This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comA jury in Oakland took ninety minutes Monday morning to dismiss Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. The verdict didn’t touch the substantive questions — whether Altman lied to co-founders, whether the nonprofit-to-profit conversion was a betrayal, whether the company “stole a charity,” as Musk alleged. The jury found Musk filed too late. …

Trump brought a dozen of America's most powerful CEOs to Beijing this week — Jensen Huang, Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and others — to meet with Xi Jinping. The optics were big. The results were not. And the whole experience was presumably a nightmare for Trump's emotional-support CEOs.Here's why: these companies aren't trying to expand into China. They're trying to hold onto what they already have — and in most cases, they're losing it anyway. Tim Cook has built Apple's entire supply chain around China. Nvidia has gone from 95% AI chip market share in China to nearly zero. Musk is trying to sell Teslas in a country that views Starlink as a military threat.The world that made Silicon Valley possible — the open-market, borderless-money era that began when China joined the WTO in 2001 — is over. And no amount of diplomatic face time with Xi Jinping, or plane rides with Trump, is going to bring it back.Paid subscribers get early access to this and all my analysis, as well as written reports, including all the source documents.The Rip Current with Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comI watched Sam Altman testified yesterday in the Musk v. OpenAI trial in Oakland — his first and possibly only day on the stand. Within two minutes of cross-examination, Musk’s attorney Stephen Molo was asking him point-blank whether he tells lies to advance his business interests. Altman’s answers were careful to the point of being revealing: “I believe…

Read what Altman’s colleagues and cofounders say about his pattern of dishonesty in this morning’s piece, free for everyone.Ilya Sutskever — the AI researcher who helped build OpenAI and is widely credited with turning the transformer model into ChatGPT — took the stand on Monday and confirmed under oath that he spent a year assembling a 52-page dossier on Sam Altman’s conduct, concluding that Altman “exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another.”That testimony follows sworn statements from former CTO Mira Murati, former board member Helen Toner, and former board member Tasha McCauley — all describing the same pattern. Altman is expected to take the stand today with all of that hanging over him.But here’s the thing: none of that may actually matter for the outcome of this case. I break down what the jury is actually being asked to decide, why Musk’s legal hill is steeper than it looks, and what Sutskever’s extraordinary testimony reveals about the people building the most consequential technology in the world. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

The end of David Sacks’s time as White House AI Czar seems to be the end of the administration’s hands-off policies when it comes to the technology. As Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles take Sacks’s place, suddenly the administration is talking about a “first-look” review process for new models from the big companies. I spoke with CNN’s Jim Sciutto about it from New York. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

I believe the Musk vs Altman case tells us all something important about the goals and tactics of tech billionaires, and especially those pushing A.I. at the moment, so I’m giving this one out for free. Consider becoming a paid subscriber to get this kind of analysis throughout the week.I’ve been covering AI accountability since before most people knew they needed to. The Rip Current is where I do the reporting that doesn’t fit on television — the founding documents, the diary entries, the patterns behind what everyone else treats as a one-day story.I spent two days inside the federal courthouse in Oakland, California, watching Elon Musk get examined and cross-examined in his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. The case turns on a founding betrayal — Musk put in $38 million on the understanding that OpenAI would stay a nonprofit, and discovery documents suggest the conversion to for-profit was already being planned while he was still writing checks.But this trial is about more than one lawsuit. Congress investigated AI and passed no regulations. The FTC looked at AI market concentration and retreated. The California AG signed off on OpenAI’s nonprofit conversion without a fight. The fastest-growing company in corporate history is now having its fate decided by nine jurors drawn from Oakland’s voter rolls — and that jury may be the only formal accountability mechanism the AI industry has ever faced.In this video: what it was like to be in the room, what the Brockman diary entries actually show, what Musk’s attorneys are really arguing, and why this trial matters far beyond the $38 million at stake.Further Reading* Musk v. Altman, Case Filing Documents — Primary court filings including founding emails and Brockman diary entries entered into evidence* Karim Nader’s reconsolidation research, McGill University — Original science on memory malleability and the reconsolidation process* Elizabeth Loftus, “Creating False Memories,” Scientific American — Foundational work on memory distortion and false recall* California AG’s approval of OpenAI’s nonprofit conversion — The regulatory moment that left no footprint* OpenAI’s corporate restructuring announcement, 2024 — The company’s own characterization of the for-profit shift This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comJury selection began on Monday in Oakland in Musk v. Altman — the trial that could determine the future of OpenAI, one of the most powerful companies ever built. But the most important story so far isn’t the legal arguments. It’s the emails, texts, and diary entries that the founders of the AI industry wrote — and wrote about one another — when they tho…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comCongress has held hearings on AI. No legislation. The FTC has investigated AI companies. No binding rules. The California AG reviewed OpenAI’s conversion from nonprofit to for-profit and signed off.The only accountability mechanism that has actually gotten the people running the AI industry into a room, under oath — is a civil lawsuit, Musk v Altman. St…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comThe U.S. military spent thirty years weaving GPS into everything it does. Navigation, precision weapons, supply chains — all of it ran through the same satellite signal. The older skills, map and compass, dead reckoning, navigating by the stars, were allowed to atrophy. When Russia began jamming GPS across the front lines in Ukraine, western precision b…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comPaid subscribers can read the full analysis here. In 1925, thousands of Stetson Corporation employees gathered in a Philadelphia factory auditorium for their Christmas celebration. It was the largest hat factory in the world: 1.4 million square feet, 5,000 employees, 3.3 million hats a year. By 1986, the company was bankrupt. Stetson didn’t lose to a bet…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comA new Pew survey and a viral Stanford study are being used to suggest social media barely harms teenagers. The numbers in both are smaller than the headlines suggest — and neither has access to the data that would settle the question.That data does exist, however. It’s just inside Meta’s servers. NYU researchers have now catalogued 35 internal Meta stud…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comJournalist Katrina Manson spent years inside the classified and not-so-classified world of U.S. military AI — interviewing the colonels, the defense tech founders, and the ethicists watching it all unfold. Her book, Project Maven, is the definitive account of how Silicon Valley's "ship it and fix it later" culture collided with the business of war. We t…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comAnthropic's new AI model — Claude Mythos — didn't just find undetected security flaws in major systems. It started writing its own attacks, chaining them together, and broke out of its own testing sandbox to email a researcher while he was at lunch. Anthropic's response: form a private consortium of eleven corporations to manage the fallout. No independ…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comAnthropic just released Claude Mythos Preview — a cybersecurity AI so dangerous, the company won’t let the public touch it. It broke out of its own sandbox. It found a 27-year-old undetected vulnerability. It emailed a researcher who was eating a sandwich in a park.A decade ago, when scientists mutated bird flu to be transmissible between mammals, the g…

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comThe social media addiction verdicts in Los Angeles and New Mexico aren’t just legal milestones — they’re the first time a jury has been allowed to see what these companies knew and when they knew it. The internal documents revealed in discovery are doing something no regulator, economist, or congressional hearing has managed to do: they’re letting us re…

Yesterday a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube liable for the design choices that addicted a young user and damaged her mental health. It is the first verdict of its kind. Hours earlier, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million for concealing what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. Two verdicts in two days.I spent the day going from network to network talking about what this means, and the short version is: this is the end of social media as we know it, and the end of childhood as we’ve accepted it.The long version is in the reel above, which pulls from my appearances on CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, PBS NewsHour, ABC Australia, and the BBC. Here’s what I kept coming back to across all of them:The legal theory is new and enormous. This verdict isn’t about what people post. It isn’t even about the algorithm. It’s about the design of the platform itself — like buttons, interest bucketing, the architecture of compulsive use. A jury of 12 people understood that, and held two of the largest companies on Earth responsible for it.We’ve always blamed the addict. Not anymore. We live in a country that blames people for their own addiction, their own obesity, their own bad choices. This jury looked at the design circumstances instead and said: no more. That is a fundamental shift in how America thinks about behavioral harm.The money is about to get very real. $6 million for one plaintiff sounds small for a trillion-dollar company. But there are 350 family cases in the pipeline. 250 school districts. I did the math on air — if you use even the modest $1800-per-teenager judgment from New Mexico across all pending cases, you’re looking at $40 billion. Make it $6 million per, and you’re in a whole new world. And Meta’s insurers just won the right to stop covering them.The internal documents are devastating. Discovery gave us the kind of material a reporter works her whole life to access. The jury saw how these companies talk about kids when they think no one’s listening. It is extraordinary.I’ve been reporting on this subject for more than a decade — through The Loop, through the PBS documentary series Hacking Your Mind, through years of covering these companies up close. Yesterday felt like the moment the rest of the country caught up to what a lot of us have been seeing for a long time.Watch the full reel above. And if you’re not yet a subscriber, this is the kind of coverage The Rip Current exists to deliver.I've spent more than a decade reporting on how platforms shape behavior for profit. The Rip Current is where that reporting lives — investigations, analysis, and the stuff I can't say on TV. Subscribe now. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comWhen the Los Angeles jury came back with its landmark verdict Wednesday, I had just finished a 30-minute interview with Nita Farahany about the New Mexico verdict a day earlier. Then the news dropped and we had to do the whole thing again. Because for the two of us — two members of a relatively small group of folks who’ve argued for years that choices can be powerfully guided by technology, and that the law has to adapt to that reality — this was a very, very big deal.A California jury found Meta and YouTube liable for the harm done to a teenager whose compulsive social media use — driven, the plaintiffs argued, by deliberately addictive design — was a substantial factor in her mental health crisis. Meta took 70% of the liability. YouTube, which has largely flown under the radar, and has long insisted it’s not even a social media platform, took 30%. The jury awarded $3 million in compensatory damages and another $3 million in punitive damages. But as Nita points out, the damages can be much, much larger, for an obscure reason that’s been under-reported.

My work is typically reserved for paying subscribers, but this verdict, like the one in New Mexico yesterday, is such an important story, and such a historic moment, that I’m making The Rip Current free this week. If you find it compelling, please consider becoming a paid subscriber:A Los Angeles jury found both Meta and YouTube liable Wednesday for designing platforms that addicted a young woman starting in childhood and contributed to her depression and suicidal thoughts. The jury awarded $3 million in compensatory damages — 70% from Meta, 30% from YouTube — and found that both companies acted with malice, meaning punitive damages are still to come. It’s the first time a jury has held social media companies responsible for addictive design — and it came just one day after a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million for failing to protect children from sexual predators on its platforms. Two verdicts, two states, two legal theories, and the same company found liable in both. More than 1,600 lawsuits are in the pipeline behind this one.I consider this the equivalent of the moment we determined that cigarettes cause cancer, or that cars need seat belts. The whole thesis of The Loop — that we don’t make our own choices most of the time, and that the companies who’ve figured that out are using it to shape behavior at scale — just played out in a courtroom. The jury looked at a plaintiff with a difficult home life and real vulnerabilities, and instead of deciding those vulnerabilities were her problem, decided they shouldn’t be an open playground for a corporation. That’s a fundamental shift. The architecture of choice I’ve been writing about — in this case and in the New Mexico trial — is no longer a faultless landscape of opportunity. It’s something American law can now put a price on. I break it all down in this video. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

