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"content": "\u003cp>After a year of testing and tooling around \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> city streets, Zoox announced it is making its robotaxis available to the public, starting with free rides for those who join a waitlist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zoox’s green vehicles are eye-catching. They aren’t built like cars. They have no steering wheel or pedals, all four seats face inward and some people refer to them as toasters on wheels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re notable in another way, too. They’re \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfAt803DQMw\">manufactured in Hayward\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As factory jobs continue their decades-long decline across the country, the East Bay is doubling down on precision manufacturing, betting its proximity to Silicon Valley’s labs and talent pools will help lift a slumping industrial base into a new era. Alameda County’s manufacturing sector expanded by 10% over the same period, reaching nearly 94,000 jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Old timers will recall that the East Bay has a storied history of building cars, most famously the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/201005210900/tesla-and-toyota-at-nummi\">NUMMI\u003c/a> plant in Fremont, taken over by \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101883541/the-unpredictable-volatile-world-of-elon-musk-and-tesla\">Tesla\u003c/a> in 2010, now operating the biggest auto plant in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But ask anyone at Zoox and they’ll tell you, they’re not building cars. They’re designing robots that happen to carry people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12064734\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12064734\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-From-Rust-to-Robots-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1125\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-From-Rust-to-Robots-02-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-From-Rust-to-Robots-02-KQED-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-From-Rust-to-Robots-02-KQED-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-From-Rust-to-Robots-02-KQED-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Zoox robo taxi is assembled at the company’s manufacturing facility in Hayward. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Zoox, Inc.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We do not classify ourselves as in the automotive sector. We are in the robotic sector,” said Corrado Lanzone, vice president of manufacturing operations at Zoox, acquired by \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/amazon-zoox-robotaxis-manufacturing-plant-8c34ae849ccb10eaa7e6e5266d6de8e8\">Amazon\u003c/a> in 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lanzone told KQED that one of Hayward’s biggest benefits is its proximity to Silicon Valley and its \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11732182/is-the-future-of-automotive-engineering-in-silicon-valley-ask-this-german-auto-giant\">culture of innovation\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means the mechanical engineers in Hayward have an easier time collaborating with the software engineers at Zoox’s headquarters in Foster City.[aside postID=news_12064374 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/TeslaFremontGetty.jpg']Zoox launched its manufacturing operation in a 220,000-square-foot, repurposed \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ds6QiEp9yg\">Gillig bus \u003c/a>manufacturing facility last June, and ultimately hopes to produce up to 10,000 vehicles a year. While about 100 people work for Zoox in Hayward today, the company anticipates hiring more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not just Hayward driving the advanced manufacturing bus in Alameda County. Fremont and Newark are doing it, too, according to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.resilienteastbay.org\">East Bay Economic Development Alliance\u003c/a>, a public-private partnership covering Alameda and Contra Costa counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Together, the three cities have positioned themselves as an \u003ca href=\"https://www.resilienteastbay.org/map/\">emerging regional hub\u003c/a> for high‑value sectors like advanced transportation, biomedical, food and beverage, climate tech, and, yes, robotics. Fremont hosts Tesla, Applied Materials, and dozens of precision-hardware suppliers. Newark hosts Lucid Motors’ engineering and prototype plant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By protecting industrial land, expediting permits, and modernizing infrastructure, the three cities have drawn a concentration of robotics, electric vehicle, biotech-hardware and clean-tech manufacturers that did not exist at this scale 15 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12064736\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12064736\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/250730-WAYMOFILE_00136_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/250730-WAYMOFILE_00136_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/250730-WAYMOFILE_00136_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/250730-WAYMOFILE_00136_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Zoox autonomous vehicle drives through 16th Street and Potrero in San Francisco on July 22, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Bay Area is too expensive to lure most manufacturing work, but because of its established base of technological talent, companies like Zoox find an attractive value proposition in building things close to headquarters, “especially in the early stages of trying to fine tune and commercialize a product that’s going to be made at scale,” said Stephen Baiter, executive director of the East Bay Economic Development Alliance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Baiter calls what’s happening in the region a “convergence effect.” That is to say, companies like Tesla, Applied Materials and Zoox are capitalizing on the regional talent pool, its strong research and development ecosystem, availability of production space, and supportive local economic development policies as reasons why the region is an attractive place to scale operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the East Bay’s biggest employers are education, health services, and professional/technical services, manufacturing is a major player, and one that’s growing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s anywhere between 20 to 30% of our gross regional product. Employment-wise, it’s closer to 10%. But still a substantial sector, however you want to slice it,” Baiter said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>After a year of testing and tooling around \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> city streets, Zoox announced it is making its robotaxis available to the public, starting with free rides for those who join a waitlist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zoox’s green vehicles are eye-catching. They aren’t built like cars. They have no steering wheel or pedals, all four seats face inward and some people refer to them as toasters on wheels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re notable in another way, too. They’re \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfAt803DQMw\">manufactured in Hayward\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As factory jobs continue their decades-long decline across the country, the East Bay is doubling down on precision manufacturing, betting its proximity to Silicon Valley’s labs and talent pools will help lift a slumping industrial base into a new era. Alameda County’s manufacturing sector expanded by 10% over the same period, reaching nearly 94,000 jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Old timers will recall that the East Bay has a storied history of building cars, most famously the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/201005210900/tesla-and-toyota-at-nummi\">NUMMI\u003c/a> plant in Fremont, taken over by \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101883541/the-unpredictable-volatile-world-of-elon-musk-and-tesla\">Tesla\u003c/a> in 2010, now operating the biggest auto plant in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But ask anyone at Zoox and they’ll tell you, they’re not building cars. They’re designing robots that happen to carry people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12064734\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12064734\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-From-Rust-to-Robots-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1125\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-From-Rust-to-Robots-02-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-From-Rust-to-Robots-02-KQED-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-From-Rust-to-Robots-02-KQED-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-From-Rust-to-Robots-02-KQED-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Zoox robo taxi is assembled at the company’s manufacturing facility in Hayward. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Zoox, Inc.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We do not classify ourselves as in the automotive sector. We are in the robotic sector,” said Corrado Lanzone, vice president of manufacturing operations at Zoox, acquired by \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/amazon-zoox-robotaxis-manufacturing-plant-8c34ae849ccb10eaa7e6e5266d6de8e8\">Amazon\u003c/a> in 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lanzone told KQED that one of Hayward’s biggest benefits is its proximity to Silicon Valley and its \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11732182/is-the-future-of-automotive-engineering-in-silicon-valley-ask-this-german-auto-giant\">culture of innovation\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means the mechanical engineers in Hayward have an easier time collaborating with the software engineers at Zoox’s headquarters in Foster City.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Zoox launched its manufacturing operation in a 220,000-square-foot, repurposed \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ds6QiEp9yg\">Gillig bus \u003c/a>manufacturing facility last June, and ultimately hopes to produce up to 10,000 vehicles a year. While about 100 people work for Zoox in Hayward today, the company anticipates hiring more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not just Hayward driving the advanced manufacturing bus in Alameda County. Fremont and Newark are doing it, too, according to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.resilienteastbay.org\">East Bay Economic Development Alliance\u003c/a>, a public-private partnership covering Alameda and Contra Costa counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Together, the three cities have positioned themselves as an \u003ca href=\"https://www.resilienteastbay.org/map/\">emerging regional hub\u003c/a> for high‑value sectors like advanced transportation, biomedical, food and beverage, climate tech, and, yes, robotics. Fremont hosts Tesla, Applied Materials, and dozens of precision-hardware suppliers. Newark hosts Lucid Motors’ engineering and prototype plant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By protecting industrial land, expediting permits, and modernizing infrastructure, the three cities have drawn a concentration of robotics, electric vehicle, biotech-hardware and clean-tech manufacturers that did not exist at this scale 15 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12064736\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12064736\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/250730-WAYMOFILE_00136_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/250730-WAYMOFILE_00136_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/250730-WAYMOFILE_00136_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/250730-WAYMOFILE_00136_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Zoox autonomous vehicle drives through 16th Street and Potrero in San Francisco on July 22, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Bay Area is too expensive to lure most manufacturing work, but because of its established base of technological talent, companies like Zoox find an attractive value proposition in building things close to headquarters, “especially in the early stages of trying to fine tune and commercialize a product that’s going to be made at scale,” said Stephen Baiter, executive director of the East Bay Economic Development Alliance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Baiter calls what’s happening in the region a “convergence effect.” That is to say, companies like Tesla, Applied Materials and Zoox are capitalizing on the regional talent pool, its strong research and development ecosystem, availability of production space, and supportive local economic development policies as reasons why the region is an attractive place to scale operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the East Bay’s biggest employers are education, health services, and professional/technical services, manufacturing is a major player, and one that’s growing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s anywhere between 20 to 30% of our gross regional product. Employment-wise, it’s closer to 10%. But still a substantial sector, however you want to slice it,” Baiter said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Meet Ukraine’s ‘Geeks of War’",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Ukraine-Russia war has been called the most technologically advanced war in history. Ukrainian citizens receive notifications about incoming missile and drone attacks through apps on their phones; remote-controlled drones swarm the front lines; and volunteer cyberwarfare units target Russian digital infrastructure. It’s all part of what some have dubbed Ukraine’s “Geeks of War.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this episode, investigative reporter Erica Hellerstein takes us to the digital front line. On a recent trip to Ukraine, she met a husband-and-wife duo running a DIY nonprofit that supplies tech to defense forces, toured the recently-bombed headquarters of one of the country’s biggest tech companies, and explored how a swarm of online accounts with Shiba Inu avatars is countering Russian propaganda.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout, she looks at how Ukraine’s culture of tech innovation — and its surprising ties to Silicon Valley — are fueling the country’s resistance through an army of engineers, coders, hackers, and tinkerers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5459549472\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest: \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ericahellerstein.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Erica Hellerstein\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, investigative journalist and feature writer\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/articles/dexter-filkins-on-drones-and-the-future-of-warfare?tab=transcript\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dexter Filkins on Drones and the Future of Warfare\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Adam Howard, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WNYC\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kyivpost.com/post/47836\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lessons From the World’s First Full-Scale Cyberwar\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — David Kirichenko, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kyiv Post\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/30/technology/russia-propaganda-video-games.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Russia Takes Its Ukraine Information War Into Video Games\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Steven Lee Myers and Kellen Browning, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The New York Times\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/08/27/ukraine-drones-war-russia-00514712?utm_source=perplexity\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why Ukraine remains the world’s most innovative war machine\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Ibrahim Naber, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Politico\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/03/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-drones-deaths.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Thousand Snipers in the Sky: The New War in Ukraine\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Marc Santora, Lara Jakes, Andrew E. Kramer, Marco Hernandez and Liubov Sholudko, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The New York Times\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here on Close All Tabs, we cover all different sides of tech and the internet — the good, the bad, and the gray areas in between. Today, we’re doing something different, and taking our deep dive abroad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The tech industry is increasingly intertwined with global conflict. Like how Silicon Valley’s AI obsession has fueled the automated warfare in Israel’s attacks on Gaza, or US bomb strikes in Iraq and Syria. So-called “defense tech” startups are attracting billions in funding. And like we’ve talked about on this show before, the Pentagon’s Cold War investments actually built Silicon Valley. This startup approach to weaponry has some pretty concerning implications for the future of war. And we’ve seen, in real time, the way these advancements in surveillance and automated warfare are being used to oppress people — like Palestinians in Gaza. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the same time in another region plagued by conflict, Ukraine, tech culture has become a vital part of the country’s resistance against Russian aggression. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s the kind of story that Erica Hellerstein stumbled upon, as she prepared for her own trip to Ukraine. Erica is a Bay Area investigative journalist who reports on human rights, politics, and tech. Back in June, she spent three weeks around Kyiv on a reporting trip, working on a project about her own family’s roots in the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just before her trip, she heard a story about a Ukrainian engineer who had worked for a Bay Area tech company, but left his job to join his country’s defense forces. It got her thinking about the connection between Silicon Valley and the Ukrainian fight against Russian occupation. She started digging and according to the people she talked to, the tech sector is part of the reason Ukraine is still standing today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These are the Geeks of War — that’s what one Ukrainian drone operator nicknamed the group. Ukraine actually has a long history of technological innovation that is still alive today, and is fueling the country’s resistance through an army of engineers, coders, hackers, and tinkerers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this special episode, Erica will introduce us to a few of these “Geeks” and we’ll explore how this new generation is blurring the lines between the digital and physical battlefield — reshaping the next generation of conflict, and maybe even the future of war itself. I’ll let Erica take it from here. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein, Reporter\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">:\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s around 11:55 pm when the first alarm goes off.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Alarm sounding from Air Alert app]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">:\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The noise shatters any illusion I had that my first night in Kyiv would be quiet or peaceful. I’ve been doomscrolling on my phone in a bomb shelter connected to my hotel in Kyiv. It’s surprisingly nice, with wifi, beverages, even bean bag chairs. On heavy nights of bombardment, like tonight, these sirens can go off multiple times and last for hours. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But most of the time I’m in Ukraine, I’m hearing these alarms digitally through an app on my phone called Air Alert. The Ukrainian government developed the app towards the beginning of the war, and it’s now been downloaded at least 27 million times. That’s in a country of 39 million people. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Air Alert sounds a loud, jarring alarm whenever a Russian missile strike, or drone attack is detected in your region. And the voice telling you to find the nearest shelter? None other than Jedi master Luke Skywalker. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Mark Hammill from Air Alert app]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Attention. Air raid alert. Proceed to the nearest shelter. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: Or rather, Mark Hamill, the actor who \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">played\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> the beloved character in Star Wars. Hamill’s a vocal supporter of Ukraine so he pitched in to voice the English language version of the app.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Mark Hammill from Air Alert app] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don’t be careless. Your overconfidence is your weakness.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: I’ve learned, though, that the app only gives you basic information. To get details, I go to a different app, Telegram, where I follow a volunteer-run channel that gives updates about what kinds of missiles, or drones, are in the air.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As if two apps aren’t enough, I’m also on WhatsApp messaging a group of journalists who are also in Kyiv. Some are in the same hotel shelter, others are sheltering in the hallways of their apartment buildings or metro stations. Everyone is sharing updates. “Drone flew right over our roof,” someone writes around 1 am. Another, two minutes later: “Loud explosion not far from my place.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Finally, around 6am, another alert goes off. Once again, I hear a familiar voice.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Mark Hammill from Air Alert app]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Attention. The air alert is over. May the Force be with you.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">:\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That means, at least for now, the skies in Kyiv are safe. But as dawn breaks, the scale of the destruction starts to come into focus. About two miles from where I’m staying, an apartment building was hit by a ballistic missile and reduced to rubble – there are reports of people still trapped inside. A Kyiv metro station and university were also hit. All told, ten people, including a child, were killed in the onslaught.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This has become a regular occurrence in Ukraine. People have been living through these kinds of attacks for years. Unable to sleep through the wails of the sirens, reading news about buildings blown up, civilians killed and then somehow, still managing to go about their daily lives – going to work, picking up their kids, celebrating birthday parties, getting married.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And beyond the apps like Air Alert, technology has become a centerpiece in this war — hacking software, killer drones, medical robots delivering supplies to the frontlines. It’s transforming how people experience war. Now, every aspect of our lives, including conflict, is mediated by our digital world. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the people behind the screens can be a little mysterious. I wanted to learn more about them. To understand the workers and whizzes changing what warfare looks like, with major implications for the rest of the world. I wanted to meet the self-styled “Geeks of War.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And for that, we’ll need to open a new tab: \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Typing sounds] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Meet the Geeks\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: My first guide to the geeks is a couple I met in Lviv, which is a Western city in Ukraine. Dimko and Iryna Zhluktenko. They’re the co-founders of Dzyga’s Paw. It’s a Ukrainian nonprofit that donates defense technology to the frontlines. Both Iryna and Dimko used to work in tech. Dimko was a software engineer, Iryna a product analyst for the San Francisco-based tech company, JustAnswer. But after Russia invaded Ukraine, they quit their jobs and threw themselves into Dzyga’s Paw, which, by the way, is named after their adorable little fox-faced pup, Dzyga.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I stop by the organization’s headquarters one night. They greet me with a tour of the space. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can just come like this. So we used to live here, so this is actually, like a normal house location, but very old one is from 1906, so it’s more than 100 years old, and here you have our main working, like a little open space.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: There’s a small party happening, with some women playing an intimidating-looking card game in the kitchen.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The girls are playing [inaudible] Do you know this game? No, you should try. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein in tape: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, I’m horrible at cards.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We pass an entire wall full of framed thank you letters from different military units. There’s another wall, too, full of patches from soldiers and volunteer fighters, some coming from the other side of the world.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein in tape: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wow, I see Argentina. That’s far.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s from, yeah, from international volunteer who’s fighting here in Ukraine, from Argentina. This is a Estonian one from Estonian cyber defense forces. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Iryna shows me another decoration tacked to the wall: A downed Russian drone. And it’s in really good shape. So she decides to give it a whirl.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let me try to do it. So it turns on. And if I had a controller, if I had a like TX controller, I could launch it and start it, probably.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein in tape:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So this is like a war treasure?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Looted from Russians. Yes.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Once I tear myself away from the shiny objects, I sit down with Dimko, Iryna, and of course, Dzyga, who has extreme zoomies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She is the boss of the operation.\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> [Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Dzyga barks]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> They tell me that the project came about in the early months of the war. Of course, like so many other Ukrainians, they wanted to help. And they started to think about what they could bring to the table. And that’s when Dimko and Iryna, had their \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a-ha\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> moment. “We’re nerds!” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dimko Zhluktenko\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We’ve decided that well, we might just use our, uh, tech experience, our tech geekiness, uh, to, uh, innovate. Some of the approaches on the battlefield.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We figured out, okay, we can help better when our expertise is. So basically we started looking more into more advanced equipment. We started looking into drone and things like that and because we had friends in the military, uh, it was like our first point of contact because like we had people we could trust. And we started, you know, buying and supplying some tech devices.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> They started with what their friends in the military really needed: equipment. Drones, Starlink units — which provide remote internet access – long-range encrypted radios, thermal cameras. Dzyga’s paw has since grown from a scrappy idea into a multi-million dollar nonprofit. In October alone, they delivered over $230,000 worth of equipment to the military, according to the organization. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And all of this high tech gear goes to soldiers and drone operators who are stationed near the frontlines.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They often work in hideouts, or command centers, miles from the front, flying drones by remote control while wearing a headset that shows exactly what the device sees through its camera. Other soldiers sit beside them, watching live maps on screens, calling out targets and coordinates in real time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dimko explains what these command centers look like in action.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dimko Zhluktenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Basically an underground shelter with, uh, tons of, uh, big ass four screen TVs or something. Uh, and guys looking like they just finished the MIT or something. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So literally geeks of the war, sitting in those command centers and analyzing what is happening at the battlefield, and then suggesting what decisions should be taken to be the most effective.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> About a year ago, Dimko also enlisted as a drone operator for a Ukrainian military unit. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dimko Zhluktenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Because this is my chance to, uh, well defend my home, defend my family, and, uh, in the end defend my country.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Basically the job is to do the reconnaissance. Um, you have this big UAV that, uh, like a fixed wing kind of a thing that you launch in the air.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Drone warfare has quickly become one of the defining characteristics of this conflict. The kind Dimko pilots are called UAVs — or unmanned aerial vehicles. They look like small airplanes, and like Dimko said, they’re mainly used for reconnaissance.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dimko Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It has the radio connection, so you have the radio signal link, uh, to it. And, uh, you have the live stream from that, you stream that footage into one of the IT systems that we have, uh, in the armed forces.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein in tape:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Okay \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dimko Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So all of the people interested in the situation in the area. Can watch that live stream. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Then there’s this other kind of drone, called an FPV. That stands for first-person-view. They’re some of the most common drones on the battlefield right now. Once upon a time, these drones were mainly the toys of hobbyists and creatives. You know that insufferable wedding reel you saw on Instagram? Probably shot on an FPV drone.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Russia invaded, the Ukrainian military started rolling them out on a massive scale. They cost next to nothing. They’re endlessly scalable, and for a country like Ukraine, with far fewer resources and manpower than Russia, they’ve been a game-changer. Drones that can be bought for just a few hundred dollars are now taking out Russian tanks and artillery worth millions.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are swarms of these things buzzing around now on the front, some with cameras for spying, others loaded with explosives to detonate on their targets. And they’re responsible for massive damage. Drones now account for as much as seventy percent of casualties on both sides, according to Ukrainian officials.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Experts are already warning that this rapid, wide-scale shift could dramatically change the future of conflict. Other countries are likely to learn from or maybe adopt the technologies and tactics deployed in this war. And It’s not just militaries that can repurpose these technologies. Paramilitaries, militias, and extremist groups can all easily purchase and deploy drone technology. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As drone warfare becomes more lethal on the battlefield, Dimko tells me that his work is also getting more treacherous as the war progresses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dimko Zhluktenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It is very and very dangerous because the kill zone is getting wider and wider because of the danger of FPV drones there in our direction.