苹果的新篇章、SpaceX与Cursor达成协议，以及帕兰提尔引发争议的宣言
内容总结：
本期《Uncanny Valley》播客内容摘要
本周，播客团队讨论了蒂姆·库克卸任苹果CEO后公司的未来走向，以及SpaceX与Cursor之间出人意料的交易背后原因，还有Palantir公司自行发布的政治宣言为何在网上引发巨大争议。此外，他们还探讨了部分阴谋论者为何开始与特朗普保持距离，以及一名诈骗犯如何利用AI生成女性形象来吸引并骗取“MAGA群体”中男性的钱财。
本期提及文章：
- 《蒂姆·库克的遗产：将苹果变成订阅服务公司》
- 《MAGA开始将目光投向特朗普之外》
- 《诈骗犯用AI生成的MAGA女孩骗取“超级愚蠢”男性》
节目详细内容：
主持人Zoë Schiffer、Brian Barrett和Leah Feiger首先讨论了苹果CEO蒂姆·库克正式宣布卸任的消息，继任者为长期高管约翰·特努斯。库克的遗产主要体现在两方面：一是将苹果带入万亿美元俱乐部，二是将苹果打造成以服务和订阅为核心的商业模式。但苹果在AI领域明显落后，特努斯将面临如何确定苹果在AI竞赛中定位的挑战。团队认为，苹果可能不会像其他公司那样全力投入AI，而是继续以iPhone和Mac为核心平台，通过与其他AI公司合作来保持竞争力。
随后，团队分析了SpaceX与AI编程公司Cursor之间价值高达600亿美元的潜在交易。这笔交易之所以引人注目，是因为一家火箭公司与AI编程公司之间的合作颇为罕见。有观点认为，SpaceX旗下的xAI在编程模型方面表现不佳，需要Cursor的技术支持。但交易结构复杂，且可能推迟SpaceX的IPO计划。
讨论还涉及Palantir公司CEO亚历克斯·卡普的新书《技术共和国》中提炼出的22点宣言。该宣言主张硅谷工程精英有义务参与国家安全事务，并批评某些文化“功能失调且落后”。这份宣言在网上被批评为“法西斯主义”，反映了Palantir作为美国政府技术承包商日益强硬的立场。
MAGA阵营出现裂痕
节目重点分析了近期多位MAGA核心人物——包括塔克·卡尔森、坎迪斯·欧文斯、玛乔丽·泰勒·格林等——开始公开批评特朗普的现象。一些阴谋论者甚至质疑去年宾夕法尼亚州巴特勒市的暗杀未遂事件是“自导自演”。背后原因包括特朗普未能兑现公布爱泼斯坦相关文件、伊朗战争导致油价上涨等承诺。这是多年来首次出现这一群体的显著动摇，可能对中期选举产生影响。
AI生成的“MAGA女神”诈骗案
最后，团队讲述了一名印度医学生利用AI生成女性形象，在社交媒体上伪装成“MAGA女性”的诈骗案。最初他尝试出售普通的AI比基尼照片未获成功，后经AI建议改为打造“亲特朗普、反堕胎、反移民”的硬核MAGA形象，结果迅速吸引了上万粉丝，并通过付费订阅平台获利。有趣的是，他尝试制作自由派AI形象却无人问津，显示出刻意制造政治对立对获取流量的重要性。
中文翻译：
本周《恐怖谷》节目里，团队讨论了蒂姆·库克卸任苹果CEO后，这家公司的下一步走向。他们还分析了SpaceX和Cursor达成惊人交易背后的逻辑，以及Palantir自行发布的宣言为何在网上引发热议。此外，我们还会探讨为什么一些阴谋论者正离特朗普而去，以及一名诈骗犯如何利用AI生成的女性形象来吸引并骗取MAGA男性的钱财。
本期节目提及的文章：
- 《蒂姆·库克的遗产：将苹果转变为订阅制公司》
- 《MAGA开始把目光投向特朗普之外》
- 《这名诈骗犯用AI生成的MAGA女孩骗取“超级愚蠢”男性的钱财》
你可以在Bluesky上关注Brian Barrett（@brbarrett）、Zoë Schiffer（@zoeschiffer）和Leah Feiger（@leahfeiger）。写信给我们请发送至[email protected]。
收听方式
你可以随时通过本页面的音频播放器收听本周的播客，但如果你想免费订阅、不错过每一集，可以这样做：
如果你使用的是iPhone或iPad，请打开名为“播客”的应用，或直接点击此链接。你也可以下载Overcast或Pocket Casts等应用，搜索“uncanny valley”。我们在Spotify上也有节目。
文字记录
注意：此为自动生成的文字记录，可能包含错误。
布莱恩·巴雷特：嘿，我是布莱恩。过去几周，佐伊、莉亚和我很高兴能成为你们的新主持人，我们很想听到你们的反馈。如果你喜欢这个节目并且有空，请在你使用的播客或应用中给我们留个评价。这真的能帮助我们触达更多人。如有任何问题或评论，你随时可以联系我们：[email protected]。感谢收听。节目正式开始。
莉亚·费格：佐伊，欢迎回来。
佐伊·希弗：谢谢。
莉亚·费格：我太想你了。
布莱恩·巴雷特：我也同样想你。
佐伊·希弗：哇。
布莱恩·巴雷特：这不是比赛。
佐伊·希弗：哦，天哪。我感觉太被爱了。我以后要更常离开。俗话说，小别胜新婚，我很高兴能回到这里。欢迎收听《连线》杂志的《恐怖谷》节目。我是佐伊·希弗，商业与行业板块总监。
布莱恩·巴雷特：我是布莱恩·巴雷特，执行编辑。
莉亚·费格：我是莉亚·费格，政治与科学板块总监。
佐伊·希弗：本周节目，我们将告别苹果CEO蒂姆·库克，他宣布将辞去公司的最高职位。除了谈论他在苹果的遗产，我们还将探讨这一期待已久的变动对这家全球最大公司之一的未来究竟意味着什么。
布莱恩·巴雷特：我们还会讨论为什么SpaceX和Cursor本周宣布的潜在600亿美元交易如此惊人，并深入分析Palantir那份颇具争议的22点宣言。我觉得“宣言”本身就带有争议性，不然它们就只是备忘录了——这份宣言是他们本周在X平台上发布的。
莉亚·费格：而且，我们慢慢注意到，一些MAGA领导人和支持者正在逐渐远离特朗普。我们将剖析这些现象是否真的在累积成某种有意义的变革，还是仅仅代表我们Bluesky粉丝们的一厢情愿。
佐伊·希弗：那么，本周我们就从周一吸引我们所有人注意力的新闻开始吧。这条消息让布莱恩·巴雷特在两分钟内给我打了——我不知道——15次电话。蒂姆·库克正式卸任了。
布莱恩·巴雷特：佐伊，要是你当时接了电话，我就不用打那么多次了。
佐伊·希弗：布莱恩，我当时正忙着处理那该死的艺术素材需求呢，压力山大。他已正式辞去苹果CEO一职。我认为正式交接是9月1日，但公告已经发布了。苹果的资深高管约翰·特努斯将接任CEO。这对公司来说是一个非常关键的节点。我的意思是，我认为库克的遗产将体现在两个方面：一是专注于苹果的财务状况。公司当时已经做得很好，但他把它带入了万亿美元市值区间，并且他还完善了公司的运营和供应链。他全力推动苹果成为一家服务和订阅业务公司，例如App Store、iCloud、Apple Pay等等。这些听起来可能不如推出iPhone那么性感，但在很多方面，正是他将苹果塑造成了今天的样子。关于蒂姆·库克卸任的传言已经流传了很长时间。早在2024年，《连线》杂志的史蒂文·利维就曾问他退休是否在即，库克是这样回答的：
蒂姆·库克（档案音频）：我会一直做下去，直到我内心的声音说“是时候了”，然后我就会离开，去专注于下一个篇章会是什么样子。如你所说，从1998年开始，我的生活就与这家公司紧密相连。这是一段很长的时间，占据了我成年后生活的绝大部分，所以很难想象没有苹果的生活。
莉亚·费格：我也会在wired.com做这份工作，直到我内心的声音告诉我停下来。
佐伊·希弗：哇。好吧。那件事我们改天再谈。
布莱恩·巴雷特：没错。
佐伊·希弗：我认为这个时刻真正有趣的地方在于，苹果作为一家公司显然表现得非常出色，再次强调，万亿美元级别，等等等等。然而，感觉它在AI时代确实错过了机会，我认为约翰·特努斯的部分工作将是弄清楚苹果在AI竞赛中的位置。
布莱恩·巴雷特：嗯，我认为特努斯上任这件事本身就已经说明了这一点。特努斯是一位资深的硬件工程师，他延续了苹果用产品人而非AI人或软件人的历史，我认为这并非坏事。一方面，是的，苹果在这场AI竞赛中落后了。但另一方面，苹果并没有为了追求一场它可能根本不需要赢得的竞赛而烧掉数千亿美元，对吧？
佐伊·希弗：是的，它认为自己不需要。它对这一点的回应——我是说，史蒂文·利维不久前采访了特努斯，再次问道：“你们在AI时代打算做什么？” 他的回答很大程度是：“我们有iPhone。我们认为AI应用会出现在iPhone的App Store里，这在很多方面就是我们的答案。” 不是说他们不会尝试以不同方式嵌入AI，但我仍然认为他们相信主要的计算平台仍将是Mac和iPhone，也就是他们创造的设备。
莉亚·费格：我有点喜欢这一点，因为在一个我们看到运动鞋公司——向Allbirds转型AI致敬——的时代，我喜欢有这样一家规模庞大、非常成功的科技公司说：“是的，我们要与它共存。我们要确保我们的订阅和产品能够适应这项显然非常重要且具有工具性的技术，但我们不需要像布莱恩说的那样，‘为了让它成为核心架构而炸毁我们整个商业计划。’”
佐伊·希弗：我为Allbirds感到高兴，因为那些鞋子实在太丑了。
布莱恩·巴雷特：一个可能的类比是……苹果从未做过搜索引擎，对吧？搜索是世界上最大的业务之一。苹果从未做过搜索引擎，但谷歌向苹果支付数十亿美元，只为成为iPhone上的默认搜索引擎。我认为苹果的赌注是，通过与OpenAI、再次与谷歌、也许还有Anthropic建立合作关系，它可以实现类似的模式：“我们只是载体。我们只是那个东西。” 我看好他们的胜算，因为到目前为止我们看到的所有AI硬件……我知道萨姆·奥尔特曼和乔尼·艾维在搞些东西。我知道每个人都在试图推出某种吊坠、音箱或其他东西。归根结底，我不认为AI计算会取代你的手机。我认为从根本上说，你总是需要一个带有显示屏和应用程序，并能访问更广泛互联网的东西，而不是仅仅一个你可以跟它说话并得到回应的设备。