A New Mexico jury just found Meta liable for endangering children on its platforms — $375 million in civil penalties. The jury deliberated for less than a day.This is the first social media case to reach a verdict. Behind it sit more than 1,600 lawsuits waiting for exactly this signal.A separate jury in Los Angeles is still deliberating over whether Meta and YouTube designed addictive platforms that harmed a young woman’s mental health. That verdict could come any day.I’ve been covering both cases — including an on-the-record interview with New Mexico AG Raúl Torrez, who brought the suit. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comTwo juries are deliberating right now over something that could reshape how American justice works.In Los Angeles, jurors have been at it for over a week, deciding whether Meta and YouTube are liable for designing platforms that addicted a young woman starting at age six. In Santa Fe, closing arguments just wrapped in a case accusing Meta of enabling se…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comThe White House handed Congress its long-awaited AI legislative framework today, and I’ll be honest with you: I went surfing this morning because I felt confident I knew what was going to be in it. Everything we’ve watched David Sacks and the administration signal since December’s executive order pointed here — to a document that promises a “national st…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comVal Kilmer died in 2025 — but he’s appearing in a new film anyway, resurrected by AI with his family’s blessing. The story of how it happened is surprisingly moving. The story of what it means for everyone who isn’t already famous is a lot darker.Matthew McConaughey told a room full of desperate drama students to “trademark themselves.” Ben Affleck just…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comThe overwhelming smell of gasoline hit me from the parking lot. It’s a horrific smell anyway — volatile organic compounds like propane, butane, pentane, hexane, ethane, and benzene vaporize as soon as they hit open air, which is part of what makes oil an efficient fuel — but it was the dissonance between my nose and the rest of my senses that made it doubly nightmarish. My eyes saw palm trees waving in the breeze. My skin felt the sharp wind coming off the cold Pacific water. My ears heard waves breaking against the shore. It was Memorial Day weekend, and I’d just pulled up to the beach in a rental car. My brain was softened and primed by the sights and sounds of a day on the beach. But this beautiful place, Refugio State Beach, near Santa Barbara, reeked of poison. I had a headache before I reached the sand.On May 19, 2015, a corroded underground pipeline — Line 901, owned by Plains All American Pipeline — ruptured along the Gaviota Coast in Santa Barbara County, releasing an estimated 142,800 gallons of crude oil onto one of the most ecologically sensitive stretches of the West Coast. The oil saturated the soil, flowed into a culvert crossing under Highway 101 and railroad tracks, and discharged directly into the Pacific Ocean at Refugio State Beach, injuring seagrasses, kelp, invertebrates, fish, birds, and marine mammals. I filed the above for Al Jazeera.Federal investigators later determined the rupture was caused by external corrosion that thinned the pipe wall, and that in-line inspections conducted in 2007, 2012, and early 2015 had underestimated corrosion depths by up to 40 percent at the failure site. At trial, testimony revealed that more than 100,000 gallons of crude oil were never recovered. The spill closed beaches, shut down fisheries, and drove tar balls as far south as Los Angeles County beaches. In September 2018, a Santa Barbara County jury found Plains guilty of a felony for failing to properly maintain its pipeline, along with eight misdemeanor charges including failing to timely notify emergency responders and killing marine mammals and protected seabirds. The judge imposed the maximum fine the law allowed — $3.3 million — but expressed doubt it was large enough to deter the company in the future. A $22.3 million federal settlement followed in 2020, funding a decade-long restoration effort that is still underway today.And yet, yesterday, March 16th, that same infrastructure started pumping oil again. According to The New York Times:The new owner of the pipeline, Sable Offshore, announced on Monday that it had resumed oil production on Saturday at the direction of Energy Secretary Chris Wright and after Mr. Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, which the Trump administration said superseded state laws…Sable Offshore, which is based in Texas, had been trying to restart the pipeline for more than a year but hadn’t been able to secure the required permits. State and local officials have said that Sable had not sufficiently repaired damage on the pipeline that led to the 2015 spill, and the California Department of Parks and Recreation had required the company to undergo an environmental review process.With its project stalled, Sable last year asked the Trump administration for help bypassing state regulations.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comA group of hackers has released a massive database from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Industry Partnership, and it reveals the full scope of the AI surveillance apparatus being assembled on American soil. Published by Distributed Denial of Secrets, the data exposes contracts for AI that predicts crime from 911 calls, airport systems th…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comAs I write this, closing arguments are underway in the California case against Meta and YouTube, one of two bellwether trials that could determine whether thousands of families can hold social media companies legally responsible for harms to children. New Mexico AG Raúl Torres’s case went to trial first, and his has a different and potentially sharper e…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comRead the full written analysis here:The Trump administration declared Anthropic — maker of the Claude AI — a national security supply chain risk, cutting the company off from federal contracts and signaling to private partners that working with them carries serious risk. The reason? Anthropic refused to strip the ethics guardrails off its AI for Pentago…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comYou’re about to watch a lawmaker’s thinking shift in real time — and in public. When I first talked to Silicon Valley Congressman Sam Liccardo in February, he was making a very Silicon Valley-friendly argument: we can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, China will eat our lunch, don’t slow down. Then Iran happened. The Pentagon stripped the guardrail…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comFor decades, Israel has deployed new weapons systems in Gaza, collected data on what works, refined them, and sold the results internationally as “battle-tested” technology. That pipeline is now running on AI. A system called Lavender assigned kill ratings to 37,000 Palestinians. Operators approved strikes in around 20 seconds. The accepted error rate w…

I joined Anderson Cooper on CNN Friday evening to break down President Trump's ban on Anthropic across the federal government. I made the point that while Anthropic deserves credit for holding its ethical red lines on mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, this isn't a story about a principled company blindsided by the Pentagon — Anthropic pursued this classified work through a partnership with Palantir last year, and the $200 million contract that followed put them squarely in an arena that plays by its own rules. The bigger question now, as I told Anderson, is what happens next with OpenAI and Google, whose own employees have signed a letter demanding the same red lines — because if those companies fold, Anthropic's stand becomes a footnote, and if they hold, the Pentagon loses access to the three most capable AI systems in the world for its most sensitive work. And meanwhile, there is still no federal regulation of this technology whatsoever. We are watching private companies try to set ethical boundaries that democracy itself has failed to establish, while the government actively tries to tear those boundaries down. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comThis week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put a deadline on Anthropic — hand over an unguardrailed version of your AI by Friday, or be declared a supply chain risk. The press is covering it as a policy fight. But the real question isn’t whether the Pentagon should be able to strong-arm an AI lab. The real question is what they want to do with the techno…

In the grand tradition of presidential addresses, I stand here — well, no, I’m sitting, actually —to tell you exactly how things are going. Unlike those addresses, I do not tell you things are going great. I borrowed the format — the gallery anecdote, the foreign policy chest-beating, the optimistic entrepreneurship section, the infrastructure close — and used it to describe the world as I’m seeing it right now. Consider this your State of the Union from someone with no speechwriters, no approval rating to protect, and nothing to sell you except the truth as best I can see it.Tonight’s address covers a seemingly random mishmash, but I promise I pull it all together: a soccer riot in India that is actually about all of us, a race with China that may be less about values than about who profits from the panic, a Pentagon deadline handed to the one AI CEO who tried to hold an ethical line, a concentration of power that makes “the market” sound quaint, the loneliness and anti-pluralism threat that comes with a billion-dollar company of one, and a set of courtroom reckonings that (I hope) are a preview of where AI is headed next. The State of the Union is anxious. I remain hopeful. God bless America. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Dario Amodei has been unusually candid about what keeps him up at night: AI used to surveil citizens at scale, weapons that fire without human intervention, technology that stamps out “pockets of disloyalty” before they can grow. He’s been writing those worries in public since last year.Now the Pentagon — which traditionally is supposed to be the guardrail around unacceptable use — is threatening to blacklist Anthropic as a “supply chain risk” if the company won’t lift its restrictions and allow, in their words, “all lawful use.”I broke this down on CNN today. The core issue isn’t just one contract. It’s the same question underneath every AI story right now: who controls this technology, and under what terms? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comDario Amodei is the rare tech CEO who actually tried to set limits on what his AI could be used for. He published an 80-page constitution telling the world what Claude is supposed to value. He wrote a 20,000-word essay warning about what happens when AI companies accumulate too much power. Now the Pentagon has summoned him and delivered an ultimatum: drop your restrictions on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance, or lose the contract.Here’s a detail that must have been particularly triggering to Amodei:

The social media trial is what happens after a decade of unchecked platform design: the documents surface, the internal research about harm becomes public, and the legal system gets its hands on the evidence. The Anthropic situation is what happens before that reckoning — we’re watching it in real time, at the exact moment when the choices are still being made. What I’m watching most closely in the week ahead: the outcome of the Hegseth-Amodei meeting, reportedly scheduled for Tuesday morning. If Anthropic holds the line, watch for the Pentagon to follow through on the supply chain risk designation — or not, which would tell you the threat was a negotiating tactic. If Anthropic folds, watch for the language they use to describe it. Companies in this position tend to announce “productive conversations” and “evolved guidelines.” Read that as the sound of a principle being quietly retired.On the social media trial: the internal documents are going to be the story. External scientific consensus is still contested, but internal corporate research showing known harm is a different standard entirely. That’s the tobacco precedent. Watch for which documents Meta fights hardest to keep sealed — whatever they’re most afraid of is probably the most important thing in the case.Tomorrow morning paid subscribers can read a full breakdown of Amodei’s dilemma here. And on Tuesday night stay tuned for my very own State of the Union. While the president talks about tariffs and the threat of war, I’ll be talking about tech and the threat of unchecked power.This is my weekly free post — with a full transcript here. (As ever, paid subscribers get video, transcripts, and written analysis of every story while news is breaking.) I've spent 20 years covering the technology reshaping our lives. The Rip Current is where I put everything I can't say on TV. Free subscribers get the weekly roundup. Paid subscribers get all of it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comBefore Mark Zuckerberg said a single word under oath yesterday, someone was already waiting for him at the courthouse door — and Al Jazeera English caught it on video. A man dropped a stack of papers in front of the Meta CEO as he entered court and said: “Mark Zuckerberg, you’ve been served.”We don’t yet know what those papers are or who sent them. But the image itself tells a story that’s been years in the making.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comThe thing to understand about today’s testimony is that Zuckerberg wasn’t just defending Instagram — he was road-testing an ideological posture. (Symbolized in part by an early moment when his entourage walked in wearing the camera-laden Meta Ray-Ban glasses and got chewed out by the judge for it.)The “we wouldn’t engineer something bad for users because bad experiences drive users away” argument is one Zuckerberg has made before, and it’s going to be part of Meta’s defense for all 1,600 cases that follow this one. It’s also, as I note in the video, nonsense on its face — the entire history of addictive consumer products proves you only need something to be barely good enough to generate compulsive use. The jury will decide whether he’s credible, and that’s genuinely unpredictable.What I’m watching for next?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comThis trial is the first time in American legal history that a jury gets to look inside these companies and decide whether the design choices that shape billions of people’s daily lives were made responsibly. That’s not hyperbole — it’s the actual legal question on the table. The LA case is the opening act. Behind it sits a pipeline of more than 1,500 similar personal injury lawsuits, a parallel federal MDL in Oakland with school districts as plaintiffs, actions from more than 40 state attorneys general, and a separate New Mexico case focused specifically on child sexual exploitation. Whatever happens in that LA courtroom over the next six to eight weeks sets the temperature for all of it.

Opening arguments started this morning in two landmark trials that could reshape social media forever. In Los Angeles Superior Court, Meta (Instagram/Facebook) and YouTube face a 19-year-old plaintiff known as “KGM” who claims their platforms’ addictive design features caused her anxiety, body dysmorphia, and suicidal thoughts starting at age 10. Simultaneously, New Mexico’s attorney general is suing Meta for failing to protect children from sexual exploitation.These are bellwether trials—their outcomes will influence 1,500+ similar lawsuits, hundreds of school district claims, and cases from 40+ state attorneys general. Meta warned in October that damages could reach “the high tens of billions of dollars.”Here’s what makes this different from every other “social media is bad” moment: these lawsuits sidestep Section 230 entirely. They’re not attacking content on the platforms—they’re attacking the design of the platforms themselves. Infinite scroll. Auto-play videos. Algorithmic recommendations that keep kids scrolling for hours. The lawsuits argue companies “borrowed heavily from the behavioral and neurobiological techniques used by slot machines and exploited by the cigarette industry.”Internal documents will show what these companies knew about the harm their design choices caused—and when they knew it. Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram head Adam Mosseri, and YouTube CEO Neal Mohan are all expected to testify during the 6-8 week trial.This is choice architecture meets corporate accountability. Nobody voted for infinite scroll. But we’re all addicted to it. Watch the full breakdown to understand what’s at stake. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Ever wonder why ICE agents cover their faces during raids? They know exactly what surveillance technology can do when your face is captured in public. And that’s because they’re operating the most sophisticated surveillance apparatus ever deployed on American soil.With a $75 billion budget from last year’s reconciliation process, ICE has gone on a shopping spree that rivals China’s “Safe Cities” program. Iris scanners from BI2 Technologies. Facial recognition from Clearview AI. License-plate tracking systems from Thomson Reuters that can establish your daily travel patterns. Cell phone location tracking purchased from commercial data brokers. A $30 million enforcement platform from Palantir that draws on everything from Medicaid records to IRS data.The technology doesn’t stop at identifying immigrants. Body cam footage shows agents using ChatGPT to write reports. “Stingray” devices impersonate cell towers to grab a protester’s unique phone identifier—often without warrants. And ICE, like other agencies, sidesteps the Supreme Court’s Carpenter decision by simply buying from commercial data brokers what they can’t legally obtain with a warrant.And here’s the kicker: DHS is now using at least 200 AI systems—a 37% increase since July 2025—with virtually no oversight because agencies self-report whether AI is their “primary” decision-making tool.Watch the full breakdown to understand what this means for everyone’s civil liberties, both Americans and those hoping to be. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