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have a lot of, uh, Russian groups there, specifically hunting pilots like us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But even though Dimko is now an official member of the Ukrainian military, the organization he helps run, Dzyga’s Paw, started completely outside of that system as a grassroots, volunteer mission. And now it’s directly helping units like his and this is really common. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ukraine is heavily dependent on volunteers. People like the Dzyga’s Paw team, delivering supplies to the frontlines, volunteer air defense groups that shoot down Russian drones in the middle of the night, or Ukrainian tech companies building safety apps for civilians. All of this experimentation, this volunteer work – it’s been a really important part of Ukraine’s survival. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a classic battlefield, it’d fail. But, um, it’s a constant competition of technology again and I still feel we are more rapid. We are more fast in terms of inventing something new. I wanna believe at least that, um, it all comes from our initial desire to survive and to fight for our country ’cause uh, there were many different people with different careers and professions, but, uh, huge part of them switched to thinking in this direction. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And this bottom-up, grassroots approach represents a fundamental difference between how Ukraine and Russia operate.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Compared to Russia, it’s like they don’t have a, they like, everything is very like, top down. It’s controlled from the,yeah, from the state. So, indeed they have great engineers, but they are given like a task to develop something, to come up with a solution. While in Ukraine, it’s more of a like, grassroots thing and sometimes something brilliant just comes out of nowhere.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So how did Ukraine get here to this nimble and adaptive space for innovation and experimentation? And why does it all remind me so much of the tech culture in the Bay Area? We’ll get into that after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, we’re back. Time to open a new tab: [\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Typing sounds] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ukraine’s culture of tech innovation.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To help us understand Ukraine’s tech culture, we’re taking a visit to MacPaw — one of the most successful tech companies to come out of Ukraine before the war. They created the CleanMyMac software. I’m at the company’s headquarters in Kyiv.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This building was actually hit by a Russian missile back in December. There are still some traces of the attack around the building: Window glass damaged, parts of the exterior crumbling. Here’s MacPaw CEO Oleksandr Kosovan describing that day:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Oleksandr Kosovan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The rockets were very powerful so they destroyed all the facade of the building. All the windows were shattered. A lot of damage inside the office, but nothing super critical. We were very lucky in that none of our employees were injured. It was scary.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> MacPaw has built several digital tools to support Ukraine during the war, including an app to help Ukrainian companies check on employees after attacks, software that helps computers identify Russian malware, and a special VPN to help people in occupied territories circumvent Russian censorship.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While getting a tour of the MacPaw office, something catches my eye. It’s a wall filled with a collection of old Apple products from across the ages. It’s got ancient looking grey computers, and those bulky, colorful desktops that always felt to me like the computer version of a jolly rancher. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein in tape:\u003c/b> \u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I remember having these in school. It brings me back. Very nostalgic. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oleksandr created this wall as an homage to Apple, which has always been an inspiration to him. Before the war, he wanted to create a museum full of the company’s products. For now, this wall is a little shrine in the middle of the MacPaw office.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a Bay Area resident, it’s kind of funny, being here and seeing traces of where I’m from all over the tech industry here. Granted, Silicon Valley is hugely influential but what surprises me is just how intertwined Silicon Valley and Ukraine’s tech industries are. Like how Iryna of Dzyga’s Paw worked for a San Francisco startup.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this is not unusual I’m learning. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For years, tech companies from San Francisco to San Jose have relied on Ukrainian engineers for their technical skills, English fluency, and lower labor costs. Companies like Google, Grammarly (which was founded by Ukrainians), Ring, JetBridge, and Caspio all had employees based in Ukraine when Russia began its full-scale invasion.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a general cultural ethos here that feels familiar to my Bay Area sensibilities, like the food trucks, ping pong tables, and hoodies I see all over tech campuses in Kyiv. There was one friendship bracelet-wearing tech worker I talk to who tells me all about her recent ayahuasca healing journey in South America. I felt like I was back at home.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there are all the personal connections I notice with the Ukrainians I meet. Some worked for Bay Area companies. Or, have friends who live there for work. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And since the war began, these transnational ties have become a quiet but meaningful network of support for Ukraine. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Silicon Valley–based nonprofit Nova Ukraine, which was co-founded by a former Facebook and Google employee from Kharkiv, has raised over $160 million in humanitarian aid.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Iryna’s old employer, JustAnswer, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">has expanded its Ukrainian workforce. It funded a pediatric mental health center in the country as well. Caspio \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">helped relocate dozens of Ukrainian staffers safely out of the country, and\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> continues supporting staff remotely. Sometimes, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">company Zoom calls will be interrupted by the wail of a siren telling Ukrainian workers to go to a bomb shelter. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While there’s a lot of overlap between these two parts of the world, the innovation mindset that runs through Ukraine’s tech sector has deep roots. It started long before Steve Jobs or Silicon Valley exploded onto the global scene, like, decades before.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 1951, when Ukraine was still part of the USSR, engineers on the outskirts of Kyiv developed the first computer in all of Europe. They worked around the clock, under tough conditions, in a crumbling old building that was ravaged by bombing during WWII. The people who made this computer, they’re considered the godfathers of Ukrainian IT. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s Oleksandr again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Oleksandr Kosovan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most of the, uh [inaudible] or IT on that era was actually originated from Ukraine. And um, beside that, there were like so many engineers, like my father was an engineer. There are so, so many great engineers that were working for this industry back then. And, and this basically were like the birth of the modern IT industry in Ukraine. So when the USSR collapsed, this talent and this, uh, uh, knowledge, uh, stayed in, in Ukraine.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And today, the industry those engineers helped to create now plays a significant role in Ukraine’s economy. In 2024, Ukraine’s IT sector contributed 3.4% to Ukraine’s GDP, behind only the agricultural industry, according to a report published by the IT Association of Ukraine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Oleksandr Kosovan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Literally hundreds of thousands of people joined, uh, Ukrainian army. They started to bring their experience and their, like, creative, uh, vision and approach, uh, to the Army. And they started to apply, uh, some changes from, from bottom up. Uh, because, uh, these generals here, they probably know how to, uh, find the war of previous era, uh, but they don’t, uh, definitely understand how they can apply these technologies in order to, to receive some, some advantage. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> To this point, we’ve been mostly talking about the physical battlefield, like drones attacking targets in the real world. But a new frontline has emerged in this war — the internet. And the tools and tactics needed to fight in these spaces look completely different. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Typing sounds] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The new digital battlefield.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our guide to this world is David Kirichenko, a fellow journalist who splits his time between the U.S. and Ukraine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I’m a war journalist and since 2022, I’ve been working on the front lines, um, in Ukraine.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But he’s also been reporting on another front: the digital fight between the two countries. Because the information space between Russia and Ukraine has become its own proxy war, with each vying for support at home and abroad.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It certainly has, I think, a very big impact on what goes on the physical battlefield just from the amount of influence and impact that you can have. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Russia’s a country long known for its sophisticated cyber warfare campaigns. In the current conflict, it’s been deploying vast amounts of disinformation online to weaken support for Ukraine around the world — on social media, fake news sites, even video games. This practice, as David points out, has deep roots, going back to the Cold War.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Even since the 1980s, the Russians first started out by building like a newspaper in India. It prints a fake story and then you have a, a more slightly more credible one, print that, and then everyone just starts citing it and it circulates around the world. And an MIT study showed that, um, like the fake news it it spreads like six, seven times faster than the truth.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Enter: The Fellas. They’re a niche online community that has come together to fight Russian disinformation. They call themselves the North Atlantic Fellas Organization, or NAFO, for short. And because it’s the internet, their entire social media “army” has adopted the likeness of one very good boy: A Shiba Inu.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The members of this online battalion, who like to be called the Fellas, usually identify themselves on Twitter, or X, with a cartoon Shiba avatar. And they have one major purpose: To take up digital arms against Russian propaganda. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When a pro-Russian narrative pops up on social media, The Fellas leap into action. Their objective is to distract, mock and debunk the Kremlin’s talking points. Politico called the group “a sh*t posting, Twitter-trolling, dog-deploying social media army taking on Putin one meme at a time.” \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are now thousands of Fellas out there in the digital dog fight. They’re an organic phenomenon, borne out of internet culture. And they make anyone who earnestly tries to engage with their trolling look ridiculous. “Oh, you’re fighting with a cartoon Shiba at 3 pm on a Tuesday? Don’t you have anything better to do?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The best way to counter Russia propaganda is by mocking it, ridiculing it, and showing that like, this is how ridiculous it is. And like you just make a joke at it yourself by sharing it. Just the fact that, you know, over the years you had all these high-ranking Russian and then other officials engaging with cartoon dogs on, on Twitter.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A less cheeky example of digital warfare is the IT Army of Ukraine. They’re a collective of volunteer hackers around the world who coordinate cyber attacks against Russia. They’ve attacked thousands of targets since the war began, from Russian banks to media outlets, and power grids. In June 2024, the group claimed responsibility for a large-scale cyberattack against Russia’s banking system, reportedly causing outages on banking websites, apps, and payment systems. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The IT Army of Ukraine isn’t a traditional military unit. It’s a sprawling, loosely organized network that runs primarily online. They post updates and send communications on their Telegram channel, where they have nearly 115,000 subscribers. They also have a website that lays out more information about their work and how to get involved. One page, for example, is titled: “Instructions for setting up attacks on the enemy country.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">David has also been reporting on this group. The IT Army’s spokesperson told him last year that its volunteer hackers had caused something like a billion dollars in damage from these attacks. David explains the anatomy of an attack.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You typically have people that you have the toolkit installed so it doesn’t interfere with your, your Netflix or slow down your internet. You couldn’t set it to, I want to run from like 12:00 AM to 6:00 PM, I’m gonna leave my computer on. So if the IT army, like, runs the botnet and wants to direct an attack, it has the access to the compute to be able to run it and send pings from a lot of different places to overwhelm, um, a system. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so they like posted the, the toolkit onto their website so anyone’s able to go and, and download it. And it’s pretty, pretty simple to install it. And, uh, all you gotta do is just make sure that your computer is running and contributing your compute power to the botnet so that it’s overwhelming, like services when the attack begins.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve met people that said like, even my 12-year-old child is like doing these, uh, cyber attacks against Russia. They just download the toolkit and, you know, you set, you can even set a timer, allow your computer to participate in this botnet\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But these IT soldiers operate in a legally murky zone. There’s obviously something troubling about kids participating in cyberwar against another country. And, if someone participates in an attack from their couch on the other side of the world, are they breaking any laws?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It is a gray space. How do governments prepare to legislate for this. Like, are you a combatant If you’re engaging in like cyber warfare? Are you breaking any laws? Should governments build a cyber reserve or some sort of like legal framework for their, like, people to be able to participate in this stuff? I mean, it, you know what, if you’re in Poland and then you’re conducting some cyber attacks and the Russians are very upset and they can launch a missile and they claim that you’re an enemy combatant. And yeah, just it’s, it’s a very challenging space and for I think lawmakers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For all the reasons he just laid out, most of the people I spoke with wouldn’t talk openly about participating in the IT Army. Though one person told me that “literally everyone with a laptop did.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Regardless, all these IT Army volunteers are having a real impact, David says. And this theme of a decentralized, grassroots approach as part of Ukraine’s strategy — chaotic with flashes of ingenuity — it keeps coming up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It ties back to Ukraine’s, wider story of, it’s a volunteer driven war effort. Like Ukrainian soldiers across the frontline are just dependent on online communities and, and volunteers. And so just people around the world have had such a big impact, both in information space, getting supplies to soldiers. Um, and one of the other ways has been on the cyber realm. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This grassroots system is pretty much the opposite of how \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Russia\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> does things. Which is centralized, top down, structured. Just a few solutions, scaled across every single military unit. They’re two competing philosophies fueling this technological arms race between Russia and Ukraine. A war of who’s quicker to out-innovate the other side. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Ukraine is so decentralized, it’s kind of its biggest strength and biggest weaknesses. You have a zoo of solutions of every volunteer group. They’re making, they’re iterating, but then there’s so many different technologies and, and weapons, that everyone’s using different things and it’s hard to standardize, but then it also makes it very effective. But then the Russians learn what’s working and over time they can steer \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the whole war machine to focus on a, on a few things, and it’s sharing those lessons. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And no matter how things end, what they’re coming up with is changing what war looks like altogether. With major implications.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Drones dominate not just the, the frontline itself, but it’s changed like naval warfare. Ukrainians’ naval drones have helped to neutralize a third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and they’re basically blockading Russia’s fleet that had to retreat from occupied Crimea. Ukraine has built, right, these ground robots that are becoming like mechanical medics, and the naval drones help shoot down multiple Russian helicopters, a couple of fighter jets. And those two fighter jets that were lost in Mayra, um, each like 50 million. So you can have a sea drone worth like 200, $300,000 with the, uh, missile worth that much or less, shooting down something that’s $50 million.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so we’re going to continue to see the proliferation of like, cheaper, faster tech. And we gotta learn what, you know, how do we prepare for that?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Technology is fundamentally a gray area. It’s built on these bursts of genius and promise, and also shows up in our modern world in dark and scary ways. It’s that first European computer, created out of the ashes of a bombed-out building in the Soviet Union. It’s Silicon Valley revolutionizing the world we now inhabit. For better, in some ways and in many ways, for worse: consolidating power, money, data, and influence, on an unimaginable scale.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that’s the real story of the geeks of war. There are the lifesaving apps, like Air Alert, Telegram channels with real-time information about missiles and drones, VPNs connecting people in occupied territories to a bigger, broader, information ecosystem- Tools that are keeping people safe, connected and alive.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But there are also new technologies that are killing people, and the potentially catastrophic consequences of cyber saber-rattling. Destroyer drones, yes, they can give an underdog country like Ukraine an edge, but when you stop and think about their capabilities, the damage that can be unleashed with a tool literally anyone can buy for just a few hundred dollars, it’s terrifying. And then of course, there’s cyberwarfare, which can take down a whole country’s infrastructure, cripple power grids, communication networks, financial systems and thrust us all into completely uncharted geopolitical territory. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It reminds me of the early days of social media. When Google was still telling us not to be evil. When social networks were described as a revolutionary, democratizing force, helping to topple authoritarian regimes, organize mass protest, connect people all over the world. But we all know what actually happened was a lot more complicated than Big Tech’s aspirational mottos. The lens flipped. The narrative cracked. And now we’re living on the other side. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what will be the story we tell about all these tools 10, 20 years from now? The technology we’re seeing in this war is opening up a new frontier. But who knows where it will be deployed next: What it will look like, who it will target. The geeks are showing us the future we just don’t know where it will lead.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks to Erica Hellerstein for her reporting and collaboration on this episode. Erica’s reporting was supported by a fellowship through the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With that, it’s time to close all these tabs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios in San Francisco, and is hosted by me, Morgan Sung.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris Hambrick is our editor. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts. Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor in chief.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink dust silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">OK, and I know it’s a podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "The Ukraine-Russia war has been called the most technologically advanced war in history. Ukrainian citizens receive notifications about incoming missile and drone attacks through apps on their phones; remote-controlled drones swarm the front lines; and volunteer cyberwarfare units target Russian digital infrastructure. It’s all part of what some have dubbed Ukraine’s “Geeks of War.”In this episode, investigative reporter Erica Hellerstein takes us to the digital front line. On a recent trip to Ukraine, she met a husband-and-wife duo running a DIY nonprofit that supplies tech to defense forces, toured the recently-bombed headquarters of one of the country’s biggest tech companies, and explored how a swarm of online accounts with Shiba Inu avatars is countering Russian propaganda. Throughout, she looks at how Ukraine’s culture of tech innovation — and its surprising ties to Silicon Valley — are fueling the country’s resistance through an army of engineers, coders, hackers, and tinkerers.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Ukraine-Russia war has been called the most technologically advanced war in history. Ukrainian citizens receive notifications about incoming missile and drone attacks through apps on their phones; remote-controlled drones swarm the front lines; and volunteer cyberwarfare units target Russian digital infrastructure. It’s all part of what some have dubbed Ukraine’s “Geeks of War.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this episode, investigative reporter Erica Hellerstein takes us to the digital front line. On a recent trip to Ukraine, she met a husband-and-wife duo running a DIY nonprofit that supplies tech to defense forces, toured the recently-bombed headquarters of one of the country’s biggest tech companies, and explored how a swarm of online accounts with Shiba Inu avatars is countering Russian propaganda.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout, she looks at how Ukraine’s culture of tech innovation — and its surprising ties to Silicon Valley — are fueling the country’s resistance through an army of engineers, coders, hackers, and tinkerers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5459549472\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest: \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ericahellerstein.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Erica Hellerstein\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, investigative journalist and feature writer\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/articles/dexter-filkins-on-drones-and-the-future-of-warfare?tab=transcript\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dexter Filkins on Drones and the Future of Warfare\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Adam Howard, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">WNYC\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kyivpost.com/post/47836\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lessons From the World’s First Full-Scale Cyberwar\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — David Kirichenko, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kyiv Post\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/30/technology/russia-propaganda-video-games.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Russia Takes Its Ukraine Information War Into Video Games\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Steven Lee Myers and Kellen Browning, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The New York Times\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/08/27/ukraine-drones-war-russia-00514712?utm_source=perplexity\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why Ukraine remains the world’s most innovative war machine\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Ibrahim Naber, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Politico\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/03/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-drones-deaths.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Thousand Snipers in the Sky: The New War in Ukraine\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Marc Santora, Lara Jakes, Andrew E. Kramer, Marco Hernandez and Liubov Sholudko, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The New York Times\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here on Close All Tabs, we cover all different sides of tech and the internet — the good, the bad, and the gray areas in between. Today, we’re doing something different, and taking our deep dive abroad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The tech industry is increasingly intertwined with global conflict. Like how Silicon Valley’s AI obsession has fueled the automated warfare in Israel’s attacks on Gaza, or US bomb strikes in Iraq and Syria. So-called “defense tech” startups are attracting billions in funding. And like we’ve talked about on this show before, the Pentagon’s Cold War investments actually built Silicon Valley. This startup approach to weaponry has some pretty concerning implications for the future of war. And we’ve seen, in real time, the way these advancements in surveillance and automated warfare are being used to oppress people — like Palestinians in Gaza. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the same time in another region plagued by conflict, Ukraine, tech culture has become a vital part of the country’s resistance against Russian aggression. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s the kind of story that Erica Hellerstein stumbled upon, as she prepared for her own trip to Ukraine. Erica is a Bay Area investigative journalist who reports on human rights, politics, and tech. Back in June, she spent three weeks around Kyiv on a reporting trip, working on a project about her own family’s roots in the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just before her trip, she heard a story about a Ukrainian engineer who had worked for a Bay Area tech company, but left his job to join his country’s defense forces. It got her thinking about the connection between Silicon Valley and the Ukrainian fight against Russian occupation. She started digging and according to the people she talked to, the tech sector is part of the reason Ukraine is still standing today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These are the Geeks of War — that’s what one Ukrainian drone operator nicknamed the group. Ukraine actually has a long history of technological innovation that is still alive today, and is fueling the country’s resistance through an army of engineers, coders, hackers, and tinkerers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this special episode, Erica will introduce us to a few of these “Geeks” and we’ll explore how this new generation is blurring the lines between the digital and physical battlefield — reshaping the next generation of conflict, and maybe even the future of war itself. I’ll let Erica take it from here. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein, Reporter\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">:\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s around 11:55 pm when the first alarm goes off.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Alarm sounding from Air Alert app]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">:\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The noise shatters any illusion I had that my first night in Kyiv would be quiet or peaceful. I’ve been doomscrolling on my phone in a bomb shelter connected to my hotel in Kyiv. It’s surprisingly nice, with wifi, beverages, even bean bag chairs. On heavy nights of bombardment, like tonight, these sirens can go off multiple times and last for hours. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But most of the time I’m in Ukraine, I’m hearing these alarms digitally through an app on my phone called Air Alert. The Ukrainian government developed the app towards the beginning of the war, and it’s now been downloaded at least 27 million times. That’s in a country of 39 million people. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Air Alert sounds a loud, jarring alarm whenever a Russian missile strike, or drone attack is detected in your region. And the voice telling you to find the nearest shelter? None other than Jedi master Luke Skywalker. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Mark Hammill from Air Alert app]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Attention. Air raid alert. Proceed to the nearest shelter. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: Or rather, Mark Hamill, the actor who \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">played\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> the beloved character in Star Wars. Hamill’s a vocal supporter of Ukraine so he pitched in to voice the English language version of the app.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Mark Hammill from Air Alert app] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don’t be careless. Your overconfidence is your weakness.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: I’ve learned, though, that the app only gives you basic information. To get details, I go to a different app, Telegram, where I follow a volunteer-run channel that gives updates about what kinds of missiles, or drones, are in the air.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As if two apps aren’t enough, I’m also on WhatsApp messaging a group of journalists who are also in Kyiv. Some are in the same hotel shelter, others are sheltering in the hallways of their apartment buildings or metro stations. Everyone is sharing updates. “Drone flew right over our roof,” someone writes around 1 am. Another, two minutes later: “Loud explosion not far from my place.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Finally, around 6am, another alert goes off. Once again, I hear a familiar voice.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Mark Hammill from Air Alert app]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Attention. The air alert is over. May the Force be with you.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">:\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That means, at least for now, the skies in Kyiv are safe. But as dawn breaks, the scale of the destruction starts to come into focus. About two miles from where I’m staying, an apartment building was hit by a ballistic missile and reduced to rubble – there are reports of people still trapped inside. A Kyiv metro station and university were also hit. All told, ten people, including a child, were killed in the onslaught.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This has become a regular occurrence in Ukraine. People have been living through these kinds of attacks for years. Unable to sleep through the wails of the sirens, reading news about buildings blown up, civilians killed and then somehow, still managing to go about their daily lives – going to work, picking up their kids, celebrating birthday parties, getting married.