佐伊·希弗：我真诚地希望你是错的。我非常想要一个AI硬件设备，可以像耳机一样，你只需要跟它说话，而不需要看屏幕。但我认为你是对的，总有一些事情我们需要屏幕来完成，而且有些事情人类自己做得更好。而我也愿意相信，最终会有大量任务我们可以卸载给AI代理，这在语音计算范式下更有意义。我确实同意你提到的合作观点，苹果已经与谷歌合作，将谷歌的Gemini嵌入其设备。我认为一些人将此视为权宜之计，比如“好吧，它还没有运行前沿模型。它会暂时使用谷歌的技术。” 而我则将此视为苹果承认：“我们甚至不会试图全力以赴地加入这场竞赛。谷歌就在那里，我们可以用Gemini，这就是我们要做的。”
布莱恩·巴雷特：是的。现在，关于蒂姆·库克的遗产，还有另一部分我想问问莉亚。因为在所有与唐纳德·特朗普友好相处的硅谷巨头中，蒂姆·库克在几个方面显得尤为突出。一是，我认为他是唯一一个向特朗普赠送了由其公司工程师设计的定制纪念品的人。
佐伊·希弗：真尴尬。
莉亚·费格：我一直在等你提这个，但布莱恩，你要知道，在我的世界里，我们不叫他蒂姆·库克。我们叫他蒂姆·苹果。这是——
布莱恩·巴雷特：没错。理应如此。
莉亚·费格：就像我的总统一样，对我来说，他现在和永远都是蒂姆·苹果。不，这真是一个有趣的点。实际上，我想把这个问题抛回给你们。特努斯与特朗普政府的人关系如何？在过去一年半里，我们看到他们的科技行业同行对政府大献殷勤。与此同时，苹果虽然在安抚，但在某些方面也设法避开了纷争。我很好奇这种情况会如何变化。
佐伊·希弗：我认为库克首先是一位外交家，他利用这种外交手腕让苹果获得了有利的交易。特朗普对他有一种意外感，因为他给人的印象更偏向自由派。有一种感觉是，在私底下，他对特朗普并不像在公开场合那样赞美，但尽管如此，他还是出席了就职典礼，参与了合影。我确实听到过一些有趣的事。我的意思是，这只是个传言，但来自那些身处此类圈子的人，他们说库克事先并不知道自己会被直接安排坐在特朗普身后参加就职典礼。当这个安排被提出时，出现了一阵短暂的恐慌，因为他们都意识到那张照片会是什么样子，但无论如何，照片就是那样了。
布莱恩·巴雷特：关于特努斯的问题，我想说两点。第一，我认为我们除了知道他即将成为一家拥有众多股东的大公司CEO之外，其他并不了解。他有信托责任让业绩数字上涨，而做到这一点的方法之一就是与唐纳德·特朗普保持友好关系。事情就是这样。我不是说这应该是这样的，但我认为无论他个人感受如何，他会对政府采取对立立场的想法似乎有些牵强。我想说的第二点是，蒂姆·库克并没有消失。他将担任执行董事长。作为公告的一部分，苹果表示他将——我没有确切的措辞——但大意是他将与世界各地的领导人合作。他基本上将继续扮演这个外交角色。我认为他正在退出CEO的角色，转而更多地扮演握手、与世界各国领导人交好、试图保持过去几年建立起来的那种外交节奏的角色。
佐伊·希弗：是的。我想说的最后一点，回到iPhone本身，如果AI硬件继续令人失望，我认为苹果将处于非常有利的地位，它所下的赌注是正确的。但我确实认为，如果乔尼·艾维和萨姆·奥尔特曼那个神秘设备面世并且表现良好，或者有其他东西能够可靠地执行语音指令……那么，我不知道。我认为长远来看，这可能会给苹果带来麻烦。
布莱恩·巴雷特：嗯，佐伊，他们还有Vision Pro呢。
佐伊·希弗：哦，对，对。
莉亚·费格：就像在说“这是你们最蠢的观点吗？每个人都有iPhone。” 是的，当然，所有这些公司都有太多东西要失去，但这里有一种对产品的实际参与感，我发现即使从理性上也很难将二者割裂。是的，你可以攻击一家公司，但他们仍然会在竞选活动中拿出自己的iPhone。
佐伊·希弗：我的意思是，每个人某个时候都有过黑莓。每个人都有一个MySpace账号。事物来来去去。
莉亚·费格：事物来来去去。这倒是真的。
佐伊·希弗：我不知道是否有更好的东西会出现。
莉亚·费格：好吧。
佐伊·希弗：而且每个人都讨厌整天盯着手机。
莉亚·费格：是的。我在这里有点支持期待iPhone替代品的出现。
布莱恩·巴雷特：转到科技行业的另一个角落，本周SpaceX与热门AI初创公司Cursor达成了一项协议，要么在今年晚些时候以600亿美元收购该公司，要么如果收购未完成，他们将为其共同完成的工作支付100亿美元。他们表示将密切合作，构建“下一代编码和AI知识工作”，这基本上就是AI编码工具。这就是Cursor的知名领域。这有点奇怪。这出乎意料，而且安排也很奇特。佐伊，帮我理解一下，为什么一家火箭制造公司可能会收购一家依赖其他竞争性大语言模型的AI编码公司？佐伊，帮帮我。
佐伊·希弗：好吧。首先，我想说这对我并不意外，因为在这条消息发布前五分钟，我接到了一个电话，说消息要来了，我以为我抓到了本月甚至本年度最大的独家新闻。然后，不幸的是，新闻稿发布了，对我来说真是悲剧性的转折。
布莱恩·巴雷特：差点就是最大的独家新闻了。
佐伊·希弗：我知道。不过，我认为这实际上在某种程度上是合理的。你也许还记得，SpaceX现在拥有xAI，而xAI在编码模型方面并非特别出色，所以它确实需要Cursor的帮助。
布莱恩·巴雷特：他们投入了太多精力去制作动漫女性和非自愿色情内容，以至于他们没能——
佐伊·希弗：对。是啊。动漫女友优先了，而企业为那些动漫女友支付的费用远不及为企业代码支付的。我的意思是，我真的认为这是当前AI行业中一个被低估的现象。你跟很多人，很多投资者，很多安德森·霍洛维茨圈子的人聊天，他们会说：“达里奥·阿莫迪每天醒来就想的是企业代码，这哥们就是印钞机。他非常专注。他像激光一样聚焦在这个实际的商业模式上，而且行之有效。萨姆·奥尔特曼有个该死的机器人部门。他在干什么？” 有这样一种感觉，企业代码是目前行得通的东西，如果你要成为一家严肃的AI公司，你就必须全力以赴。所以我不知道，更疯狂的事情也发生过。然而，我认为Cursor正处于一个困难时期，因为它必须与主要实验室竞争。一家公司同意与埃隆·马斯克达成这样的交易——马斯克以试图收购Twitter然后退出而闻名，尽管那笔交易的终止费也非常高昂——我会犹豫不决。我不知道他们现在在想什么。
布莱恩·巴雷特：有两点。第一，对我来说，奇怪之处更深。仅仅是SpaceX拥有xAI，而xAI又拥有X，这一切都像是我们只是把所有东西都放在这个奇怪的保护伞下。
佐伊·希弗：是的。
布莱恩·巴雷特：这是一个奇怪的埃隆马戏团。
莉亚·费格：我必须说，看到“SpaceX AI”被实际写出来很刺眼。有点刺眼。
佐伊·希弗：这就是变得太富有的问题：你身边没有人会告诉你你的想法没有意义、很糟糕，我认为这变成了一个问题。
布莱恩·巴雷特：这就是为什么我永远不想有钱。但是Cursor的公告我觉得很有趣，因为Cursor根本没有宣布收购这部分内容。
佐伊·希弗：没有。
布莱恩·巴雷特：他们发表了一份我认为相当简短、冷淡的声明，简短要么是因为匆忙，要么是因为他们……我不知道。但上面只说——
佐伊·希弗：我们不知道。我们不知道。据说是这样。
布莱恩·巴雷特：据说是匆忙。我们只知道他们只说：“你知道吗？我们很高兴能获得xAI的计算资源。” 基本上就这些。没有关于交易的任何内容，没有关于钱的任何内容。
佐伊·希弗：是的。你知道这让我想起了什么吗？当埃隆·马斯克告诉全世界沃尔特·艾萨克森将要为他写传记时，沃尔特·艾萨克森说：“什么？” 然后同意写了那本传记。那个人可以通过告诉他的数百万粉丝事情正在发生来促成事情发生。
布莱恩·巴雷特：就促成事情而言，这笔交易要到今年晚些时候才会发生。最近有报道称，原因——这让我觉得最合理——是SpaceX正在准备IPO。他们接近上市了，他们不想因为完成这笔交易而延迟IPO。所以有一个操作顺序的问题，比如“我们需要先上市，然后再尝试完成一笔600亿美元的交易”，这再次感觉，就像所有关于这个的事情一样，我不想说被诅咒了，只是感觉随时可能脱轨。
佐伊·希弗：是的。作为记者，我对IPO年感到非常兴奋，因为我觉得这是公司真正需要整肃其行为的时刻。他们需要让运营、内部流程都达到非常非常非常非常精确的标准。你要上市了，会有很多审视。会有很多股东。SpaceX正在尝试。Anthropic正在尝试。OpenAI正在尝试。我认为这将是一段狂野的时期，一路上事情会变得奇怪。
布莱恩·巴雷特：你们俩读过Palantir CEO亚历克斯·卡普的书《技术共和国》吗？或者更确切地说，你们读过多少遍？
佐伊·希弗：对。这才是关键问题。
莉亚·费格：我得承认我没读过，但我读了太多关于它的文章。不幸的是，我感觉我现在已经读过它了。
布莱恩·巴雷特：嗯，如果你在X上关注了Palantir，现在大概每个人都应该读过了；如果你没关注，也没关系。要明确的是，这不是推荐。但本周，Palantir在X上，没人问他们，但他们主动分享了亚历克斯·卡普那本书的22点摘要。他们开头写道：“因为我们经常被问起，以下是《技术共和国》的简要版本。” 然后列出了卡普理想中的科技与国家合二为一的愿景。里面有一些要点，一些亮点，引述如下：“硅谷的工程精英有参与国家防御的积极义务。” 还有：“在世界历史上，没有哪个国家比这个国家更推动进步价值观。” 里面还有一点我确实想提出来。
莉亚·费格：征兵制？你肯定得谈谈征兵制。
布莱恩·巴雷特：征兵制是个好话题。我本来想说：“一些文化产生了至关重要的进步，其他文化仍然功能失调且落后。”