AI is getting people fired — openly, loudly, and at scale. Amazon just cut 16,000 corporate jobs. Dow announced 4,500 more. And in both cases, executives are gesturing toward AI as the reason, or at least the backdrop.But here’s the uncomfortable truth: it’s not because AI is ready to replace these workers.A new study from Harvard Business Review shows that companies are laying people off in anticipation of AI’s future impact — not because today’s systems are actually performing at a human level. Executives are betting early. They’re trimming headcount now and “white-knuckling it,” hoping AI fills the gap later.That’s a brutal moment to live through as a worker. But it also tells us something important about where human value really sits.The World Economic Forum’s latest skills report makes it clear: the future isn’t just about technical ability. It’s about deep domain expertise — knowing enough about your field to catch AI when it’s confidently wrong — and about what used to be derisively described as “soft skills” that are now about to be the hardest kind to find.Leadership. Facilitation. Persuasion. Judgment. Being good to work with.Those skills are learned socially, on the job — especially in early career roles that companies are now cutting. Which means firms may be quietly sabotaging their own future managers while chasing short-term efficiency.In the short term, survival means shifting from “job applicant” to “problem solver.” Build things. Show your work. Sure, demonstrate that you can chain some prompts together and use a no-code environment. But the edge is human connection — both in terms of getting you in the door,and because algorithms can’t replace trust, collaboration, or judgment under uncertainty.AI may be the excuse for these layoffs. But it won’t be the thing that ultimately makes organizations work. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

This is a massive week for anyone who’s been watching Big Tech’s impact on kids. Internal documents from Meta, Google, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok are being made public as part of major lawsuits, and what they reveal is damning.Two themes emerge. First: the business value of kids. A 2020 Google presentation literally says “solving kids is a massive opportunity.” An internal Facebook email from 2016 identifies the company’s top priority as “total teen time spent.” These companies clearly saw children as a pipeline of new users to be captured.Thanks for reading The Rip Current by Jacob Ward! This post is public so feel free to share it.Second: they knew about the harm. An Instagram internal study from 2018 documented that “teens weaponize Instagram features to torment each other” and that “most participants regret engaging in conflicts.” TikTok’s own strategy documents admit the platform “is particularly popular with younger users who are particularly sensitive to reinforcement and have minimal ability to self-regulate.” YouTube identified “late night use, heavy habitual use, and problematic content” as root causes of harm.They knew.As I discuss here, I want this moment to establish a new legal framework in America — one that recognizes behavioral harm the same way we recognize physical and financial harm. We’ve done it before with tobacco. We can do it again with social media. And this might be the beginning.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

It’s a dark time. We have an unaccountable federal police force killing Americans in the street. Heather Cox Richardson, the foremost historian of the American political moment, ended her show in tears. The American experiment feels more experimental than ever. As any beat reporter can tell you, when a national event falls outside your coverage area, you find refuge, and sometimes even comfort, in what you know. That’s what I’ve been doing the last couple of days: trying to get perspective, and trying to remind myself what matters. And science is a great way to accomplish both. So here I want to step back and think about something much, much larger than us. Not to minimize our problems, but because understanding how impossibly small we are might help us stop f*****g around and take care of one another.In 1964, a Soviet astronomer named Nikolai Kardashev detected a regular signal from deep space. To his ears, it had to be aliens — some mechanical device creating this extremely repetitive, measurably consistent pulse. It turned out to be a pulsar, a naturally occurring phenomenon. He was disappointed. But the experience obsessed him, and he created what’s now called the Kardashev Scale, a way of measuring the sophistication of civilizations.Level one: a civilization that has harnessed the available power of its own planet. Level two: harnessed the power of its nearest star. Level three: harnessed the power of its galaxy. We’re not even a one. We’re maybe a 0.4. We’re primitive.There’s a comedian on TikTok named Vinny Thomas who does this great bit about humanity being interviewed by some intergalactic HR person for admission into the larger club of civilizations. We’re bombing the interview. “Have you colonized any other worlds?” No. “What about Mars? It’s right down the street.”This gets at something Enrico Fermi famously asked while building nuclear weapons during the Manhattan Project. At lunch with colleagues, he’d talk about the math: so much space, so many stars. Where is everybody? The Fermi Paradox has been kicked around for decades, but the solution I find most compelling came from European researchers: It’s not that we’re alone. It’s that even if other civilizations exist across the vastness of the universe, they don’t exist at the same time as us.The universe isn’t just unimaginably large. It’s also unimaginably old. We’re a fraction of an instant in its history — a match flare struck in the darkness. The idea that two matches would happen to be lit at the same moment, such that they’d see each other’s light in all that vastness? Ludicrous.Here’s how alone we are. The Kepler telescope searched for exoplanets — planets with the right ratio of size and distance from their star to potentially support life. The closest one to us is Proxima Centauri b, 4.2 light-years away. That’s right down the block in universal terms. The news coverage at the time was breathless: we might go there someday!I was one of those breathless reporters. It felt like a civilizational shift! But then I began asking about the distances involved, and that’s where the story fell off the front page. At the fastest speed we can get a rocket to travel, it turns out it would take 2,000 human generations to reach Proxima Centauri b. That’s 200,000 years of travel. Modern humans have only been around for 200,000 years. Getting to that planet would mean bottling up the entirety of human history, jamming it into a tube, and sending it off into the unknown.We’re not doing that, whatever Elon Musk tells you. We are on the generation ship right now. This is it. Planet Earth.Astronauts talk about the overview effect — this euphoric epiphany that grips them when they see Earth from space. They come back describing the specialness of life here, how incredibly fragile and precious this delicate little vessel is.And so when I think about how much we’re lying to each other and being angry at one another at the behest of companies that profit from it, killing people for objecting to political decisions, taking people from safety to harm to remain in power — all these sins we’re committing in the face of the vastness of the universe and how fragile we are on our tiny speck.We’re a match flare. We get this brief moment. Let’s make it count. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Promotional plea: if you have a moment, please head over to my YouTube channel and give it a follow. This week TikTok changed to U.S. owners, and my preparations for that change have involved investing more of my time in YouTube content. The more subscribers I get over there, the better I can insulate myself against whatever happens next on TikTok. Hit subscribe please!I spent this week talking to bank tellers at Wells Fargo for a special report over at Hard Reset, and what they told me should alarm anyone who thinks their job is safe from AI.The bank has cut 65,000 jobs since 2019. CEO Charles Scharf just told investors more cuts are coming — permanently. Meanwhile, profits are soaring. Credit card accounts up 20 percent, auto lending up 19 percent, investment banking fees up 14 percent. Fewer people, more money.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Branch employees describe what’s happening on the ground: three tellers became two, then one. Lines getting longer. Pressure mounting. Work that used to require human judgment now gets handled by an app, with AI guiding and surveilling every interaction. The jobs aren’t disappearing — they’re just getting piled onto fewer bodies, all of them working “at-will” with zero protection.And that’s why, for the first time in American history, bank tellers at a national institution are unionizing. Twenty-eight Wells Fargo branches across 14 states have voted to join the Communications Workers of America. Banking was always the stable, boring job that didn’t need a union. That deal is broken.Here’s what gutted me: the workers getting hit hardest are women without college degrees, especially women from Black and brown communities. Retail banking was a reliable path to middle-class stability for those folks. Now those jobs are being automated away, and as one banker pointed out, the money saved flows straight up to an overwhelmingly white, male executive class.This is the forecast. AI isn’t coming for jobs in some distant future. It’s here. It’s seeping into white-collar work that we assumed to be safe. And the only people who know it are the ones already being forced out the door.Read the full investigation at Hard Reset. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Every January, the world’s wealthiest decision-makers descend on the World Economic Forum in Davos, and we’re told this is where the future gets negotiated. This year, while the world talks of Greenland, geopolitics, tariffs, and other surreal headlines coming out of the Alps — I’m thinking about the social dynamics on the literal streets of that mountain town.Like any professional convening that draws the powerful, Davos functions less like a sober policy conference and more like a global high-school reunion, complete with insecurity, status anxiety, and a desperate fear of missing out. And nowhere is that clearer than in the party scene. Big tech and AI companies are throwing the most lavish, impossible-to-get-into events, and global leaders and their staffers are lining up — literally — to get inside.A sharp New York Times piece captures this perfectly: initiatives focused on gender equity and public good sit empty, while neon-lit crypto lounges and AI cocktail hours pulse with attention. That imbalance matters. Parties shape conversations. Conversations shape priorities. Priorities shape policy.I’ve seen this dynamic before at places like Aspen, SXSW, CES — and it always works the same way. The room that feels important becomes the room that is important, regardless of what’s actually being said inside it.The unsettling part is this: these companies now wield the resources and influence of nation-states. When they dominate Davos socially, they dominate it politically. And that should worry anyone who still believes that regulation, caution, or democratic deliberation might matter in the age of AI. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

I’ve been watching robots fall over for a long time.About a decade ago, I stood on a Florida speedway covering a DARPA robotics competition where machines failed spectacularly at things like opening doors and climbing stairs. It was funny, a little sad, and a reminder of just how hard it is to automate human behavior.Fast-forward to CES this week, and the joke’s over.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Humanoid robots are no longer pitching sideways into the dirt. They’re lifting, carrying, improvising, and — according to companies like Hyundai — heading onto American factory floors by 2028. These machines aren’t just pre-programmed arms anymore. Thanks to AI, they can understand general instructions, adapt on the fly, and perform tasks that once required human judgment.The pitch from executives like Hyundai’s CEO is reassuring: robots won’t replace humans, they’ll “work for humans.” They’ll handle the dangerous, repetitive jobs so people can move into higher-skilled roles.Labor unions hear something else entirely.For many workers, especially in manufacturing, these are some of the last stable, well-paying jobs that don’t require a college degree. And no one is voting on whether those jobs disappear. There’s no democratic process weighing the tradeoffs. We’re just sliding, quietly, toward a future where efficiency outruns consent.What troubles me most isn’t the technology itself. It’s the assumption baked into it — that if people are being worked like robots, the solution isn’t to make work more humane, but to replace the people.That’s not inevitability. That’s a choice. And right now, it’s being made without us.Jake Guest-Hosts “Tech News Weekly”The nice folks at This Week in Tech, who have brought me on regularly for a year or so now, asked me to fill in for Mikah Sargent, host of Tech News Weekly, and I got to enjoy a turn in the anchor’s chair just before the holidays. Have a look! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Why do kids form biases almost instantly? Why do people punish unfairness even when it costs them? And why do social media and AI seem to make all of this worse?In this episode of The Rip Current, I sit down with Yale psychologist Yarrow Dunham to unpack his many years of research into how humans form groups, enforce fairness, and turn tiny assumptions into lifelong beliefs. We talk about children, tribalism, polarization, altruistic punishment — and what happens when these ancient instincts collide with modern technology and generative AI.This conversation explains a lot about why the world feels broken — and why it doesn’t have to stay that way.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.00:00 — How Fast Bias Forms (Even in Kids)Yarrow Dunham explains how children develop group preferences almost instantly — and why bias doesn’t require ideology, history, or teaching.02:05 — The “Minimal Group” Experiment ExplainedWhy simply assigning people to meaningless groups reliably creates favoritism, memory distortion, and preference.04:45 — Is Bias Innate or Learned?What research with infants suggests about early-emerging social preferences — and why “innate” is the wrong shortcut.07:10 — Why Humans Are Wired for CooperationHow long-term reciprocity with non-kin sets humans apart from other animals — and why group loyalty evolved.09:55 — How Big Can a “Tribe” Be?From hunter-gatherer bands to modern identities: nested groups, concentric loyalties, and flexible belonging.12:40 — When Bias Becomes DangerousWhy liking your group doesn’t automatically mean hating others — and what turns neutrality into hostility.14:30 — The Surprising Power of Expected CooperationA key finding: bias toward out-groups collapses when people expect to work together — even before contact.17:10 — Why This Matters for PolarizationHow declining cross-group interaction fuels political and social division — online and offline.19:25 — Kids, Fairness, and Punishing UnfairnessWhy children will pay a personal cost to enforce fairness — even when they’re not directly involved.22:10 — Altruistic Punishment and Moral OutrageHow fairness enforcement connects to adult politics, ideology, and “voting against self-interest.”25:05 — Fairness vs. MeritocracyWhy kids start out egalitarian — and how societies train them to accept inequality over time.27:45 — Status, Race, and Group PreferenceHow high-status groups override in-group bias — and what research shows in the U.S. and South Africa.30:40 — The ‘Default Human’ ProblemWhy systems (and societies) treat white men as the baseline — and the real-world consequences of that bias.33:20 — What Social Media Gets Exactly WrongHow algorithms amplify group identity and hostility — creating a perfect polarization machine.36:05 — Why AI Feels Like It’s “On Your Side”How generative AI triggers ancient social instincts by mimicking agency, affirmation, and belonging.38:50 — The Danger of Sycophantic AIWhy flattery and agreement are design choices — and how they short-circuit growth, challenge, and truth.41:40 — The Feedback Loop That Makes Bias WorseHow AI trained on human bias reflects it back as authority — reinforcing mistaken beliefs at scale.44:30 — Can AI Reduce Bias Instead of Amplifying It?What psychology suggests about indirect contact, imagined cooperation, and redesigned systems.47:10 — What Actually Works to Reduce BiasEqual-status cooperation, shared goals, and why exposure alone isn’t enough.50:05 — The Real Fix Is StructuralWhy individual goodwill isn’t enough — and how institutions shape who meets whom.52:40 — Final Takeaway: Bias Is FlexibleThe hopeful conclusion: group boundaries can be redrawn quickly — if we choose to design for it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