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And beyond the apps like Air Alert, technology has become a centerpiece in this war — hacking software, killer drones, medical robots delivering supplies to the frontlines. It’s transforming how people experience war. Now, every aspect of our lives, including conflict, is mediated by our digital world. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the people behind the screens can be a little mysterious. I wanted to learn more about them. To understand the workers and whizzes changing what warfare looks like, with major implications for the rest of the world. I wanted to meet the self-styled “Geeks of War.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And for that, we’ll need to open a new tab: \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Typing sounds] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Meet the Geeks\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: My first guide to the geeks is a couple I met in Lviv, which is a Western city in Ukraine. Dimko and Iryna Zhluktenko. They’re the co-founders of Dzyga’s Paw. It’s a Ukrainian nonprofit that donates defense technology to the frontlines. Both Iryna and Dimko used to work in tech. Dimko was a software engineer, Iryna a product analyst for the San Francisco-based tech company, JustAnswer. But after Russia invaded Ukraine, they quit their jobs and threw themselves into Dzyga’s Paw, which, by the way, is named after their adorable little fox-faced pup, Dzyga.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I stop by the organization’s headquarters one night. They greet me with a tour of the space. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can just come like this. So we used to live here, so this is actually, like a normal house location, but very old one is from 1906, so it’s more than 100 years old, and here you have our main working, like a little open space.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: There’s a small party happening, with some women playing an intimidating-looking card game in the kitchen.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The girls are playing [inaudible] Do you know this game? No, you should try. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein in tape: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, I’m horrible at cards.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We pass an entire wall full of framed thank you letters from different military units. There’s another wall, too, full of patches from soldiers and volunteer fighters, some coming from the other side of the world.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein in tape: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wow, I see Argentina. That’s far.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s from, yeah, from international volunteer who’s fighting here in Ukraine, from Argentina. This is a Estonian one from Estonian cyber defense forces. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Iryna shows me another decoration tacked to the wall: A downed Russian drone. And it’s in really good shape. So she decides to give it a whirl.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let me try to do it. So it turns on. And if I had a controller, if I had a like TX controller, I could launch it and start it, probably.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein in tape:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So this is like a war treasure?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Looted from Russians. Yes.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Once I tear myself away from the shiny objects, I sit down with Dimko, Iryna, and of course, Dzyga, who has extreme zoomies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She is the boss of the operation.\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> [Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Dzyga barks]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> They tell me that the project came about in the early months of the war. Of course, like so many other Ukrainians, they wanted to help. And they started to think about what they could bring to the table. And that’s when Dimko and Iryna, had their \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a-ha\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> moment. “We’re nerds!” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dimko Zhluktenko\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We’ve decided that well, we might just use our, uh, tech experience, our tech geekiness, uh, to, uh, innovate. Some of the approaches on the battlefield.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We figured out, okay, we can help better when our expertise is. So basically we started looking more into more advanced equipment. We started looking into drone and things like that and because we had friends in the military, uh, it was like our first point of contact because like we had people we could trust. And we started, you know, buying and supplying some tech devices.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> They started with what their friends in the military really needed: equipment. Drones, Starlink units — which provide remote internet access – long-range encrypted radios, thermal cameras. Dzyga’s paw has since grown from a scrappy idea into a multi-million dollar nonprofit. In October alone, they delivered over $230,000 worth of equipment to the military, according to the organization. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And all of this high tech gear goes to soldiers and drone operators who are stationed near the frontlines.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They often work in hideouts, or command centers, miles from the front, flying drones by remote control while wearing a headset that shows exactly what the device sees through its camera. Other soldiers sit beside them, watching live maps on screens, calling out targets and coordinates in real time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dimko explains what these command centers look like in action.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dimko Zhluktenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Basically an underground shelter with, uh, tons of, uh, big ass four screen TVs or something. Uh, and guys looking like they just finished the MIT or something. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So literally geeks of the war, sitting in those command centers and analyzing what is happening at the battlefield, and then suggesting what decisions should be taken to be the most effective.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> About a year ago, Dimko also enlisted as a drone operator for a Ukrainian military unit. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dimko Zhluktenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Because this is my chance to, uh, well defend my home, defend my family, and, uh, in the end defend my country.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Basically the job is to do the reconnaissance. Um, you have this big UAV that, uh, like a fixed wing kind of a thing that you launch in the air.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Drone warfare has quickly become one of the defining characteristics of this conflict. The kind Dimko pilots are called UAVs — or unmanned aerial vehicles. They look like small airplanes, and like Dimko said, they’re mainly used for reconnaissance.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dimko Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It has the radio connection, so you have the radio signal link, uh, to it. And, uh, you have the live stream from that, you stream that footage into one of the IT systems that we have, uh, in the armed forces.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein in tape:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Okay \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dimko Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So all of the people interested in the situation in the area. Can watch that live stream. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Then there’s this other kind of drone, called an FPV. That stands for first-person-view. They’re some of the most common drones on the battlefield right now. Once upon a time, these drones were mainly the toys of hobbyists and creatives. You know that insufferable wedding reel you saw on Instagram? Probably shot on an FPV drone.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Russia invaded, the Ukrainian military started rolling them out on a massive scale. They cost next to nothing. They’re endlessly scalable, and for a country like Ukraine, with far fewer resources and manpower than Russia, they’ve been a game-changer. Drones that can be bought for just a few hundred dollars are now taking out Russian tanks and artillery worth millions.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are swarms of these things buzzing around now on the front, some with cameras for spying, others loaded with explosives to detonate on their targets. And they’re responsible for massive damage. Drones now account for as much as seventy percent of casualties on both sides, according to Ukrainian officials.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Experts are already warning that this rapid, wide-scale shift could dramatically change the future of conflict. Other countries are likely to learn from or maybe adopt the technologies and tactics deployed in this war. And It’s not just militaries that can repurpose these technologies. Paramilitaries, militias, and extremist groups can all easily purchase and deploy drone technology. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As drone warfare becomes more lethal on the battlefield, Dimko tells me that his work is also getting more treacherous as the war progresses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dimko Zhluktenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It is very and very dangerous because the kill zone is getting wider and wider because of the danger of FPV drones there in our direction.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have a lot of, uh, Russian groups there, specifically hunting pilots like us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But even though Dimko is now an official member of the Ukrainian military, the organization he helps run, Dzyga’s Paw, started completely outside of that system as a grassroots, volunteer mission. And now it’s directly helping units like his and this is really common. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ukraine is heavily dependent on volunteers. People like the Dzyga’s Paw team, delivering supplies to the frontlines, volunteer air defense groups that shoot down Russian drones in the middle of the night, or Ukrainian tech companies building safety apps for civilians. All of this experimentation, this volunteer work – it’s been a really important part of Ukraine’s survival. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a classic battlefield, it’d fail. But, um, it’s a constant competition of technology again and I still feel we are more rapid. We are more fast in terms of inventing something new. I wanna believe at least that, um, it all comes from our initial desire to survive and to fight for our country ’cause uh, there were many different people with different careers and professions, but, uh, huge part of them switched to thinking in this direction. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And this bottom-up, grassroots approach represents a fundamental difference between how Ukraine and Russia operate.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Iryna Zhluktenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Compared to Russia, it’s like they don’t have a, they like, everything is very like, top down. It’s controlled from the,yeah, from the state. So, indeed they have great engineers, but they are given like a task to develop something, to come up with a solution. While in Ukraine, it’s more of a like, grassroots thing and sometimes something brilliant just comes out of nowhere.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So how did Ukraine get here to this nimble and adaptive space for innovation and experimentation? And why does it all remind me so much of the tech culture in the Bay Area? We’ll get into that after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, we’re back. Time to open a new tab: [\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Typing sounds] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ukraine’s culture of tech innovation.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To help us understand Ukraine’s tech culture, we’re taking a visit to MacPaw — one of the most successful tech companies to come out of Ukraine before the war. They created the CleanMyMac software. I’m at the company’s headquarters in Kyiv.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This building was actually hit by a Russian missile back in December. There are still some traces of the attack around the building: Window glass damaged, parts of the exterior crumbling. Here’s MacPaw CEO Oleksandr Kosovan describing that day:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Oleksandr Kosovan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The rockets were very powerful so they destroyed all the facade of the building. All the windows were shattered. A lot of damage inside the office, but nothing super critical. We were very lucky in that none of our employees were injured. It was scary.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> MacPaw has built several digital tools to support Ukraine during the war, including an app to help Ukrainian companies check on employees after attacks, software that helps computers identify Russian malware, and a special VPN to help people in occupied territories circumvent Russian censorship.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While getting a tour of the MacPaw office, something catches my eye. It’s a wall filled with a collection of old Apple products from across the ages. It’s got ancient looking grey computers, and those bulky, colorful desktops that always felt to me like the computer version of a jolly rancher. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein in tape:\u003c/b> \u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I remember having these in school. It brings me back. Very nostalgic. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oleksandr created this wall as an homage to Apple, which has always been an inspiration to him. Before the war, he wanted to create a museum full of the company’s products. For now, this wall is a little shrine in the middle of the MacPaw office.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a Bay Area resident, it’s kind of funny, being here and seeing traces of where I’m from all over the tech industry here. Granted, Silicon Valley is hugely influential but what surprises me is just how intertwined Silicon Valley and Ukraine’s tech industries are. Like how Iryna of Dzyga’s Paw worked for a San Francisco startup.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this is not unusual I’m learning. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For years, tech companies from San Francisco to San Jose have relied on Ukrainian engineers for their technical skills, English fluency, and lower labor costs. Companies like Google, Grammarly (which was founded by Ukrainians), Ring, JetBridge, and Caspio all had employees based in Ukraine when Russia began its full-scale invasion.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a general cultural ethos here that feels familiar to my Bay Area sensibilities, like the food trucks, ping pong tables, and hoodies I see all over tech campuses in Kyiv. There was one friendship bracelet-wearing tech worker I talk to who tells me all about her recent ayahuasca healing journey in South America. I felt like I was back at home.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there are all the personal connections I notice with the Ukrainians I meet. Some worked for Bay Area companies. Or, have friends who live there for work. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And since the war began, these transnational ties have become a quiet but meaningful network of support for Ukraine. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Silicon Valley–based nonprofit Nova Ukraine, which was co-founded by a former Facebook and Google employee from Kharkiv, has raised over $160 million in humanitarian aid.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Iryna’s old employer, JustAnswer, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">has expanded its Ukrainian workforce. It funded a pediatric mental health center in the country as well. Caspio \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">helped relocate dozens of Ukrainian staffers safely out of the country, and\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> continues supporting staff remotely. Sometimes, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">company Zoom calls will be interrupted by the wail of a siren telling Ukrainian workers to go to a bomb shelter. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While there’s a lot of overlap between these two parts of the world, the innovation mindset that runs through Ukraine’s tech sector has deep roots. It started long before Steve Jobs or Silicon Valley exploded onto the global scene, like, decades before.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 1951, when Ukraine was still part of the USSR, engineers on the outskirts of Kyiv developed the first computer in all of Europe. They worked around the clock, under tough conditions, in a crumbling old building that was ravaged by bombing during WWII. The people who made this computer, they’re considered the godfathers of Ukrainian IT. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s Oleksandr again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Oleksandr Kosovan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most of the, uh [inaudible] or IT on that era was actually originated from Ukraine. And um, beside that, there were like so many engineers, like my father was an engineer. There are so, so many great engineers that were working for this industry back then. And, and this basically were like the birth of the modern IT industry in Ukraine. So when the USSR collapsed, this talent and this, uh, uh, knowledge, uh, stayed in, in Ukraine.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And today, the industry those engineers helped to create now plays a significant role in Ukraine’s economy. In 2024, Ukraine’s IT sector contributed 3.4% to Ukraine’s GDP, behind only the agricultural industry, according to a report published by the IT Association of Ukraine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Oleksandr Kosovan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Literally hundreds of thousands of people joined, uh, Ukrainian army. They started to bring their experience and their, like, creative, uh, vision and approach, uh, to the Army. And they started to apply, uh, some changes from, from bottom up. Uh, because, uh, these generals here, they probably know how to, uh, find the war of previous era, uh, but they don’t, uh, definitely understand how they can apply these technologies in order to, to receive some, some advantage. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> To this point, we’ve been mostly talking about the physical battlefield, like drones attacking targets in the real world. But a new frontline has emerged in this war — the internet. And the tools and tactics needed to fight in these spaces look completely different. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Typing sounds] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The new digital battlefield.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our guide to this world is David Kirichenko, a fellow journalist who splits his time between the U.S. and Ukraine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I’m a war journalist and since 2022, I’ve been working on the front lines, um, in Ukraine.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> But he’s also been reporting on another front: the digital fight between the two countries. Because the information space between Russia and Ukraine has become its own proxy war, with each vying for support at home and abroad.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It certainly has, I think, a very big impact on what goes on the physical battlefield just from the amount of influence and impact that you can have. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Russia’s a country long known for its sophisticated cyber warfare campaigns. In the current conflict, it’s been deploying vast amounts of disinformation online to weaken support for Ukraine around the world — on social media, fake news sites, even video games. This practice, as David points out, has deep roots, going back to the Cold War.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Even since the 1980s, the Russians first started out by building like a newspaper in India. It prints a fake story and then you have a, a more slightly more credible one, print that, and then everyone just starts citing it and it circulates around the world. And an MIT study showed that, um, like the fake news it it spreads like six, seven times faster than the truth.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Enter: The Fellas. They’re a niche online community that has come together to fight Russian disinformation. They call themselves the North Atlantic Fellas Organization, or NAFO, for short. And because it’s the internet, their entire social media “army” has adopted the likeness of one very good boy: A Shiba Inu.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The members of this online battalion, who like to be called the Fellas, usually identify themselves on Twitter, or X, with a cartoon Shiba avatar. And they have one major purpose: To take up digital arms against Russian propaganda. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When a pro-Russian narrative pops up on social media, The Fellas leap into action. Their objective is to distract, mock and debunk the Kremlin’s talking points. Politico called the group “a sh*t posting, Twitter-trolling, dog-deploying social media army taking on Putin one meme at a time.” \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are now thousands of Fellas out there in the digital dog fight. They’re an organic phenomenon, borne out of internet culture. And they make anyone who earnestly tries to engage with their trolling look ridiculous. “Oh, you’re fighting with a cartoon Shiba at 3 pm on a Tuesday? Don’t you have anything better to do?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The best way to counter Russia propaganda is by mocking it, ridiculing it, and showing that like, this is how ridiculous it is. And like you just make a joke at it yourself by sharing it. Just the fact that, you know, over the years you had all these high-ranking Russian and then other officials engaging with cartoon dogs on, on Twitter.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A less cheeky example of digital warfare is the IT Army of Ukraine. They’re a collective of volunteer hackers around the world who coordinate cyber attacks against Russia. They’ve attacked thousands of targets since the war began, from Russian banks to media outlets, and power grids. In June 2024, the group claimed responsibility for a large-scale cyberattack against Russia’s banking system, reportedly causing outages on banking websites, apps, and payment systems. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The IT Army of Ukraine isn’t a traditional military unit. It’s a sprawling, loosely organized network that runs primarily online. They post updates and send communications on their Telegram channel, where they have nearly 115,000 subscribers. They also have a website that lays out more information about their work and how to get involved. One page, for example, is titled: “Instructions for setting up attacks on the enemy country.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">David has also been reporting on this group. The IT Army’s spokesperson told him last year that its volunteer hackers had caused something like a billion dollars in damage from these attacks. David explains the anatomy of an attack.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You typically have people that you have the toolkit installed so it doesn’t interfere with your, your Netflix or slow down your internet. You couldn’t set it to, I want to run from like 12:00 AM to 6:00 PM, I’m gonna leave my computer on. So if the IT army, like, runs the botnet and wants to direct an attack, it has the access to the compute to be able to run it and send pings from a lot of different places to overwhelm, um, a system. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so they like posted the, the toolkit onto their website so anyone’s able to go and, and download it. And it’s pretty, pretty simple to install it. And, uh, all you gotta do is just make sure that your computer is running and contributing your compute power to the botnet so that it’s overwhelming, like services when the attack begins.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve met people that said like, even my 12-year-old child is like doing these, uh, cyber attacks against Russia. They just download the toolkit and, you know, you set, you can even set a timer, allow your computer to participate in this botnet\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But these IT soldiers operate in a legally murky zone. There’s obviously something troubling about kids participating in cyberwar against another country. And, if someone participates in an attack from their couch on the other side of the world, are they breaking any laws?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It is a gray space. How do governments prepare to legislate for this. Like, are you a combatant If you’re engaging in like cyber warfare? Are you breaking any laws? Should governments build a cyber reserve or some sort of like legal framework for their, like, people to be able to participate in this stuff? I mean, it, you know what, if you’re in Poland and then you’re conducting some cyber attacks and the Russians are very upset and they can launch a missile and they claim that you’re an enemy combatant. And yeah, just it’s, it’s a very challenging space and for I think lawmakers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For all the reasons he just laid out, most of the people I spoke with wouldn’t talk openly about participating in the IT Army. Though one person told me that “literally everyone with a laptop did.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Regardless, all these IT Army volunteers are having a real impact, David says. And this theme of a decentralized, grassroots approach as part of Ukraine’s strategy — chaotic with flashes of ingenuity — it keeps coming up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It ties back to Ukraine’s, wider story of, it’s a volunteer driven war effort. Like Ukrainian soldiers across the frontline are just dependent on online communities and, and volunteers. And so just people around the world have had such a big impact, both in information space, getting supplies to soldiers. Um, and one of the other ways has been on the cyber realm. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This grassroots system is pretty much the opposite of how \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Russia\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> does things. Which is centralized, top down, structured. Just a few solutions, scaled across every single military unit. They’re two competing philosophies fueling this technological arms race between Russia and Ukraine. A war of who’s quicker to out-innovate the other side. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Ukraine is so decentralized, it’s kind of its biggest strength and biggest weaknesses. You have a zoo of solutions of every volunteer group. They’re making, they’re iterating, but then there’s so many different technologies and, and weapons, that everyone’s using different things and it’s hard to standardize, but then it also makes it very effective. But then the Russians learn what’s working and over time they can steer \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the whole war machine to focus on a, on a few things, and it’s sharing those lessons. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And no matter how things end, what they’re coming up with is changing what war looks like altogether. With major implications.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Kirichenko:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Drones dominate not just the, the frontline itself, but it’s changed like naval warfare. Ukrainians’ naval drones have helped to neutralize a third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and they’re basically blockading Russia’s fleet that had to retreat from occupied Crimea. Ukraine has built, right, these ground robots that are becoming like mechanical medics, and the naval drones help shoot down multiple Russian helicopters, a couple of fighter jets. And those two fighter jets that were lost in Mayra, um, each like 50 million. So you can have a sea drone worth like 200, $300,000 with the, uh, missile worth that much or less, shooting down something that’s $50 million.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so we’re going to continue to see the proliferation of like, cheaper, faster tech. And we gotta learn what, you know, how do we prepare for that?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Technology is fundamentally a gray area. It’s built on these bursts of genius and promise, and also shows up in our modern world in dark and scary ways. It’s that first European computer, created out of the ashes of a bombed-out building in the Soviet Union. It’s Silicon Valley revolutionizing the world we now inhabit. For better, in some ways and in many ways, for worse: consolidating power, money, data, and influence, on an unimaginable scale.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that’s the real story of the geeks of war. There are the lifesaving apps, like Air Alert, Telegram channels with real-time information about missiles and drones, VPNs connecting people in occupied territories to a bigger, broader, information ecosystem- Tools that are keeping people safe, connected and alive.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But there are also new technologies that are killing people, and the potentially catastrophic consequences of cyber saber-rattling. Destroyer drones, yes, they can give an underdog country like Ukraine an edge, but when you stop and think about their capabilities, the damage that can be unleashed with a tool literally anyone can buy for just a few hundred dollars, it’s terrifying. And then of course, there’s cyberwarfare, which can take down a whole country’s infrastructure, cripple power grids, communication networks, financial systems and thrust us all into completely uncharted geopolitical territory. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It reminds me of the early days of social media. When Google was still telling us not to be evil. When social networks were described as a revolutionary, democratizing force, helping to topple authoritarian regimes, organize mass protest, connect people all over the world. But we all know what actually happened was a lot more complicated than Big Tech’s aspirational mottos. The lens flipped. The narrative cracked. And now we’re living on the other side. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what will be the story we tell about all these tools 10, 20 years from now? The technology we’re seeing in this war is opening up a new frontier. But who knows where it will be deployed next: What it will look like, who it will target. The geeks are showing us the future we just don’t know where it will lead.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks to Erica Hellerstein for her reporting and collaboration on this episode. Erica’s reporting was supported by a fellowship through the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With that, it’s time to close all these tabs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios in San Francisco, and is hosted by me, Morgan Sung.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris Hambrick is our editor. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts. Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor in chief.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink dust silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">OK, and I know it’s a podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "civil-liberties-groups-sue-san-jose-over-license-plate-reader-use",
"title": "Civil Liberties Groups Sue San José Over License Plate Reader Use",
