Trump’s Tech Posse in China; Who’s Winning in Musk v. Altman?; Hantavirus Conspiracy Theories

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

WIRED

Technology

4.1 • 574 Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The team dives into Trump’s selected entourage for his high-stakes visit to China — from Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires to Melania director Brett Ratner. Plus, we break down the latest developments in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman, alleging that OpenAI abandoned its original nonprofit mission for profit-driven goals — but is either side actually gaining an edge in the trial? And Leah shares with us some of the most outlandish conspiracy theories that have been swirling around the hantavirus outbreak.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, director of business and industry.
0:07.0	I'm Brian Barrett, executive editor. And I'm Leah Feiger, director of politics and science.
0:12.0	Today on the show, we're diving into the final week of the Musk v. Altman trial. The high-profile
0:18.3	testimonies we've heard this week, including from OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman himself, have resurfaced a lot of past events and a lot of drama.
0:26.1	But we're asking, will this actually be consequential to the trial's verdict?
0:30.6	Also happening this week, President Trump is headed to China.
0:33.5	He's accompanied by a select number of Silicon Valley's top CEOs.
0:37.1	We'll discuss how their presence could influence conversations between world leaders
0:40.3	at a moment when the economic and foreign policy stakes could not be higher for the U.S.
0:45.1	We'll also get into the wild conspiracy theories that have been increasingly swirling around the Hanta virus,
0:51.1	from wellness influencers to grifters.
0:53.2	A lot of them have been recycling
0:54.6	very similar conspiracy theories from the COVID-19 pandemic. We're going to tell you what they're
1:00.6	sharing and also how to spot this kind of harmful misinformation. So we're wrapping up the
1:09.7	final week of one of the most consequential and honestly one of the
1:13.5	pediest trials in Silicon Valley history, the one between Elon Musk and Sam Altman.
1:19.9	The last time we spoke about the trial, we were still at the very beginning figuring out who
1:24.4	was going to speak and what they were going to say. But now we've heard Mustaine put forth their key argument, namely that Sam Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman
1:33.3	deceived him by creating OpenAI's for-profit arm instead of keeping Open AI as a classic charity.
1:40.6	This week, we heard from some of the key people who have been central to both the past and the present of Open AI.
1:46.9	We're talking about Ilya Sutskiver, who's the former Open AI chief scientist, who is part of the effort to briefly oust Sam Altman as CEO back in November, 2023.
1:55.3	We also heard from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who is one of the earliest backers of Open AI.
	...

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