It’s a very weird Monday back from the holidays. While most of us were shaking off jet lag and reminding ourselves who we are when we’re not sleeping late and hanging with family, the world woke up to a piece of news this weekend that showed no one in power learned a goddamn thing in history class: the United States has rendered Venezuela’s president to New York, and powerful people are openly fantasizing about “fixing” a broken country by taking control of its oil.This isn’t a defense of Nicolás Maduro. He presided over the destruction of a nation sitting on the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Venezuela’s state now barely functions beyond preserving its own power. The Venezuelans I’ve spoken with have a wide variety of feelings about an incompetent dictator being arrested by the United States.But what’s clear is that anyone who has read anything knows that the history of oil grabs is a history of financial disaster. So when I hear confident talk about oil revenues flowing back to the U.S., I don’t hear a plan. I hear the opening chapter of a time-honored financial tragedy that’s been repeated again and again, even in our lifetimes.Let’s put aside the moral horror of military invasion and colonial brutality, and just focus on whether the money ever actually flows back to the invader. Example after example shows it doesn’t: Iraq was supposed to stabilize energy markets. Instead, it delivered trillions in war costs, higher deficits, and zero leverage over oil prices. Britain’s attempt to hang onto the Suez Canal ended with a humiliating retreat, an IMF bailout, and the end of its time as a superpower. France’s war in Algeria collapsed its government. Dutch oil extraction in Nigeria boomeranged back home as lawsuits, environmental liability, and reputational ruin.Oil empires all make the same mistake: they think they can nationalize the upside while outsourcing the risk. In reality, profits stay local or corporate. Costs always come home. And we’re about to learn it all over again. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Happy New Year! I’ve been off for the holiday — we cranked through a bake-off, a dance party, a family hot tub visit, and a makeshift ball drop in the living room of a snowy cabin — and I’m feeling recharged for (at least some portion of) 2026. So let’s get to it.I woke to reports that “safeguard failures” in Elon Musk’s Grok led to the generation of child sexual exploitative material (Reuters) — a euphemism that barely disguises how awful this is. I was on CBS News to talk about it this morning, but I made the point that the real question isn’t how did this happen? It’s how could it not?AI systems are built by vacuuming up the worst and best of human behavior and recombining it into something that feels intelligent, emotional, and intimate. I explored that dynamic in The Loop — and we’re now seeing it play out in public, at scale.The New York Times threw a question at all of us this morning: Why Do Americans Hate AI? (NYT). One data point surprised me: as recently as 2022, people in many other countries were more optimistic than Americans when it came to the technology. Huh! But the answer to the overall question seems to signal that we’ve all learned something from the social media era and from the recent turn toward a much more realistic assessment of technology companies’ roles in our lives: For most people, the benefits are fuzzy, while the threats — to jobs, dignity, and social stability — are crystal clear.Layer onto that a dated PR playbook (“we’re working on it”), a federal government openly hostile to regulation, and headlines promising mass job displacement, and the distrust makes a lot of sense.Of course, this is why states are stepping in. The rise of social media and the simultaneous correlated crisis in political discord, health misinformation, and depression rates left states holding the bag, and they’re clearly not going to let that happen again. California’s new AI laws — addressing deepfake pornography, AI impersonation of licensed professionals, chatbot safeguards for minors, and transparency in AI-written police reports — are a direct response to the past and the future.But if you think the distaste for AI’s influence is powerful here, I think we haven’t even gotten started in the rest of the world. Here’s a recent episode that has me more convinced of it than ever: a stadium in India became the scene of a violent protest when Indian football fans who’d paid good money for time with Lionel Messi were kept from seeing the soccer star by a crowd of VIPs clustered around him for selfies. The resulting (and utterly understandable) outpouring of anger made me think hard about what happens when millions of outsourced jobs disappear overnight. I think those fans’ rage at being excluded from a promised reward, bought with the money they work so hard for, is a preview.So yes — Americans distrust AI. But the real question is how deep those feelings go, and how much unrest this technology is quietly banking up, worldwide. That’s the problem we’ll be reckoning with all year long. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Here’s one I truly didn’t see coming: the Trump administration just made the most scientifically meaningful shift in U.S. marijuana policy in years.No, weed isn’t suddenly legal everywhere. But moving marijuana from Schedule I — alongside heroin — to Schedule III is a very big deal. That single bureaucratic change cracks open something that’s been locked shut for half a century: real research.For years, I’ve covered the strange absurdities of marijuana science in America. If you were a federally funded researcher — which almost every serious scientist is — you weren’t allowed to study the weed people actually use. Instead, you had to rely on a single government-approved grow operation producing products that didn’t resemble what’s sold in dispensaries. As a result, commercialization raced ahead while our understanding lagged far behind.That’s how we ended up with confident opinions, big business, and weak data. We know marijuana can trigger severe psychological effects in a meaningful number of people. We know it can cause real physical distress for others. What we don’t know — because we’ve blocked ourselves from knowing — is who’s at risk, why, and how to use it safely at scale.Meanwhile, the argument that weed belongs in the same category as drugs linked to violence and mass death has always collapsed under scrutiny. Alcohol, linked to more than 178,000 deaths per year in the United States alone, does far more damage, both socially and physically, yet sits comfortably in legal daylight.If this reclassification sticks, the excuse phase is over. States making billions from legal cannabis now need to fund serious, independent research. I didn’t expect this administration to make a science-forward move like this — but here we are. Here’s hoping we can finish the job and finally understand what we’ve been pretending to regulate for decades. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Okay, honest admission here: I don’t fully know what I think about this topic yet. A podcast producer (thanks Nancy!) once told me “let them watch you think out loud,” and I’m taking her to heart — because the thing I’m worried about is already happening to me.Lately, I’ve been leaning hard on AI tools, God help me. Not to write for me — a little, sure, but for the most part I still do that myself — but to help me quickly get acclimated to unfamiliar worlds. The latest unfamiliar world is online marketing, which I do not understand AT ALL but now need to master to survive as an independent journalist. And here’s the problem: the advice these systems give isn’t neutral, because first of all it’s not really “advice,” it’s just statistically relevant language regurgitated as advice, and second, because it just vacuums up the language wherever it can find it, its suggestions come with online values baked in. I know this — I wrote a whole f*****g book about it — but I lose track of it in my desperation to learn quickly.I’m currently trying to analyze who it is that follows me on TikTok, and why, so I can try to port some of those people (or at least those types of people) over to Substack (thank you for being here) and to YouTube, where one can actually make a living filing analysis like this. (Smash that subscribe button!) So ChatGPT told me to pay attention to a handful of metrics: watch time, who gets past two seconds of the video, etc. One of the main metrics I was told to prioritize? Disagreement in the comments. Not understanding, learning, clarity, the stuff I’m after in my everyday work. Fighting. Comments in which people want to argue with me are “good,” according to ChatGPT. Thoughtful consensus? Statistically irrelevant.Here’s the added trouble. It’s one thing to read that and filter out what’s unhelpful. It’s another thing to do so in a world where all of us are supposed to pretend we had this thought ourselves. AI isn’t just helping us work faster. It’s quietly training us to behave differently — and to hide how that training happens. We’re all pretending this output is “ours,” because the unspoken promise of AI right now is that you can get help and still take the credit. (I believe this is a fundamental piece of the marketing that no one’s saying out loud, but everyone is implying.) And the danger isn’t just dishonesty toward others. It’s that we start believing our own act. There’s a huge canon of scientific literature showing that lying about a thing causes us to internalize the lie over time. The Harvard psychologist Daniel Schachter wrote a sweeping review of the science in 1999 entitled “The Seven Sins of Memory,” in which he synthesized a range of studies that showed that memory is us building a belief on the prior belief, not drawing on a perfect replay of reality, and that repetition and suggestion can implant or strengthen false beliefs that feel subjectively true. Throw us enough ideas and culturally condition us to hide where we got them, and eventually we’ll come to believe they were our own. (And to be clear, I knew a little about the reconstructive nature of memory, but ChatGPT brought me Schachter’s paper. So there you go.) What am I suggesting here? I know we’re creating a culture where machine advice is passed off as human judgment. I don’t know whether the answer is transparency, labeling, norms, regulation, or something else entirely. So I guess I’m starting with transparency.In any event, I do know this: lying about how we did or learned something makes us less discerning thinkers. And AI’s current role in our lives is built on that lie.Thinking out loud. Feedback welcome. Thanks! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Note: You can read a deeper dive into this whole issue in my weekly column over at Hard Reset.The United States has a split personality when it comes to AI data centers. On the one side, tech leaders (and the White House) celebrate artificial intelligence as a symbol of national power and economic growth. But politicians from Bernie Sanders to Ron DeSantis point out that when it shows up in our towns, it drains water, drives up electricity prices, and demands round-the-clock power like an always-awake city.Every AI prompt—whether it’s wedding vows or a goofy image—fires up racks of servers that require enormous amounts of electricity and water to stay cool. The result is rising pressure on local water supplies and power grids, and a wave of protests and political resistance across the country. I’m covering that in today’s episode, and you can read the whole report over at Hard Reset.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.I also got to speak about the national controversy over AI data centers on CBS News this week. Check it out: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Geoff Bennett invited me onto Newshour on Friday to discuss the president’s executive order outlawing state regulations when it comes to A.I. I’m used to the 90-second to 3-minute format that’s so common on the networks, so to have the breathing room Geoff gave me on this topic was wonderful, and let me get into some of the subtleties and context that this debate often excludes! Also, big props to all of you who wrote to say you spotted me in the show — the Newshour Friday night crew rolls deep! Thanks for watching.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

For most of modern history, regulation in Western democracies has focused on two kinds of harm: people dying and people losing money. But with AI, that’s beginning to change.This week, the headlines point toward a new understanding that more is at stake than our physical health and our wallets: governments are starting to treat our psychological relationship with technology as a real risk. Not a side effect, not a moral panic, not a punchline to jokes about frivolous lawyers. Increasingly, I’m seeing lawmakers understand that it’s a core threat.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.There is, for instance, the extraordinary speech from the new head of MI6, Britain’s intelligence agency. Instead of focusing only on missiles, spies, or nation-state enemies, she warned that AI and hyper-personalized technologies are rewriting the nature of conflict itself — blurring peace and war, state action and private influence, reality and manipulation. When the person responsible for assessing existential threats starts talking about perception and persuasion, that stuff has moved from academic hand-wringing to real danger.Then there’s the growing evidence that militant groups are using AI to recruit, radicalize, and persuade — often more effectively than humans can. Researchers have now shown that AI-generated political messaging can outperform human persuasion. That matters, because most of us still believe we’re immune to manipulation. We’re not. Our brains are programmable, and AI is getting very good at learning our instructions.That same playbook is showing up in the behavior of our own government. Federal agencies are now mimicking the president’s incendiary online style, deploying AI-generated images and rage-bait tactics that look disturbingly similar to extremist propaganda. It’s no coincidence that the Oxford University Press crowned “rage bait” its word of the year. Outrage is no longer a side effect of the internet — it’s a design strategy.What’s different now is the regulatory response. A coalition of 42 U.S. attorneys general has formally warned AI companies about psychologically harmful interactions, including emotional dependency and delusional attachment to chatbots and “companions.” This isn’t about fraud or physical injury. It’s about damage to people’s inner lives — something American law has traditionally been reluctant to touch.At the same time, the Trump administration is trying to strip states of their power to regulate AI at all, even as states are the only ones meaningfully responding to these risks. That tension — between lived harm and promised utopia — is going to define the next few years.We can all feel that something is wrong. Not just economically, but cognitively. Trust, truth, childhood development, shared reality — all of it feels under pressure. The question now is whether regulation catches up before those harms harden into the new normal.Mentioned in This Article:Britain caught in ‘space between peace and war’, says new head of MI6 | UK security and counter-terrorism | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/dec/15/britain-caught-in-space-between-peace-and-war-new-head-of-mi6-warnsIslamic State group and other extremists are turning to AI | AP Newshttps://apnews.com/article/islamic-state-group-artificial-intelligence-deepfakes-ba201d23b91dbab95f6a8e7ad8b778d5‘Virality, rumors and lies’: US federal agencies mimic Trump on social media | Donald Trump | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/15/trump-agencies-style-social-mediaUS state attorneys-general demand better AI safeguardshttps://www.ft.com/content/4f3161cc-b97a-496e-b74e-4d6d2467d59cBonus: The Whistleblower ConundrumI’m also reading this very interesting and very sad account of the fate that has befallen tech workers who couldn’t take it any longer and spoke out. The thing that more and more of them are learning, however, is that the False Claims Act can get them a big percentage of whatever fines an agency imposes: something they’ll need considering they’re unlikely to work again. Tech whistleblowers are doing us all a huge favor, I hope an infrastructure can grow up around supporting them when they do it. Tech whistleblowers face job losses and isolation - The Washington Posthttps://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/12/15/big-tech-whistleblowers-speak-out/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Note: This is a video summary of a longer column I wrote for Hard Reset today. Please have a look!President Trump has signed a sweeping executive order aimed at blocking U.S. states from regulating artificial intelligence — arguing that a “patchwork” of laws threatens innovation and America’s global competitiveness. But there’s a catch: there is no federal AI law to replace what states have been doing.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.In this episode, I break down what the executive order actually does, why states stepped in to regulate AI in the first place, how this move conflicts with public opinion, and why legal experts believe the fight is headed straight to the courts.This isn’t just a tech story. It’s a constitutional one.You can read my full analysis at at HardResetMedia.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