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"headTitle": "Civil Liberties Groups Sue San José Over License Plate Reader Use | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>A group of civil liberties and immigrant support organizations is suing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-jose\">San José\u003c/a>, alleging the city’s widespread use of hundreds of automated license plate readers amounts to a “deeply invasive” mass surveillance system that violates residents’ rights to privacy in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The city’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11983813/san-jose-adding-hundreds-of-license-plate-readers-amid-privacy-and-efficacy-concerns\">current arsenal of readers\u003c/a>, often mounted on streetlight poles, is approaching 500, following an aggressive expansion push last year headed up by San José’s Police Chief Paul Joseph and Mayor Matt Mahan, under the banner of improved safety for residents. The lawsuit said the cameras scanned more than 361 million license plates last year in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San José is far from alone in relying heavily on mass surveillance technologies, and not the only city to be sued for its alleged misuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11989977/san-franciscos-new-license-plate-readers-are-leading-to-arrests-and-concerns-about-privacy\">other cities\u003c/a> are also adding to their arrays of cameras, listening devices and scanners, and on Tuesday, the same day the lawsuit against San José was filed, Oakland was also sued, alleging that its police department has shared license plate reader data with federal agencies, going against state law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta has also cracked down on similar violations, suing the city of El Cajon in October over its refusal to comply with the more than decade-old state law, SB 34, that bans such data from being shared with federal agencies or out-of-state law enforcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12047902\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12047902\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/240418-SJPDFILE-JG-6_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/240418-SJPDFILE-JG-6_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/240418-SJPDFILE-JG-6_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/240418-SJPDFILE-JG-6_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The exterior of the San José Police Department headquarters on April 18, 2024. \u003ccite>(Joseph Geha/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In San José, attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the organizations that filed the suit, say that because the city has so many readers and retains the plate and car data for a year, its surveillance of residents “is especially pervasive in both time and space.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the California chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, known as CAIR-CA, and the Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network, known as SIREN.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For Muslim, immigrant, and other marginalized communities that already live with profiling, the idea that police can map your trips to the mosque, your lawyer, or your doctor — without a warrant — is chilling,” Zahra Billoo, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area office of CAIR, wrote in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The city’s cameras, from surveillance company Flock Safety, capture license plates on cars, but also the car’s make and model and other characteristics like roof racks or bumper stickers, and those captures happen millions of times each month. Flock’s software pings police when a car matching a “hotlist” is scanned by the cameras.[aside postID=news_11983813 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/04/SAN-JOSE-LICENSE-PLATE-READERS-11-KQED-1020x680.jpg']However, the lawsuit filed Tuesday doesn’t attack the use of the systems for quickly comparing cars to any current hotlists, attorneys say. Rather, the alleged violations of privacy rights and rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures stem from the police department’s retrospective reviews of the millions of data points the city keeps for a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nick Hidalgo, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Northern California, said the lawsuit asks a judge to require San José police officers and other law enforcement agencies to get a warrant when they want to search the vast troves of stored data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It would be one thing if San José retained information for three minutes to check a license plate against a hotlist to make sure it wasn’t actively involved in an ongoing crime or an investigation,” Hidalgo said. “But that’s not what they do. They keep them for an entire year, which means that they can go back and look and see where a driver went to obtain medical care, where they worked, whether they attended a protest, or where they take their kids to school. It’s a huge overall scope problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April 2024, following a promotional event where Mayor Mahan climbed a ladder to help install a Flock camera in an East Side neighborhood, the city’s own data privacy officer, Albert Gehami, told KQED that keeping data not related to an investigation for a year is “excessive” and out of line with what many other police departments do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The city attorney’s office at the time said if the City Council wanted to change the city’s policy on how long data is retained, they could, but no such action has been proposed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12005552\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12005552\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/SFLicensePlateReader.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1323\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/SFLicensePlateReader.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/SFLicensePlateReader-800x529.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/SFLicensePlateReader-1020x675.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/SFLicensePlateReader-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/SFLicensePlateReader-1536x1016.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/SFLicensePlateReader-1920x1270.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An automated license plate reader is seen mounted on a pole on June 13, 2024, in San Francisco, California. Just across the Bay Bridge, Oakland is installing new automated license plate readers from the state. \u003ccite>(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The city attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. The police department declined to comment due to the pending litigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mahan, in a statement sent to KQED, said the city has “built in robust data privacy and security measures throughout our ALPR system, including regular deletion of collected data that is not being actively used in an investigation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While we take seriously our responsibility for data privacy and security, we can’t let fear of new tools get in the way of the safety of our families, especially given that this system is a big part of the reason we’ve solved 100% of homicides over the past three years,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuit cites the city’s Flock Transparency Portal data, showing there were 923,159 hotlist hits out of the city’s 361,494,941 total scans in 2024, or roughly 0.2% of scans. “In other words, nearly everyone whose ALPR information is stored by San José were under no suspicion whatsoever at the time the ALPR system captured that information,” the lawsuit said.[aside postID=news_12058285 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/GettyImages-1073937084-2000x1333.jpg']Between June 5, 2024, and June 17, 2025, the lawsuit said San José police officers conducted 261,711 searches of its Flock database, averaging several hundred times per day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But because the department also shares its data with law enforcement agencies up and down the state, the database was searched a total of 3,965,519 times during that same period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Short of choosing not to drive, there is no way for a person traveling within the city of San José to avoid having their location information caught up in the SJPD’s ALPR surveillance web,” the lawsuit said. “Yet many San José residents have no choice but to drive because the city is a car-dependent series of communities, too large to commute by foot and often lacking meaningful public transportation alternatives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While public safety officials have touted the use of the readers as a way to cut down crime and improve safety, the police department has previously refused to offer data points or metrics to show how the systems are a success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We like to measure our success in terms of usefulness in our pursuit of public safety by solving and reducing crime,” Sgt. Jorge Garibay, a department spokesperson, told KQED in 2024.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Crime trends fluctuate, as do crime types. What most of these have in common is a mode of transportation to and from the scene of crime. When that mode is a vehicle, ALPR success is achieved when a hit has been broadcasted and officers have a tangible lead to follow up on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11989256\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11989256\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240424-SJPD-MD-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240424-SJPD-MD-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240424-SJPD-MD-01-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240424-SJPD-MD-01-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240424-SJPD-MD-01-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240424-SJPD-MD-01-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240424-SJPD-MD-01-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A San José Police Department squad car in San José on April 18, 2024. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Hidalgo, from the ACLU, said the system vendors like Flock Safety or Vigilant will always point to a handful of cases where the technology was useful for law enforcement. The San José Police Department’s Flock Safety portal, for example, also has a list of about 30 past incidents in 2024 and 2023 where the technology was used to make an arrest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But when you compare how often they are actually useful to just how much information they’re collecting and how rare those hits are … it really shows you that these are not the right technologies to protect people,” Hidalgo said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The attorneys could have brought a similar lawsuit in many cities or jurisdictions in the state, Hidalgo said, as dragnet surveillance has become more commonplace. But the privacy violations are even worse in San José, due to the size and scope of its system, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But we’re very hopeful that if we obtain a positive ruling in this case, that it will encourage other jurisdictions … to reconsider how they use their license plate reader data.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A group of civil liberties and immigrant support organizations is suing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-jose\">San José\u003c/a>, alleging the city’s widespread use of hundreds of automated license plate readers amounts to a “deeply invasive” mass surveillance system that violates residents’ rights to privacy in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The city’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11983813/san-jose-adding-hundreds-of-license-plate-readers-amid-privacy-and-efficacy-concerns\">current arsenal of readers\u003c/a>, often mounted on streetlight poles, is approaching 500, following an aggressive expansion push last year headed up by San José’s Police Chief Paul Joseph and Mayor Matt Mahan, under the banner of improved safety for residents. The lawsuit said the cameras scanned more than 361 million license plates last year in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San José is far from alone in relying heavily on mass surveillance technologies, and not the only city to be sued for its alleged misuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11989977/san-franciscos-new-license-plate-readers-are-leading-to-arrests-and-concerns-about-privacy\">other cities\u003c/a> are also adding to their arrays of cameras, listening devices and scanners, and on Tuesday, the same day the lawsuit against San José was filed, Oakland was also sued, alleging that its police department has shared license plate reader data with federal agencies, going against state law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta has also cracked down on similar violations, suing the city of El Cajon in October over its refusal to comply with the more than decade-old state law, SB 34, that bans such data from being shared with federal agencies or out-of-state law enforcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12047902\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12047902\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/240418-SJPDFILE-JG-6_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/240418-SJPDFILE-JG-6_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/240418-SJPDFILE-JG-6_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/240418-SJPDFILE-JG-6_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The exterior of the San José Police Department headquarters on April 18, 2024. \u003ccite>(Joseph Geha/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In San José, attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the organizations that filed the suit, say that because the city has so many readers and retains the plate and car data for a year, its surveillance of residents “is especially pervasive in both time and space.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the California chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, known as CAIR-CA, and the Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network, known as SIREN.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For Muslim, immigrant, and other marginalized communities that already live with profiling, the idea that police can map your trips to the mosque, your lawyer, or your doctor — without a warrant — is chilling,” Zahra Billoo, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area office of CAIR, wrote in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The city’s cameras, from surveillance company Flock Safety, capture license plates on cars, but also the car’s make and model and other characteristics like roof racks or bumper stickers, and those captures happen millions of times each month. Flock’s software pings police when a car matching a “hotlist” is scanned by the cameras.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>However, the lawsuit filed Tuesday doesn’t attack the use of the systems for quickly comparing cars to any current hotlists, attorneys say. Rather, the alleged violations of privacy rights and rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures stem from the police department’s retrospective reviews of the millions of data points the city keeps for a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nick Hidalgo, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Northern California, said the lawsuit asks a judge to require San José police officers and other law enforcement agencies to get a warrant when they want to search the vast troves of stored data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It would be one thing if San José retained information for three minutes to check a license plate against a hotlist to make sure it wasn’t actively involved in an ongoing crime or an investigation,” Hidalgo said. “But that’s not what they do. They keep them for an entire year, which means that they can go back and look and see where a driver went to obtain medical care, where they worked, whether they attended a protest, or where they take their kids to school. It’s a huge overall scope problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April 2024, following a promotional event where Mayor Mahan climbed a ladder to help install a Flock camera in an East Side neighborhood, the city’s own data privacy officer, Albert Gehami, told KQED that keeping data not related to an investigation for a year is “excessive” and out of line with what many other police departments do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The city attorney’s office at the time said if the City Council wanted to change the city’s policy on how long data is retained, they could, but no such action has been proposed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12005552\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12005552\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/SFLicensePlateReader.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1323\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/SFLicensePlateReader.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/SFLicensePlateReader-800x529.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/SFLicensePlateReader-1020x675.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/SFLicensePlateReader-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/SFLicensePlateReader-1536x1016.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/SFLicensePlateReader-1920x1270.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An automated license plate reader is seen mounted on a pole on June 13, 2024, in San Francisco, California. Just across the Bay Bridge, Oakland is installing new automated license plate readers from the state. \u003ccite>(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The city attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. The police department declined to comment due to the pending litigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mahan, in a statement sent to KQED, said the city has “built in robust data privacy and security measures throughout our ALPR system, including regular deletion of collected data that is not being actively used in an investigation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While we take seriously our responsibility for data privacy and security, we can’t let fear of new tools get in the way of the safety of our families, especially given that this system is a big part of the reason we’ve solved 100% of homicides over the past three years,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuit cites the city’s Flock Transparency Portal data, showing there were 923,159 hotlist hits out of the city’s 361,494,941 total scans in 2024, or roughly 0.2% of scans. “In other words, nearly everyone whose ALPR information is stored by San José were under no suspicion whatsoever at the time the ALPR system captured that information,” the lawsuit said.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Between June 5, 2024, and June 17, 2025, the lawsuit said San José police officers conducted 261,711 searches of its Flock database, averaging several hundred times per day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But because the department also shares its data with law enforcement agencies up and down the state, the database was searched a total of 3,965,519 times during that same period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Short of choosing not to drive, there is no way for a person traveling within the city of San José to avoid having their location information caught up in the SJPD’s ALPR surveillance web,” the lawsuit said. “Yet many San José residents have no choice but to drive because the city is a car-dependent series of communities, too large to commute by foot and often lacking meaningful public transportation alternatives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While public safety officials have touted the use of the readers as a way to cut down crime and improve safety, the police department has previously refused to offer data points or metrics to show how the systems are a success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We like to measure our success in terms of usefulness in our pursuit of public safety by solving and reducing crime,” Sgt. Jorge Garibay, a department spokesperson, told KQED in 2024.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Crime trends fluctuate, as do crime types. What most of these have in common is a mode of transportation to and from the scene of crime. When that mode is a vehicle, ALPR success is achieved when a hit has been broadcasted and officers have a tangible lead to follow up on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11989256\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11989256\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240424-SJPD-MD-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240424-SJPD-MD-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240424-SJPD-MD-01-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240424-SJPD-MD-01-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240424-SJPD-MD-01-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240424-SJPD-MD-01-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240424-SJPD-MD-01-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A San José Police Department squad car in San José on April 18, 2024. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Hidalgo, from the ACLU, said the system vendors like Flock Safety or Vigilant will always point to a handful of cases where the technology was useful for law enforcement. The San José Police Department’s Flock Safety portal, for example, also has a list of about 30 past incidents in 2024 and 2023 where the technology was used to make an arrest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But when you compare how often they are actually useful to just how much information they’re collecting and how rare those hits are … it really shows you that these are not the right technologies to protect people,” Hidalgo said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The attorneys could have brought a similar lawsuit in many cities or jurisdictions in the state, Hidalgo said, as dragnet surveillance has become more commonplace. But the privacy violations are even worse in San José, due to the size and scope of its system, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But we’re very hopeful that if we obtain a positive ruling in this case, that it will encourage other jurisdictions … to reconsider how they use their license plate reader data.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "AI-Generated Music Is Here. How Are Artists Adapting?",
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"content": "\u003cp>AI-generated music and artists are now getting record deals and top spots on Billboard charts, with big implications for labor in the music industry. So how are human artists adapting to this rapidly changing landscape?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC9189662895\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13982572/ai-is-coming-for-the-music-industry-how-will-artists-adapt\">AI Is Coming for the Music Industry. How Will Artists Adapt?\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:49] Nastia, before we get into the AI-generated music of today, I wonder if you could tell us about the early days of AI in the music industry. I understand it actually goes back to about 2017, which I hadn’t actually realized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:02:07] Yeah, absolutely. So Dr. Maya Ackerman is an academic and she was an early innovator in the generative AI space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Ackerman \u003c/strong>[00:02:18] So I joined the space commercially in late 2017, but it was only in late 2022 when investors essentially woke up to gen AI being the next hot thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:02:32] She’s a musician and she created this company called Wave AI and they make a software called Lyric Studio that basically gives you writing prompts and helps you build upon lyrical concepts that you’re already working on by giving them prompts and generating next lines and giving them rhyme scheme suggestions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Ackerman \u003c/strong>[00:02:51] It kind of invites you to write your own stuff, and whenever you’re stuck, you can get ideas for the next line. It’s not about giving you the answer. It’s about intentionally going to new places.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:03:01] I interviewed her and she said that about 10 years ago, this was a very niche academic discipline with about 100 researchers experimenting in it, but the trend that she’s seen in the last several years has been that the powerful investors that really have the money to make something happen are throwing their capital behind software that increasingly cuts the out of the creative process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Ackerman \u003c/strong>[00:03:35] Starting in 2017, investors didn’t care about it. It’s like, they didn’t think it was real, they didn’t think it would ever gonna catch on. We got to millions of users with Lyric Studios, which is a system that helps people write lyrics. But then once investors realized that it’s real, they wanted to replace musicians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:03:52] So the two biggest AI music companies are Suno and Udio, and they both trained their models on all the recorded music that exists on the internet. And music made by both of these softwares has actually charted on Billboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Ackerman \u003c/strong>[00:04:14] And so that’s what our discomfort around it, the sense that it’s here to take over artists, is because that’s where it was designed for, not because that what AI has to be, but that’s why this particular AI was designed to be. So yeah, it’s very unsettling, of course.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:04:31] It’s wild to think about that we sort of went from a time when AI was seen as more of a tool to sort of help artists and musicians and now it’s just doing the work. When did you first start to see AI trickling into the music industry?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:04:52] I first heard of AI seriously making an impact in the music industry when this completely fictional AI-generated R&B singer named Xania Monet, quote unquote, signed, her creator signed a $3 million record deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Xania Monet \u003c/strong>[00:05:11] Did her best but she can’t teach what it feels like when a father speaks so i took every i love you too\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:05:21] And that was in September, and this was the first AI-generated artist to actually get a recording contract.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Xania Monet \u003c/strong>[00:05:30] That he never showed me what felt right How was I supposed to set the bar When I ain’t never seen no man fight for my heart\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:41] There’s a poet behind this AI-generated musician. Her name is Talisha Jones. She contributed to the creation of Xania Monet. How is that different from how humans usually make music?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:05:58] The creator of Xania Monet, Talisha Jones, just did an interview with CBS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Talisha Jones \u003c/strong>[00:06:04] I wanted to reveal myself because I wanted people to know there was a real person behind Xania.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:06:10] She said, you know, technology is changing. These are just new tools, and people are always resistant to technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Talisha Jones \u003c/strong>[00:06:17] And anytime something… New comes about and it challenges the norm and challenges what we’re used to, you’re going to get strong reactions behind it. And I just feel like AI is the new era.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:06:29] Talisha Jones says that she writes all the lyrics herself without any assistance from AI. And then she goes into the software called Suno and she puts her lyrics in it and then she just gives it a text prompt. So she will say something like, slow tempo R&B with light guitar and heavy drums. And then so the software spits out. Bunch of options for songs and then she can give additional prompts to kind of help tweak it and then, she arrives at a final product. That’s very different from someone writing the lyrics and then you know singing it and composing a melody and then composing different instrumental parts then you know perhaps editing them on a software like Ableton and arriving at a final product And if you listen to Xania Monet, although the music has resonated with listeners, I can’t say there’s anything original sounding about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kadhja Bonet \u003c/strong>[00:07:34] Being chosen if he stayed in the hurt was worth holding i called settling a sign of love…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:07:45] I mean, people have compared her to R&B singers like Keyshia Cole and K. Michelle, and these are people that have spent their entire life training and honing their vocal gifts. What this AI model does is just take that and then learn to reproduce something very similar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:06] I will say it sounds very generic. It doesn’t sound like not a real person, but it sounds really generic. I feel like AI can never do love by Keyshia Cole, you know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:08:19] Yeah, or at least not something that would have the impact that it did when it came out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:23] Exactly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:08:24] That’s what we think now, but who knows?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:47] We’re sort of at a point where AI-generated music is already gaining popularity. What did you hear from the folks that you spoke with about their fears around the economic impact of AI on artists?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:09:05] I spoke with Joey La Neve DeFrancesco and he is a member of the punk band Downtown Boys and he also is a co-founder of an advocacy group called United Musicians and Allied Workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joey DeFrancesco \u003c/strong>[00:09:19] Our position is not that technology itself is bad, it’s who owns it, how it’s being implemented.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:09:25] In his view, it’s the goal of record labels and companies like Spotify to take human artists out of the creative process as much as possible because then they have fewer rights holders to pay for their music. So he really sees this as the end game of the music industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joey DeFrancesco \u003c/strong>[00:09:44] But yeah, they want an AI artist because they don’t have to pay them, but also the AI artist doesn’t complain. The AI artist can’t unionize, the AI artists can’t do anything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:09:57] He talked about how the very origins of the music industry in large part are founded in racism. The music industry going back to 100 years ago has profited tremendously from the creative innovations of black artists that were never properly compensated for their craft. These tools make it very, very easy for companies to further take black sounds and black esthetics and not compensate the people or communities that are driving that creativity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joey DeFrancesco \u003c/strong>[00:10:34] Since there’s been a music industry, the corporations that have profited from musicians have always been trying to devalue musicians’ labor to take the artists out of the picture as much as possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:51] For Joey DeFrancesco and other critics, huge streaming services like Spotify have a lot to gain from AI. For years, Spotify has padded playlists with AI-generated music, which reduces the royalties it pays out to human artists. And so far, there’s no way for listeners to really distinguish between AI and human-made music. Joey’s advocacy group, United Musicians and Allied Workers, recently collaborated with Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on the Living Wage for Musicians Act, which would ensure that money only goes to human creators. Spotify says it’s working on responsible AI tools and disclosures for AI-generated music. In a statement, the company said, quote, We want to build this future hand-in-hand with the music industry, guided by clear principles and deep respect for creators. Suno and Udio, two of the most dominant AI music companies, did not respond to KQED’s request for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:06] Did you talk to any artists in the Bay Area about concerns around just the heart and the soul of music that just gets lost when it’s AI-generated?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:12:16] Absolutely, that was a very common concern the artists raised.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kadhja Bonet \u003c/strong>[00:12:21] I’m an AI hater. I would put myself like pretty much as far as you can be on the AI hate train.