Welcome to If Then, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future.

I'm Will Oremus.

And I'm April Glazer.

Hey everyone, welcome to If Then. We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, a partnership

between Slate, Arizona State University, and New American. We're recording this on the afternoon

of Tuesday, February 6th. On today's show, we'll talk about a new anti-tech lobbying group,

formed by, of all people, former Facebook and Google

employees. We'll also discuss the big trial that's happening this week in San Francisco.

Waymo, which was Google's early self-driving car effort, now spun off under its parent company

Alphabet, is accusing rival Uber of stealing trade secrets in the winner-take-all race for self-driving supremacy.

Later, we'll be joined by Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist and longtime expert on the ins and

ounce of FISA. That's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which has been in the news

a ton in recent weeks with regard to a controversial memo, the Nunes memo. Republicans say it calls into question

the legitimacy of the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

And lastly, don't close my tabs, our picks for the best on the web this week.

All right, Will, how's it going this week? It's going well. It's another busy Tuesday in the tech

world. While we were

recording, actually, I just saw that two SpaceX booster rockets landed in perfect synchrony in what

appears to have been a successful launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket. This is a big deal, I think.

Yeah, it's been really exciting to watch the private space industry really come into its own.

You know, SpaceX has certainly launched a ton of rockets in the past 12 months.

So, you know, today was a big day because the Falcon Heavy, you know, they weren't sure how it was going to go, but it seems like it went well.

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