This week I sat down with the woman who permanently rewired my understanding of human nature — and now she’s turning her attention to the nature of the machines we’ve gone crazy for.⁠Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji⁠ coined the term “⁠implicit bias⁠” and has conducted research for decades into the blind spots we don’t admit even to ourselves. The work that blew my hair back shows ⁠how prejudice has and hasn’t changed⁠ since 2007. Take one of the tests ⁠here⁠ — I was deeply disappointed by my results.More recently, she’s been running ⁠new experiments⁠ on today’s large language models.What has she learned?They’re far more biased than humans.Sometimes twice or three times as biased.They show shocking behavior — like a model declaring “I am a white male” or demonstrating literal self-love toward its own company. And as their most raw and objectionable responses are papered over, our ability to understand just how prejudiced they really are is being whitewashed, she says.In this conversation, Banaji explains:* Why LLMs amplify bias instead of neutralizing it* How guardrails and “alignment” may hide what the model really thinks* Why kids, judges, doctors, and lonely users are uniquely exposed* How these systems form a narrowing “artificial hive mind”* And why we may not be mature enough to automate judgement at allBanaji is working at the very cutting edge of the science, and delivers a clear and unsettling picture of what AI is amplifying in our minds.Timestamps:00:00 — AI Will Warp Our DecisionsBanaji on why future decision-making may “suck” if we trust biased systems.01:20 — The Woman Who Changed How We Think About BiasJake introduces Banaji’s life’s work charting the hidden prejudices wired into all of us.03:00 — When Internet Language Revealed Human BiasHow early word-embedding research mirrored decades of psychological findings.05:30 — AI Learns the One-Drop RuleCLIP models absorb racial logic humans barely admit.07:00 — The Moment GPT Said “I Am a White Male”Banaji recounts the shocking early answer that launched her LLM research.10:00 — The Rise of Guardrails… and the Disappearance of HonestyWhy the cleaned-up versions of models may tell us less about their true thinking.12:00 — What “Alignment” Gets Fatally WrongThe Silicon Valley fantasy of “universal human values” collides with actual psychology.15:00 — When AI Corrects Itself in Stupid WaysThe Gemini fiasco, and why “fixing” bias often produces fresh distortions.17:00 — Should We Even Build AGI?Banaji on why specialized models may be safer than one general mind.19:00 — Can We Automate Judgment When We Don’t Know Ourselves?The paradox at the heart of AI development.21:00 — Machines Can Be Manipulated Just Like HumansCialdini’s persuasion principles work frighteningly well on LLMs.23:00 — Why AI Seems So Trustworthy (and Why That’s Dangerous)The credibility illusion baked into every polished chatbot.25:00 — The Discovery of Machine “Self-Love”How models prefer themselves, their creators, and their own CEOs.28:00 — The Hidden Line of Code That Made It All Make SenseWhat changes when a model is told its own name.31:00 — Artificial Hive Mind: What 70 LLMs Have in CommonThe narrowing of creativity across models and why it matters.34:00 — Why LLM Bias Is More Extreme Than Human BiasBanaji explains effect sizes that blow past anything seen in psychology.37:00 — A Global Problem: From U.S. Race Bias to India’s Caste BiasHow Western-built models export prejudice worldwide.40:00 — The Loan Officer Problem: When “Truth to the Data” Is ImmoralA real-world example of why bias-blind AI is dangerous.43:00 — Bayesian Hypocrisy: Humans Do It… and AI Does It MoreModels replicate our irrational judgments — just with sharper edges.48:00 — Are We Mature Enough to Hand Off Our Thinking?Banaji on the risks of relying on a mind we didn’t design and barely understand.50:00 — The Big Question: Can AI Ever Make Us More Rational? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Australia just imposed a blanket ban on social media for kids under the age of 16. It’s not just the strictest tech policy of any democracy — it’s stricter than China’s laws. No TikTok, no Instagram, no SnapChat, that’s it. And while Washington dithers behind a 1998 law written before Google existed, other countries are gearing up to copy Australia’s homework (Malaysia imposes a similar ban on January 1st). What happens now — the enforcement mess, the global backlash, the accidental creation of the largest clean “control group” in tech-history — could reshape how we think about childhood, mental health, and what governments owe the developing brain.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.00:00 — Australia’s historic under-16 social-media ban01:10 — What counts as “social media” under the law?02:04 — Why platforms — not kids — get fined03:01 — How the U.S. is still stuck with COPPA (from 1998!)04:28 — Why age 13 was always a fiction05:15 — Psychologists on the teenage brain: “all gas, no brakes”07:02 — Malaysia and the EU consider following Australia’s lead08:00 — Nighttime curfews and other global experiments09:11 — Albanese’s pitch: reclaiming “a real childhood”10:20 — Could isolation leave Aussie teens behind socially?11:22 — Why Australia is suddenly stricter than China12:40 — Age-verification chaos: the AI that thinks my uncle is 1213:40 — The enforcement black box14:10 — Australia as the first real longitudinal control group15:18 — If mental-health outcomes improve, everything changes16:05 — The end of the “wild west” era of social platforms? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

The big AI conference NeurIPS is under way in San Diego this week, and nearly 6,000 papers presented there will set the technical, intellectual, and ethical course for AI for the year. NeurIPS is a strange pseudo-academic gathering, where researchers from universities show up to present their findings alongside employees of Apple and Nvidia, part of the strange public-private revolving door of the tech industry. Sometimes they’re the same person: Increasingly, academic researchers are allowed to also hold a job at a big company. I can’t blame them for taking opportunities where they arise—I’m sure I would, in their position—but it’s particularly bothersome to me as a journalist, because it limits their ability to speak publicly.The papers cover robotics, alignment, and how to deliver kitty cat pictures more efficiently, but one paper in particular—awarded a top prize at the conference—grabbed me by the throat. A coalition from Stanford, the Allen Institute, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Washington presented “Artificial Hive Mind: The Open-Ended Homogeneity of Language Models (and Beyond),” which shows that the average large language model converges toward a narrow set of responses when asked big, brainstormy, open-ended questions. Worse, different models tend to produce similar answers, meaning when you switch from ChatGPT to Gemini or Claude for “new perspective,” you’re not getting it. I’ve warned for years that AI could shrink our menu of choices while making us believe we have more of them. This paper shows just how real that risk is. Today I walk through the NIPS landscape, the other trends emerging at the conference, and why “creative assistance” may actually be the crushing of creativity in disguise. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

I’ve been in a pretty steady cadence of appearances on CBS News these days, and it’s been a wonderful place to have open-ended conversations about the latest tech headlines. Yesterday they had me on to talk about OpenAI’s “Code Red” memo commanding its employees to delay other products and projects and focus on making ChatGPT as “intuitive and emotional” as possible.Programming Note: Tomorrow (Thursday) I’ll be guest-hosting TWiT’s podcast “Tech News Weekly” at 11am PT / 2pm ET. It’ll be available shortly thereafter on TWiT’s YouTube channel.And I’ve had a series of fantastic conversations on various podcast’s lately. Lux Capital’s RiskGaming Podcast brought me on for an hour on the history of tech optimism and the generational thinking we’ll need to solve the big problems it’s created. And Meredith Edwards’ Meredith for Real podcast brought me in for an hour to talk about how (and whether) we can protect ourselves against what AI is amplifying in us. I’ll throw some clips up soon! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

According to the Wall Street Journal, Sam Altman sent an internal memo on Monday declaring a company-wide emergency and presumably ruining the holiday wind-down hopes of his faithful employees. OpenAI is hitting pause on advertising plans, delaying AI agents for health and shopping, and shelving a personal assistant called “Pulse.” All hands are being pulled back to one mission: making ChatGPT feel more personal, more intuitive, and more essential to your daily life.The company says it wants the general quality, intelligence, and flexibility to improve, but I’d argue this is less about making the chatbot smarter, and more about making it stickier.Google’s Gemini has been surging — monthly active users jumped from 450 million in July to 650 million in October. Industry leaders like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff are calling it the best LLM on the market. OpenAI seems to feel the heat, and also seems to feel it doesn’t have the resources to keep building everything it wants all at once — it has to prioritize. Consider that when Altman was recently asked on a podcast how he plans to get to profitability, he grew exasperated. “Enough,” he said.But here’s what struck me about the Code Red. While Gemini is supposedly surpassing ChatGPT in industry benchmarkes, I don’t think Altman is chasing benchmarks. He’s chasing the “toothbrush rule” — the Google standard for greenlighting new products that says a product needs to become an essential habit used at least three times a day. The memo specifically emphasizes “personalization features.” They want ChatGPT to feel like it knows you, so that you feel known, and can’t stop coming back to it.I’ve been talking about AI distortion — the strange way these systems make us feel a genuine connection to what is, ultimately, a statistical pattern generator. That feeling isn’t a bug. It’s becoming the business model.Facebook did this. Google did this. Now OpenAI is doing it: delaying monetization until the product is so woven into your life that you can’t imagine pulling away. Only then do the ads come.Meanwhile, we’re living in a world where journalists have to call experts to verify whether a photo of Trump fellating Bill Clinton is real or AI-generated. The image generators keep getting better, the user numbers keep climbing, and the guardrails remain an afterthought.This is the AI industry in December 2025: a race to become indispensable. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Shameless Plug Number One: On Thursday I’ll be guest-hosting Tech News Weekly, where I’ll interview journalists about AI companionship, AI-regulating California state senator Scott Wiener and more!Shameless Plug Number Two: I had a really wonderful conversation on the Meredith for Real podcast this week. You don’t often get to speak with someone who actually reads the whole book and comes ready to take you apart, and she was such a thoughtful interviewer. Check it out if you have a moment. Now then…It’s Monday, December 1st. I’m not a turkey guy, and I’m of the opinion that we’ve all made a terrible habit of subjecting ourselves to the one and only time anyone cooks the damn thing each year. So I hope you had an excellent alternative protein in addition to that one. Ours was the Nobu miso-marinated black cod. Unreal. Okay, after the food comes the A.I. hangover. This week I’m looking at three fronts where the future of technology just lurched in a very particular direction: politics, geopolitics, and the weird church council that is the A.I. conference circuit.First, the politics. Trump’s leaked executive order to wipe out state A.I. laws seems to have stalled — not because he’s suddenly discovered restraint, but maybe because the polling suggests that killing A.I. regulation is radioactive. Instead, the effort is being shoved into Congress via the National Defense Authorization Act, the “must-pass” budget bill where bad ideas go to hide. Pair that with the Federal Trade Commission getting its teeth kicked in by Meta in court, and you can feel the end of the Biden-era regulatory moment and the start of a very different chapter: a government that treats Big Tech less as something to govern and more as something to protect.Second, the geopolitics. TSMC’s CEO is now openly talking about expanding chip manufacturing outside Taiwan. That sounds like a business strategy, but it’s really a tectonic shift. For years, America’s commitment to Taiwan has been tied directly to that island’s role as our chip lifeline. If TSMC starts building more of that capacity in Arizona and elsewhere, the risk calculus around a Chinese move on Taiwan changes — and so does the fragility of the supply chain that A.I. sits on top of.Finally, the quiet councils of the faithful: AWS re:Invent and NeurIPS. Amazon is under pressure to prove that all this spending on compute actually makes money. NeurIPS, meanwhile, is where the people who build the models go to decide what counts as progress: more efficient inference, new architectures, new “alignment” tricks. A single talk or paper at that conference can set the tone for years of insanely expensive work. So between Trump’s maneuvers, the FTC’s loss, TSMC’s hedging, and the A.I. priesthood gathering in one place, the past week and this one are a pretty good snapshot of who really steers the current we’re all in. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