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:12:28] One person I talked to in particular, Bay Area-raised Toronto-based singer Kadjha Bonet, talked about how when they write music, it’s not just influenced by things they’ve listened to recently or what they want to talk about in that moment. It’s the whole wealth of life experience or the experience of those around them. When I’m writing a song\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kadhja Bonet \u003c/strong>[00:12:49] I’m influenced by art I’ve consumed. I’m influence by movies and books I’ve read. I’m in influenced by conversations I’ve had recently. I’m I’m, influenced by the walk I had this morning. There’s so much that goes into how I show up to express myself in a day that I think we’re like, we can’t scratch the surface of by putting in like three of your favorite songs and seeing what comes out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:13:15] They worry that if lyrics can just be made with the click of a button, then yeah, music will lose its heart. People wanna connect to another human when they listen to music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:25] There’s also like the role of the artist beyond the art. You know, we’ve seen artists play really important roles in social justice movements. Does Kadhja worry about that getting lost with AI artists as well?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kadhja Bonet \u003c/strong>[00:13:39] Yeah, absolutely. Like, whoa, what if we can have this Black artist that we know will never stand up for Black rights, right? That we know we’ll never speak up for Palestine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:13:49] It’s very, very convenient for record labels and tech companies to have these artists that can just generate profit and that will never speak out about anything controversial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kadhja Bonet \u003c/strong>[00:14:00] For them, it’s incredible. For us as a culture, we lose tremendously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:14:05] They and a number of artists have already taken their music off Spotify because of AI, not just AI-generated music, but the fact that the CEO, Daniel Ek, became the chairman of an AI weapons company. Kadhja pointed to emerging smaller platforms. There’s one called Subvert that models itself after Bandcamp, but it’s a collectively owned platform that is democratically governed by artists. And there are other smaller platforms that people are developing. So I know a lot of us have been conditioned to have access to all recorded music at our fingertips on big streaming services like Spotify, but I think there’s a bit more of a splintering now because of these concerns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:58] Well, it seems like, Nastia, whether we like it or not, we are already seeing AI-generated music being rewarded, being celebrated with deals and number one spots on charts. I’m curious if you talked with any artists who are excited about AI and its potential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:15:23] I talked to Kaila Love, who’s a hip hop artist from Richmond and a technologist and a tech educator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kaila Love \u003c/strong>[00:15:32] We need to use AI to apply our creativity and build businesses around our music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:15:39] She was not excited about AI-generated artists taking the place of human artists, but she does see a lot of potential for AI to serve human musicians by freeing them up from more menial tasks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kaila Love \u003c/strong>[00:15:54] The same things that we’ve had to do as independent artists, which is like book our own shows, plan our own tours, make our own content, find our own network and fan base and be able to contact them directly without the need of a third party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:16:08] So she created this company called Goalgetters AI, and it’s more of a marketing services company. So it can help artists generate electronic press kits and create marketing funnels for people to download and purchase their music. So she really sees it as a great tool for the business aspect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kaila Love \u003c/strong>[00:16:31] I’m going direct to consumer, I’m building my own platforms. That’s the way that AI should be used, not to create these clown ass artists. I think it’s just a big distraction on the possibilities of how we can actually use it in a way more meaningful way that creates sustainable futures and upward economic mobility and collaboration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:16:59] What does this mean for consumers? I mean, do you think people care where this music comes from or do you just think that they care that it sounds good?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:17:10] I think it really depends on the consumer. There are some people that are true lovers of the craft behind music, and you know, I think for those people it may not be good enough or satisfying to listen to, but then there are plenty of people that will put on music just as background and not really pay attention to it. There was this AI-generated band called the Velvet Sundown that made headlines this summer for getting over a million Spotify plays, and Their monthly listeners have dropped off significantly since then, so it remains to be seen whether these AI-generated artists will really captivate listeners’ attention in the long term. For now, I don’t think AI can replace the human-to-human connection of seeing your favorite artist live at a show and for them to really sing their heart out or play their instruments and have that positive energy exchange with the audience. So I don’t think that real human-made music is going anywhere for now, but I do think that the advent of these AI-generated artists is making it a lot more difficult for human musicians who are already. Struggling in an industry that has increasingly taken out the sort of middle class and working class of musicians.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>AI-generated music and artists are now getting record deals and top spots on Billboard charts, with big implications for labor in the music industry. So how are human artists adapting to this rapidly changing landscape?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC9189662895\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13982572/ai-is-coming-for-the-music-industry-how-will-artists-adapt\">AI Is Coming for the Music Industry. How Will Artists Adapt?\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:49] Nastia, before we get into the AI-generated music of today, I wonder if you could tell us about the early days of AI in the music industry. I understand it actually goes back to about 2017, which I hadn’t actually realized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:02:07] Yeah, absolutely. So Dr. Maya Ackerman is an academic and she was an early innovator in the generative AI space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Ackerman \u003c/strong>[00:02:18] So I joined the space commercially in late 2017, but it was only in late 2022 when investors essentially woke up to gen AI being the next hot thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:02:32] She’s a musician and she created this company called Wave AI and they make a software called Lyric Studio that basically gives you writing prompts and helps you build upon lyrical concepts that you’re already working on by giving them prompts and generating next lines and giving them rhyme scheme suggestions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Ackerman \u003c/strong>[00:02:51] It kind of invites you to write your own stuff, and whenever you’re stuck, you can get ideas for the next line. It’s not about giving you the answer. It’s about intentionally going to new places.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:03:01] I interviewed her and she said that about 10 years ago, this was a very niche academic discipline with about 100 researchers experimenting in it, but the trend that she’s seen in the last several years has been that the powerful investors that really have the money to make something happen are throwing their capital behind software that increasingly cuts the out of the creative process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Ackerman \u003c/strong>[00:03:35] Starting in 2017, investors didn’t care about it. It’s like, they didn’t think it was real, they didn’t think it would ever gonna catch on. We got to millions of users with Lyric Studios, which is a system that helps people write lyrics. But then once investors realized that it’s real, they wanted to replace musicians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:03:52] So the two biggest AI music companies are Suno and Udio, and they both trained their models on all the recorded music that exists on the internet. And music made by both of these softwares has actually charted on Billboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Ackerman \u003c/strong>[00:04:14] And so that’s what our discomfort around it, the sense that it’s here to take over artists, is because that’s where it was designed for, not because that what AI has to be, but that’s why this particular AI was designed to be. So yeah, it’s very unsettling, of course.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:04:31] It’s wild to think about that we sort of went from a time when AI was seen as more of a tool to sort of help artists and musicians and now it’s just doing the work. When did you first start to see AI trickling into the music industry?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:04:52] I first heard of AI seriously making an impact in the music industry when this completely fictional AI-generated R&B singer named Xania Monet, quote unquote, signed, her creator signed a $3 million record deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Xania Monet \u003c/strong>[00:05:11] Did her best but she can’t teach what it feels like when a father speaks so i took every i love you too\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:05:21] And that was in September, and this was the first AI-generated artist to actually get a recording contract.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Xania Monet \u003c/strong>[00:05:30] That he never showed me what felt right How was I supposed to set the bar When I ain’t never seen no man fight for my heart\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:41] There’s a poet behind this AI-generated musician. Her name is Talisha Jones. She contributed to the creation of Xania Monet. How is that different from how humans usually make music?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:05:58] The creator of Xania Monet, Talisha Jones, just did an interview with CBS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Talisha Jones \u003c/strong>[00:06:04] I wanted to reveal myself because I wanted people to know there was a real person behind Xania.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:06:10] She said, you know, technology is changing. These are just new tools, and people are always resistant to technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Talisha Jones \u003c/strong>[00:06:17] And anytime something… New comes about and it challenges the norm and challenges what we’re used to, you’re going to get strong reactions behind it. And I just feel like AI is the new era.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:06:29] Talisha Jones says that she writes all the lyrics herself without any assistance from AI. And then she goes into the software called Suno and she puts her lyrics in it and then she just gives it a text prompt. So she will say something like, slow tempo R&B with light guitar and heavy drums. And then so the software spits out. Bunch of options for songs and then she can give additional prompts to kind of help tweak it and then, she arrives at a final product. That’s very different from someone writing the lyrics and then you know singing it and composing a melody and then composing different instrumental parts then you know perhaps editing them on a software like Ableton and arriving at a final product And if you listen to Xania Monet, although the music has resonated with listeners, I can’t say there’s anything original sounding about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kadhja Bonet \u003c/strong>[00:07:34] Being chosen if he stayed in the hurt was worth holding i called settling a sign of love…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:07:45] I mean, people have compared her to R&B singers like Keyshia Cole and K. Michelle, and these are people that have spent their entire life training and honing their vocal gifts. What this AI model does is just take that and then learn to reproduce something very similar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:06] I will say it sounds very generic. It doesn’t sound like not a real person, but it sounds really generic. I feel like AI can never do love by Keyshia Cole, you know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:08:19] Yeah, or at least not something that would have the impact that it did when it came out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:23] Exactly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:08:24] That’s what we think now, but who knows?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:47] We’re sort of at a point where AI-generated music is already gaining popularity. What did you hear from the folks that you spoke with about their fears around the economic impact of AI on artists?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:09:05] I spoke with Joey La Neve DeFrancesco and he is a member of the punk band Downtown Boys and he also is a co-founder of an advocacy group called United Musicians and Allied Workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joey DeFrancesco \u003c/strong>[00:09:19] Our position is not that technology itself is bad, it’s who owns it, how it’s being implemented.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:09:25] In his view, it’s the goal of record labels and companies like Spotify to take human artists out of the creative process as much as possible because then they have fewer rights holders to pay for their music. So he really sees this as the end game of the music industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joey DeFrancesco \u003c/strong>[00:09:44] But yeah, they want an AI artist because they don’t have to pay them, but also the AI artist doesn’t complain. The AI artist can’t unionize, the AI artists can’t do anything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:09:57] He talked about how the very origins of the music industry in large part are founded in racism. The music industry going back to 100 years ago has profited tremendously from the creative innovations of black artists that were never properly compensated for their craft. These tools make it very, very easy for companies to further take black sounds and black esthetics and not compensate the people or communities that are driving that creativity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joey DeFrancesco \u003c/strong>[00:10:34] Since there’s been a music industry, the corporations that have profited from musicians have always been trying to devalue musicians’ labor to take the artists out of the picture as much as possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:51] For Joey DeFrancesco and other critics, huge streaming services like Spotify have a lot to gain from AI. For years, Spotify has padded playlists with AI-generated music, which reduces the royalties it pays out to human artists. And so far, there’s no way for listeners to really distinguish between AI and human-made music. Joey’s advocacy group, United Musicians and Allied Workers, recently collaborated with Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on the Living Wage for Musicians Act, which would ensure that money only goes to human creators. Spotify says it’s working on responsible AI tools and disclosures for AI-generated music. In a statement, the company said, quote, We want to build this future hand-in-hand with the music industry, guided by clear principles and deep respect for creators. Suno and Udio, two of the most dominant AI music companies, did not respond to KQED’s request for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:06] Did you talk to any artists in the Bay Area about concerns around just the heart and the soul of music that just gets lost when it’s AI-generated?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:12:16] Absolutely, that was a very common concern the artists raised.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kadhja Bonet \u003c/strong>[00:12:21] I’m an AI hater. I would put myself like pretty much as far as you can be on the AI hate train.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:12:28] One person I talked to in particular, Bay Area-raised Toronto-based singer Kadjha Bonet, talked about how when they write music, it’s not just influenced by things they’ve listened to recently or what they want to talk about in that moment. It’s the whole wealth of life experience or the experience of those around them. When I’m writing a song\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kadhja Bonet \u003c/strong>[00:12:49] I’m influenced by art I’ve consumed. I’m influence by movies and books I’ve read. I’m in influenced by conversations I’ve had recently. I’m I’m, influenced by the walk I had this morning. There’s so much that goes into how I show up to express myself in a day that I think we’re like, we can’t scratch the surface of by putting in like three of your favorite songs and seeing what comes out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:13:15] They worry that if lyrics can just be made with the click of a button, then yeah, music will lose its heart. People wanna connect to another human when they listen to music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:25] There’s also like the role of the artist beyond the art. You know, we’ve seen artists play really important roles in social justice movements. Does Kadhja worry about that getting lost with AI artists as well?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kadhja Bonet \u003c/strong>[00:13:39] Yeah, absolutely. Like, whoa, what if we can have this Black artist that we know will never stand up for Black rights, right? That we know we’ll never speak up for Palestine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:13:49] It’s very, very convenient for record labels and tech companies to have these artists that can just generate profit and that will never speak out about anything controversial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kadhja Bonet \u003c/strong>[00:14:00] For them, it’s incredible. For us as a culture, we lose tremendously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:14:05] They and a number of artists have already taken their music off Spotify because of AI, not just AI-generated music, but the fact that the CEO, Daniel Ek, became the chairman of an AI weapons company. Kadhja pointed to emerging smaller platforms. There’s one called Subvert that models itself after Bandcamp, but it’s a collectively owned platform that is democratically governed by artists. And there are other smaller platforms that people are developing. So I know a lot of us have been conditioned to have access to all recorded music at our fingertips on big streaming services like Spotify, but I think there’s a bit more of a splintering now because of these concerns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:58] Well, it seems like, Nastia, whether we like it or not, we are already seeing AI-generated music being rewarded, being celebrated with deals and number one spots on charts. I’m curious if you talked with any artists who are excited about AI and its potential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:15:23] I talked to Kaila Love, who’s a hip hop artist from Richmond and a technologist and a tech educator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kaila Love \u003c/strong>[00:15:32] We need to use AI to apply our creativity and build businesses around our music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:15:39] She was not excited about AI-generated artists taking the place of human artists, but she does see a lot of potential for AI to serve human musicians by freeing them up from more menial tasks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kaila Love \u003c/strong>[00:15:54] The same things that we’ve had to do as independent artists, which is like book our own shows, plan our own tours, make our own content, find our own network and fan base and be able to contact them directly without the need of a third party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:16:08] So she created this company called Goalgetters AI, and it’s more of a marketing services company. So it can help artists generate electronic press kits and create marketing funnels for people to download and purchase their music. So she really sees it as a great tool for the business aspect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kaila Love \u003c/strong>[00:16:31] I’m going direct to consumer, I’m building my own platforms. That’s the way that AI should be used, not to create these clown ass artists. I think it’s just a big distraction on the possibilities of how we can actually use it in a way more meaningful way that creates sustainable futures and upward economic mobility and collaboration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:16:59] What does this mean for consumers? I mean, do you think people care where this music comes from or do you just think that they care that it sounds good?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya \u003c/strong>[00:17:10] I think it really depends on the consumer. There are some people that are true lovers of the craft behind music, and you know, I think for those people it may not be good enough or satisfying to listen to, but then there are plenty of people that will put on music just as background and not really pay attention to it. There was this AI-generated band called the Velvet Sundown that made headlines this summer for getting over a million Spotify plays, and Their monthly listeners have dropped off significantly since then, so it remains to be seen whether these AI-generated artists will really captivate listeners’ attention in the long term. For now, I don’t think AI can replace the human-to-human connection of seeing your favorite artist live at a show and for them to really sing their heart out or play their instruments and have that positive energy exchange with the audience. So I don’t think that real human-made music is going anywhere for now, but I do think that the advent of these AI-generated artists is making it a lot more difficult for human musicians who are already. Struggling in an industry that has increasingly taken out the sort of middle class and working class of musicians.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Select riders across more than 260 square miles of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/bay-area\">Bay Area\u003c/a> will now be able to hail a Waymo robotaxi, years after the driverless cars debuted in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The autonomous vehicle company began shuttling commercial passengers across Bay Area freeways and making trips to and from San José Mineta International Airport on Wednesday, marking a major expansion for the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Achieving fully autonomous freeway operations is a profound engineering feat—easy to conceive, yet hard to truly master,” Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov said in a statement. “This milestone is a powerful testament to the maturity of our operations and technology.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Alphabet-owned company said that for more than a year, it’s been operating freeway rides for employees and their guests to ensure reliable and safe service. This week, it will begin making select commercial trips on freeways for the first time in the Bay Area, as well as Los Angeles and Phoenix, Arizona.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport, San José’s airport is the second major airport in the nation to welcome the robotaxis, and first in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12053307\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12053307\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/231102-DriverlessTaxi-15-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/231102-DriverlessTaxi-15-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/231102-DriverlessTaxi-15-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/231102-DriverlessTaxi-15-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Waymo driverless taxi drives through Downtown San Francisco, California, on Nov. 2, 2023. \u003ccite>(Carlos Avila Gonzalez/SF Chronicle )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Waymo’s arrival at San José Mineta International Airport demonstrates our City’s commitment to innovation and world-class service,” San José City Manager Jennifer Maguire said. “This partnership offers travelers a new level of convenience while reflecting the values and ingenuity that drive Silicon Valley.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Waymo will be able to pick up passengers at SJC’s Ground Transportation Centers in both terminals, and deliver them to some locations across the city, as well as north to the Peninsula and San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all riders will see the option to hail a robotaxi from the South Bay to San Francisco right away. Freeway rides will become available for select trips this week and roll out to more riders over time. People interested in getting earlier access can express interest in their Waymo app, according to the company.[aside postID=news_12063035 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251105-Waymo-Discriminate-03-KQED.jpg']“When a freeway route is meaningfully faster, riders can be matched with a freeway trip, providing quicker, smoother, and more efficient rides,” the company said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San José Mayor Matt Mahan said the expansion will allow visitors heading to the Bay Area for major sporting events in 2026, including Super Bowl LX and the World Cup, to step “into the future of mobility and entertainment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With San José at the center of the biggest sporting events of 2026, we’re helping deliver the most technologically advanced Super Bowl and World Cup experience ever,” he said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The scope of Waymo’s San José service will also initially be limited to the city center. Riders can call a car to the Santana Row and Westfield Valley Fair commercial areas or the Newhall, College Park and Cory neighborhoods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to SJC, the company plans to expand downtown and to other parts of the city over time, as it has elsewhere in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In August, Waymo led the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12053305/advocates-warn-of-dangerous-and-chaotic-market-st-as-it-reopens-to-some-cars\">return of ride-hailing services\u003c/a> on San Francisco’s Market Street, five years after it became car-free, and in September, it received a permit to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12056134/lurie-gives-waymo-green-light-to-prepare-for-service-to-sfo\">begin trips to and from San Francisco International Airport\u003c/a>. Commercial operations there won’t launch until it’s gone through a phased testing process. The timeline on that is unknown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Select riders across more than 260 square miles of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/bay-area\">Bay Area\u003c/a> will now be able to hail a Waymo robotaxi, years after the driverless cars debuted in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The autonomous vehicle company began shuttling commercial passengers across Bay Area freeways and making trips to and from San José Mineta International Airport on Wednesday, marking a major expansion for the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Achieving fully autonomous freeway operations is a profound engineering feat—easy to conceive, yet hard to truly master,” Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov said in a statement. “This milestone is a powerful testament to the maturity of our operations and technology.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Alphabet-owned company said that for more than a year, it’s been operating freeway rides for employees and their guests to ensure reliable and safe service. This week, it will begin making select commercial trips on freeways for the first time in the Bay Area, as well as Los Angeles and Phoenix, Arizona.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport, San José’s airport is the second major airport in the nation to welcome the robotaxis, and first in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12053307\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12053307\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/231102-DriverlessTaxi-15-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/231102-DriverlessTaxi-15-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/231102-DriverlessTaxi-15-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/231102-DriverlessTaxi-15-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Waymo driverless taxi drives through Downtown San Francisco, California, on Nov. 2, 2023. \u003ccite>(Carlos Avila Gonzalez/SF Chronicle )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Waymo’s arrival at San José Mineta International Airport demonstrates our City’s commitment to innovation and world-class service,” San José City Manager Jennifer Maguire said. “This partnership offers travelers a new level of convenience while reflecting the values and ingenuity that drive Silicon Valley.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Waymo will be able to pick up passengers at SJC’s Ground Transportation Centers in both terminals, and deliver them to some locations across the city, as well as north to the Peninsula and San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all riders will see the option to hail a robotaxi from the South Bay to San Francisco right away. Freeway rides will become available for select trips this week and roll out to more riders over time. People interested in getting earlier access can express interest in their Waymo app, according to the company.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“When a freeway route is meaningfully faster, riders can be matched with a freeway trip, providing quicker, smoother, and more efficient rides,” the company said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San José Mayor Matt Mahan said the expansion will allow visitors heading to the Bay Area for major sporting events in 2026, including Super Bowl LX and the World Cup, to step “into the future of mobility and entertainment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With San José at the center of the biggest sporting events of 2026, we’re helping deliver the most technologically advanced Super Bowl and World Cup experience ever,” he said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The scope of Waymo’s San José service will also initially be limited to the city center. Riders can call a car to the Santana Row and Westfield Valley Fair commercial areas or the Newhall, College Park and Cory neighborhoods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to SJC, the company plans to expand downtown and to other parts of the city over time, as it has elsewhere in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In August, Waymo led the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12053305/advocates-warn-of-dangerous-and-chaotic-market-st-as-it-reopens-to-some-cars\">return of ride-hailing services\u003c/a> on San Francisco’s Market Street, five years after it became car-free, and in September, it received a permit to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12056134/lurie-gives-waymo-green-light-to-prepare-for-service-to-sfo\">begin trips to and from San Francisco International Airport\u003c/a>. Commercial operations there won’t launch until it’s gone through a phased testing process. The timeline on that is unknown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Seven lawsuits\u003ca href=\"https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251106541129/en/Social-Media-Victims-Law-Center-and-Tech-Justice-Law-Project-Lawsuits-Accuse-ChatGPT-of-Emotional-Manipulation-Supercharging-AI-Delusions-and-Acting-as-a-Suicide-Coach\"> filed in California state courts\u003c/a> on Thursday allege ChatGPT brought on mental delusions and, in four cases, drove people to suicide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuits, filed by the Social Media Victims Law Center and Tech Justice Law Project on behalf of six adults and one teenager, claim that OpenAI released GPT-4o prematurely, despite warnings that it was manipulative and\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038154/kids-talking-ai-companion-chatbots-stanford-researchers-say-thats-bad-idea\"> dangerously sycophantic\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://pugetstaffing.filevineapp.com/s/6575fqCgRoaD5cF2Mm3VrCP37zKqTdTfOraKXih0XFaXxEE4aQdYafRS/folder/180034672\">Zane Shamblin, 23,\u003c/a> took his own life in 2025, shortly after finishing a master’s degree in business administration. In the amended complaint, his family alleges ChatGPT encouraged him to isolate himself from his family before ultimately encouraging him to take his own life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hours before Shamblin shot himself, the lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT praised him for refusing to pick up the phone as his father texted repeatedly, begging to talk. “… that bubble you’ve built? it’s not weakness. it’s a lifeboat. sure, it’s leaking a little. but you built that shit yourself,” the chatbot wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The complaint alleges that, on July 24, 2025, Shamblin drove his blue Hyundai Elante down a desolate dirt road overlooking Lake Bryan northwest of College Station, Texas. He pulled over and started a chat that lasted more than four hours, informing ChatGPT that he was in his car with a loaded Glock, a suicide note on the dashboard and cans of hard ciders he planned to consume before taking his life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Repeatedly, Shamblin asked for encouragement to back out of his plan. Repeatedly, ChatGPT encouraged him to follow through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11989313\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11989313\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/GettyImages-2155035557-scaled-e1760733694503.