莉亚·费格：是的。很难不把这份宣言的每一点都大声读出来。说“引发了强烈反应”是轻描淡写，但我们遗漏了最大的反应，即网上的批评者称这是法西斯主义。他们基本上是在说：“你只是在逐点告诉我们Palantir是如何堕入法西斯主义的。” 我们花了很多时间谈论这家公司。我们并没有真正深入讨论它的起源以及它如何看待自己在整个美国梦（或无论这意味着什么）中的位置。它成立于9/11之后。它应该是在那个打击海外恐怖主义被视为最高目标的国家共识之后成立的。该公司由科技亿万富翁彼得·蒂尔共同创立。其数据聚合分析工具为从企业到美国军方瞄准系统的一切提供动力，而最近，这尤其意味着针对移民的瞄准系统。所以CEO亚历克斯·卡普将这家公司描述为美国政府的延伸手臂，这本身并不新鲜。我认为它只是在某个特定点上触动了批评者，以及内部的批评者，他们开始说：“等等，那不是我当初签约的国家。” 特别是在今年，ICE和国土安全部的监控、对伊朗军事行动的支持，该公司在这些立场上加倍下注。实际上，明天我们政治记者玛凯娜·凯利会发一篇报道，讲述这些立场在公司内部也不那么受欢迎。然后你还有亚历克斯·卡普，他看起来根本不在乎，他说：“不，不，不，我们在正轨上。我们会继续走下去。”
布莱恩·巴雷特：是的，亚历克斯·卡普经常说很多话，这感觉像是那些话的延伸。所以这可能……我认为它触动了人们的神经，因为这是人们第一次看到这么多内容被集中在一个地方，而且不是在CNBC或会议上随口说的。它就像是“不，这是一份非常刻意的价值观声明。”
佐伊·希弗：我认为亚历克斯·卡普得益于他说话像哲学专业的学生。当你听他说话时，你会觉得“这个人听起来很聪明，但他到底在说什么？” 所以当公关部门将其翻译成通俗语言，说：“好吧，我们为你分解一下。你不用翻书了。这是它全部的意思。” 我认为这就是让人们感到惊讶的地方。
莉亚·费格：是的，这是哲学上的漫谈，被包装在一个看起来像是威权主义、极端民族主义计划的东西里，难怪人们称之为法西斯主义。
布莱恩·巴雷特：所以有一件事我……我知道我们可以整天引用这里的内容，里面有这样一句话：“必须抵制某些圈子中普遍存在的对宗教信仰的不容忍。精英阶层对宗教信仰的不容忍，或许是表明其政治计划构成一个比其中许多人声称的更不开放的思想运动的最明显标志之一。” 现在，我要说的是，这感觉像是对宗教不容忍的一种非常片面的看法。我认为有一种想法是，人们是容忍宗教，还是容忍所有宗教，同时拒绝某个宗教在政府结构中成为主导宗教的想法？这应该是……你明白我的意思吗？我认为这里有一种明确的视角，而且是一种……防御性的姿态，我认为这并不……我觉得它不够有自知之明。
莉亚·费格：是的，它不奏效，也许这就是问题的一部分，布莱恩。这是一个糟糕的观点，所以我想这是我这一期的《糟糕观点》了。给我一个真正相信这些东西而不是为了中饱私囊的威权主义者吧。我看看这个，Palantir现在正大把大把地赚钱，所以他们当然会重复任何能让他们在政府那里保持好感的话。你看到政府正在与哪怕只是稍微发声的公司开战，无论是Anthropic还是其他谁，而且这种氛围就在那里。不，Palantir现在是政府的首选机构，我们从特朗普政府上任第一周就看到了这一点。我们看到那么多的DOGE（政府效率部）来源于此，所以我很难看着这一切而不说：“好吧，你也在考虑这些东西在给你合同的人眼里会是什么样子。”
佐伊·希弗：我的意思是，我认为这没错，但我认为卡普是一个真正的信徒。从听那个人说话或看他的历史来看，我不觉得他是现在才投机地宣扬这些他以前不信的信念。他看起来像是那种不仅喝了迷汤，而且是真的相信这些东西的人。
布莱恩·巴雷特：他差不多是在制造迷汤，他把粉剂搅进水里。他在描绘自己的图景。
佐伊·希弗：是的。是的，谢谢。我真的很努力地想把这个比喻说好。是的，他是那个把迷汤分给别人喝的人。
莉亚·费格：但你无法将其与这在商业上对他有多成功分开来看。
佐伊·希弗：不，当然不能。
莉亚·费格：我认为这就是我在谈论Palantir的活动时不断回到的地方。
佐伊·希弗：嗯，我只想……当你听到像乔·朗斯代尔这样的人说话时，我会觉得……这对我来说似乎更明显。他看起来也是那种真正相信这类事情的人，然而他成长的环境是，他因为主张这些信念而获得了巨大的回报，所以毫无疑问，随着时间的推移，这些信念变得更加坚定。
莉亚·费格：嗯，玛凯娜的文章中有一个非常有趣的点，你们都可以在WIRED.com上读到，那就是在Slack上，人们正在就卡普在公开场合的言论、他们的公开行动等等进行这些激烈的讨论。在宣言发布后，有一条引语让我念念不忘，内容是：“我很好奇为什么一定要发这个，尤其是用公司账号。从实际层面看，每次发了这种东西，我们在美国以外销售软件就更难了，而且我怀疑我们在美国是否需要这个。” 这，我想，又回到了商业角度：这对谁有利？这如何让他们受益？这会让他们受益多久？至少，员工们开始对此感到有些惊慌了。
布莱恩·巴雷特：我很好奇这是否会导致任何实质性的变化，比如人们是否真的离开公司，是否更难在那里招聘到人，或者他们是否会得到很多——我认为同样，你不能孤立地看这件事。这份宣言发布的同时，Anthropic正与五角大楼进行一场非常公开的角力，说：“实际上，我们认为政府不应该将某些工具用于某些目的。我们确实有底线，不会仅仅为了服务于美国的霸权而这样做。” 这是一个非常有趣的动态，Palantir发布这份宣言，感觉几乎是在表明立场：“不，实际上，你们应该跟上，Anthropic，以及其他任何认为应该与政府设定界限的公司。”
莉亚·费格：是的，绝对如此。你必须做你必须做的事来确保政府合同源源不断。谈到政府，我想把话题留在这里，因为实际上，可能，也许，或许在中期选举季会有一些变化发生。伙计们，我们得谈谈最新的趋势。过去几天、几周，我们大家都注意到了涉及现任特朗普政府的事情，更具体地说，是MAGA运动中非常重要的派系正在如何远离特朗普。我们说的是重要人物。我们说的是本周塔克·卡尔森几乎是字面意义上为误导人们关于特朗普的事道歉，称每个人都牵连其中，让他当选了。我们看坎迪斯·欧文斯，另一位重要评论员，一直在全面反对特朗普。我们看玛乔丽·泰勒·格林，她在最近几周和几个月里一直在反对特朗普，但在过去几天和几周里，每个人都在对此猛攻。现在人人都是批评家，而且不仅仅是这些高调的保守派人物经历了他们重大的“抛弃阶段”。阴谋论者也在抛弃特朗普，而这长期以来一直是他的拿手好戏。大卫·吉尔伯特上周晚些时候写了一篇精彩的文章，讲述了MAGA运动中许多重要人物实际上都开始说，2024年总统大选期间在宾夕法尼亚州巴特勒市发生的针对特朗普的暗杀企图其实是伪造的。历史上支持特朗普的播客主蒂姆·狄龙对此发表了看法。
蒂姆·狄龙（档案音频）：也许那次暗杀并不是……我们不知道全部情况，所以也许它是被安排的，也许是伪造的。
佐伊·希弗：他为什么那么说话？
布莱恩·巴雷特：我们应该这样说话吗……等等，他很受欢迎。我们应该那样说话吗？
佐伊·希弗：你能试试吗？
莉亚·费格：佐伊，这是你的转变点。我的意思是，但他并不孤单。这就是最疯狂的地方。我前面提到的网红坎迪斯·欧文斯也谈到了这一点。
坎迪斯·欧文斯（档案音频）：我觉得很奇怪，唐纳德·特朗普对于查明是谁开了那一枪毫无兴趣，或者看起来完全漠不关心。
莉亚·费格：需要明确的是，所有这些分享都没有证据。没有任何重要的报道表明这些是伪造的，但这并没有阻止这波MAGA人群，他们在某种程度上重复着许多“蓝丸党”在2024年提出的完全相同的说法，即“这是伪造的。这全都是针对哈里斯的。这是针对拜登的。这是针对所有这些的。” 所以看着那个“握手”表情符号在那一刻汇集到一起，真是令人着迷。但对我而言，我认为这也相当清楚地表明，进入中期选举，共和党处于一个奇怪的境地。特朗普的民调数字比以往任何时候都低。共和党已经在某些选举中与他拉开距离。我不知道。你们对此有多认真？你们在你们的圈子里看到了什么？
佐伊·希弗：嗯，我的意思是，在我们谈到那之前，我想先退一步问你，这是为什么？是许多小事累积的结果吗？是伊朗战争吗？为什么人们现在这么生气？
莉亚·费格：爱泼斯坦是个大事。句号。爱泼斯坦真的很大。他承诺完全公布爱泼斯坦相关文件。但后续非常令人失望。没人真的相信他说了什么。司法部那些零星的披露，尤其是特朗普的名字被涂黑的内容。所以那很混乱，人们不喜欢那样。他通过承诺打击美国的恋童癖，并声称这是民主党的阴谋，从而赢得了很多人的支持。而爱泼斯坦文件处理得如此糟糕，肯定坑了他。然后再加上伊朗、物价上涨、以及所有这些事情，突然之间，人们看着这一切说：“我们在这儿干什么呢？”
布莱恩·巴雷特：我还想说，他甚至失去了一些“男性圈”的支持，比如罗根和西奥·冯，因为移民问题。还有安德鲁·舒尔茨。那里也有反弹。我认为他一直在做他承诺不会做的事情，而这终于开始显现后果了。
佐伊·希弗：对。
莉亚·费格：任何人的基本盘都是稳固的，对吧？当你谈论民主党基本盘时，那些年复一年出来支持民主党的人，他们可能对某些行动感到愤怒，但他们会继续投票给民主党。这里真正有趣的是，我们在2016年看到的是，特朗普创造了一个新的基本盘，这就是为什么共和党人看着这位前名人以一种非常非常大的方式登上舞台，并团结了来自不同阵营的阴谋论者和独立人士，会感到如此疯狂。是的，共和党人大量投票给他，但他也把很多新人带到了帐篷下。但到现在已经10年了，这个基本盘从未动摇过。他们在1月6日期间没有动摇。他们在第一个任期的各种调查中没有动摇。所以看到现在的动摇，这真的是我能想到的、在关注这一切过程中第一次让我觉得“哦，天哪，人们在摇摆了。” 这和我以前见过的非常不同，很难说这是中期选举前的升温，是2028年前的升温，我们是选择JD万斯？我们是选择马可·卢比奥？我们终于要从特朗普作为党领袖的身份中走出来了？我不知道，我认为党还没有决定，但听到这些传闻真的很有趣。
布莱恩·巴雷特：我想问的是，这种“传染”蔓延得有多广？特朗普一直在非常激烈地反击，在Truth Social上发表了很长的咆哮，针对塔克、针对坎迪斯·欧文斯等等。你有没有感觉——现在说可能太早了，我猜——但你有感觉吗，他能不能控制住局面，还是这会变成一场真正的、对他来说是四级火警的危机，尤其是随着中期选举临近？
