives. “Often, if you talk to people who are really close to the technology, the timelines they quote for really reaching transformative levels of intelligence are, like, shockingly soon,” he tells Remnick. “If we’re worried about the incompetence of government, on whatever side of that you situate yourself, we should worry about automated government. For example, an A.I. decides the length of a sentence in a criminal conviction, or an A.I. decides whether you qualify for Medicaid. Basically, we’ll have less of a say in how things go and computers will have more of a say.” Rothman’s essay “ Are We Taking A.I. Seriously Enough? ” appears in his weekly column, Open Questions . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
Donald Trump Finally Gets His Way on Tariffs 33:26

8 weeks ago33:26

33:26

The Washington Roundtable discusses President Donald Trump’s invocation of emergency powers to enact sweeping tariffs and the ensuing global economic meltdown, in addition to how authoritarians have historically used economic control and coercion to strengthen their grip on power. The Roundtable also examines other spheres where Trump’s maximalist approach might make a mark, including immigration enforcement, the politicization of the military, and the potential seizure of Greenland. This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump’s Ego Melts the Global Economy ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Pete Hegseth’s Secret History ,” by Jane Mayer (December, 2024) “ The Truth About Donald Trump’s ‘Liberation Day ,’ ” by John Cassidy “ Has Trump’s Legal Strategy Backfired? ,” by Ruth Marcus “ Fighting Elon Musk, One Tesla Dealership at a Time ,” by Sarah Larson “ How Trump Is Helping Tycoons Exploit the Pandemic ,” by Jane Mayer (July, 2020) To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
How Tesla Dealerships Became the Epicenter of the Trump Resistance 25:28

8 weeks ago25:28

25:28

Sarah Larson joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the Tesla Takedown movement, protesting Elon Musk and Donald Trump, along with the political efficacy of targeting an electric-car company and why some protesters are borrowing tactics from the AIDS activist group ACT UP. This week’s reading: “ Fighting Elon Musk, One Tesla Dealership at a Time ,” by Sarah Larson “ The Fired Student-Debt Relievers ,” by E. Tammy Kim “ What Marine Le Pen’s Conviction Means for French Democracy ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ How Donald Trump Throttled Big Law ,” by Ruth Marcus “ Why Benjamin Netanyahu Is Going Back to War ,” by Bernard Avishai To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
Senator Chris Murphy: “This Is How Democracy Dies—Everybody Just Gets Scared” 23:41

9 weeks ago23:41

23:41

With congressional Republicans unwilling to put any checks on an Administration breaking norms and issuing illegal orders, the focus has shifted to the Democratic opposition—or the lack thereof. Democrats like Chris Murphy, the junior senator from Connecticut, have vehemently disagreed with party leaders’ reversion to business as usual. Murphy opposed Senator Chuck Schumer’s negotiation to pass the Republican budget and keep the government running; he advocated for the Democrats to skip the President’s joint address to Congress en masse. Murphy believes that the Democrats have a winning formula if they stick to a populist, anti-big-money agenda. But, he concedes, some of his colleagues are playing normal politics, “where we try to become more popular than Republicans. People like me believe that it won’t matter if we’re more popular than them, because the rules won’t allow us to run a fair election.” By attacking democratic institutions, law firms, and other allies, he thinks, Republicans can insure that their party wins indefinitely, as in failed democracies around the world. “If you think that democracy is the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 story,” Murphy tells David Remnick, “then you have to act like it. You need to show that you’re willing to take a political risk.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

1
From “Inside the Hive”: Gavin Newsom’s Risky Podcast Gambit 38:29

9 weeks ago38:29

38:29

The Washington Roundtable is off today, and will be back next week. In the meantime, enjoy a conversation about the California governor’s new podcast venture, “This Is Gavin Newsom,” from Vanity Fair’s “Inside the Hive” podcast. Radhika Jones, the host and editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair , talks with the magazine’s executive editor, Claire Howorth, and the “Hive” editor Michael Calderone about why Newsom is taking time off from running the world’s fifth-largest economy to talk to people such as Steve Bannon. Is he effectively reaching right-wingers and countering the MAGA media machine? And will the show help or hinder his chances of leading the Democratic ticket one day? To discover more from “Inside the Hive” and other Vanity Fair podcasts, visit vanityfair.com/podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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Will Trump’s Obsession with Space Save NASA? 28:55

9 weeks ago28:55

28:55

The writer David W. Brown, who has long covered NASA and the space industry, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Elon Musk’s takeover of NASA, the agency’s increasingly complicated relationship with SpaceX, and whether Donald Trump’s interest in sending people to Mars will spare the space program from DOGE’s downsizing. This week’s reading: “ Inside Trump and Musk’s Takeover of NASA ,” by David W. Brown “ Don’t Believe Trump’s Promises About Protecting the Social Safety Net ,” by John Cassidy “ The E.P.A. vs. the Environment ,” by Elizabeth Kolbert “ We’re Still Not Done with Jesus ,” by Adam Gopnik “ Is March Madness All Luck? ,” by Tyler Foggatt To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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Kaitlan Collins Is Not “Nasty”; She’s Just Doing Her Job. 28:25