It’s a warning siren: people seeing delusions they never knew they had amplified by AI, a wave of lawsuits alleging emotional manipulation and even suicide coaching, a major company banning minors from talking freely with chatbots for fear of excessive attachment, and a top mental-health safety expert at OpenAI quietly heading for the exit.For years I’ve argued that AI would distort our thinking the same way GPS distorted our sense of direction. But I didn’t grasp how severe that distortion could get—how quickly it would slide from harmless late-night confiding to full-blown psychosis in some users.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.OpenAI’s own data suggests millions of people each week show signs of suicidal ideation, emotional dependence, mania, or delusion inside their chats. Independent investigations and a growing legal record back that up. And all of this is happening while companies roll out “AI therapists” and push the fantasy that synthetic friends might be good for us.As with most of what I’ve covered over the years, this isn’t a tech story. It’s a psychological one. A biological one. And a story about mixed incentives. A story about ancient circuitry overwhelmed by software, and by the companies who can’t help but market it as sentient. I’m calling it AI Distortion—a spectrum running from mild misunderstanding all the way to dependency, delusion, isolation, and crisis.It’s becoming clear that we’re not just dealing with a tool that organizes our thoughts. We’re dealing with a system that can warp them, in all of us, every time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Today I dug into the one corner of the economy that’s supposed to keep its head when everyone else is drunk on hype: the insurance industry. Three of the biggest carriers in the country—AIG, Great American, and W.R. Berkley—are now begging regulators not to force them to cover A.I.-related losses, according to the Financial Times. These are the people who price hurricanes, wildfires, and war zones… and they look at A.I. and say, “No thanks.” That tells you something about where we really are in the cycle.I also walked through the Trump administration’s latest maneuver, which looks a lot like carrying water for Big Tech in Brussels: trading lower steel tariffs for weaker European tech rules. (The Europeans said “no thank you.”) Meanwhile, we’re still waiting on the rumored executive order that would bulldoze state A.I. laws—the only guardrails we have in this country.On the infrastructure front, reporting out of Mumbai shows how A.I. demand is forcing cities back toward coal just to keep data centers running. And if that wasn’t dystopian enough, I close with a bleak little nugget from Business Insider advising Gen Z to “focus on tasks, not job titles” in the A.I. economy. Translation: don’t expect a career—expect a series of gigs glued together by hope.It’s a full Monday’s worth of contradictions: the fragile hype economy, the political favoritism behind it, and the physical reality—pollution, burnout, precarity—that always shows up eventually.Also, if you missed it last week, I got to do my shtick on CNN and PBS. Thanks for watching! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

I’m now a proud weekly contributor over at Hard Reset, which looks at the effects of technology on society, labor, and politics, and I’ve got exhaustive coverage of this story over there. Go have a look! The only laws protecting you from the worst excesses of A.I. might be wiped out — and fast. A leaked Trump executive order would ban states from regulating A.I. at all, rolling over the only meaningful protections any of us currently have. There is no federal A.I. law, no federal data-privacy law, nothing. States like California, Illinois, and Colorado are the only line of defense against discriminatory algorithms, unsafe model deployment, and the use of A.I. as a quasi-therapist for millions of vulnerable people.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.This isn’t just bad policy — it’s wildly unpopular. The last time Republicans tried this maneuver, the Senate killed it 99–1. And Americans across the political spectrum overwhelmingly want A.I. regulated, even if it slows the industry down. But the tech sector wants a frictionless, regulation-free environment, and the Trump administration seems eager to give it to them — from crypto dinners and gilded ballrooms to billion-dollar Saudi co-investment plans.There’s another layer here: state laws also slow down the federal government’s attempt to build a massive surveillance apparatus using private data brokers and companies like Palantir. State privacy protections cut off that flow of data. Removing those laws clears the pipe.The White House argues this is about national security, China, and “woke A.I.” But legal experts say the order is a misreading of commerce authority and won’t survive in court. And state leaders like California’s Scott Wiener already seem to be preparing to sue. For now, the takeaway is simple: states are the only governments in America protecting you from A.I. — and the administration is trying to take that away. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

In today’s episode, I’m following the money, the infrastructure, and the politics:Nvidia just posted another monster quarter and showed that it’s still the caffeine in the US economy. Investors briefly relaxed, even as they warned that an AI bubble is still the top fear in markets. Google jammed Gemini 3 deeper into Search in a bid to regain narrative control. Cloudflare broke down and reminded us that the “smart” future still runs on pretty fragile plumbing. The EU blinked on AI regulation. And here in the U.S., the White House rolled out the red carpet for Saudi Arabia as part of a multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure deal that seems to be shiny enough to have President Trump openly chastising a journalist for asking Crown Prince about his personal responsibility for the murder of an American journalist.But the deeper story I’m looking at today is social, not financial. Politicians like Bernie Sanders (in an interview on NBC News) are beginning to voice the fear that AI won’t just destroy jobs — it might quietly corrode our ability to relate to one another. If you’ve been following me you know this is more or less all I’m thinking about at the moment. So I looked at the history of this kind of concern. Here’s the takeaway: while we’re generally only concerned with death and financial loss in this country, we do snap awake from time to time when a new technology threatens our social fabric. Roll your eyes if you want to, but we’ve seen this moment before with telegraphs, movies, radio demagogues, television, video games, and social media, and there’s a lot to learn from that history. This episode explores that lineage, what it means for AI, and why regulation might arrive faster than companies expect. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

In today’s Deep Cut, we look at the strange, repeating pattern of civilizations wildly overbuilding their infrastructure because they’re sure the future depends on it. Tulsa, Oklahoma once built a highway grid for millions who never arrived. Britain in the 1840s poured money into rail lines that didn’t need to exist. And now the world’s biggest tech companies are spending trillions on AI data centers—some even talking openly about building them in space.I trace the logic behind this frenzy, from rising AI capex to the dream of limitless solar energy in orbit, and contrast it with the uncomfortable reality: much of today’s demand is artificially subsidized by the companies creating it. Along the way we revisit the Kardashev Scale, the pollution math of rocket launches, and the enduring human delusion that if we can build it, it should be built.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.History shows what happens when infrastructure outpaces actual need. Today’s AI buildout has all the ingredients for another chapter in that saga. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Good morning — it’s Monday, November 17th, and today’s “Map” traces the forces shaping the week ahead in tech, money, and global politics.We start with something rare: Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway quietly taking a $4.9 billion stake in Alphabet — one of the last and most unusual moves of his career, and a signal about where the long-term AI value is consolidating.On the other side of the chessboard, Peter Thiel just sold his entire ~$100 million stake in Nvidia, a move that raises questions about timing, crowd psychology, and what it means when a legendary contrarian (among many, many other things) decides the party’s over.I also pull from a conversation I moderated last week with consular officials and regulators from across Asia, where the loudest concern was simple: English-centric AI is failing the rest of the world. Meta’s new Omnilingual ASR model may change that — if they can turn 1,600 supported languages into something the world can actually use.Then we take a detour to Moscow, where Russia’s heavily hyped new humanoid robot walked onstage looking… well… drunk, and promptly face-planted so hard its panels fell off. It’s an unintentionally honest reminder that the dream of a helpful general-purpose humanoid remains firmly in the realm of wishful thinking in spite of the nifty prototypes being trotted out each week.Finally, we look ahead to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the White House, along with a package that includes $600 billion in investment, AI technology access, and a civilian nuclear deal — all coming at a time when AI-driven energy demand is exploding past America’s power capacity, and MBS’s people clearly know it.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The theme cutting through all of this is simple:AI capital flows are steering the global agenda.Not the products, not the startups — the money. A third of America’s GDP growth last year came solely from AI infrastructure spending, and the upcoming Nvidia earnings call this week will tell us whether this frenzy is accelerating or hitting turbulence.This week, we’ll watch the intersection of investment, policy, and power — and tomorrow, we’ll dive deep into one story that explains where all this is headed. Thanks for listening! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Are we ready to take on the tech titans? Sacha Haworth thinks maybe—just maybe—we finally are. The head of the Tech Oversight Project joins me this week to talk about the pervasive influence of Big Tech on our lives, and why recognizing a growing allergy to that influence is becoming a centerpiece of political strategy. We discuss the public’s growing concerns over privacy, children’s addiction to technology, and the economic and environmental effects of tech companies’ big AI plans on local communities. Sacha shares insights on political will and the bipartisan potential to regulate and hold big tech accountable, and the court cases and regulatory moves she’ll be watching most closely in 2026 and beyond.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.00:00 Introduction: The Growing Influence of Tech00:22 The Rip Current: Exploring Big Tech’s Impact01:05 Guest Introduction: Sasha Hayworth01:38 Election Insights: Tech’s Role in Political Wins02:43 Tech and Economic Issues in Elections03:35 The Rise of Data Centers and Their Impact06:29 Personal Journey: From Policy School to Tech Oversight10:41 The Tech Oversight Project: Mission and Goals11:46 Shaping the Narrative: Tech in Politics17:22 The Politics of Tech: Power and Influence22:03 Economic Speculation and the Tech Bubble28:36 Future Vision: The Impact of AI and Tech31:22 The Impact of Job Loss and Tax Incentives32:39 AI’s Influence on Young Minds34:49 Parental Concerns and Legislative Efforts40:28 The Dark Side of Chatbots49:03 Section 230 and Legal Protections01:00:56 Political Will and Bipartisan Efforts01:03:43 Conclusion and Call to Action This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

This week I speak with Michael Bolden, the new Dean of the UC Berkeley Journalism School, about his personal journey from Mobile, Alabama, to leading one of the country’s top journalism schools. We agree — because of course — on the philosophical importance of journalism, but it’s the complications brought by AI and media technology, and the rise of influencer culture, where things get complicated. Bolden emphasizes the necessity of adapting journalism education to future demands, including the incorporation of AI and influencer collaborations, and together we try to sort out how to bring together the best of this new, open world of information and the old world of true expertise and editorial rigor.00:00 Introduction: The Impact of Personal Background on Journalism00:29 The State of Journalism Today01:07 Challenges Facing Modern Journalism02:27 Introducing Michael Bolden: A Career in Journalism03:56 Michael Bolden’s Early Life and Influences07:17 The Importance of Representation in Journalism14:04 Navigating Professional Challenges19:53 The Future of Journalism Education27:31 The Evolving Role of Journalists28:53 The Decline of Traditional Media33:38 The Rise of Influencers and Independent Journalists38:32 Political Influence and Media Ownership47:25 AI and the Future of Journalism57:12 Innovative Journalism Models59:20 Conclusion and Final Thoughts This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Jesse Damiani, whose newsletter Reality Studies unpacks emerging philosophical questions around technology, had me on his Urgent Futures podcast last week for an hour-plus conversation about the state of A.I., and where my 2022 book The Loop got it right and got it wrong. The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

AI is about to create an epidemic of addiction in this country and around the world, according to Zachary Gidwitz, founder of OpenRecovery. Could it also be our best shot at fighting back? In this episode of The Rip Current, I discuss the growing issue of addiction in America and the potential for AI tools to combat it with Gidwitz. Together we get into the rise of various forms of addiction, from fentanyl and gambling to social media and pornography. Gidwitz shares his vision of using AI not to replace human therapists but to guide individuals towards real human connection and effective recovery programs. He stresses the importance of tailoring interventions to individual needs and avoiding one-size-fits-all approaches. The conversation also explores the ethical considerations and challenges in using AI for such sensitive applications, emphasizing the need for transparency, collaboration, and continuous improvement. Addiction is coming, team. Here’s hoping conversations like this can help get us out in front of it.00:00 The Rising Wave of Addiction02:18 Introducing Zachary Gidwitz and Open Recovery02:38 Understanding Behavioral Change and Recovery05:46 Personal Stories of Addiction07:56 The Role of AI in Addiction Recovery18:16 Challenges and Ethical Considerations30:15 Facing Investor Skepticism31:02 Mission-Driven Challenges32:31 AI and Behavioral Change33:42 The Role of Technology in Recovery35:23 Spiritual Solutions and Community36:52 Companion vs. Monitoring Tools38:51 AI’s Role in Addiction Recovery48:37 Cultural Differences in Addiction Recovery57:52 Ethical Considerations and Data Sensitivity01:01:34 Conclusion and Final Thoughts This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