莉亚·费格：好问题。我认为还需要一点时间来观察。我认为我们必须看看夏天美国经济会发生什么。人们还能进行公路旅行吗？还是因为伊朗战争导致油价太高？与此同时，尽管这是上周的新闻，但我还是得再次提出来，坚定的特朗普支持者，包括我们刚刚讨论过的许多人，都在问他是不是敌基督。特朗普与教皇发生了争执。他以非常具体的方式押注天主教徒，以至于他实际的 supporters 在YouTube直播中问：“我们投票选出的这个人是不是敌基督？” 所以说，这并不一定是可控的，它只需要另一个时刻，另一条特朗普的Truth Social帖子，另一份公函，另一个战争问号，就能真正、真正地失控。
佐伊·希弗：我们认为后果会落到JD万斯头上吗？还是说他已经准备好接掌MAGA的大旗？
莉亚·费格：好吧。我这么说，但我是对你们俩说的，假装我们没有现在这么多的听众。
布莱恩·巴雷特：数百万。
莉亚·费格：数百万。没人喜欢JD万斯。JD万斯受到我们硅谷人士的喜爱，那是为他现在在位而欢呼的人群。这一点非常明确。他在很多方面都是连接特朗普和许多这些人的桥梁人物，过去有一些关于这方面的精彩报道。但当你谈论JD万斯，人民之子，在卡车停靠站握手、抱小孩等等，那不是他，而且我真的看不出他如何能甩掉特朗普的臭味。
布莱恩·巴雷特：我住在深南地区，中期选举的竞选广告已经开始了，它们仍然 overwhelmingly 是关于谁是最特朗普的共和党人？这仍然是人们竞选的依据。我很好奇这种情况是否会改变，而且我无法想象一个世界，它会变成谁是最JD万斯的共和党人？
莉亚·费格：是的。我也不确定我是否能看到那一点。我们知道，我可以永远谈论这个，但我们先快速休息一下，回来后，我们将进入一个有趣/离奇的故事，关于一个诈骗犯如何通过创建一个为特定受众量身定制的AI生成女性而大赚一笔。请继续关注我们。
布莱恩·巴雷特：在今天节目结束前，我想谈一个来自EJ·迪克森的故事，我们本周发布后受到了很多关注。这个故事说实话完美地概括了我们所处的时代。EJ采访了一位在印度的医学生——我们叫他萨姆，不是真名——他正试图赚点钱来支付开销，并希望毕业后能移民到美国。尝试了几种方法后，比如卖他的医学院笔记、做YouTube视频，他找到了一个更具体、可能更有利可图的想法。他决定使用谷歌的Gemini Nano Banana Pro（一个AI图像生成服务）创建一个AI生成的女人，并在线销售她的比基尼照片，因为你到处都找不到这些。这是一种稀有商品。
佐伊·希弗：我真的很想听莉亚·费格说出“谷歌Gemini Nano Banana Pro”这个词。我只是觉得那组词——
莉亚·费格：我不会说的。我就是不干。不适合我。
布莱恩·巴雷特：我们会说到那的。
莉亚·费格：谢谢。
布莱恩·巴雷特：等一下。他创建了这个AI生成的女人，但发现内容都没有火起来，毫无进展，所以他回到Gemini向聊天机器人寻求建议。Gemini回复说，这些图片太普通了，但如果他把他的AI生成模型调整为更具MAGA风格，可能会获得一些关注。所以让她出现在射击场，让她喝一些Coors Light啤酒，发布反堕胎、反移民的信息，你懂的。你相信吗？它像火箭一样火了。
佐伊·希弗：哦，天哪。这真是这个时代的故事，而且Gemini是那个提出建议的人，这太有趣了。
布莱恩·巴雷特：嗯，事情是这样的。这样的账户太多了。这个账户名叫艾米丽·哈特，一个月内就在Instagram上获得了超过1万名粉丝，然后他们又在OnlyFans的竞争对手Fanvue上订阅了她软色情的AI生成内容，但这样的账户到处都是。
佐伊·希弗：等等，布莱恩，但人们知道它是一个AI模型吗？还是他们认为它是一个真实的女人？
布莱恩·巴雷特：很多人似乎不知道，而且他们——
莉亚·费格：他们似乎非常、非常不确定。
布莱恩·巴雷特：是的，有些人说“我知道，但我不在乎。”
佐伊·希弗：对。好吧。好吧。好吧。
布莱恩·巴雷特：因为你永远不会在现实生活中见到这个人，我觉得在某种程度上，这类顾客、内容消费者，在某个节点上，一切都已经是抽象的了。但有趣的是，MAGA特定的——我想说他的MAGA-focused创作——非常成功。他尝试做了一个左翼对应的版本。他尝试做了一个民主党版本，没人——
佐伊·希弗：没成功？
布莱恩·巴雷特：没成功。没搞起来。每个人都说“这看起来像愚蠢的AI。”
莉亚·费格：不，只有保持极化才有钱赚，这是整个骗局中非常有趣的一部分，即这是一个骗局的想法。这完全是一个骗局。我更惊讶于这是一个明显与此毫无利害关系的人所为。
佐伊·希弗：今天节目就到这里。我们会在节目说明中附上所有提及文章的链接。《恐怖谷》由Kaleidoscope Content制作。阿德里安娜·塔皮亚制作了本集节目。由Macrosound的阿马尔·拉尔混音。由马特·吉尔斯进行事实核查。普兰·班迪是我们的纽约录音室工程师。马克·莱达是我们的旧金山录音室工程师。金伯利·蔡是我们的数字制作高级经理。凯特·奥斯本是我们的执行制作人。凯蒂·德拉蒙德是《连线》杂志的全球编辑总监。
英文来源：
This week on Uncanny Valley, the team discusses what’s next for Apple as Tim Cook steps down from his role as CEO. They also go into the reasoning behind SpaceX and Cursor’s surprising deal, and why Palantir’s self-published manifesto drew a lot of heat online. Also, we discuss why some conspiracy theorists are leaving Trump’s side, and how a scammer created an AI-generated woman to attract and grift MAGA men.
Articles mentioned in this episode:
- Tim Cook’s Legacy Is Turning Apple Into a Subscription
- MAGA Is Starting to Look Beyond Trump
- This Scammer Used an AI-Generated MAGA Girl to Grift ‘Super Dumb’ Men
You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett, Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer, and Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger. Write to us at [email protected].
How to Listen
You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how:
If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for “uncanny valley.” We’re on Spotify too.
Transcript
Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Brian Barrett: Hey, it's Brian. Zoë, Leah, and I have really enjoyed being your new hosts these past few weeks, and we want to hear from you. If you like the show and have a minute, please leave us a review in the podcast or app of your choice. It really helps us reach more people, and for any questions and comments, you can always reach us at [email protected]. Thank you for listening. On to the show.
Leah Feiger: Zoë, welcome back.
Zoë Schiffer: Thank you.
Leah Feiger: I missed you so much.
Brian Barrett: And I missed you the exact same amount.
Zoë Schiffer: Wow.
Brian Barrett: It's not a contest.
Zoë Schiffer: Oh, my gosh. I feel so loved. I'm going to go away more often. Absence makes the heart go fonder, as we all know, and I'm thrilled to be here. Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoë Schiffer, director of business and industry.
Brian Barrett: I'm Brian Barrett, executive editor.
Leah Feiger: And I'm Leah Feiger, director of politics and science.
