Is Silicon Valley Losing Its Influence on DC?

WIRED

a day ago

By Zoë Schiffer and Jake Lahut Jul 28, 2025 1:14 PM This episode of Uncanny Valley covers black holes, woke AI, and the relationship between Silicon Valley billionaires and the Trump administration. Peter Thiel speaks at The Cambridge Union on May 08, 2024, in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Photograph:In today's episode, WIRED's director of business and industry, Zoë Schiffer, is joined by senior writer Jake Lahut to run through five of the most important stories we published this week—from Trump's newly unveiled AI plan to how supermassive black holes could have originated. Plus, they dive into why the relationship between Silicon Valley and DC is undergoing some major changes.
Mentioned in this episode:
Trump's AI Action Plan Is a Crusade Against 'Bias'—and Regulation by Kate Knibbs and Will Knight
Newly Discovered 'Infinity Galaxy' Could Prove How Ancient Supermassive Black Holes Formed by Jorge Garay
How Trump Killed Cancer Research by Elisa Muyl and Anthony Lydgate
The Great Crypto Re-Banking Has Begun by Joel Khalili
The GOP's Message for Tech Billionaires: Be Like Peter Thiel by Jake Lahut
You can follow Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer and Jake Lahut on Bluesky at ‪@jakelahut.writes.news‬. Write to us at [e-mail]. How to Listen
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Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Zoë Schiffer: Hey, this is Zoë. Before we start, I want to tell you about the new WIRED subscription program. If you're already a subscriber, thank you so much for supporting us. If you haven't signed up yet, this is a great time to do so. You'll have access to newsletters with exclusive analysis from WIRED reporters and access to live stream AMAs where you can ask your most pressing questions. Head over to wired.com to learn more. Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley . I'm WIRED's director of business and industry, Zoë Schiffer. Today on the show, we're bringing you five stories that you need to know about this week. And later we'll dive into our main segment on how the influence of Silicon Valley is shifting in D.C. And why Republicans think tech leaders should follow the example of Peter Thiel. I'm joined today by WIRED's senior writer, Jake LaHut.
Jake Lahut: Hey, Zoë, great to be with you. First time.
Zoë Schiffer: Jake, you and I were both watching Trump's speech yesterday. This was a keynote speech that he gave, an event that was hosted by the All-In Podcast, and he was talking about AI regulation. This came after he had already put out an AI action plan, which was this really long document that outlined 90 plus policies focusing on three main goals. Accelerating AI innovation, building AI infrastructure, and leading international diplomacy and security. So I guess just to start, can I get your high level take on the speech? Because I don't watch Trump a ton. And every time I do, I'm really struck by his just vibe is so fascinating and so funny to me.
Jake Lahut: Oh, absolutely. So to give the listeners a little bit of background on where I come from. I have been to more Trump rallies than I can count, in person that is, covering them in a professional capacity. And the weird thing about seeing Trump speak is you can really get a feel for, one, how much he just wants to be there. And this was definitely a case of he didn't seem like he really wanted to be doing this speech. There's this difference in the cadence and tone of his voice where even if you're not watching it, where you can see him looking at the teleprompter and then looking away to riff, he has this very rote cadence when he's reading on the prompter. So I would say this was a pretty middle of the road Trump phoning it in type speech.
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I had a one-on-one at the beginning of the speech and the person I was supposed to talk to was like, "Wait, should we cancel it? Should we push it back?" I was like, "It's Trump. I feel pretty confident that he's not going to start talking about AI until like 30 minutes in." But he really was talking about rolling back any level of regulation that we already have and definitely not imposing new regulations on AI companies, really trying to move away roadblocks so they can go innovate as quickly as possible. He framed it as an all-out race. And he talked a lot about woke AI. So maybe let's get into that a little bit because this is a sticking point for him.
Jake Lahut: Yeah. And I still don't really know what he means by woke AI. I mean, we did see at the outset of some of these models, I guess going back to 2022, '23, I remember Google's had those weird renditions of the founding fathers where there were very few, if any, white ones. Maybe he's talking about that. But I'm also wondering, is he talking about going full Grok with what we're going to be supporting? And then the other thing that I just on a very high level that I found interesting was he's basically saying China doesn't play by the rules. And if they're not going to play by the rules and we want to beat China, then we can't play by any rules either. And he extends that to saying we shouldn't even be paying publishers or anyone whose work is trained not to... He had this example of like, well, you read a book and you learn something from the book, but that doesn't mean anybody should get paid. And I was like, okay.
Zoë Schiffer: Right.
Jake Lahut: And also, I've worked at least three publications now where my work has trained these models and I have not seen a dime. So, yeah, I was a little stupefied, to be honest, hearing that part.
