WIRED Roundup: The Five Tech and Politics Trends That Shaped 2025
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
WIRED
4.1 • 570 Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For better or for worse, this year had it all — from the AI industry shaping the global economy and our lives, to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) taking over U.S federal agencies under Elon Musk’s leadership. In today’s episode, Zoë and WIRED’s executive editor Brian Barrett get together to reflect on some of this year’s key moments — and how they give us important clues as to what we can expect this upcoming year.
Articles mentioned in this episode:
- The AI Data Center Boom Is Warping the US Economy | WIRED
- The US Needs an Open Source AI Intervention to Beat China | WIRED
- DOGE Is the Deep State | WIRED
- ICE Wants to Build Out a 24/7 Social Media Surveillance Team | WIRED
- The FBI's Jeffrey Epstein Prison Video Had Nearly 3 Minutes Cut Out | WIRED
Join WIRED’s best and brightest on Uncanny Valley as they dissect the collision of tech, politics, finance, and business, from Alexis Ohanian's newest tech venture to the effects of inaccurate information from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots on social protests.
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. |
| 0:08.3 | I'm Zoe Schiffer, Wired's director of business and industry. |
| 0:12.4 | Today on the show, we're wrapping up our news episode series by reflecting on the trends and stories that shaped 2025. |
| 0:19.3 | And who better to do that with than Brian Barrett, our executive editor who works tirelessly |
| 0:24.2 | in the shadows. |
| 0:25.7 | Zoe, thank you. |
| 0:26.6 | Thank you for having me. |
| 0:28.2 | Happy to emerge from my shadowy layer. |
| 0:32.0 | From the dark, dark cave. |
| 0:33.9 | Thank you. |
| 0:34.9 | What a year it's been, and I'm so excited for it to be almost over. Oh my gosh, |
| 0:41.2 | me too. Okay, because it's been quite a year newswise, safe to say, especially in tech and politics. |
| 0:49.1 | Honestly, it was a little bit tricky to pick which trends we should discuss today, but we settled on five stories |
| 0:55.1 | that kind of encapsulate this year pretty well, and I think give us clues as to what is going |
| 1:00.3 | to be unfolding in 2026. The first one that I want to talk about is dear to my heart, and it's |
| 1:07.3 | about AI data centers. So we all know that the investment, the amount of money being spent on data centers is absolutely staggering. |
| 1:16.0 | With companies like meta, Google, and Microsoft tripling down on AI infrastructure spending this year. |
| 1:22.0 | But it's not just about the money that's being spent. |
| 1:24.6 | It's also about how that money is being invested and the domino |
| 1:28.2 | effect that it's already having on the rest of the tech industry and honestly, our entire economy. |
| 1:34.9 | I'm glad you're talking about data centers because they sound boring. They should be boring. |
| 1:39.3 | In a just world, they would be, but they're at the center of so much that is going on right now. |
... |
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