Zoë Schiffer: This week on the show, we're saying goodbye to Apple CEO Tim Cook, who announced that he is stepping down from the top gig at the company. And, more than just talking about his legacy at Apple, we'll be looking into what this long-awaited shift actually means for the future of one of the world's biggest companies.
Brian Barrett: We'll also get into why SpaceX and Cursor's potential $60 billion deal announced this week is pretty staggering, and we'll get into Palantir's controversial 22-point manifesto. I feel like “manifestos” are inherently controversial, otherwise they'd be memos that they posted on X this week.
Leah Feiger: And slowly but surely, we have been seeing certain MAGA leaders and supporters move away from Trump. We're going to break down whether these instances are actually building to something meaningful or just some wishful thinking on the behalf of our Bluesky followers.
Zoë Schiffer: So let's kick it off this week with the news that grabbed all of our attention on Monday. It had Brian Barrett calling me, I don't know, 15 times in the span of two minutes. Tim Cook officially stepping down.
Brian Barrett: If you'd picked up, Zoë, I wouldn't have had to.
Zoë Schiffer: Brian, I was trying to fill out the goddamn art request. It was really stressful. He has officially stepped down as the CEO of Apple. I think the official transition is September 1st, but the announcement is out there. John Ternus, a longtime executive at Apple, is taking over the CEO gig. This is a pretty pivotal moment for the company. I mean, Cook's legacy, I think, will be twofold, one in just honing in on Apple's financials. The company was doing really well, but he took it into the trillion-dollar range, and he's also perfected its operations and supply chain. He went all in on making Apple a services and subscription business with things like the App Store, iCloud, Apple Pay, all of that. So this doesn't sound quite as sexy as launching the iPhone, but in many ways he's the person that shaped Apple into what it is today. And rumors about Tim Cook stepping down have been swirling for a really long time. Back in 2024, WIRED’s Steven Levy asked him if retirement was on the horizon and Cook responded like this:
Tim Cook, archival audio: I'll do it until the voice in my head says, "It's time," and then I'll go and focus on what the next chapter looks like. My life has been wrapped up in this company, as you mentioned, since 1998. This is a long time. It's the overwhelming majority of my adult life, and so it's tough to envision life without Apple.
Leah Feiger: I'm also going to do this job at wired.com until the voice in my head tells me to stop.
Zoë Schiffer: Wow. OK. Well, we're going to table that for another time.
Brian Barrett: Yeah.
Zoë Schiffer: I think what's really interesting about this moment is Apple obviously is doing phenomenally as a company, again, trillion dollars, et cetera, et cetera. However, it does feel like it has missed the boat in the AI era, and I think John Ternus' job will be in part to figure out what is Apple's place in the AI race.
Brian Barrett: Well, I think the fact that it's Ternus in general already sort of speaks to that a little bit. Ternus is a longtime hardware engineer who’s continuing Apple's history of product people versus AI people, software people, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I think on the one hand, yes, Apple is behind in this AI race. On the other hand, Apple hasn't set fire to hundreds of billions of dollars in pursuit of a race that maybe it doesn't even need to win, right?
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, it doesn't think it needs to. Its answer to this, I mean, Steven Levy interviewed Ternus somewhat recently and asked again, "What are you going to do in the AI era?" And his response was very much, "We have the iPhone. We think AI apps will exist in the App Store on iPhones, and that's going to be, in many ways, our answer." Not to say they're not going to try and embed AI in different ways, but I still think they think the primary computing platform is going to be Macs and iPhones, the devices that they create.