10 weeks ago28:25

28:25

Kaitlan Collins was only a couple years out of college when she became a White House correspondent for Tucker Carlson’s the Daily Caller. Collins stayed in the White House when she went over to CNN during Donald Trump’s first term, and she returned for his second. Trump has made his disdain for CNN clear—and he’s not a big fan of Collins, either. At one point during Trump’s first term, she was barred from a press conference; he called her a “nasty person” during a Presidential campaign interview. There’s never been a White House so overtly hostile to the press than the second Trump Administration, penalizing news organizations for not conforming to the President’s wishes. But, as Collins tells the staff writer Clare Malone , she believes that Trump is “someone who seeks the validation of the press as much as he criticizes them publicly. And so, you know, it doesn’t really bother me when he gets upset at my question.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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Will Judges Stick Together to Face Trump’s Defiance? 37:33

10 weeks ago37:33

37:33

The Washington Roundtable speaks with with Michael Waldman, the president and C.E.O. of the Brennan Center for Justice, at N.Y.U. Law, to discuss the escalating attacks on the judiciary by President Trump and his allies. If the Administration ignores a legitimate order from a federal judge, as it has come close to doing, what can the courts do in response? This week’s reading: “ Donald Trump, Producer-in-Chief ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ Why ‘Constitutional Crisis’ Fails to Capture Trump’s Attack on the Rule of Law ,” by Isaac Chotiner “ The Trump Administration Nears Open Defiance of the Courts ,” by Ruth Marcus To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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Can Donald Trump Deport Anyone He Wants? 39:14

10 weeks ago39:14

39:14

The veteran courts reporter Ruth Marcus joins the host Tyler Foggatt to discuss the Trump Administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, why flights of Venezuelan deportees were sent to El Salvador, and how the defiance of federal court orders has set off a constitutional crisis. This week’s reading: “ The Trump Administration Nears Open Defiance of the Courts ,” by Ruth Marcus “ The Case of Mahmoud Khalil ,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “ The Long Nap of the Lazy Bureaucrat ,” by Charlie Tyson “ Hundreds of Thousands Will Die ,” by David Remnick “ The Felling of the U.S. Forest Service ,” by Peter Slevin To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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Atul Gawande on Elon Musk’s “Surgery with a Chainsaw” 26:29

11 weeks ago26:29

26:29

Two weeks after the Inauguration of Donald Trump, Elon Musk tweeted, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into a wood chipper.” Musk was referring to the Agency for International Development, an agency which supports global health and economic development, and which has saved millions of lives around the world. “A viper’s nest of radical-left lunatics,” Musk called it. U.S.A.I.D.’s funding is authorized by Congress, and its work is a crucial element of American soft power. DOGE has decimated the agency with cuts so sudden and precipitous that federal workers stationed in conflict zones were stranded without safe passage home, as their own government publicly maligned them for alleged fraud and corruption. Courts have blocked aspects of the federal purge of U.S.A.I.D., but it’s not clear if workers can be rehired and contracts restarted, or whether the damage is done. In January, 2022, Atul Gawande, a surgeon and leading public health expert who has written for The New Yorker since 1998, was sworn in as assistant administrator for global health at U.S.A.I.D. He resigned as the new administration came to power, and is watching in shock as Trump and Musk make U.S.A.I.D. a guinea pig for the government-wide purge now under way. U.S.A.I.D. was, he admits, a soft target for MAGA—helping people in faraway countries. Gawande calls U.S.A.I.D. “America at its best.” But with Trump and Musk, “there’s a different world view at play here,” he says. “Power is what matters, not impact.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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The “Cognitive Élite” Seize Washington 31:35

11 weeks ago31:35

31:35

The Washington Roundtable discusses the ideological underpinnings of Elon Musk’s DOGE with the former Democratic operative and San Francisco-based journalist Gil Duran. Duran writes about the so-called cognitive élite, the right-wing Silicon Valley technologists who want to use A.I. and cryptocurrency to unmake the federal government, on his newsletter The Nerd Reich . This week’s reading: “ The Most Powerful Crypto Bro in Washington Has Very Weird Beliefs ,” by Gil Duran (for The New Republic ) “ Uncertainty Is Trump’s Brand. But What if He Already Told Us Exactly What He’s Going to Do? ,” by Susan B. Glasser “ The Felling of the U.S. Forest Service ,” by Peter Slevin “ Trump Is Still Trying to Undermine Elections ,” by Sue Halpern “ Who Gets to Determine Greenland’s Future? ,” by Louise Bokkenheuser To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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Will Trump’s Tariffs Trigger a Recession? 36:50

11 weeks ago36:50

36:50

The staff writer John Cassidy joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the recent meltdown of the U.S. stock market, Donald Trump’s long-standing support for tariffs, and what the potential death of an American-dominated free-trade system could mean for the global economy. This week’s reading: “ Will Trumpian Uncertainty Knock the Economy Into a Recession? ,” by John Cassidy “ Who Gets to Determine Greenland’s Future? ,” by Louise Bokkenheuser “ What’s Next for Ukraine? ,” by Joshua Yaffa “ Canada, the Northern Outpost of Sanity ,” by Bill McKibben “ Can Americans Still Be Convinced That Principle Is Worth Fighting For? ,” by Jay Caspian Kang “ Donald Trump's A.I. Propaganda ,” by Kyle Chayka To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker , visit newyorker.com/podcasts . To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices…

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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How Bob Menendez Came By His Gold Bars 23:21

12 weeks ago23:21