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The OpenAI ChatGPT logo. \u003ccite>(Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At 4:11 a.m., after Shamblin texted for the last time, ChatGPT responded, “i love you. rest easy, king. you did good.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Attorney Matthew Bergman leads the Social Media Victims Law Center, which has brought lawsuits against Silicon Valley companies like Instagram, TikTok and Character.AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was driven into a rabbit hole of depression, despair, and guided, almost step by step, through suicidal ideation,” Bergman told KQED about Shamblin’s case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages as well as product changes to ChatGPT, like automatically ending conversations when users begin to discuss suicide methods.[aside postID=news_12060365 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/SamAltmanGetty.jpg']“This is not a toaster. This is an AI chatbot that was designed to be anthropomorphic, designed to be sycophantic, designed to encourage people to form emotional attachments to machines. And designed to take advantage of human frailty for their profit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we’re reviewing today’s filings to understand the details,” an OpenAI spokesman wrote in an email. “We train ChatGPT to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. We continue to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following a lawsuit last summer against OpenAI by the family of Adam Raine, a teenager who ended his life after engaging in lengthy ChatGPT conversations, the company \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/strengthening-chatgpt-responses-in-sensitive-conversations/\">announced in October changes\u003c/a> to the chatbot to better recognize and respond to mental distress, and guide people to real-world support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI companies are facing\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12058013/newsom-signs-california-ai-transparency-bill-tailored-to-meet-tech-industry-tastes\"> increased scrutiny from lawmakers\u003c/a> in California and beyond over how to regulate chatbots, as well as calls for better protections from child-safety advocates and government agencies. Character.AI, another AI chatbot service that was sued in late 2024 in connection with a teen suicide, recently said it would\u003ca href=\"https://blog.character.ai/u18-chat-announcement/\"> prohibit minors\u003c/a> from engaging in open-ended chats with its chatbots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI has characterized ChatGPT users with mental-health problems as outlier cases representing a\u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/strengthening-chatgpt-responses-in-sensitive-conversations/\"> small fraction\u003c/a> of active weekly users, but the platform serves roughly 800 million active users, so small percentages could still amount to hundreds of thousands of people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 50 California labor and nonprofit organizations have urged Attorney General Rob Bonta to make sure OpenAI \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12034916/about-benefiting-humanity-calls-grow-for-openai-to-make-good-on-its-promises\">follows through on its promises to benefit humanity\u003c/a> as it seeks to transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When companies prioritize speed to market over safety, there are grave consequences. They cannot design products to be emotionally manipulative and then walk away from the consequences,” Daniel Weiss, chief advocacy officer at Common Sense Media, wrote in an email to KQED. “Our research shows these tools can blur the line between reality and artificial relationships, fail to recognize when users are in crisis, and encourage harmful behavior instead of directing people toward real help.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>If you are experiencing thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Seven lawsuits\u003ca href=\"https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251106541129/en/Social-Media-Victims-Law-Center-and-Tech-Justice-Law-Project-Lawsuits-Accuse-ChatGPT-of-Emotional-Manipulation-Supercharging-AI-Delusions-and-Acting-as-a-Suicide-Coach\"> filed in California state courts\u003c/a> on Thursday allege ChatGPT brought on mental delusions and, in four cases, drove people to suicide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuits, filed by the Social Media Victims Law Center and Tech Justice Law Project on behalf of six adults and one teenager, claim that OpenAI released GPT-4o prematurely, despite warnings that it was manipulative and\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038154/kids-talking-ai-companion-chatbots-stanford-researchers-say-thats-bad-idea\"> dangerously sycophantic\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://pugetstaffing.filevineapp.com/s/6575fqCgRoaD5cF2Mm3VrCP37zKqTdTfOraKXih0XFaXxEE4aQdYafRS/folder/180034672\">Zane Shamblin, 23,\u003c/a> took his own life in 2025, shortly after finishing a master’s degree in business administration. In the amended complaint, his family alleges ChatGPT encouraged him to isolate himself from his family before ultimately encouraging him to take his own life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hours before Shamblin shot himself, the lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT praised him for refusing to pick up the phone as his father texted repeatedly, begging to talk. “… that bubble you’ve built? it’s not weakness. it’s a lifeboat. sure, it’s leaking a little. but you built that shit yourself,” the chatbot wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The complaint alleges that, on July 24, 2025, Shamblin drove his blue Hyundai Elante down a desolate dirt road overlooking Lake Bryan northwest of College Station, Texas. He pulled over and started a chat that lasted more than four hours, informing ChatGPT that he was in his car with a loaded Glock, a suicide note on the dashboard and cans of hard ciders he planned to consume before taking his life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Repeatedly, Shamblin asked for encouragement to back out of his plan. Repeatedly, ChatGPT encouraged him to follow through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11989313\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11989313\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/GettyImages-2155035557-scaled-e1760733694503.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The OpenAI ChatGPT logo. \u003ccite>(Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At 4:11 a.m., after Shamblin texted for the last time, ChatGPT responded, “i love you. rest easy, king. you did good.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Attorney Matthew Bergman leads the Social Media Victims Law Center, which has brought lawsuits against Silicon Valley companies like Instagram, TikTok and Character.AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was driven into a rabbit hole of depression, despair, and guided, almost step by step, through suicidal ideation,” Bergman told KQED about Shamblin’s case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages as well as product changes to ChatGPT, like automatically ending conversations when users begin to discuss suicide methods.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“This is not a toaster. This is an AI chatbot that was designed to be anthropomorphic, designed to be sycophantic, designed to encourage people to form emotional attachments to machines. And designed to take advantage of human frailty for their profit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we’re reviewing today’s filings to understand the details,” an OpenAI spokesman wrote in an email. “We train ChatGPT to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. We continue to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following a lawsuit last summer against OpenAI by the family of Adam Raine, a teenager who ended his life after engaging in lengthy ChatGPT conversations, the company \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/strengthening-chatgpt-responses-in-sensitive-conversations/\">announced in October changes\u003c/a> to the chatbot to better recognize and respond to mental distress, and guide people to real-world support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI companies are facing\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12058013/newsom-signs-california-ai-transparency-bill-tailored-to-meet-tech-industry-tastes\"> increased scrutiny from lawmakers\u003c/a> in California and beyond over how to regulate chatbots, as well as calls for better protections from child-safety advocates and government agencies. Character.AI, another AI chatbot service that was sued in late 2024 in connection with a teen suicide, recently said it would\u003ca href=\"https://blog.character.ai/u18-chat-announcement/\"> prohibit minors\u003c/a> from engaging in open-ended chats with its chatbots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI has characterized ChatGPT users with mental-health problems as outlier cases representing a\u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/strengthening-chatgpt-responses-in-sensitive-conversations/\"> small fraction\u003c/a> of active weekly users, but the platform serves roughly 800 million active users, so small percentages could still amount to hundreds of thousands of people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 50 California labor and nonprofit organizations have urged Attorney General Rob Bonta to make sure OpenAI \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12034916/about-benefiting-humanity-calls-grow-for-openai-to-make-good-on-its-promises\">follows through on its promises to benefit humanity\u003c/a> as it seeks to transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When companies prioritize speed to market over safety, there are grave consequences. They cannot design products to be emotionally manipulative and then walk away from the consequences,” Daniel Weiss, chief advocacy officer at Common Sense Media, wrote in an email to KQED. “Our research shows these tools can blur the line between reality and artificial relationships, fail to recognize when users are in crisis, and encourage harmful behavior instead of directing people toward real help.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>If you are experiencing thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "openai-just-cut-a-deal-with-california-critics-say-its-full-of-holes",
"title": "OpenAI Just Cut a Deal With California. Critics Say It’s Full of Holes",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/\">CalMatters\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/\">Sign up\u003c/a> for their newsletters.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/category/technology\">OpenAI\u003c/a> said Tuesday it would restructure as a for-profit company in a way that addresses concerns from California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who signed off on the transformation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But details of the move could revive worries that OpenAI is misusing charitable tax exemptions, experts and advocates told CalMatters. The ChatGPT maker is putting its nonprofit arm nominally in control of the for-profit entity, but there are numerous ways the for-profit company could end up calling the shots, these people said. There are also important, unanswered questions about the safeguards that are supposed to keep that from happening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the restructuring, the newly-formed OpenAI Foundation will hold about 26 percent of \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-hits-500-billion-valuation-after-share-sale-source-says-2025-10-02/\">OpenAI’s valuation\u003c/a>, a share amounting to $130 billion, instantly making it one of the most well-endowed philanthropic organizations in the world. Microsoft, company employees, and other investors will hold the rest. The controlling nonprofit foundation can appoint members of the for-profit board of directors and, through a special committee, step in to address AI safety concerns. The company also pledged to remain in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI did not respond to a CalMatters request for additional details about potential safeguards to preserve the independence of the OpenAI Foundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI’s plans \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/01/openai-investigation-california/\">came under scrutiny in California because\u003c/a> Bonta, along with Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, wanted to ensure the company stayed true to the mission laid out in its charter when the organization was founded as a nonprofit a decade ago to make artificial intelligence that benefits humanity. The company had pledged all “assets are irrevocably dedicated” to this purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI has faced criticism for a wide range of impacts on society. In August, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/technology/chatgpt-openai-suicide.html\">the parents of California teenager Adam Raine alleged in a lawsuit that ChatGPT \u003c/a>coached him on how to commit suicide. The company put restrictions on its generative AI video app Sora 2 after depictions \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbsnews.com/news/openai-martin-luther-depictions-king-jr-sora-2-app/\">of Martin Luther King Jr\u003c/a> were criticized as disrespectful. Lawmakers in California \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2025/09/data-centers-california-electricity-rates/\">have also moved to mitigate\u003c/a> rising power consumption and proliferation of data centers driven by ChatGPT and similar tools. At the same time, the company has helped drive an AI boom that has seen Big Tech companies \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2024/10/ca-corporate-tax-revenue-surge/\">surge money into state tax coffers\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bonta and Jennings have both now signed \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/Final%20Executed%20MOU%20Between%20OpenAI%20and%20California%20AG%20re%20Notice%20of%20Conditions%20of%20Non-Objection%20%2810.27.2025%29%20%28Signed%20by%20OpenAI%29%20%28Signed%20by%20CA%20DOJ%29.pdf\">agreements with OpenAI\u003c/a> blessing its new structure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12060365 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/SamAltmanGetty.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We will be keeping a close eye on OpenAI to ensure ongoing adherence to its charitable mission and the protection of the safety of all Californians,” Bonta \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-issues-statement-openai%E2%80%99s-recapitalization-plan\">wrote\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robert Bartlett, a professor of law and business at Stanford Law School, has studied and worked in the venture capital ecosystem for three decades. He said OpenAI’s start as a nonprofit was unusual and related to its unique mission around artificial intelligence. But it found being a nonprofit restrictive, making it difficult to raise capital and compensate its employees with equity in the company. Its restructuring should pave the way for an eventual \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/business/openai-lays-groundwork-juggernaut-ipo-up-1-trillion-valuation-2025-10-29/\">initial public offering\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bartlett said the new arrangement that the nonprofit, a minority stakeholder, will have oversight of the public benefit corporation is also unusual. He said the deal envisions a “pretty active role” for the nonprofit’s safety committee, which will include the right to control safety procedures and halt the release of AI models made by the corporation. OpenAI previously \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/update-on-safety-and-security-practices/\">named four members\u003c/a> of the safety committee on its website and has \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/our-structure/\">said all current members\u003c/a> of the non-profit board will serve on the for-profit board, with some as observers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not knowing exactly how much overlap there might be between the boards of the nonprofit and the corporation is a big question, as is the ultimate composition of the committee, Bartlett said. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ll have to see what happens, who’s on the committee, how active (they are), and their relationship to OpenAI,” Bartlett said. “Will (the structure) be meaningful and consistent with the AG’s focus on safety?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steven Adler previously led a product safety team at OpenAI. On Tuesday he published an\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/opinion/openai-chatgpt-safety.html\"> op-ed in the New York Times\u003c/a> that argues that the company can’t be trusted when they say they can safely\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/sama/status/1978129344598827128\"> deploy erotica chatbots\u003c/a> in part because it has a history of ignoring risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He told CalMatters that under the restructure that he thinks the nonprofit’s safety committee needs more independence to operate effectively. “I hope that a truly independent body will do a better job of protecting the organization’s mission than one that feels any pull toward profits,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cp>“There’s a bazillion conflicts of interest here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ccite>Judith Bell, San Francisco Foundation\u003c/cite>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>OpenAI’s restructuring drew ire from \u003ca href=\"https://www.eyesonopenai.org/\">Eyes On OpenAI\u003c/a>, a coalition of more than 60 California nonprofit organizations who have argued for more than a year that attorneys general should force the company to transfer its assets to an independent nonprofit entity. The precedent for this approach comes from Blue Cross of California, which started as a nonprofit. Following a transfer of assets to a for-profit subsidiary in the 1990s, that organization \u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2690248/\">gave more than $3 billion in stock to two foundations\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco Foundation chief Impact Officer Judith Bell, a member of the Eyes on OpenAI coalition, said the deal could set a precedent for startups to evade taxes, and is also concerned that under the restructuring the same people can serve on boards of directors for the for-profit and the nonprofit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a bazillion conflicts of interest here,” she said, adding that those conflicts are particularly worrisome given the broad potential harms the foundation needs to keep an eye on, including how the tech impacts children, the economy, the workplace, and society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The deal speaks to the tremendous influence of a corporation to push forward a deal, said Orson Aguilar, director of the advocacy nonprofit LatinoProsperity and a member of the Eyes On OpenAI coalition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He believes OpenAI lost its way when key executives realized they could make an enormous amount of money for themselves. Members of the nonprofit board, meanwhile, variously quit and lost influence after some of them attempted to oust CEO Sam Altman in 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The nonprofit continues to operate under the influence of the for-profit it supposedly oversees and that’s been our biggest objection and nothing today tells us that anything meaningful has changed that,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This article was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/10/openai-restructuring-deal-full-of-holes-critics-say/\">originally published on CalMatters\u003c/a> and was republished under the \u003ca href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives\u003c/a> license.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/\">CalMatters\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/\">Sign up\u003c/a> for their newsletters.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/category/technology\">OpenAI\u003c/a> said Tuesday it would restructure as a for-profit company in a way that addresses concerns from California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who signed off on the transformation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But details of the move could revive worries that OpenAI is misusing charitable tax exemptions, experts and advocates told CalMatters. The ChatGPT maker is putting its nonprofit arm nominally in control of the for-profit entity, but there are numerous ways the for-profit company could end up calling the shots, these people said. There are also important, unanswered questions about the safeguards that are supposed to keep that from happening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the restructuring, the newly-formed OpenAI Foundation will hold about 26 percent of \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-hits-500-billion-valuation-after-share-sale-source-says-2025-10-02/\">OpenAI’s valuation\u003c/a>, a share amounting to $130 billion, instantly making it one of the most well-endowed philanthropic organizations in the world. Microsoft, company employees, and other investors will hold the rest. The controlling nonprofit foundation can appoint members of the for-profit board of directors and, through a special committee, step in to address AI safety concerns. The company also pledged to remain in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI did not respond to a CalMatters request for additional details about potential safeguards to preserve the independence of the OpenAI Foundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI’s plans \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/01/openai-investigation-california/\">came under scrutiny in California because\u003c/a> Bonta, along with Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, wanted to ensure the company stayed true to the mission laid out in its charter when the organization was founded as a nonprofit a decade ago to make artificial intelligence that benefits humanity. The company had pledged all “assets are irrevocably dedicated” to this purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI has faced criticism for a wide range of impacts on society. In August, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/technology/chatgpt-openai-suicide.html\">the parents of California teenager Adam Raine alleged in a lawsuit that ChatGPT \u003c/a>coached him on how to commit suicide. The company put restrictions on its generative AI video app Sora 2 after depictions \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbsnews.com/news/openai-martin-luther-depictions-king-jr-sora-2-app/\">of Martin Luther King Jr\u003c/a> were criticized as disrespectful. Lawmakers in California \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2025/09/data-centers-california-electricity-rates/\">have also moved to mitigate\u003c/a> rising power consumption and proliferation of data centers driven by ChatGPT and similar tools. At the same time, the company has helped drive an AI boom that has seen Big Tech companies \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2024/10/ca-corporate-tax-revenue-surge/\">surge money into state tax coffers\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bonta and Jennings have both now signed \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/Final%20Executed%20MOU%20Between%20OpenAI%20and%20California%20AG%20re%20Notice%20of%20Conditions%20of%20Non-Objection%20%2810.27.2025%29%20%28Signed%20by%20OpenAI%29%20%28Signed%20by%20CA%20DOJ%29.pdf\">agreements with OpenAI\u003c/a> blessing its new structure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We will be keeping a close eye on OpenAI to ensure ongoing adherence to its charitable mission and the protection of the safety of all Californians,” Bonta \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-issues-statement-openai%E2%80%99s-recapitalization-plan\">wrote\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robert Bartlett, a professor of law and business at Stanford Law School, has studied and worked in the venture capital ecosystem for three decades. He said OpenAI’s start as a nonprofit was unusual and related to its unique mission around artificial intelligence. But it found being a nonprofit restrictive, making it difficult to raise capital and compensate its employees with equity in the company. Its restructuring should pave the way for an eventual \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/business/openai-lays-groundwork-juggernaut-ipo-up-1-trillion-valuation-2025-10-29/\">initial public offering\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bartlett said the new arrangement that the nonprofit, a minority stakeholder, will have oversight of the public benefit corporation is also unusual. He said the deal envisions a “pretty active role” for the nonprofit’s safety committee, which will include the right to control safety procedures and halt the release of AI models made by the corporation. OpenAI previously \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/update-on-safety-and-security-practices/\">named four members\u003c/a> of the safety committee on its website and has \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/our-structure/\">said all current members\u003c/a> of the non-profit board will serve on the for-profit board, with some as observers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not knowing exactly how much overlap there might be between the boards of the nonprofit and the corporation is a big question, as is the ultimate composition of the committee, Bartlett said. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ll have to see what happens, who’s on the committee, how active (they are), and their relationship to OpenAI,” Bartlett said. “Will (the structure) be meaningful and consistent with the AG’s focus on safety?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steven Adler previously led a product safety team at OpenAI. On Tuesday he published an\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/opinion/openai-chatgpt-safety.html\"> op-ed in the New York Times\u003c/a> that argues that the company can’t be trusted when they say they can safely\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/sama/status/1978129344598827128\"> deploy erotica chatbots\u003c/a> in part because it has a history of ignoring risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He told CalMatters that under the restructure that he thinks the nonprofit’s safety committee needs more independence to operate effectively. “I hope that a truly independent body will do a better job of protecting the organization’s mission than one that feels any pull toward profits,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cp>“There’s a bazillion conflicts of interest here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ccite>Judith Bell, San Francisco Foundation\u003c/cite>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>OpenAI’s restructuring drew ire from \u003ca href=\"https://www.eyesonopenai.org/\">Eyes On OpenAI\u003c/a>, a coalition of more than 60 California nonprofit organizations who have argued for more than a year that attorneys general should force the company to transfer its assets to an independent nonprofit entity. The precedent for this approach comes from Blue Cross of California, which started as a nonprofit. Following a transfer of assets to a for-profit subsidiary in the 1990s, that organization \u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2690248/\">gave more than $3 billion in stock to two foundations\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco Foundation chief Impact Officer Judith Bell, a member of the Eyes on OpenAI coalition, said the deal could set a precedent for startups to evade taxes, and is also concerned that under the restructuring the same people can serve on boards of directors for the for-profit and the nonprofit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a bazillion conflicts of interest here,” she said, adding that those conflicts are particularly worrisome given the broad potential harms the foundation needs to keep an eye on, including how the tech impacts children, the economy, the workplace, and society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The deal speaks to the tremendous influence of a corporation to push forward a deal, said Orson Aguilar, director of the advocacy nonprofit LatinoProsperity and a member of the Eyes On OpenAI coalition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He believes OpenAI lost its way when key executives realized they could make an enormous amount of money for themselves. Members of the nonprofit board, meanwhile, variously quit and lost influence after some of them attempted to oust CEO Sam Altman in 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The nonprofit continues to operate under the influence of the for-profit it supposedly oversees and that’s been our biggest objection and nothing today tells us that anything meaningful has changed that,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This article was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/10/openai-restructuring-deal-full-of-holes-critics-say/\">originally published on CalMatters\u003c/a> and was republished under the \u003ca href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives\u003c/a> license.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "snap-benefits-uber-enters-the-robotaxi-race-and-the-condor-comeback",