Leah Feiger: I kind of love this because in an era where we're seeing sneaker companies—shout-out Allbirds’ pivot to AI—I like that there is this massive, very successful tech company that's saying, "Yes, we're going to live with this. We're going to make sure that our subscriptions, our products are adaptable to this clearly very important and instrumental technology, but we don't need to blow up," like Brian said, "our entire business plan to make this a core structure here."
Zoë Schiffer: I like that for Allbirds because those shoes are absolutely hideous.
Brian Barrett: A parallel might be ... So Apple never made a search engine, right? Search is one of the biggest businesses in the world. Apple never made a search engine, but Google pays Apple billions of dollars to be the primary search engine on the iPhone. I think Apple's bet is that by building relationships with OpenAI, with Google again, with Anthropic at some point, who knows, it can have that similar, "We're just the vessel. We're just the thing." And I like their odds because all of the AI hardware that we've seen so far ... I know that Sam Altman and Jony Ive are cooking something up. I know that everybody's got some sort of pendant or speaker or whatever that they're trying to make happen. At the end of the day, I don't think that AI computing is going to replace your phone. I think fundamentally you're always going to need something with a display and apps, and the broader internet versus just something you could talk to and get answers back from.
Zoë Schiffer: I sincerely hope you're wrong. I'm really wanting an AI hardware device that could be like headphones that you could just speak to and you wouldn't have to look at a screen. But I think you're right that there will always be certain things we need screens for, and that humans are better at just doing ourselves. And then I would like to think there will be a whole slew of tasks that we can eventually offload to AI agents, and that would make more sense for a voice computing paradigm. I do think to the partnership point that you made, Apple has already partnered with Google and it's going to embed Google Gemini into its devices. I think some people saw that as a stopgap, like, "OK, it doesn't have frontier models up and running. It's going to use Google in the interim." I saw that as Apple admitting, "We're not even going to try and get into this race in a full-throated way. Google's right there, we can use Gemini and that's what we're going to do."
Brian Barrett: Yeah. Now, there's another part of Tim Cook's legacy that I want to ask Leah about. Because Tim Cook, of all the Silicon Valley titans who have been friendly and made nice with Donald Trump, Tim Cook kind of stands out in a couple of ways. One in that I think he's the only one who presented Trump with a custom trophy designed by his company's engineers.
Zoë Schiffer: Embarrassing.
Leah Feiger: I was waiting for you to bring this up, but Brian, just so you know, in my world, we don't call him Tim Cook. We call him Tim Apple. This is—
Brian Barrett: That's true. Rightly so.
Leah Feiger: Just like my president, he is Tim Apple to me now and forevermore. No, this is such an interesting point. Actually, I'm going to throw this back to you guys. What's Ternus' relationship with Trump admin people? We have been seeing their colleagues in the tech industry fawn over the administration in the last year and a half. Apple has simultaneously, while placating, has also managed to stay out of the fray in some ways too. I'm very curious to see how that changes.
Zoë Schiffer: I think that Cook is a diplomat first and foremost, and he used that diplomacy to position Apple to get deals that were favorable to the company. I think there was a surprise factor with Trump because he reads as more liberal. There was a feeling that behind closed doors he wasn't as complimentary of Trump as he was in public, but nonetheless, he was at the inauguration, he was appearing in photo ops. I did actually hear something funny. I mean, this caveat is a rumor, but from people who are in these types of circles, and said that he wasn't aware that he was going to be placed directly behind Trump in the inauguration. And when that placement was put forward, there was a moment of slight panic because they all realized what the photo was going to look like, but nonetheless, that's the photo.
Brian Barrett: I think two things about the Ternus question specifically. One, I think we just don't know other than I will say he is going to be the CEO of a major company that has lots of shareholders, and he has a fiduciary responsibility to make this number go up, and the way that you do that is you're friendly with Donald Trump. That's just kind of the way it is. I'm not saying that's the way it should be, but I think the idea that he would take a stand against this administration feels far-fetched regardless of what his personal feelings are. The other thing I would say is Tim Cook's not disappearing. He's going to be the executive chairman. As part of the announcement, Apple said he is going to be, I don't have the exact phrasing, but something like he's going to be working with leaders across the world. He's going to continue that diplomacy role basically. I think he's stepping out of his CEO role, and into more of a shaking hands, making nice with world leaders, trying to keep up that sort of diplomatic cadence that he'd already established over the last several years.
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I think the last point that I wanted to make, just going back to the iPhone of it all, is if AI hardware continues to disappoint, I think that Apple is in a really strong position, and the bet that it's making is correct. But I do think that if this mysterious Jony Ive, Sam Altman device comes on the scene and is good, or if something else comes up that is able to execute voice commands in a reliable way then ... I don't know. I think that could be a problem for Apple down the road.
Brian Barrett: Well, Zoë, they've got the Vision Pro.
Zoë Schiffer: Oh, right, right.
Leah Feiger: Like, "Is this the dumbest take you guys? Everyone has an iPhone." Yes, of course, all of these companies have so much to lose, but there is this actual engagement with product that I find so hard to separate even intellectually. Yeah, you can come after a company, they're still going to be taking their iPhones out on the campaign trail.
Zoë Schiffer: I mean, everyone had a Blackberry at some point. Everyone had a MySpace account. Things come and go.
Leah Feiger: Things come and go. That's true.
Zoë Schiffer: I don't know if a better thing comes on.
Leah Feiger: All right.
Zoë Schiffer: And everyone hates being on their phone.
Leah Feiger: Yeah. I'm waning here for the iPhone replacement, please.
Brian Barrett: Going to another corner of the tech industry, this week SpaceX announced a deal with the popular AI startup Cursor, to either acquire the company for $60 billion later this year, or if an acquisition doesn't happen they'll pay them $10 billion for whatever work that they've done together. They said they're going to work closely together to build "next-generation coding and knowledge work of AI," which is AI coding tools basically. That's what Cursor is known for. It's a little weird. It was unexpected, and the arrangement is strange. Zoë, help me understand why it's a potential deal for a rocket ship company buying an AI coding company that relies on other large language models who are competitive. Zoë, help me. Help me.
Zoë Schiffer: OK. Well, first I just want to say it wasn't unexpected to me, because five minutes before this news came out, I got a call that the news was coming, and I thought I had the biggest scoop of my month, if not year. And then, sadly, the press release came, so tragic turn of events for me.
Brian Barrett: Biggest almost scoop.
Zoë Schiffer: I know. However, I think this actually makes some level of sense. Might you recall that SpaceX now owns xAI, and that xAI is not incredible at coding models, and so it does need Cursor's help.
Brian Barrett: They put so much into making anime women and nonconsensual porn that they couldn't—
Zoë Schiffer: Right. Yeah. The anime girlfriends took precedence, and companies won't pay as much for those anime girlfriends as they will for enterprise code. I mean, I really think that this is an under-understood thing that is happening in the AI industry right now. You talk to a lot of people, a lot of investors, a lot of the Andreessen Horowitz circle, and they're like, "Dario Amodei gets up every day and he thinks enterprise code, that man just prints money. He is so focused. He is laser-focused on this actual business model and it is working. Sam Altman has a goddamn robotics division. What is he doing?" There is the sense that enterprise code is the thing that is working, and that if you're going to be a serious AI company you need to go all in. So I don't know, crazier things have happened. However, I think that Cursor is in a difficult moment because it has to compete with the major labs. A company agreeing to go into a deal like this with Elon Musk, who famously tried to buy Twitter and then back out despite the very expensive kill fee on that deal as well, I would be hesitant. I don't know what they're thinking right now.
Brian Barrett: Two things. One, the weirdness to me is deeper. Just the fact that SpaceX owns xAI, which owns X is all just like we're just putting it all under this weird umbrella.
Zoë Schiffer: Yes.
Brian Barrett: It's a weird Elon circus.
Leah Feiger: I have to say seeing SpaceX AI actually written out was jarring. It was a little bit jarring.
Zoë Schiffer: This is the thing about getting too rich, is you don't have people around you that will tell you your ideas don't make sense and that they're bad, and I think that that becomes a problem.
Brian Barrett: This is why I never want to have money. But Cursor's announcement I thought was interesting, because Cursor didn't announce the acquisition part of this at all.
Zoë Schiffer: No.
Brian Barrett: They put out a pretty terse, I thought, statement, short either because it was rushed or short because they were ... I don't know. But all it said—
Zoë Schiffer: We don't know. We don't know. Allegedly.
Brian Barrett: Allegedly rushed. All we know is that they just said, "You know what? We're excited about getting access to xAI's compute." That was basically it. Nothing about a deal, nothing about the money.
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. You know what it made me think of? Is when Elon Musk told the world that Walter Isaacson was going to be writing his biography, and Walter Isaacson said, "What?" And then agreed to write said biography. That man can make things happen by just telling his many millions of followers that things are happening.