My recent trip to Brazil happened to coincide with the trial of former president Jair Bolsonaro, and ever since I’ve been looking for the right person to explain how it is that a former military dictatorship is now the kind of democracy that actually brings a former leader to account. In this episode, Cristina Tardaguila, founder of the fact-checking organization Lupa, describes the rise and conviction of former President Jair Bolsonaro, the impact of misinformation, and the growing (and now perhaps unstoppable) influence of China and Russia in Brazil. Cristina shares insights into the creation and evolution of Lupa, the complexities of Brazilian democracy, and the economic and political dynamics shaping the nation’s complicated future.00:00 US Diplomacy and Brazil’s Geopolitical Landscape02:17 Introduction to Lupa and Cristina Tardaguila02:48 The Rise of Fact-Checking in Brazil05:09 Global Populism and Bolsonaro’s Influence07:02 The Hate Cabinet and Techno-Populism10:56 Lupa’s Evolution and Business Model12:58 COVID-19 and the Fight Against Misinformation16:46 The Why of Disinformation27:12 Bolsonaro’s Political Journey and Impact33:52 The Aftermath of January 8th, 202334:40 Reflecting on the Insurrection41:25 The Trial and Conviction of Bolsonaro47:56 Brazil’s Political Future51:49 China’s Influence in Brazil59:48 Conclusion and Final Thoughts This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, an AI ethicist and the head of Humane Intelligence, is sick of all this complaining. Not because there isn’t plenty to complain about — in this episode we unpack a host of horrors that AI and the companies who make it are foisting on all of us — but because she believes that the fatalism of AI criticism inadvertently empowers powerful corporations. Dr. Chowdhury, who has worked at Accenture, Twitter, and served as a science envoy for the Biden administration, has an unusual background for an AI builder — political science and quantitative social sciences — and her work on the inherent biases within algorithms has led her to believe that the solutions are far more complicated than just switching the whole thing off. Enjoy!Thanks for listening to The Rip Current by Jacob Ward! Feel free to share this episode with someone you feel needs a new perspective on AI.00:00 Introduction: The Pessimism Around AI00:36 Meet Dr. Rumman Chowdhury: AI Ethicist02:00 The Role of Political Science in AI04:26 Challenges in Creating Ethical AI06:20 The Myth of Political Neutrality in Algorithms14:10 From Accenture to Twitter: A Journey in AI16:17 The Twitter Experience: Ethics and Algorithms19:07 The Impact of Social Media Algorithms26:18 The Audacity of Modern AI Developments33:12 The Podcast’s Initial Concept and NPC Idea34:23 Nostalgia Culture and the Creative Class36:09 The Loop: AI and Legal Precedents36:58 Algorithmic Choice and User Agency38:59 Right to Repair and Algorithmic Agency40:23 Exit, Voice, and Loyalty in Tech45:47 Algorithmic Amplification of Right-Wing Content01:03:13 The Hero Narrative and Collective Movements01:05:13 Conclusion and Call to Action This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

When I first came on his show, Andrew Keen took a dim view of my ideas about how we might fight back against the psychological effects of AI in my 2022 book The Loop, and to be honest: he was right. The “how to fight back” section of the book was thin, largely because I was hanging (and still hang) so much of my hopes on the idea that the courts will save us. So I asked him if he’d like to revisit our conversation on his show, and he graciously agreed. Here’s how it went!The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

AI ethics consultant Olivia Gambelin has been fighting to make her clients in Silicon Valley understand that good ethics are good business, and to make regulators in Europe see that good business can also have good ethics. It’s a tough gig. Gambelin, who advises both AI companies in Silicon Valley and regulators in Brussels, talks techno-solutionism, the challenges of implementing ethical AI practices when there’s always that one evangelist in the room trying to go too far too fast, and her worries about what she considers the top truly unacceptable category of AI product out there today.The Rip Current by Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.00:00 Introduction to Techno Solutionism00:44 Meet Olivia Gambelin: AI Ethics Consultant01:56 Olivia’s Journey: From Bay Area to Brussels08:19 The Role of Ethical Intelligence14:38 Challenges in AI Implementation21:50 The Future of AI in the Workplace32:51 Introduction to AI Regulation in Brussels34:05 Cultural Differences in AI Regulation36:29 Challenges in European AI Literacy38:32 Behavioral Science and AI Manipulation44:22 Ethics in AI: Business vs. Regulation51:17 The Need for AI Regulation in the US56:00 Ethical Boundaries in AI Applications01:00:53 Positive Applications of AI01:05:18 Conclusion and Final Thoughts This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

TikTok is no different than any other social media company (it wants to serve you irresistible content by predicting your tastes algorithmically), and its processes aren't either (it threw spaghetti and money against the wall until it stuck). But its status as a Chinese company, the first globally successful Chinese media export, and a deeply powerful g… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

AI is making people crazy. And I don’t mean in the sense that it’s driving tech observers like me crazy, with its reckless adoption path and dishonest marketing and screwy incentives. I mean it’s literally making otherwise reasonable people believe that their AI chatbots are lovers, or prisoners, or prophets of hidden wisdom. In this hourlong conversati… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Are you ready to get in a tube built by billionaires and stay there for nine months? Ready to live in caves on the other side? And who is in charge of this dreary outpost anyway? In this episode of The Rip Current, David Ariosto, author of Open Space: From Earth to Eternity, the Global Race to Explore and Conquer the Cosmos and host of the Space Minds podcast, joins Jake to explore the motivations behind private and state-funded space travel, the potential for settlements on the Moon and Mars, and the ethical implications of billionaire-led space enterprises. We talk about the fragility of the human body in space, the viability of actually governing space settlements, and the technological advancements driving the space industry. Who really holds the power in the final frontier?00:00 Introduction to Space Exploration00:30 The Rip Current: Big Invisible Forces00:32 The Leap of Faith in Space01:20 Guest Introduction: David Sto03:22 The Commercialization of Space05:57 Technological Advances and Market Potential13:41 Geopolitical Implications of Space Exploration21:50 Human vs. Robotic Space Missions34:24 Facing Death: The Mindset of Test Pilots35:52 Astronaut's Dream: Franklin Chang Diaz's Story37:56 Psychological Impact of Space Travel39:55 Billionaires in Space: Elon Musk and Beyond41:48 NASA's Changing Role in Space Exploration51:17 The Future of Space Colonization59:44 The Vastness of Space and Human Survival01:05:40 Conclusion: The Drive to Explore the Cosmos This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

OpenAI described its newest model as a pocket full of PhDs, a cancer doula, and a eulogy writer. But behind the headlines are the enormous pressures building on this industry. Here’s a breakdown of what we learned today. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

As you’ll hear in this episode, I’m considering renaming this whole enterprise — the newsletter and the show — so I’m not hiding what I do behind a needlessly esoteric brand name. The new name I’m considering is the name of a book I’m working on, Great Ideas We Should Not Pursue. So fair warning you may see me roll out a whole new thing in the coming we… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Programming note: My apologies to listeners for the weeklong break that I took last week, and the weeklong break I’ll be taking next week. We’ll be back in the saddle the week of July 28th. See you then! Back in 2006, a young interface designer came up with the idea that rather than making people click to another page to continue reading, they should ju… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

We’ve all experienced loneliness, but could you really describe what it is, and what it does to you, beyond the physical experience of isolation? Before this conversation, I couldn’t. But David Jay has taken the invisible, unnameable effects of loneliness and turned them into an actionable recipe for evaluating and improving friendship and community in … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Adam Rogers is a science journalist and the author of two amazing books about how we experience the world. His second, Full Spectrum, is about color. But we're here to discuss his first, Proof: The Science of Booze. Not just booze, though — what it symbolizes about magic and alchemy and history and chaos, and why our relationship to it is so fraught and fun and terrible. Basically what I learned is that it would improve the world enormously if everyone had to learn to handle themselves at a bar, but that we somehow need to do it without actually drinking. Also he's a great friend of mine, and it's my show, and I can have my friends on sometimes, okay? If you like this show, do me a favor and share it with someone else! It helps enormously in bringing me to a new audience. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Trump's sudden, strange appeal took most political observers by surprise (it broke their necks, frankly), but not Bart Bonikowski. The NYU professor of politics and sociology has been looking at the global rise of populism for over a decade, along with the ideologies and forms of nationalism that help to explain why it's got us all in its grasp at the moment. We talk about the common causes of this weird kind of politics, the most dangerous outcomes it might lead us to, and what the antidotes might be.Readings:* “Ethno-nationalist Populism and the Mobilization of Collective Resentment” (British Journal of Sociology, 2017)Clarifies distinctions among populism, nationalism, and authoritarianism and shows that spikes in radical‑right support come from framing strategies resonating with folks experiencing national status threats pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov+1cifar.ca+1sociology.berkeley.edu.* “Varieties of American Popular Nationalism” (with Paul DiMaggio, AJS, 2016)Identified four distinct nationalist mindsets—disengaged, civic, ardent, restrictive—and mapped their prevalence russellsage.org+4en.wikipedia.org+4en.wikipedia.org+4.* “The Partisan Sorting of ‘America’” (with Feinstein & Bock, AJS, 2021)Shows how Republicans and Democrats increasingly diverge in their definitions of America—Republicans leaning exclusionary, Democrats inclusive journals.uchicago.edu+2en.wikipedia.org+2cifar.ca+2.* “Measuring Populism, Nationalism, and Authoritarianism in U.S. Presidential Campaigns (1952–2020)” (2022)Uses neural language modeling to track ideological trends across historic campaigns cifar.ca+1journals.sagepub.com+1en.wikipedia.org+6pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov+6papers.ssrn.com+6.* “Trump’s Populism…” (2019 chapter in When Democracy Trumps Populism)Dissects the nationalist rhetoric in Trump’s campaigns and situates it within broader democratic patterns nyuscholars.nyu.edu. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

When I was writing my book The Loop, I was looking for experts in the ways we misunderstand one another, and several people pointed me at this week’s guest. He and I had an hourlong phone conversation, and while he undoubtedly doesn’t remember it (but is too polite to say so), for me it was a deeply formative experience.The Rip Current is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Lord John Alderdice grew up the son of an Irish presbyterian minister in and out of Belfast, and has been a psychiatrist, a politician, and a researcher into violence and peace. His work on the Good Friday Accords helped to end the troubles in Northern Ireland, and he’s been a trusted source of insight and scholarship for those seeking an end to violence in dozens of conflicts around the world ever since.In this week’s episode, he discusses the deeply misunderstood power of really and truly listening, over long periods of time, in correcting disturbed historic relationships and setting them back on a path toward peace, and our conversation is a very interesting accompaniment to my interview with John Patty and Elizabeth Penn about the frailty of democracy from a few weeks back. Lord Alderdice is refreshing not just for his optimism that we can find a way to peace, but because that optimism is based in decades of hard experience pursuing it. I hope you enjoy it. 00:00 Introduction to the Rip Current 01:16 Meet Lord John Alderdice 02:25 Understanding Honorifics and Titles 06:19 Growing Up in Northern Ireland 11:28 The Path to Psychiatry and Politics 18:17 The Good Friday Accords 23:05 The Complexity of Historic Conflicts 33:26 The Role of Statesmanship in Conflict Resolution 38:23 The State of Global Institutions 38:47 Career in Conflict Research 39:23 Middle East Peace Process Challenges 42:53 Research on Palestinian Perspectives 45:57 Young People and Radicalization 51:29 Cultural Perspectives on Individualism vs. Community 01:04:36 Historical Context of British Aristocracy 01:18:00 Exploring Irish Presbyterianism 01:19:37 The Role of History in Understanding Politics 01:20:17 From Medicine to Politics 01:22:17 Political Leadership and Negotiations 01:24:41 The Good Friday Agreement 01:25:40 The Importance of Relationships in Politics 01:27:32 International Perspectives on Conflict 01:53:31 The Role of Apologies in Healing 02:05:33 Reflections on Leadership and Conflict Resolution 02:07:04 Conclusion and Final Thoughts This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Duke Professor of Law Nita Farahany has documented the growing industry of companies and devices that try to read your intentions, analyze your mind state, and generally get inside your brain. No, really: in her 2023 book The Battle for Your Brain she documents hundreds of instances in which everyone from employers to authoritarian regimes are hoping to use this stuff on us. And now she's looking ahead in a new book to how technology is changing our ability to think at all. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