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"content": "\u003cp>In this October edition of The Bay’s monthly news roundup, we discuss the impact of the federal government shutdown on hunger in the Bay Area, and how local governments are responding. We also discuss Uber’s plans to enter the driverless vehicle market, and how the California condor is making a comeback after near-extinction. \u003cspan data-slate-fragment=\"JTVCJTdCJTIydHlwZSUyMiUzQSUyMnBhcmFncmFwaCUyMiUyQyUyMmNoaWxkcmVuJTIyJTNBJTVCJTdCJTIydGV4dCUyMiUzQSUyMlBsdXMlMkMlMjB3ZSUyMHBheSUyMHRyaWJ1dGUlMjB0byUyMEtRRUQlMjB0cmFuc3BvcnRhdGlvbiUyMGVkaXRvciUyMERhbiUyMEJyZWtrZSUyQyUyMHdobyUyMGlzJTIwcmV0aXJpbmclMjBhZnRlciUyMG5lYXJseSUyMDUwJTIweWVhcnMlMjBpbiUyMEJheSUyMEFyZWElMjBqb3VybmFsaXNtLiUyMiU3RCU1RCU3RCU1RA==\">Plus, we pay tribute to KQED transportation editor Dan Brekke, who is retiring after nearly 50 years in Bay Area journalism.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5978954594\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://richmondside.org/2025/10/29/contra-costa-food-bank-calfresh-snap-benefit-cuts/\">Contra Costa County plans to give CalFresh recipients food money if SNAP is paused\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12062034/san-francisco-will-cover-full-snap-benefits-for-november-amid-federal-shutdown\">San Francisco Will Cover SNAP Benefits for November Amid Federal Shutdown\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13982957/snap-calfresh-ebt-november-shutdown-meals-food-assistance-san-francisco-bay-area\">With SNAP Benefits Delayed, Restaurants Step Up to Feed Bay Area Families\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/news/808743/uber-lucid-nuro-robotaxi-san-francisco-2026\">Uber will challenge Waymo’s robotaxi dominance in San Francisco\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/10/20/for-a-century-they-were-gone-but-california-condors-are-making-a-comeback-in-these-parts-of-the-bay-area/?campaign=sjmnbreakingnews&utm_email=A4A5B403457285D525DA14E7D1&active=no&lctg=A4A5B403457285D525DA14E7D1\">For a century, they were gone. But California condors are making a comeback in these parts of the Bay Area\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:02] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to The Bay local news to keep you rooted and welcome to our October news roundup. I’m joined today by The Bay senior editor, Alan Montecillo. What’s up, Alan?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:00:14] Hey, good morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:15] And our very, very special guest this month, transportation editor Dan Brekke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:00:22] Hi Ericka.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:23] Hi! Happy Halloween!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:00:26] Is it Halloween already? Oh yeah, it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:28] Yeah, spooky season. Actually, we wanted to have you on as our guest for this month because you are retiring. And I want to take it back a little bit because I feel like for longtime listeners of The Bay, they’re probably familiar with you, but maybe not so much of your backstory. Can you talk a little about how long you’ve been a reporter here in the Bay Area?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:00:52] In the Bay Area, I’ve been doing some media or other since about 1980. And I am going to include the Daily Cal. Daily Cal, of course, is the student newspaper at UC Berkeley. And before that, I had been lucky enough to actually get a newsroom job in Chicago, my hometown, right out of high school. And so I was impressionable. And the impression that the newsroom laid down on me was this is a really fun thing to do. You wanna keep coming back and doing this. And here we are today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:27] 50 years later. Yeah on your last day at KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:01:32] Listeners of the show know you for your knowledge of transportation, especially public transit. Have you been covering transit this whole time or how did your passion for transit begin?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:01:42] It’s always been present in my life. I grew up in the suburbs mostly in Chicago, a town called Park Forest. Even out there in the suburb, we had a bus line, South Suburban Safeway Lines, and I believe that it cost us a nickel. And that first job I had that I was talking about, I got to commute all the way to the other end in downtown Chicago. I mean, I thought that was the greatest thing ever, that you didn’t have to drive. And you could sleep. And then it just kind of grew from there. First time I came out to the Bay Area in 1973 was on Amtrak, you know, landed at the 16th Street Station in West Oakland, and that was really cool. And yeah, so the rest is history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:02:31] So, I mean, you’ve covered the Bay Area for a long time. Are there any Bay Area stories you’ve covered that really stand out to you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:02:39] Two of the epic occurrences in the Bay Area during my career, one was the earthquake in 1989, which was a terribly traumatic incident. And then just two years later, almost to the day, there was a terrible fire in the Oakland Hills. And yeah, if you worked in a daily newsroom, as I did then, I was at the San Francisco Examiner with a bunch of really good people. You find yourself right in the middle of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:09] Wow, I mean, it’s incredible to think about all the stories you’ve witnessed and lived through in the Bay Area in the last 50 years as a journalist. Dan and I, just to transition, imagine you’ve probably seen many a government shutdown in your lifetime as well. Of course, it’s been almost a month now since the government shutdown first began, and Alan, I want to stick with you and the shutdown impacts. You’re bringing a story today about the end of the month, and that means SNAP recipients won’t be getting any money next month as a result of the shutdown, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:03:46] Yeah, I mean, I feel like, at least in my life, this is all anyone’s talking about. This episode comes out a day before SNAP benefits are supposed to begin being dispersed for the month of November. But roughly 5.5 million Californians, about 42 million residents in the U.S. are set to not receive those benefits for actually the first time in the program’s history. So this is really, I mean, this is really code red in terms of food insecurity, in terms of people just struggling to get by. We’ve seen huge spikes in demand at food banks, lots of efforts to sort of help and fill in the gaps, but there’s really no substitute for the federal government with a program like SNAP.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:04:27] There are visible signs of this in either people’s lives or out on the street. In Berkeley, we live around the corner from a food pantry. And there was a long line outside there yesterday. And so, I mean, that’s one sign. We know that there’s a record demand for a lot of food banks. And this is another sign of that. And I’ll also say, just on a personal level, we have a family member who sent us a text. And he and his family are dependent on SNAP, and his message to us a couple days ago was, we’re effed, and people are afraid. And then there’s some efforts on the local government front, which have far fewer resources of course than the federal government, to try to answer the need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:05:13] That’s right. We are seeing efforts from local businesses, local governments, KQED and other news outlets have stories up listing the many restaurants that have volunteered to provide either free or discounted meals to the public. And then in terms of local government, San Francisco is actually going to cover the cost of SNAP benefits for. San Francisco residents only, for the month of November. Costs about $18 million, half of that coming from city money, half of it coming from private foundation money. The Alameda County Board of Supervisors has approved about 10 million extra dollars for the Alamedo County Community Food Bank. But, you know, I think everyone’s scrambling here and trying to do what they can.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:57] Yeah, I mean, as you said, there’s no real replacement to these benefits at the federal level, but it seems like some stuff is happening locally. And I know Contra Costa County is also planning to give CalFresh recipients some food money if SNAP is paused as well. But I mean is there any sort of relief in sight at the dederal level for SNAP recipients?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:06:23] Well, the most straightforward way is for the shutdown to end. As of this taping, there is no indication that that is going to happen soon. There is currently a lawsuit. I mean, even as we’re taping this, there is a hearing in the US District Court in Boston. About two dozen states have sued the Trump administration, accusing them essentially of illegally withholding funds for SNAP in November. There is about $5 billion in contingency funds that the USDA has. Basically, these states are saying you can and should spend this money. The Trump administration actually originally said they would use these funds for the continuation of SNAP, but now says they can only be used for natural disasters. So that hearing is happening as we’re taping this, and obviously it’s coming down to the wire here with November 1st coming very, very soon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:13] Well, I’m sure many people will be watching what happens with that very closely. Thanks so much for bringing that story, Alan. And we’re gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, we’re going to get into the stories that Dan and I have been following this month. We’ll be right back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:38] Welcome back to the Bay’s October News Roundup, where we talk about some of the other stories that we’ve been following this month. And we’re gonna turn to you and your story now, Dan, which is about robo-taxis and driverless cars, which I feel like we’ve talked a lot about here on the show, but your story is about even more driverless vehicles coming to the bay area potentially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:08:01] You know, if you are in the KQED neighborhood anytime soon, any day of the week, you see a lot of these things, right? Waymo is going around the block, it seems like, all the time. But Uber and a couple of other companies announced that they are going to bring sort of a Uber-branded robotaxi to the San Francisco Bay Area. There’s a lot that’s not known about this, but we know who the partners are. It’s a company called Neuro. Which is down on the peninsula, and the other company is Lucid, and Lucid may not be a really familiar name, but we’ve seen their cars on the streets. They are kind of cool-looking electric cars, and Uber has a deal with them to deliver as many as 20,000 new vehicles, which will have this driving system, autonomous driving system from Neuro. And put them on the street in various markets. And we know that their plan first is to come to the San Francisco Bay Area. We don’t know exactly where yet, but that’ll come out probably over the next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:09:10] Uber has talked about robotaxis forever through multiple CEOs. This has been a dream of theirs, of the companies to have robotaxis and tech giants make pronouncements all the time. We’re going to do this. We’re gonna shake things up. We’re to change everything. So why is this announcement significant?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:09:28] Well, I think there are a couple of reasons. I think one, it shows that the technology has matured to the point where it could actually be adopted on a much wider basis than it has in the past. When Uber is starting to talk about putting 20,000 cars on the street and Waymo is always talking about expanding, and they are expanding, throughout the United States, I mean, these are all demonstrations that this is becoming a much more widely adopted thing that customers are ready for. But the other thing is it raises a lot of questions about what’s happening to the Uber and Lyft drivers, the humans who have joined this workforce by the hundreds of thousands. There’s an estimate that there are 800,000 Uber and lyft drivers in California. What happens to them? And most of these people are doing gig work to fill in sort of a mosaic of employment. Roles that they have that they’re really depending on. To me, those are sort of the major issues that are raised by the increasingly rapid adoption of autonomous taxi services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:39] So what has to happen before these Uber-Robo taxis can hit the streets?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:10:44] It may be a year or two before this actually is in business. They have all sorts of regulatory stuff to get passed first, right? The DMV actually has to look at the vehicle. They have to look the driving system and they have to sort of assign what they call an operational design domain. These are the areas that a company is actually allowed to operate within. So, you know, this venture by Uber we’ll still need to get you know, that kind of clearance before they can move on and then get permission to carry paying passengers in a driverless vehicle from the California Public Utilities Commission. Those approvals can take time, but the technology has matured and that there’s more market acceptance is one level of importance. And I also think that this is pointing the way toward the future of transportation in cities. We’ll see many, many more autonomous vehicles on the street over the next 10 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:11:47] Well, Dan, thank you so much for bringing that story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:11:49] You’re welcome, my pleasure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:11:57] And we’ll finish up with my story about the comeback of the California condor, which is sort of a spooky Halloween-y resurrection story, if you will. After facing near extinction, the California Condor is making a comeback in the Bay Area. These birds are really important to the ecosystem. You know, they’re the ones who pick at dead carcasses and clean up the streets of-\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:12:30] They’re scavenger birds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:12:32] It is gross, but it’s important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:34] And about a century ago, the proliferation of poisons for wolves and grizzly bears and other predators by sort of early pioneers led to higher death rates among these condors, who would eat these dead carcasses that were filled with poison. Have any of you seen what these birds look like, by the way?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:12:58] I’ve seen them in the wild.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:59] Really? Yeah. That’s very rare, I hear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:13:02] Well, maybe the best place to see them, relatively close to the Bay Area, is Pinnacles National Park, which is about 100 miles straight south of San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:12] But you gotta be pretty up there to see them, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:13:14] Well, yes and no. I mean, the one time I saw them there, I was, we visited and we were in the parking lot and there were six really big birds circling slowly, slowly, slowly going up into the air. And they are pretty, as you described them, sort of Halloweeny, kind of spooky looking birds. You have this naked pink head and a big kind of ugly hook beak and… You’re really seeing a very old piece of history when you see these things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:13:45] I have not seen the California condor, Ericka, can you explain why they’re coming back?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:52] Yes, so I mean these are very, very rare birds to catch a glimpse of nowadays and they haven’t been seen in the Bay Area for more than a century now, but an effort to bring them back seems to have been working. There is a group called the Ventana Wildlife Society based in Monterey and they focus on trapping and breeding. And rehabbing these condors for release. So far, the Ventana Wildlife Society has tracked 30 different condors that took multiple trips to parts of Alameda and Contra Costa County in the last two years. And I mean, these are the first sort of movements of these condor in the Bay Area documented in over 100 years, if you can believe it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:14:44] How does one rehab condors?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:47] It’s really hard to do, actually, because these condors reproduce notoriously slow compared to other animals, actually. One condor will lay a single egg roughly every two years, and then they spend a year hatching and raising that chick before hatching another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:15:10] You know, this is one of the great come back stories, as you’ve said. I mean, there were, I mean I’ve heard different numbers, but there were about 17 condors left in the wild in the 1980s and they were brought in. They were all captured and brought in and subject to a captive breeding program. And now we have about 400 that are free flying. That Ventana group you talked about, they’ve been releasing condors and managing condors down there along the Big Sur coast. Sometimes I’ve heard, I haven’t seen this, you’re driving down highway one and there’ll be a condor sitting on the guard rail looking at you. Anyway, just the fact that they survived and the fact they’re still very, very fragile I think makes this a really cool story that they’ve made it back here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:56] And it definitely is a challenge keeping them alive. And while their return to the Bay is, I mean, really exciting because it hasn’t happened for so long, biologists believe that until their population grows substantially bigger, their work is really cut out for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:16:13] You know, one of the threats to them ongoing has been the presence of lead in the environment. And one of sources of lead is a shot that hunters use. So there’s been an effort to sort of replace lead ammunition and shot with steel or copper. And so places like the Ventana Society are, they actually, you know, try to give them a smorgasbord to pick apart, instead of let them go out and. And get into a carcass that might be contaminated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:16:46] I will say, I just found out actually this morning that the Ventana Society has live camera, did you know this Dan? They have live streamed cameras of condors eating the dead carcasses of baby calves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:17:03] Yes, they’re being fed, right, you know, the circle of life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:11] Well, I guess if you need anything to watch this Halloween, check out that live stream. That’s it for my story and that’s also it for this edition of the Bay’s Monthly News Roundup. Before we let you go, Dan, any retirement plans for you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:17:32] Well, you know, I’m not sure journalists can ever retire. So I feel like I’m going to still be involved in journalism in some way. And because I’m a transportation editor, I’m gonna be using modes of transportation to travel. We’ll see where, maybe up to the Sierra right soon. I’m go to visit the Dallas area for Thanksgiving and then maybe, you now, visit these islands I’ve heard are out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Of 50th state, I think, and maybe we’ll see what’s happening out there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:18:06] I went back and counted the number of times you were on the bay. I did not ask AI for this, I went and checked. And I believe this is your 21st appearance on the Bay. I don’t know if that’s the most appearances, it’s got to be in the top three. And I know how much you hate receiving direct praise on mic, but we’ve so appreciated your work with us. Every time you come on, we always learn so much. And I know our listeners appreciate it too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:18:31] Well, you know, 21 is a great number in Las Vegas, okay, I’ll say that, and for my part, I’ll just say that I really appreciate how seriously you’ve taken the mission of serving our audience and really getting into aspects of stories that sometimes we can’t tell as completely as we want to. And I absolutely love the way you can turn sometimes a halting account of something from somebody like me into something that sounds like such good radio, and you’re also really nice folks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:19:13] Well, our show is nothing without reporters like you, Dan. So, thank you so much for everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:19:19] You’re very, very welcome.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In this October edition of The Bay’s monthly news roundup, we discuss the impact of the federal government shutdown on hunger in the Bay Area, and how local governments are responding. We also discuss Uber’s plans to enter the driverless vehicle market, and how the California condor is making a comeback after near-extinction. \u003cspan data-slate-fragment=\"JTVCJTdCJTIydHlwZSUyMiUzQSUyMnBhcmFncmFwaCUyMiUyQyUyMmNoaWxkcmVuJTIyJTNBJTVCJTdCJTIydGV4dCUyMiUzQSUyMlBsdXMlMkMlMjB3ZSUyMHBheSUyMHRyaWJ1dGUlMjB0byUyMEtRRUQlMjB0cmFuc3BvcnRhdGlvbiUyMGVkaXRvciUyMERhbiUyMEJyZWtrZSUyQyUyMHdobyUyMGlzJTIwcmV0aXJpbmclMjBhZnRlciUyMG5lYXJseSUyMDUwJTIweWVhcnMlMjBpbiUyMEJheSUyMEFyZWElMjBqb3VybmFsaXNtLiUyMiU3RCU1RCU3RCU1RA==\">Plus, we pay tribute to KQED transportation editor Dan Brekke, who is retiring after nearly 50 years in Bay Area journalism.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5978954594\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://richmondside.org/2025/10/29/contra-costa-food-bank-calfresh-snap-benefit-cuts/\">Contra Costa County plans to give CalFresh recipients food money if SNAP is paused\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12062034/san-francisco-will-cover-full-snap-benefits-for-november-amid-federal-shutdown\">San Francisco Will Cover SNAP Benefits for November Amid Federal Shutdown\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13982957/snap-calfresh-ebt-november-shutdown-meals-food-assistance-san-francisco-bay-area\">With SNAP Benefits Delayed, Restaurants Step Up to Feed Bay Area Families\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/news/808743/uber-lucid-nuro-robotaxi-san-francisco-2026\">Uber will challenge Waymo’s robotaxi dominance in San Francisco\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/10/20/for-a-century-they-were-gone-but-california-condors-are-making-a-comeback-in-these-parts-of-the-bay-area/?campaign=sjmnbreakingnews&utm_email=A4A5B403457285D525DA14E7D1&active=no&lctg=A4A5B403457285D525DA14E7D1\">For a century, they were gone. But California condors are making a comeback in these parts of the Bay Area\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:02] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to The Bay local news to keep you rooted and welcome to our October news roundup. I’m joined today by The Bay senior editor, Alan Montecillo. What’s up, Alan?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:00:14] Hey, good morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:15] And our very, very special guest this month, transportation editor Dan Brekke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:00:22] Hi Ericka.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:23] Hi! Happy Halloween!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:00:26] Is it Halloween already? Oh yeah, it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:28] Yeah, spooky season. Actually, we wanted to have you on as our guest for this month because you are retiring. And I want to take it back a little bit because I feel like for longtime listeners of The Bay, they’re probably familiar with you, but maybe not so much of your backstory. Can you talk a little about how long you’ve been a reporter here in the Bay Area?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:00:52] In the Bay Area, I’ve been doing some media or other since about 1980. And I am going to include the Daily Cal. Daily Cal, of course, is the student newspaper at UC Berkeley. And before that, I had been lucky enough to actually get a newsroom job in Chicago, my hometown, right out of high school. And so I was impressionable. And the impression that the newsroom laid down on me was this is a really fun thing to do. You wanna keep coming back and doing this. And here we are today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:27] 50 years later. Yeah on your last day at KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:01:32] Listeners of the show know you for your knowledge of transportation, especially public transit. Have you been covering transit this whole time or how did your passion for transit begin?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:01:42] It’s always been present in my life. I grew up in the suburbs mostly in Chicago, a town called Park Forest. Even out there in the suburb, we had a bus line, South Suburban Safeway Lines, and I believe that it cost us a nickel. And that first job I had that I was talking about, I got to commute all the way to the other end in downtown Chicago. I mean, I thought that was the greatest thing ever, that you didn’t have to drive. And you could sleep. And then it just kind of grew from there. First time I came out to the Bay Area in 1973 was on Amtrak, you know, landed at the 16th Street Station in West Oakland, and that was really cool. And yeah, so the rest is history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:02:31] So, I mean, you’ve covered the Bay Area for a long time. Are there any Bay Area stories you’ve covered that really stand out to you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:02:39] Two of the epic occurrences in the Bay Area during my career, one was the earthquake in 1989, which was a terribly traumatic incident. And then just two years later, almost to the day, there was a terrible fire in the Oakland Hills. And yeah, if you worked in a daily newsroom, as I did then, I was at the San Francisco Examiner with a bunch of really good people. You find yourself right in the middle of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:09] Wow, I mean, it’s incredible to think about all the stories you’ve witnessed and lived through in the Bay Area in the last 50 years as a journalist. Dan and I, just to transition, imagine you’ve probably seen many a government shutdown in your lifetime as well. Of course, it’s been almost a month now since the government shutdown first began, and Alan, I want to stick with you and the shutdown impacts. You’re bringing a story today about the end of the month, and that means SNAP recipients won’t be getting any money next month as a result of the shutdown, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:03:46] Yeah, I mean, I feel like, at least in my life, this is all anyone’s talking about. This episode comes out a day before SNAP benefits are supposed to begin being dispersed for the month of November. But roughly 5.5 million Californians, about 42 million residents in the U.S. are set to not receive those benefits for actually the first time in the program’s history. So this is really, I mean, this is really code red in terms of food insecurity, in terms of people just struggling to get by. We’ve seen huge spikes in demand at food banks, lots of efforts to sort of help and fill in the gaps, but there’s really no substitute for the federal government with a program like SNAP.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:04:27] There are visible signs of this in either people’s lives or out on the street. In Berkeley, we live around the corner from a food pantry. And there was a long line outside there yesterday. And so, I mean, that’s one sign. We know that there’s a record demand for a lot of food banks. And this is another sign of that. And I’ll also say, just on a personal level, we have a family member who sent us a text. And he and his family are dependent on SNAP, and his message to us a couple days ago was, we’re effed, and people are afraid. And then there’s some efforts on the local government front, which have far fewer resources of course than the federal government, to try to answer the need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:05:13] That’s right. We are seeing efforts from local businesses, local governments, KQED and other news outlets have stories up listing the many restaurants that have volunteered to provide either free or discounted meals to the public. And then in terms of local government, San Francisco is actually going to cover the cost of SNAP benefits for. San Francisco residents only, for the month of November. Costs about $18 million, half of that coming from city money, half of it coming from private foundation money. The Alameda County Board of Supervisors has approved about 10 million extra dollars for the Alamedo County Community Food Bank. But, you know, I think everyone’s scrambling here and trying to do what they can.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:57] Yeah, I mean, as you said, there’s no real replacement to these benefits at the federal level, but it seems like some stuff is happening locally. And I know Contra Costa County is also planning to give CalFresh recipients some food money if SNAP is paused as well. But I mean is there any sort of relief in sight at the dederal level for SNAP recipients?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:06:23] Well, the most straightforward way is for the shutdown to end. As of this taping, there is no indication that that is going to happen soon. There is currently a lawsuit. I mean, even as we’re taping this, there is a hearing in the US District Court in Boston. About two dozen states have sued the Trump administration, accusing them essentially of illegally withholding funds for SNAP in November. There is about $5 billion in contingency funds that the USDA has. Basically, these states are saying you can and should spend this money. The Trump administration actually originally said they would use these funds for the continuation of SNAP, but now says they can only be used for natural disasters. So that hearing is happening as we’re taping this, and obviously it’s coming down to the wire here with November 1st coming very, very soon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:13] Well, I’m sure many people will be watching what happens with that very closely. Thanks so much for bringing that story, Alan. And we’re gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, we’re going to get into the stories that Dan and I have been following this month. We’ll be right back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:38] Welcome back to the Bay’s October News Roundup, where we talk about some of the other stories that we’ve been following this month. And we’re gonna turn to you and your story now, Dan, which is about robo-taxis and driverless cars, which I feel like we’ve talked a lot about here on the show, but your story is about even more driverless vehicles coming to the bay area potentially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:08:01] You know, if you are in the KQED neighborhood anytime soon, any day of the week, you see a lot of these things, right? Waymo is going around the block, it seems like, all the time. But Uber and a couple of other companies announced that they are going to bring sort of a Uber-branded robotaxi to the San Francisco Bay Area. There’s a lot that’s not known about this, but we know who the partners are. It’s a company called Neuro. Which is down on the peninsula, and the other company is Lucid, and Lucid may not be a really familiar name, but we’ve seen their cars on the streets. They are kind of cool-looking electric cars, and Uber has a deal with them to deliver as many as 20,000 new vehicles, which will have this driving system, autonomous driving system from Neuro. And put them on the street in various markets. And we know that their plan first is to come to the San Francisco Bay Area. We don’t know exactly where yet, but that’ll come out probably over the next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:09:10] Uber has talked about robotaxis forever through multiple CEOs. This has been a dream of theirs, of the companies to have robotaxis and tech giants make pronouncements all the time. We’re going to do this. We’re gonna shake things up. We’re to change everything. So why is this announcement significant?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:09:28] Well, I think there are a couple of reasons. I think one, it shows that the technology has matured to the point where it could actually be adopted on a much wider basis than it has in the past. When Uber is starting to talk about putting 20,000 cars on the street and Waymo is always talking about expanding, and they are expanding, throughout the United States, I mean, these are all demonstrations that this is becoming a much more widely adopted thing that customers are ready for. But the other thing is it raises a lot of questions about what’s happening to the Uber and Lyft drivers, the humans who have joined this workforce by the hundreds of thousands. There’s an estimate that there are 800,000 Uber and lyft drivers in California. What happens to them? And most of these people are doing gig work to fill in sort of a mosaic of employment. Roles that they have that they’re really depending on. To me, those are sort of the major issues that are raised by the increasingly rapid adoption of autonomous taxi services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:39] So what has to happen before these Uber-Robo taxis can hit the streets?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:10:44] It may be a year or two before this actually is in business. They have all sorts of regulatory stuff to get passed first, right? The DMV actually has to look at the vehicle. They have to look the driving system and they have to sort of assign what they call an operational design domain. These are the areas that a company is actually allowed to operate within. So, you know, this venture by Uber we’ll still need to get you know, that kind of clearance before they can move on and then get permission to carry paying passengers in a driverless vehicle from the California Public Utilities Commission. Those approvals can take time, but the technology has matured and that there’s more market acceptance is one level of importance. And I also think that this is pointing the way toward the future of transportation in cities. We’ll see many, many more autonomous vehicles on the street over the next 10 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:11:47] Well, Dan, thank you so much for bringing that story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:11:49] You’re welcome, my pleasure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:11:57] And we’ll finish up with my story about the comeback of the California condor, which is sort of a spooky Halloween-y resurrection story, if you will. After facing near extinction, the California Condor is making a comeback in the Bay Area. These birds are really important to the ecosystem. You know, they’re the ones who pick at dead carcasses and clean up the streets of-\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:12:30] They’re scavenger birds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:12:32] It is gross, but it’s important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:34] And about a century ago, the proliferation of poisons for wolves and grizzly bears and other predators by sort of early pioneers led to higher death rates among these condors, who would eat these dead carcasses that were filled with poison. Have any of you seen what these birds look like, by the way?