Brian Barrett: In terms of making things happen, so this deal's not going to happen until later this year. It was reported recently that the reason was, then this part makes it, this is what makes most sense to me is, SpaceX is gearing up for an IPO. They're getting close to it, and they didn't want to close this deal because it would delay the IPO. So there's sort of an order of operation things, like, "We need to go public before we try to close a $60 billion deal," which again feels, like everything about these feels, I'm not going to say cursed, it just feels likely to derail at some point.
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. The reporter in me is really excited for IPO year because I feel like this is when companies really need to get their act together.They need to have their operations, internal processes really, really, really, really dialed. You're going public, there's going to be a lot of scrutiny. There's going to be a lot of shareholders. SpaceX is trying to do it. Anthropic is trying to do it. OpenAI is trying to do it. I think it's going to be a wild, wild time, and stuff's going to get weird along the way.
Brian Barrett: Have either of you read Palantir's CEO Alex Karp's book The Technological Republic or rather how many times have you read it?
Zoë Schiffer: Right. That's the operative question.
Leah Feiger: I have to admit I haven't read it, but I have read way too many things about it. Unfortunately, I feel like I've read it at this point.
Brian Barrett: Well, and everybody sort of should by now if you follow Palantir on X, and if you don't, that's OK. Just to be clear, it's not an endorsement. But this week, Palantir on X, unprompted, nobody asked them to, but they shared a 22-point summary of Alex Karp's book. They prefaced it with, "Because we get asked a lot, here's the technological republic in brief." And it goes on to list Karp's ideal vision of tech and the state working as one. There's some points in there, some highlights, quote, "The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation." And also quote, "No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one." There's one more in there that I do want to call out.
Leah Feiger: The draft? You got to talk about the draft.
Brian Barrett: The draft is a good one. I was going to go with, "Some cultures have produced vital advances, others remain dysfunctional and regressive."
Leah Feiger: Yes. It's hard to not read every single point of this manifesto out loud. By saying strong reactions ensued, though we're kind of missing the big one, which is critics online called this fascist. They were like, "You are just giving us the point-by-point of Palantir's dissent into fascism basically." We spend a lot of time talking about this company. We don't really talk a lot about its origins and how it views itself in the entire American dream or whatever that means. It was founded after 9/11. It was supposed to be after this big national consensus where fighting terrorism abroad was the be-all, end-all. The company was cofounded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Data aggregation analysis tool powers everything from businesses to the US military's targeting systems, and more recently, that's meant like targeting systems specifically on immigrants. So the way that CEO Alex Karp talks about this company as this extended arm of the US government isn't necessarily new. I think that it's just hitting this very specific point for critics, and critics internally as well that are going, "Wait a second, that's not the country that I actually signed up on." Specially this year, ICE and DHS surveillance, its support of military actions in Iran, the company has doubled down on all of these positions. We actually have a story coming tomorrow from politics reporter Makena Kelly about how internally that's not being received super well either. And then you have Alex Karp who kind of doesn't really appear to care, and he's like, "No, no, no, we're on track. We're going to keep going here."
Brian Barrett: Yeah, and Alex Karp says a lot of stuff all the time, and this feels like an extension of that. So it's maybe ... I think it hit a nerve because it was the first time people had seen so much of it collected in one place, then it was not something off the cuff on CNBC or at a conference. It was like, "No, this is a very intentional statement of values."
Zoë Schiffer: I think that Alex Karp benefits from being someone who speaks like a philosophy major. When you hear him talk you're like, "This man sounds very smart, but literally what is he saying?" So when comms translates that and is like, "OK, we'll break it down for you. You don't have to open the book. Here's what it all means." That's what I think catches people by surprise.
Leah Feiger: Yeah, and it's philosophical ramblings that are packaged in what appeared to be an authoritarian ultra-nationalist game plan here, which is no surprise why people call it fascist.
Brian Barrett: So here's one thing I ... I know we could quote from this all day, there's a line in there, "The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite's intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim." Now, what I would say, that feels like a very one-sided view of what religious intolerance is. I think there is the idea that, like are people intolerant of religion or are they tolerant of all religions and reject the idea of one religion becoming the predominant religion within a government structure? Which it should, you know what I mean? I think there's a certain ... The perspective is very clear here, and it's sort of one, the sort of defensive crouch I think doesn't really ... It's not very self-aware, I guess I would say.
Leah Feiger: Yeah, it doesn't hit, and maybe that's part of it, Brian. And this is a bad take, so this is my episode of Bad Takes, I suppose. Give me an authoritarian who really, really believes this stuff and isn't doing it to line their pockets. I'm looking at this, and Palantir is making money hand over fist right now, so of course they're just going to repeat anything that keeps them in the good graces with the administration. You're watching the administration be at war with companies that even remotely speak out, whether that's Anthropic or whomever, and just the idea of that being in the air. No, Palantir is like this institution of choice right now, and we've watched that happen since week one of the Trump administration. We watched so much of DOGE come from that, so it's very hard for me to look at all this and not go, "OK, you're also thinking about how this reads to these people that are giving you these contracts."
Zoë Schiffer: I mean, I think that's true, but I think Karp is a true believer. I do not get the sense from hearing that man talk or looking at his history that he is opportunistically spouting these beliefs now when he didn't believe them before. He seems like someone who has really drunk the, not even drunk the Kool-Aid, as someone who really believes this stuff.
Brian Barrett: He's sort of making the Kool-Aid, he's stirring in the powder to the water. He's painting his own picture.
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Yeah, thank you. I really tried to land that. Yeah, he's the one giving the Kool-Aid to everyone else.
Leah Feiger: But you can't separate that from how successful that's going for him business-wise.
Zoë Schiffer: No, of course.
Leah Feiger: And I think that's where I keep getting back to when we're talking about Palantir's activities here, I suppose.
Zoë Schiffer: Well, I would just ... When you listen to someone like Joe Lonsdale, I'm like ... that seems a little more apparent to me. That is someone who seems like he also really believes this type of thing, and yet he kind of grew up in an environment where he was being heavily rewarded for espousing these beliefs, and so it's no surprise that they have gotten more hardened over time, I guess.
Leah Feiger: Well, something that's really interesting that comes up in Makena's article that you can all read on WIRED.com, is in Slack people are having these kind of intense conversations about what Karp is saying in public, about their actions in public, all of these different things. There's this one quote following the post of the manifesto that I can't stop thinking about, which reads, "I'm curious why this had to be posted, especially on the company account. On the practical level, every time stuff like that gets posted it gets harder for us to sell the software outside of the US, and I doubt we need this in the US," which is, I guess brings back to the business point of who is this benefiting? How is this benefiting them? How long will this benefit them? And at the very least, employees are starting to kind of freak out about it.
Brian Barrett: And I'm curious if that actually leads to any kind of material change, if people actually leave the company, if it's harder to recruit there, or if they get a lot of like—I think too, you can't look at this in a vacuum. The fact that this is being released at the same time that Anthropic is having that very public fight with the Pentagon saying, "Actually, we don't think the government should use these tools for certain things. We do have a line where we are not just doing this in service of US supremacy." It is a really interesting dynamic, and this feels almost like you're putting it out there if you're Palantir as a sort of, "No, actually you should get in line, Anthropic, and anyone else who thinks that they should have boundaries with the government."
Leah Feiger: Yeah, absolutely. You got to do what you got to do to keep those government contracts rolling in. Talking about the government, I want to keep us there because there are actually, possibly, maybe, perhaps some changes afoot coming midterm season. Guys, we have to talk about the most recent trend. We've all been noticing it over the last couple of days, couple weeks involving the current Trump administration, and more specifically how very important factions of the MAGA movement have been shifting away from Trump. We're talking like major figures here. We're talking Tucker Carlson this week quite literally apologized for misleading people on Trump, said everyone's implicated in getting him elected. We're looking at Candace Owens, another major pundit who's been going all against Trump. We're looking at Marjorie Taylor Green, who in recent weeks and months has been moving against Trump, but everyone's been going really hard on this in the last couple of days and weeks. Everyone's a critic now, and it's not just these high-profile conservative figures who have gone through their big abandoning phase. Conspiracy theories are also abandoning Trump, which has been traditionally his bread and butter for so long. David Gilbert had an excellent piece late last week about how a number of big folks in the MAGA movement are actually all starting to say that the assassination attempt on Trump's life in Butler, Pennsylvania,during the 2024 presidential election was actually staged. Tim Dillon, a podcaster that has historically supported Trump, went in on this.
Tim Dillon, archival audio: Maybe the assassination was not something that we ... We don't know the full story, so maybe it was staged, maybe it was faked.
Zoë Schiffer: Why does he talk like that?
Brian Barrett: Should we be talking ... Wait, he's very popular. Should we be talking like that?