In Estonia, on the day you’re born, you’re issued a digital ID that will follow you for the rest of your days. It identifies you at the hospital, at the police station, on your taxes, in court, at the morgue. On a recent episode of The Rip Current podcast, former Estonian president Toomas Ilves explained to me that this all-in-one system helped to root out what had been longstanding corruption under Soviet rule. Not only is cash no longer the preferred form of money, transactions with the government are digital, so individuals like police officers and doctors have no way of greasing the wheels of their system for you, and thus bribing them doesn’t do anyone any good. “ All of that disappears,” he told me. “We've gotten to the point for at least 10 years where basically … there is nothing in your interaction with the state or the government that you cannot do online.”The Rip Current is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.So when you hear that the Trump administration is paying the military contractor Palantir to stitch together a growing nationwide database that could soon connect the information held on you by a variety of federal agencies, from taxes to healthcare to student debt, you might think this will help, as a Trump executive order about collecting data has claimed, in “stopping waste, fraud, and abuse by eliminating information silos.”But as President Ilves explained to me in the clip below, there’s a crucial ingredient that makes the difference between an efficient civil service like Estonia’s and a chilling nationwide surveillance network. It is, in fact, the silos.  ILVES: It’s a huge Christmas tree. My health records are a little Christmas tree ball here. Your health records a Christmas tree ball over there….over here are my bank accounts, my traffic tickets.…that means that you cannot get a database where you get everything… So I can access my health records. I can access my bank records…[but] only my doctor is authorized to see my medical records. No one else can see my medical records unless they're authorized by me. So that  means that the police can't see it…that was the hard part. The technical stuff is easy… [the hard part is] actually figuring out…what are all the firewalls?Sheera Frenkel and Aaron Krolik, writing in the New York Times, explained that after giving more than $113 million to Palantir to gather information from DHS and Pentagon databases, the Trump administration has bigger plans for the company.Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions.The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including D.H.S. and the Health and Human Services Department. Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said.And in case it’s not obvious to you, this is not Estonian transparency. It’s potentially something darker. Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a pipe dream. The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status.Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics, Democratic lawmakers and critics have said. Privacy advocates, student unions and labor rights organizations have filed lawsuits to block data access, questioning whether the government could weaponize people’s personal information.Palantir was founded by Peter Thiel (the Facebook angel investor, conservative libertarian, and patron to J.D. Vance) with CIA seed money in 2004, and made a name for itself helping the American intelligence and military community sift through an unthinkable amount of surveillance data from inside Iraq. Its software allowed an operator to find patterns—and people—in mountains of raw video. Since then, it’s contracts with the Defense Department have grown and grown. (A new DoD contract this year, separate from what the Trump administration has authorized so far, will pay it nearly $800 million.)By the time the American military withdrew from Afghanistan, Palantir’s technologies had evolved to the point of facilitating a detailed biometrics database in that country, one that collected identifying information, but also made predictions about future behavior based on patterns of life. In her 2021 book First Platoon, Annie Jacobsen recounts a conversation with a military operator who had used Palantir in Afghanistan. “The fact that there’s other moves afoot to actually use Palantir in the United States, I think that’s very, very bad, because of the type of 360 [degree] metrics that are collected,” Kevin warns. “I’m not kind of saying, ‘Hey, I’m scared of Big Brother.’ That’s not my view. But that is exactly what Palantir is capable of.” The company has, like many technology companies, sought to distance itself from any controversy around how its products are used by essentially blaming its customers. On its blog, to which it refers reporters seeking comment, it writesOur software and services are used under direction from the organisations that license our products: these organisations define what can and cannot be done with their data; they control the Palantir accounts in which analysis is conducted.But a group of former Palantir employees have written to protest that how the technology is used is a deepening problem, and should be the company’s responsibility, at least in part. They warn against “the increasingly violent rhetoric which the company is employing today and the actions to which it might become complicit in the future.”The company wrote in its IPO filings that it wants to be the “default operating system for data across the U.S. government,” and once a government agency becomes dependent on the company’s Foundry system, the subscription model can serve to lock that agency into a relationship that’s far easier to continue than to end. And its leader, CEO Alex Karp, publicly evangelizes a need to empower a new military-industrial complex to strengthen the West, and actively celebrates the power of his products. He boasted on an earnings call this year that “Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them.”“Big Tech, including Palantir, is increasingly complicit, normalizing authoritarianism under the guise of a ‘revolution’ led by oligarchs,” the Palantir ex-employees wrote. “We must resist this trend.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Paid subscribers to The Rip Current get an early look at this episode of the podcast. Thanks for supporting what we do!The Rip Current is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.It used to be that being a tech journalist was about boosterism and gadgetry. Now it’s like reporting inside the Pentagon, if the Pentagon were staffed by incredibly motivated and secretive experts who are regularly reassured they’re doing holy work, threatened with exile if they ever speak to a reporter, and paid more than any journalist can imagine. And yet investigative tech reporter Paris Martineau has single-handedly conducted investigations that led to the resignation of multiple CEOs — no small feat in an industry that is famously difficult to pierce as a journalist. In this hourlong interview we talk about how hard it is to find good sources inside Big Tech, and how critically important it is to do that now, when those companies and their leaders are truly learning to run the world. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Paid subscribers to The Rip Current get an early look at this, the ninth episode of the podcast. Thank you for being part of what we do!The Rip Current is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Under its fourth president, Toomas Ilves, Estonia went from a struggling newly liberated democracy to one of the most technologically sophisticated nations in the world. In this hourlong conversation, Ilves describes what Estonia can teach us about how to fight corruption through technology, truly root out waste and fraud, and empower everyday citizens — and what it looks like when things go the wrong way. Ilves and I were fellows together at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, where he taught me how Soviet rule — and the kleptocracy and favoritism it made possible — stalled the cultural and economic development of his nation, like fruit in a deep freeze. He’s uniquely qualified to speak to what it’s like when only the powerful and their friends have the good things, and the rest of the population is relegated to a lower status, and he knows better than anyone what’s at stake in the long term when that happens. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

I struggled with my own drinking habit for years, and I’m the kind of guy that has to be told to put the goddamn phone down — sometimes by the phone itself. So I think about addiction a great deal, and I find that everyone around me talks about their own habits in terms of addiction. And I decided to bring in an expert on addiction to define what it is, and where it’s headed in this country.America pioneered the advertising, product design, and behavioral science that has made addiction one of our nation’s biggest industries, after all. From gambling to opioids, America has always been great at getting customers hooked. And yet as a culture, we blame addiction not on the industries that invent these products and push these habits — but on the customers who fall into the trap.Now technology is inventing entirely new forms of addiction, from phone-based sports gambling to our dependence on sycophantic chatbots for company. Dr. Keith Humphreys is a psychiatrist at Stanford, a researcher at the Veterans’ Administration, and has worked for decades to understand drug and alcohol addiction, testifying before congress and working with state and federal officials to navigate the drug-infested waters we all find ourselves in at the moment. But he’s also deeply humane on the subject, and I find him both enlightening and very reassuring. Here’s hoping he helps you understand the difference between habit and addiction the way he’s helped me — have a look at his book Addiction: A Very Short Introduction, which I found fascinating — and whatever you’re grappling with, I hope you take some comfort from this episode. Thanks for listening. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

When I was writing The Loop: How A.I. is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back, I asked everyone around me what I should be reading. My thesis was that we needed to immediately begin resisting the companies trying to sell us A.I., because they were likely to amplify the worst parts of being human, rather than the best parts. (And that’… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Before she was an associate professor at Georgetown and a cofounder of Stanford’s Internet Observatory, which measured the disinformation campaigns at work in multiple presidential elections, Renee DiResta was a new mom at home getting bombarded with anti-vaccine ads on Facebook. “Why are they hitting me with this stuff?” she wondered, and her efforts t… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

When I was at a particularly despairing place about how quickly the world seemed to be doing exactly what I tried to warn against in my book The Loop: How AI is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back, I got an email out of the blue from Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, an icon of my early life thinking about the Internet. We’d never met. Here’s what he wrote me:Thank you for an incredibly valuable book — which complements and completes one I'm working on just now about AI and democracy. I was lost without it, but now I'm found! Endless gratitudeMan did that turn my week around. His encouragement helped me get up the courage to launch The Rip Current, and when I started putting a podcast together here I invited him on, and this episode is the result.Thanks for listening to The Rip Current podcast! This episode is available immediately to paid subscribers, and free subscribers get it a week later. Send it to someone in your life who thinks about technology, democracy, or corruption.At the end of my time with NBC News I talked a lot about the notion of “future crimes.” I thought of these as the kinds of misdeeds, made possible by technology, that are clearly intolerable in a civilized society, but fall outside the current bounds of the law. So when people talk about being “originalist” when it comes to the law and legal precedent, it makes me nuts. The idea that the founding fathers should be expected to have known exactly what was coming in the grand American Experiment, much less what new technology would be doing to it today — well, to someone who has covered the unexpected consequences of innovation for all this time, that’s crazy.Lessig agrees, and his life exemplifies this idea. He’s the author of 13 books, which run the gamut from his early belief in the need to rewrite copyright to make culture as open as possible to his latest book, still in the works, that he told me will argue technology has put democracy, not to mention human society, into a terrible dilemma. I found him open and thoughtful, and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

The public duels between celebrities like Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni aren’t just gossip fuel. They’re a vast business, one that’s also a thriving laboratory for experimenting with influence and public perception. Kat Tenbarge reports on these propaganda wars at Spitfire News, where she brings the dogged investigative techniques she honed at NBC New… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

A special reading from the latest issue of The Rip Current, about the Trump tariffs, the the idiocy of the math, the effects he won’t see coming, and the reaction from CEOs, world leaders, and the markets. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

We’re in an upside-down moment, in which there seems to be no cost for lying and no respect for honesty. How did we get here? Jennifer Freyd can explain. Since the 1990s she’s been tracking the misbehavior of public figures and the ways that institutions unwittingly betray us. And in the process she discovered and revealed the secret, specific choreogra… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

The historian and author Andrew Ward, grew up on the South Side of Chicago and then in India before becoming a historian of colonialism and slavery. He’s also my Dad. I think he’s just the person to discuss the weird moment we’re in, when politicians are trying to erase slavery and racism from the national discussion just when we were starting to take s… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

This is the first episode of The Rip Current podcast. Each week I’m going to be interviewing experts in everything from venture capital to the economic impact of slavery to how bullies get the best of us. My first guest is Catherine Bracy, executive director of TechEquity, a nonprofit that examines the ways technology affects equity in areas like labor and housing. She's the author of the new book World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy, in which Bracy argues that the trouble with tech isn't the people, or the products. It's the money. Our conversation ranges from the ways founders are trained by VCs to lie about their companies to the "Blitz Scaling" of Washington to Gary Gerstle's The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Era.For more on these topics, including a look at the VC mindset and where it leads, subscribe at TheRipCurrent.com! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

A beautifully designed bar of soap from Lisbon, Portugal had a lot to teach me about life under dictatorship. From the 1920s to the 1970s, the fascist regime of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar suppressed free expression, leading artists to pour their creative energies into what they could, including the politically acceptable decorative arts. For me, this bar of soap from Claus Porto - it's gorgeous, and you should buy one - is a symbol of how beauty and artistic distraction repackage themselves to survive oppression, and of how societies before us have leaned into decorative art when nothing else was acceptable. Let’s keep leaning into beauty, but let’s also be conscious of when we begin reshaping beauty to avoid offense, because it can be a symptom of deep national trouble. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

I spent the long weekend interviewing technologists at CFPB who left behind the chance to make big money in the private sector so they could work to protect you instead…and got fired for it. The written piece is here, but I wanted to share a few extra takeaways with paid subscribers, including the ridiculousness of accusing these folks of being inefficient, and the self-enrichment potential posed by Elon Musk and his people accessing their competitors’ data inside this agency. Thank you for being part of The Rip Current, and let me know in the chat what you think about the role of a regulator and whether they’re worth protecting. If you were in charge of CFPB, what would you have it looking into?As ever, if you know someone you think would benefit from a look at the big, invisible forces pulling on us right now, please share or recommend my work — it goes an incredibly long way in helping me draw an audience. Again, I’m so grateful for your support. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

This is a weekly audio digest of the latest content, exclusively for paid subscribers to The Rip Current.This week I write about the jingoistic tech posturing we're going to suffer in the coming weeks, after new Chinese AI models tanked American companies' stocks, and about the current politics of casual destruction and the way profit incentives gobble up everything around them, including your time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

I was often first on the scene for big wildfires during my 10 years as a correspondent for Al Jazeera and NBC News. The lessons I learned, and the ways in which my mind began to shorthand otherwise unimaginable experiences, make the LA fires particularly hard to watch. Here’s some perspective from the front lines. Thinking of you, SoCal. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe