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Sources and methods, the crown jewels of the intelligence community, shorthand for,

how do we know what's real, who told us? If you have those answers, you're on the

inside, and NPR wants to bring you there, from the Pentagon to the State Department to spy agencies,

listen to understand what's really happening and what it means for you. Sources and methods,

the new National Security podcast from NPR.

From KQED. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.

I first saw a self-driving car with my own eyes nearly 15 years ago.

It seemed magical to watch one even navigate around cones.

First rode in a Waymo under full robotic control seven years ago. It was a bit

eerie, a bit haunted. And it was back then when the scale and difficulty of the project began to

become clear. These cars would need enormous amounts of practice to generate the data necessary

to drive well and in ways that humans expect. To my eye, Waymo has basically

done it through brute force. They've created a true autonomous vehicle and having watched the

progression, it still astonishes me as I walk past them down 17th past Gus's. It's like,

oh, there's the futuristic dream of a half century of nerds, just

driving along. But now that they're real and expanding in the Bay Area, there's a whole other

set of issues that are coming to the fore. The technology will continue to recede while the

social complexities introduced by autonomous vehicles become more saline. There are people in San Francisco

who love Waymos, and there are people who would burn them in the streets. Welcome to the real

future. Here to discuss it, we're joined by Raya Jetta, who is a tech culture reporter at the SS

...