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Our Slack was absolutely blowing up when he was-
Jake Lahut: It was.
Zoë Schiffer: ... redefining fair use in real time. Everyone was losing their minds. So speaking of the current administration, our next story deals with its role in a critical field, which is cancer research. Our colleagues, Elisa Muyl and Anthony Lydgate analyzed how the Trump administration has erased hundreds of millions of dollars that were supposed to be used, and were being used, for cancer research. Specifically, the administration has paused an estimated $1.5 billion in funding to the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, which is the largest funder of cancer research in the world. And they've also effectively halted clinical trials of new drugs and laid off thousands of employees at the FDA and NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And, get this, Trump officials have reportedly maintained a list of flagged keywords that they believe should trigger program reviews. Of the NIH grants terminated so far, the 50 most common flag keywords were things like, you might expect unfortunately, trans, expression, diverse, and women.
Jake Lahut: On the one hand, not surprised. But also this is the kind of thing that I do wonder how much it ends up penetrating into the actual news diets of folks who are not following this really closely. And when you look at the pie chart that we have in this story, just the sheer amount of this that's coming from Harvard is really quite staggering. And the weird part of this that's very different from Trump 1.0, it's like AI scraping meets his personal vendettas and we get these really strange results.
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. It's really interesting because I feel like there are things that, I've thought about this with Elon Musk specifically a lot. It's like he has thrived in environments where his actions, and he's an impulsive risk-taking person, have a pretty quick consequence. He can see feedback really quick. If he does something and it doesn't work, he can then pivot. But when you're in government, you don't get to see the impact of what you're doing for kind of a while. And so if cancer research grinds to a halt because of what the Trump administration is choosing not to fund or what Elon Musk's DOGE team decided to slash contracts for or funding for, we won't actually feel the impact of that for years. But the impact will be pretty devastating, you can imagine.
Jake Lahut: Yeah. And even the longer term, second, third order effects of this. The brain drain aspect, I think, is going to be a very big story of this administration where think about if you're an undergrad who's looking at master's, PhD type research, it's like where are you going to go? Are you going to try to pivot your talents and go to the European Union? Are you going to just get a consulting job or try to go on Wall Street? I think that these are really difficult conversations that a lot of these researchers probably never thought they would have in what I would imagine for a lot of them is a very demanding but fulfilling field to try to literally cure cancer.
Zoë Schiffer: Totally. Okay. I need to shift us to a new topic because I'm already feeling quite depressed. This one is about outer space. So my first question for you is how do you feel about outer space, Jake? And would you go if you had the chance? Normally I would say, no, thank you. I'm not interested. But I don't know after this maybe, yeah, take me to Mars.
Jake Lahut: Weirdly, I would probably be more comfortable going to outer space than doing deep ocean exploration. That could be a recency bias with the-
Zoë Schiffer: I was going to say.
Jake Lahut: ... the Ocean Gate thing. But no, I was super into the, not just the Apollo missions, but Gemini and Mercury as a kid. I had a little beanbag chair in my house where I would pretend it was the capsule-
Zoë Schiffer: Oh, my gosh.
Jake Lahut: ... that was reentering the atmosphere looking for all-
Zoë Schiffer: I can picture this perfectly.
Jake Lahut: Yeah. So huge Al Shepard, John Glenn fan. I love all that stuff. But I am also a rather large person, and I think the fitting into the vessel would be difficult.
Zoë Schiffer: Totally fair. I can't 100% guarantee you would see this if you did find a vessel that could take you, but WIRED contributor Jorge Garay reported that a team of astronomers from Yale and Copenhagen recently discovered two galaxies colliding with each other. They have called it the Infinity Galaxy. And this finding is pretty exciting because it could be the first direct evidence of how really old supermassive black holes were formed.
Jake Lahut: Yeah. This is some interstellar type stuff, but it really does look like that sideways eight formation. And I found this pretty mind-blowing. Especially in our vertical video treatment of it, if you want to check this out on Instagram Reels. It's rather mesmerizing, I got to say.
Zoë Schiffer: So the prominent theory of how they form is when stars run out of fuel and collapse under their own gravity. But with very old supermassive black holes, there wouldn't have been enough time for the stars to get to that point. So this Infinity Galaxy supports another theory that they were able to form from dense clumps of matter, so no star busting needed.
Jake Lahut: At least for now, we are still discovering new things about science in the United States of America. And maybe that'll continue, maybe it won't.
Zoë Schiffer: Well, if not, AI apparently is going to step in and do everything for us.
Jake Lahut: DOGE can't go out there and catch up to the James Webb telescope at least. No one's catching that bad boy anytime soon.
Zoë Schiffer: Okay. So our next story takes us back to earth and, honestly, back to the Silicon Valley elite of it all. Our colleague, Joel Khalili, reported that crypto firms are finally getting more access to banking. This is actually critically important and covers both of our areas of reporting, Jake, because de-banking was a core reason that a lot of the Marc Andreessen types in the world really soured on the Biden administration and went all in on Trump. So now we're kind of seeing the fruits of that decision play out because under the crypto-friendly Trump administration, a number of US FinTech firms are competing to offer bank accounts to these crypto firms. But they still do need to follow the ground rules set by the partner bank involved, so there's no fully escaping the traditional banking system. But curious on your take here given how critical this was to the last election.
Jake Lahut: Oh, yeah. I mean, if you've ever had the pleasure of hearing Don Jr. talk about this, he gets real worked up about the de-banking. From my sourcing perspective, I remember being at the Republican convention last summer in Milwaukee, and I remember the second day there I'm bumping into some people I recognize. And every time I'm like, "Hey, what are you doing here? You're not on the Trump 2024 campaign." And maybe they were on it in 2016 or 2020. And it was like, "Nah, dude, I'm here with crypto. Yeah, check out this party later." Every time. And I'm like, "When did all of you end up working for these crypto companies?" But you got to think in the context of after January 6th, if you were a Trump former White House official or you were on those campaigns, your cash-out options by usual D.C. swamp standards were very different. So you weren't going to be going to K Street and doing lobbying in the traditional sense. You weren't going to be getting those cuss jobs on some Wall Street legislative affairs team or whatever. So for a lot of them, this was kind of the only game in town. And that's where I find this development really interesting is could this end up affecting that Republican talent cash-out pipeline in some weird way? And I remain completely perplexed about the next phase that Congress is going to try to set up some sort of market securities framework for these cryptocurrencies where right now they've basically given them the stablecoin win.
Zoë Schiffer: Exactly. Okay, one more before we go to break. Yesterday we published a story about the former DOGE offices at the General Services Administration in Washington D.C. We had gotten a little tip that they were left a bit of a mess when DOGE started to vacate said offices. Near the space where DOGE previously operated, there were stacks of mattresses that still had sheets on them, there were box springs, and then there was a whole corner of baby toys.
Jake Lahut: A lot, yeah.
Zoë Schiffer: A lot. We ended up publishing this story on kind of the scene, and we basically just published a bunch of photos of what we saw.
Jake Lahut: Well, Zoë, I think you're selling yourself short because your writing and narrative description of this scene was just something to behold. And I really think you got to read it online because the pictures are rather stunning. And I guess I would call this Dude Bro Chernobyl or something like that, where it was just like, whoa, this is the aftermath of something real serious going on here.
Zoë Schiffer: I wish I'd had that line. Coming up after the break, we dive into Jake's inside scoop on how the influence of Silicon Valley has been slowly but surely shifting in D.C. Stay with us. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . I'm Zoë Schiffer. I'm joined today by WIRED's senior writer Jake LaHut, who recently reported on the alliance between the Republican Party and Silicon Valley and how it's still going strong, but it's actively changing. Jake, this has been a long, long year so far. But it wasn't that long ago that Elon Musk was Trump's right hand, and tech leaders like Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos were attending the presidential inauguration. So what the heck has changed?
Jake Lahut: Well, I think both sides of the equation here are starting to figure each other out a little more. But based on the Republican strategists and people around Trump world I talk to, I think that at the moment they feel as if they have the better end of the deal here where they got all this money that helped them rise to power and they don't feel necessarily too exploited by the tech community. But also there are a lot of lessons learned from Elon's crash out. And the main one, as strategist put this pretty succinctly, where he has this old axiom of the podiums are for the principals. The principals being the candidate, your lawmaker. And Elon really needed to stay off the podium. And because he publicly attached himself to this thing so much, especially with that Wisconsin Supreme Court race where he was out there campaigning for it. And that kind of gave the Trump White House, and Republicans more broadly, a classic AB case study of like, okay, clearly he was a drag on the party brand here. And some of these strategists think that that's going to also hurt the Republicans to some degree in the midterms no matter what they do. So that's where it gets interesting with folks like Peter Thiel and, I think, the evolving thinking of keep it behind the scenes and, more importantly, don't put all of your bets in terms of donations on a couple of candidates or in this VC mindset on safe seats. And instead, this notion of being a team player keeps coming up. House Republicans, consultants, they want the Silicon Valley donors to really spread the wealth around and to try to just shore up Republicans for the midterms.