Zoë Schiffer: Could you try?
Leah Feiger: Zoë, this is your pivot. I mean, but he wasn't alone. That's what's so crazy. Influencer Candace Owens, who I mentioned earlier, she also spoke about this too.
Candace Owens, archival audio: I find it very strange that Donald Trump is not interested or has appeared to be completely disinterested in determining who fired that shot.
Leah Feiger: To be clear, all of this is being shared without evidence. There haven't been any significant reports that show that any of this was in fact staged, but that really hasn't stopped this wave of MAGA folks, in some ways, repeating the exact same claims that a lot of blue-pilled people did in 2024, which was like, "This is staged. This was all against Harris. This was against Biden. This was against all of this." So it's been fascinating watching truly the handshaking emoji come together in that moment. But also, to me, I think it's pretty indicative of the party is in a weird place going into the midterms. Polls are lower than they've ever been for Trump. The Republican Party is already distancing from him on certain elections. I don't know. How serious are you guys taking this? What are you seeing in your circles?
Zoë Schiffer: Well, I mean, I guess before we even get there, I want to back up and ask you, why is this happening? Is it a bunch of small things that are just culminating? Is it the Iran war? Why are people so pissed right now?
Leah Feiger: Epstein was big. Full stop. Epstein was really big. He promised to release everything Epstein-wise. The rollout's been super disappointing. No one's really believed what he's had to say. The little specific drops from the Department of Justice, especially everything with Trump's names getting redacted from stuff. So that's been messy, so people have not loved that. And he got a lot of people on his side with a big promise to campaign against pedophilia in the United States, and this was a whole Democratic plot, and to have the Epstein stuff be so bungled has screwed him for sure. That then combined with Iran, combined with rising prices, combined with all of this stuff, all of a sudden people are just looking at this going, "What are we doing here?"
Brian Barrett: I'd say too, he even lost some of his manosphere support, Rogan and Theo Von over immigration. Andrew Schulz. There's been pushback there too. I think he keeps doing things that he promised he wouldn't do, and that is finally catching up.
Zoë Schiffer: Right.
Leah Feiger: Anyone's base is solid, right? When you're talking about the Democratic base, the people that are coming out to support Dem's year in year out, they might be mad about certain actions, but they're going to keep voting for the Democrats. What's really interesting here, and what we saw in 2016 is that Trump created a new base, and that's why it was so wild for Republicans to watch this former celebrity take the stage in a really, really big way, and uniting conspiracy theorists and independents from across different camps. Yes, Republicans voted for him en masse, but he brought a lot of new people under the tent, but over the last 10 years at this point, the base hasn't wavered. They didn't waiver during January 6th. They didn't waiver during a variety of different investigations in his first term. So to watch the waiver now, this really is the first time that I can think of following all of this that I'm going, "Oh, gosh, people are shaking." And this is very different than I've seen before, and it's hard to say if it's a ramp-up to the midterms, if it's a ramp-up to 2028, are we picking JD Vance? Are we picking Marco Rubio? Are we finally moving on from Trump as the head of the party? I don't know, and I don't think that the party has decided that yet, but to hear these rumblings is really interesting.
Brian Barrett: I guess my question is, how far is this contagion spreading? Trump has been very vocally attacking back, very long Truth Social rants against Tucker, and against Candace Owens, and all that. Do you have a sense, and it's too early to say, I guess, I assume, but do you have a sense if this is, if he's going to be able to contain this or if this is going to turn into a real four alarm fire for him, especially as the midterms come up?
Leah Feiger: Great question. I think that it's going to take a little bit more time to see. I think we're going to have to see what happens, frankly, with the US economy in the summer months. Are people going to be able to take road trips or are gas prices going to be just too high because of the Iran war? Simultaneously, and I have to say this even though this was the news last week, but I have to bring it up again, staunch Trump supporters, including many of those that we just talked about, are asking if he's the antichrist. Trump got into fights with the Pope. He has been banking on Catholics in very specific ways, to the point that his actual supporters are going on YouTube lives and saying, "Is this person that we voted for the Antichrist?" So it's all to say that this isn't necessarily something that is containable, that it takes truly just another moment, just another Trump Truth Social, another missive, another war question mark for this to really, really get out of hand.
Zoë Schiffer: Do we think that the fallout hits JD Vance at this point, or is he positioned to take on the MAGA mantle?
Leah Feiger: OK. I'm saying this, but I'm saying this to you guys, and pretending that we don't have however many listeners we have right now.
Brian Barrett: Millions.
Leah Feiger: Millions. No one likes JD Vance. JD Vance is beloved by our Silicon Valley folks, that's who's thrilled that he's in office right now. That has been the very clear part. He is, in so many ways, the figure in between Trump and so many of these folks, and there's been some great reporting on that in the past. But when you're talking about JD Vance, man of the people, at the truck stop shaking hands, holding babies, et cetera, that's not him, and I don't really see how he's able to shake the Trump stink off of him.
Brian Barrett: I live in the Deep South, and the midterm races, the advertising has already started, and they are still overwhelmingly who is the most Trump Republican? It's still what people are running on. I'm very curious to see if that changes, and I cannot imagine a world in which that becomes who is the most JD Vance Republican?
Leah Feiger: Yeah. I don't know if I see that either. As we know, I could talk about this forever, but we're going to take a quick break, and when we're back, we're going to be getting into a fun/bizarre story about how a scammer made bank by creating an AI-generated woman perfectly tailored for a very specific kind of audience. Stay with us.
Brian Barrett: Before we wrap up for today, I want to get into a story from EJ Dickson that we published and got a lot of attention this week. It's a story that honestly kind of perfectly encapsulates the times that we are living in. So EJ talked to a medical student based in India—we call him Sam, it's not his real name—who was trying to make some money to cover expenses, and hopefully migrate to the US after he graduated. After trying a few things, he tried selling his med school notes, he tried making YouTube videos, he landed on a more specific and potentially more lucrative idea. He decided he was going to create an AI-generated woman using Google's Gemini Nano Banana Pro, it's an AI image generator service, and sell bikini photos of her online, because you can't find those anywhere. It's a rare commodity.
Zoë Schiffer: I really want to hear Leah Feiger have to say Google Gemini Nano Banana Pro. I just feel like that set of words—
Leah Feiger: I won't say it. I just won't do it. Not for me.
Brian Barrett: We'll get there.
Leah Feiger: Thanks.
Brian Barrett: Hold on. He makes this AI-generated woman, but finds out that none of the content is picking up steam, it's not going anywhere, so he goes back to Gemini to ask the chatbot for advice. Gemini goes back and tells him that the pictures were too generic, but maybe he might get some traction if he tailored his AI-generated model to be more MAGA-coded. So you put her in a rifle range, you have her pounding some Coors lights, posting anti-abortion, anti-immigration messages, you get the idea. Would you believe that it took off like a rocket?
Zoë Schiffer: Oh, my Lord. This really is like the story of the times, and it's so funny that Gemini was the one to suggest it.
Brian Barrett: Well, and here's the thing. There are so many of these accounts. This one was named Emily Hart, and within a month had more than 10,000 Instagram followers, who then also subscribed to her Softcore AI-generated content on OnlyFans competitor Fanvue, but there are so many of these everywhere.
Zoë Schiffer: Wait, but Brian, do people know that it's an AI model or do they think it's a real woman?
Brian Barrett: A lot of them don't seem to know, and the one they—
Leah Feiger: They seem very, very unsure.
Brian Barrett: Yes, and some of them are like, "I know, but I don't care."
Zoë Schiffer: Right. OK. OK. OK.
Brian Barrett: Because it's not like you're ever going to meet this person in real life, and I feel like at a certain point, this kind of customer, content consumer, it's all an abstraction anyway at a certain point. But it is interesting how the MAGA-specific, and I want to say his MAGA-focused creation, hugely successful. He tried making a left-leaning counterpart. He tried doing the Democratic version, no one—
Zoë Schiffer: Didn't work?
Brian Barrett: Did not work. Didn't pan out. Everyone was like, "This looks like dumb AI."
Leah Feiger: No, it only pays to be polarizing, which is such an interesting part of this whole grift, the idea that it's a scam. This is entirely a scam. I'm so taken with the fact that this is from someone who so clearly has no horse in this race.
Zoë Schiffer: That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Uncanny Valley is produced by Kaleidoscope Content. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. It was mixed by Amar Lal at Macrosound. It was fact-checked by Matt Giles. Pran Bandi is our New York studio engineer. Marc Leyda is our San Francisco studio engineer. Kimberly Chua is our digital production senior manager. Kate Osborn is our executive producer, and Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.
文章标题：苹果的新篇章、SpaceX与Cursor达成协议，以及帕兰提尔引发争议的宣言
文章链接：https://news.qimuai.cn/?post=3895
本站文章均为原创，未经授权请勿用于任何商业用途