Zoë Schiffer: Right, right. Because Peter Thiel is massively influential, but he's not centering himself all the time. It's rare that he actually gives interviews. He's not super outspoken on social media. So he's more of this shadowy figure, which is a huge contrast to Elon Musk who really made himself the main character in the Trump administration.
Jake Lahut: Yeah. And obviously the exception to Thiel being behind the scenes would be this interview we referenced in the story with Ross Douthat of the New York Times, where he got into all sorts of zany wild stuff. But for the most part, he's really kind of Mr. Incognito, especially among the Republican base. So we had a source in the story basically saying most voters don't know who the fuck Peter Thiel is, and that works to their advantage.
Zoë Schiffer: It's so interesting because I feel like one thing that happened with all of these tech leaders and Biden was that they felt like the relationship, the promise had broken down. They were being supportive, they were giving money-
Jake Lahut: Yes.
Zoë Schiffer: ... and yet the Biden administration, and Biden in particular, were coming out and really slamming them and going after them. There were investigations, they had Lina Khan who was targeting them for alleged antitrust violations. So it felt like a very hostile dynamic. And I think when they looked at Trump, they were like, maybe they disagreed with him on a number of policies, but it felt very pay to play. They were like, if I support him, if I put in money, I kind of know what I'm going to get. But I'm curious if you think that that part of their equation has actually worked out for them so far.
Jake Lahut: Yeah. This is where I think there's a learning curve for not just the Silicon Valley billionaires, but these broader, newer donors from the tech world where they have that kind of VC disruptor return on investment mindset. And the Republican consultants and strategists who I talk to are describing to me how you kind of got to sit these guys down and be like, "Look, you can't just come in here and say I give you X amount of money, you give me Y." You need to be involved in the longterm, and maintaining this relationship is good for both of us. There was a quote that didn't make into the story where someone said that there's probably like a 5% range of politicians where if you add a zero to the donation, they will do exactly what you want. But most of these guys have been in the game long enough, if you're a House Republican, Capitol Hill or whatever, where you really can't be tipping your hand too much with that pay to play thing. And this is sort of the ongoing re-education of the valley from Republicans about how this stuff actually works.
Zoë Schiffer: I can feel that as a headline for one of your future calls.
Jake Lahut: Thank you.
Zoë Schiffer: It feels like the crypto wing is still super important to the Republican Party. A source told you that crypto might be the glue that is keeping the tech world tied to politics. Is that what you're hearing from sources?
Jake Lahut: Yeah. And I think that that's twofold. One is obviously that it remains very profitable for the Trump family in terms of the mean coins and all that. And then the other is just the sheer amount of money they were able to pump in with these packs. And I think what's very distinct about the crypto donations is that most industries, take oil and gas or your typical Republican money machines, they want to advertise about their issue in their industry. The crypto money that came in, a lot of it went towards stuff that was totally unrelated to cryptocurrency, and that ended up being very valuable and flexible for Republicans. However, a lot of the folks who are giving this money in the crypto space were kind of like apolitical libertarians, and I think now they're a little confused, a little impatient. And another quote we had in the story was that there's just a lot of bumbling and fumbling among the crypto crowd. Were they've really got to do a lot of catching up compared to the other sub industries coming out of the valley.
Zoë Schiffer: Right, right. So the GOP seems to be doing this balancing act of keeping the tech industry close while maintaining just enough distance to avoid crash-outs like the one that we saw with Elon Musk. So what's at stake for them as they navigate this?
Jake Lahut: It's hard to make a prediction about the midterms and the impact that any potential drop-off in donations or whatever would have there. But in terms of the Trump base, which is already going through it with the Jeffrey Epstein saga, I think they've got to be careful about broadcasting and telegraphing too much chumminess and proximity here. There's a reason why the Biden White House decided to have this posture against big tech because they believe that most Americans, and certainly a lot of independent voters, have become much more skeptical and distrustful of just this broad notion of big tech. So when you look at someone like JD Vance who kind of has this whole money train on lock, at least to start out, going into the 2028 Republican Presidential primary where the base, and by the base I mean people who vote in Republican primaries, they tend to be very distrustful of elites any sort. And suddenly JD is going to be the establishment and his connections with Peter Thiel and all these things are going to be more threaded over and more well known. So that would be the bigger risk, I think. It's more of a vibe aspect than the money train.
Zoë Schiffer: Jake, thank you so much for joining me today.
Jake Lahut: Great to be with you, Zoë. Thanks so much.
Zoë Schiffer: That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Make sure to check out Thursday's episode of Uncanny Valley which is about the growing industry of brain-computer interfaces. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. Amar Lal at Macrosound mixed this episode. Pran Bandi is our New York Studio engineer. Kate Osborn is our executive producer. Condé Nast head of global audio is Chris Bannon. And Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.