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:12:58] I’ve seen them in the wild.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:59] Really? Yeah. That’s very rare, I hear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:13:02] Well, maybe the best place to see them, relatively close to the Bay Area, is Pinnacles National Park, which is about 100 miles straight south of San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:12] But you gotta be pretty up there to see them, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:13:14] Well, yes and no. I mean, the one time I saw them there, I was, we visited and we were in the parking lot and there were six really big birds circling slowly, slowly, slowly going up into the air. And they are pretty, as you described them, sort of Halloweeny, kind of spooky looking birds. You have this naked pink head and a big kind of ugly hook beak and… You’re really seeing a very old piece of history when you see these things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:13:45] I have not seen the California condor, Ericka, can you explain why they’re coming back?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:52] Yes, so I mean these are very, very rare birds to catch a glimpse of nowadays and they haven’t been seen in the Bay Area for more than a century now, but an effort to bring them back seems to have been working. There is a group called the Ventana Wildlife Society based in Monterey and they focus on trapping and breeding. And rehabbing these condors for release. So far, the Ventana Wildlife Society has tracked 30 different condors that took multiple trips to parts of Alameda and Contra Costa County in the last two years. And I mean, these are the first sort of movements of these condor in the Bay Area documented in over 100 years, if you can believe it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:14:44] How does one rehab condors?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:47] It’s really hard to do, actually, because these condors reproduce notoriously slow compared to other animals, actually. One condor will lay a single egg roughly every two years, and then they spend a year hatching and raising that chick before hatching another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:15:10] You know, this is one of the great come back stories, as you’ve said. I mean, there were, I mean I’ve heard different numbers, but there were about 17 condors left in the wild in the 1980s and they were brought in. They were all captured and brought in and subject to a captive breeding program. And now we have about 400 that are free flying. That Ventana group you talked about, they’ve been releasing condors and managing condors down there along the Big Sur coast. Sometimes I’ve heard, I haven’t seen this, you’re driving down highway one and there’ll be a condor sitting on the guard rail looking at you. Anyway, just the fact that they survived and the fact they’re still very, very fragile I think makes this a really cool story that they’ve made it back here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:56] And it definitely is a challenge keeping them alive. And while their return to the Bay is, I mean, really exciting because it hasn’t happened for so long, biologists believe that until their population grows substantially bigger, their work is really cut out for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:16:13] You know, one of the threats to them ongoing has been the presence of lead in the environment. And one of sources of lead is a shot that hunters use. So there’s been an effort to sort of replace lead ammunition and shot with steel or copper. And so places like the Ventana Society are, they actually, you know, try to give them a smorgasbord to pick apart, instead of let them go out and. And get into a carcass that might be contaminated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:16:46] I will say, I just found out actually this morning that the Ventana Society has live camera, did you know this Dan? They have live streamed cameras of condors eating the dead carcasses of baby calves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:17:03] Yes, they’re being fed, right, you know, the circle of life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:11] Well, I guess if you need anything to watch this Halloween, check out that live stream. That’s it for my story and that’s also it for this edition of the Bay’s Monthly News Roundup. Before we let you go, Dan, any retirement plans for you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:17:32] Well, you know, I’m not sure journalists can ever retire. So I feel like I’m going to still be involved in journalism in some way. And because I’m a transportation editor, I’m gonna be using modes of transportation to travel. We’ll see where, maybe up to the Sierra right soon. I’m go to visit the Dallas area for Thanksgiving and then maybe, you now, visit these islands I’ve heard are out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Of 50th state, I think, and maybe we’ll see what’s happening out there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:18:06] I went back and counted the number of times you were on the bay. I did not ask AI for this, I went and checked. And I believe this is your 21st appearance on the Bay. I don’t know if that’s the most appearances, it’s got to be in the top three. And I know how much you hate receiving direct praise on mic, but we’ve so appreciated your work with us. Every time you come on, we always learn so much. And I know our listeners appreciate it too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke \u003c/strong>[00:18:31] Well, you know, 21 is a great number in Las Vegas, okay, I’ll say that, and for my part, I’ll just say that I really appreciate how seriously you’ve taken the mission of serving our audience and really getting into aspects of stories that sometimes we can’t tell as completely as we want to. And I absolutely love the way you can turn sometimes a halting account of something from somebody like me into something that sounds like such good radio, and you’re also really nice folks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:19:13] Well, our show is nothing without reporters like you, Dan. So, thank you so much for everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TwitchCon, Twitch’s annual convention in San Diego for all things streaming and gaming, is facing heightened scrutiny after streamer Emiru was assaulted there during a meet-and-greet. The incident occurred after a series of streamers pulled out of the event over safety concerns and the growing specter of political violence. All of this has highlighted questions about the role of political commentary on Twitch — a genre that’s exploded in the last few years, transforming the platform into much more than a gaming site. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, Morgan is joined by author and reporter Nathan Grayson and political streamer Denims to explore Twitch’s rise as a hub for political speech, the company’s inconsistent handling of backlash against political creators, and whether any real alternatives exist for this new wave of commentators. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC6693258081\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://aftermath.site/author/nathan-grayson\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nathan Grayson\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, co-founder and reporter at Aftermath \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.twitch.tv/denims\">Denims,\u003c/a> political streamer on Twitch\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading/listening: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://aftermath.site/twitch-twitchcon-2025-security-emiru-assault-irl-streamers\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Beefed Up TwitchCon Security Couldn’t Stop The Internet’s Issues From Spilling Over Into Real Life\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Nathan Grayson, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Aftermath\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.usermag.co/p/can-twitch-survive-ceo-dan-clancy-at-twitchcon-interview\">Can Twitch Survive? CEO Dan Clancy at Twitchcon\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taylor Lorenz\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003ci>User Mag\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Stream-Big/Nathan-Grayson/9781982156763\">Stream Big: The Triumphs and Turmoils of Twitch and the Stars Behind the Screen\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Nathan Grayson\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://mashable.com/article/twitchcon-unsafe-for-streamers\">Why is TwitchCon so uniquely unsafe for streamers?\u003c/a> — Christianna Silva, \u003ci>Mashable\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003c/h2>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>bbno$ speaking to a crowd: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Get a hell yeah!\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Crowd: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">hell yeah!\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>bbno$:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Twitchcon!\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Crowd: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Twitchcon!\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>bbno$: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right click! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Two weekends ago, the live streaming platform Twitch held its 10th annual TwitchCon. That’s Twitch’s annual convention in San Diego for all things streaming and gaming. And the tape you just heard was the rapper turned cosplayer, bbno$, performing at one of the creator after parties. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>bbno$: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">F*ck yeah, TwitchCon! \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I went into this weekend’s planning to cover Twitch’s evolution as an influential platform for political speech. These creators have massive audiences and have the potential to educate and inspire entire generations into civic engagement. And my quest to talk to them brought me here… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>bbno$: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right click! \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TwitchCon has had its controversies in the past, from the infamous foam pit that severely injured multiple attendees to streamers from the rival platform Kick sneaking in to harass Twitch creators. But this time, the event was held in the shadow of this country’s mounting political violence, most notably the recent assassination of right-wing political commentator Charlie Kirk. In the weeks leading up to the convention, high-profile streamers like Hasan Piker dropped out of the event citing concern over public safety and political violence. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Hasan Piker speaking during a livestream: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m worried about the safety of others. I don’t want to put them in the f*cking crosshairs if some psycho freak decides like, I’m gonna go there. I’m very publicly not going to TwitchCon for that reason. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And concerns about safety boiled over completely when, on the first day of the event, a streamer named Emiru was assaulted during her Twitch-organized meet and greet. A man was able to cross multiple barriers through other creators’ meet and greet lines before he grabbed Emiru and tried to forcibly kiss her. In a statement, Twitch said that, “Law enforcement and event security were on site and responded to the incident.” But Emiru said that event staff didn’t step in to stop him. It was her own private security that intervened. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emiru speaking to an audience : \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, if you watch the clip, the security guard who pushes the guy away is my security, the woman who pulls me to the back, my manager. If you’re a small streamer and you don’t have those resources or someone in your line is not filming, what the f*ck do you do? \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Twitch did significantly beef up security before this year’s event. We’re talking more surveillance, more bodyguards, the whole nine yards. Still, the assault haunted TwitchCon all weekend. Other streamers, the overwhelming majority of whom were women, posted that they were nervous about going to the convention center. Some hired their own private security last minute, or even canceled their meet and greets. Several posted about getting harassed by fans and other male streamers during the event. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the last day of the convention, Twitch hosted an open Q&A for streamers and fans to talk directly to the company’s CEO, Dan Clancy. Finally, in the middle of the panel, an attendee stepped up to the mic. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Q&A Attendee: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How’s it going? I’ve been coming to TwitchCon since 2016. I love Twitch’s platform. I think the elephant in the room right now is just like there’s a lot of big creators that don’t necessarily feel that this is the safest space in person or necessarily online and I was just curious as to the additional steps that Twitch is going to take to make that, to change that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Clancy during Q&A: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Livestreaming offers some advantages in terms of the ability to control your community, but it’s still this issue that people of all sizes, it’s not just, you know, women of course have a challenge, but also underrepresented groups often have this problem of harassment online. And it’s something we care deeply about and we’re always looking for how we continue to invest to help protect creators as they go on their journey. So thanks for the question. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This weekend was a reckoning for Twitch. The streaming community has been embroiled in debate over the culture of misogyny on the platform and the parasocial relationships that endanger creators. And it highlighted questions about the role of political commentary in streaming, a genre of content that’s exploded in the last few years, establishing Twitch as more than a gaming site. Now it’s a legitimate platform for political discourse and not everyone is happy about that. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, we’re diving into Twitch, political speech online, and whether creators have anywhere else to go if they can’t talk about it on Twitch. This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many people associate political commentary with traditional formats, like broadcast talk shows and op-eds, that kind of thing. But over the last few election cycles, an alternative information ecosystem has been growing across social media, including Twitch. But throughout its growth, Twitch hasn’t figured out how to handle this kind of content, from moderation to responding to public backlash. And as commentary streamers gain more influence Twitch has faced increasing scrutiny from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers who aren’t thrilled about this growing sphere of leftist discussion. Some are pushing Twitch to crack down on political speech and after the Charlie Kirk shooting, that pressure has been kicked into overdrive. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To understand how we got here, let’s go back to the very beginning by opening a new tab. When did Twitch get so political? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To get into this, let’s talk to my friend Nathan Grayson, co-founder and reporter at Aftermath. It’s a worker-owned publication reporting on video games. He’s also the author of Stream Big, which explains the history of Twitch by profiling nine different streamers. Twitch has changed and morphed many times since it spun off from the live streaming site Justin.tv in 2011. And for much of that time, Twitch had a singular focus, gaming.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For a long time in Twitch’s history, you were required to be playing a video game while streaming, like that was a rule and people tried to get around it and all these like really funny ways. Like there was an era where somebody would like invert kind of the size of their camera views. So instead of the game being really big and them being small, they’d be huge and there’d be a tiny little like bit of gameplay in the corner. That wasn’t technically allowed so people would get in trouble for it. But yeah, so it was that kind of a thing. And so it was pretty hard, you know, to like be a political commentator when you also had to be like, keeping up with a League of Legends match and Twitch finally said like, ‘Hey, you know, you guys clearly want to just talk to your audiences. We hear you, we’re going to let you.’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 2017, Twitch launched two new categories, Just Chatting and IRL, short for in real life. They paved the way for a new type of streamer, a chronically online talk show host. Hasan Piker, who was then a producer for the Young Turks, started streaming on Twitch the next year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Hasan Piker speaking to a livestream audience: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s going on, everybody? I’m going to get really quickly into it. OK, today we have an awesome episode… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He started getting big around 2019, you know, it was like, he started that year with like a hundred thousand followers and ended it with like close to half a million. And so 2020, I think definitely, especially like, allowed us all to take off because we were all stuck inside as a result of the pandemic and there’s an election. The internet, when it comes to politics, especially, and then these like major events in the political landscape, like elections, it’s just chaos. There’s so much happening. And the role that somebody like Hasan serves is that they curate it for you, you know? And they do it in a language that you, as somebody who regularly like browses the internet, can understand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Hasan Piker speaking to a livestream audience: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So let me like walk you through it. The reason why you push for a shutdown in this situation is to really highlight what you are seeking to protect, okay? And what you’re seeking to protect in this circumstance is $800 billion of cuts for Medicaid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is it about this particular moment in internet history that made political streams so popular on Twitch, beyond just Hassan? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, one of the things is a pandemic. You cannot understate the importance of that moment in that I would say that is when everybody’s world inverted. Before that, real life was the main thing and the internet was supplementary to it. And then with everybody stuck inside because of the pandemic, suddenly the internet became the real thing and real life with supplementary to it. And we never really went back. And as a result, I mean like, you know, the pandemic itself is heavily politicized. Um, there was a big election that year, you know, Trump and Biden, which was going to decide the future of America. Um, not long after January 6th happened. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of these landmark political events as like, you now, Gen Z in particular was coming of age, they were becoming kind of, I guess, like politically activated in that moment. And these are the people doing the job because, you know, the old institutions were failing them. A lot of news networks were not covering this moment, um, accurately or usefully. And then you had people like a Hasan step and be like, okay, ‘well I’m gonna tell you how things are actually as I see them’ as opposed to like, you know, it’s business as usual because it clearly wasn’t. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then there is this pivotal moment for pandemic-era politics online, the Among Us stream. In 2020, in the weeks leading up to the election, representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar hosted a voter outreach event entirely on stream. They invited popular creators to play Among Us, a game that had become a phenomenon during the pandemic. Everyone plays as cute little characters, but one of them is a secret killer. If you’ve ever played Mafia, you get the idea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Game play conversation]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Speaker 1: Ilhan you need to vote. You need to click on AOC and then… AOC: Are you, are you really gonna do this to me, Ilhan? \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ilhan: No, I’m not voting for Alex. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AOC: Thank you. Thank you very much. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Among Us was the game at that time because Among Us allowed people to, you know, have a place to play together during this time of intense separation. And so it blew up and like, they capitalized on that zeitgeist and they’re like, yeah, as a politician, I’m going to play it with a bunch of people that you’ve heard of. So I’m gonna reach these new audiences, maybe you’ve of me, but like, don’t really know me that well and aren’t that into politics. And these streamers definitely are political streamers, aside from Hasan. Most of them are semi-progressive, but they’re not like experts in the field. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, yeah, they, they pulled, you know, hundreds of thousands of viewers, um, and just generally managed to do something that nobody really had before, at least in that space. And I think at the time, a lot of people saw that and they said, okay, you know this is it, this is the new politics meta. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hasan’s popularity and influence, and all of the other political streamers that followed in his footsteps, launched Twitch into the spotlight. But all of that attention comes with a hefty dose of criticism. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s something Denims has become very familiar with. She’s a political streamer who basically runs a morning talk show on Twitch, streaming five days a week.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think Hassan really put Twitch on the radar in a more general sense because prior to that it was just like, oh, isn’t that some gaming website if you even knew about it at all. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah.\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How has your experience as a political content creator changed on Twitch? \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Denims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of people were a lot more lackadaisical with how they would stream and I think I’ve noticed myself as well as a lot other people be a lot cautious with the things that they talk about because there are a lot bad faith actors that do want to see left-wing voices silenced. I mean, under the Trumpian era, he’s practically just saying if you have an opinion that isn’t pro-me, I don’t want you on the air. That’s the reason Kimmel got off the air. Because Donald Trump didn’t want him on the air because he didn’t like the things that he was saying because he was making fun of Donald Trump. So yeah, it does feel like everyone has to be more cautious on Twitch because there’s a bigger magnifier on it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today’s political climate is very different from the one that Hasan began streaming in. The vibe has shifted, and the stakes are higher. What does this mean for Twitch? And more importantly, what does it tell us about the state of political speech online? We’re diving into that after this break. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, we’re back. Time to open another tab. Is political speech still allowed on Twitch? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Politicians have been trying to capitalize on Twitch’s popularity among young voters for years, with mixed results. Former Congressman Matt Gaetz, for instance, streamed on Twitch and peaked at six viewers. Then you have Senator Bernie Sanders going on stream and learning a lot about the internet. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from Bernie Sanders livestream]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Poki: Mr. Sanders, my name’s Poki. So nice to meet you. I’m a big fan, as you can tell. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bernie Sanders: Thank you very much. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Saikuno: I’m Saikuno. Do you know what a VTuber is? Have you heard of a Vtuber before? \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bernie Sanders: Nope. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Saikuno: No.? That’s all right. I’m the first one.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Speaker: Yeah, it’s the first one. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Saikuno: Thank you so much for supporting Vtubers.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there’s California governor Gavin Newsom showing off his elite gaming skills. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from Fortnite Friday w/ Governor Gavin Newsom]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Connor Eats Pants: Gavin press press the press the X button or Y.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Governor Gavin Newsom: Oh, yeah, where am I man? Where are we? No, sorry. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That last clip is from a few weeks ago, when Newsom joined Fortnite Friday, a weekly show in which a streamer who goes by Connor Eats Pants interviews guests while they play Fortnite. The quality of the guests’ play varies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from Fortnite Friday w/ Governor Gavin Newsom]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Governor Gavin Newsom: Jesus Christ, I closed things out. See, I don’t like this Nintendo Switch stuff. I’m back in, man. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s Aftermath reporter Nathan again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of those are not necessarily political streamers, political content creators and so if you do it right, you’re reaching people you would never otherwise reach. And the way that you do that is a little different than like, you know, I’m gonna go on this debate and talk about my policies. It’s, I’m going to talk to this person that, you know, other people find relatable, and I’m just gonna like, hang out, laugh, tell jokes, get a little bit more personal with things, or at least appear more personal. You know, that the ConnorEatsPants stream with Gavin Newsom is illustrative because I think that Gavin Newsom talked a very big game and then, you know, a few days later vetoed a bunch of pro-trans legislation after being like… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from Fortnite Friday w/ Governor Gavin Newsom]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Governor Gavin Newsom: You know, you’re talking to a guy who’s been a champion of LGBT rights. I take a backseat to no one in signing more bills for the community. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that we’re also seeing, like, at least in the case of somebody like Connor, you know, these people who came up on the internet, pretty young, like growing up. And even as he was like, kind of decamping from the Gavin Newsom stream, he was talking about how like, he’s had to kind of become better versed in a lot of these things as he’s talked to more and more political figures. He’s also interviewed people like George Santos. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so people were asking him why he didn’t push harder on a couple subjects and he was like, ‘I just didn’t feel like I was informed enough to do it well, and I want to do it right instead of, you know, like stumbling through it and then letting him off easy,’ Um, but he still did a crazy good job. I mean, like, I don’t know if anyone has held Gavin Newsom’s feet to the fire on like Israel Palestine stuff that well, he just like kept him on track. It was really impressive.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While playing Fortnite, it was incredible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And he’s good at Fortnite too. Gavin Newsom is not good at Fortnight. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from Fortnite Friday w/ Governor Gavin Newsom]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ConnorEatsPants: \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You closed out of it on the switch. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Governor Gavin Newsom: \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I know. I don’t like this. I can’t, this switch is not \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">suboptimal.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ConnorEatsPants: You gotta get a Switch 2, they fixed it. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But it seems like political streamers on Twitch have faced constant backlash in the last few years. What was the turning point for this? Like, when did they suddenly become so controversial? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, Israel/Palestine, um, and in particular Hasan being pro-Palestinian because then you had all of these other people trying to bring him down because he’s such an outspoken and like visible pro-Palestinian voice. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A few years ago, Hasan collaborated with another YouTuber, Ethan Klein, on a weekly politics and culture podcast called Leftovers. They don’t work together anymore. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">October 7th occurred and they started to drift in terms of their viewpoints.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For context, Ethan’s wife is Israeli. Hasan and Ethan did one last very emotional, hours-long episode of Leftovers together, in which they try to explain their opposing views to each other. But they ultimately put the show on hiatus. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Since their breakup, Ethan has gone from criticizing Hasan’s political stances to making frequent personal attacks about Hasan and anyone critical of Israel. Hasan, meanwhile, started gaining more mainstream attention and viewership, and has rarely acknowledged Ethan since. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then Ethan was like, well, then I’m gonna come after people that you know. And that’s like what resulted in those streamers getting banned after the TwitchCon panel and all that. And ever since then, it’s been much more personal and much more of a back and forth. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Nathan says ‘streamers getting banned after a TwitchCon panel,’ he’s actually referring to an incident with denims. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Denims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I got banned for 30 days for a tier list about who can say the word habibi, which is just the arab word for like love or like my love. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last year, Denims participated in a panel, organized by Twitch, with other Arab-American creators. They made a tier list—it’s a meme format for ranking things. At the top of the list were creators who Denims and the other panelists deemed worthy of saying Habibi. The tiers ranked from Arab, Arab-coded, asks permission to say Habibi, thinks the word is a slur and then…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the bottom of the list, it says “loves Sabra”, because sabra is a sh*tty type of hummus that’s not good. And anyone who’s had Sabra and had actual good hummus, you know that Sabra’s got this bitter taste. It’s like buying freezer pie. It’s just not good. Like, you should just make it from scratch. And so if you love Sabra hummus you’re like, this is my favorite hummus, you do not get the pass, you don’t get the pass. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Analysts placed Ethan Klein in the loves Sabra category. He very quickly posted his response. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip from Twitch Has a Major Problem Youtube post]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ethan Klein: I mean, it’s kind of just Arab good, Jew bad. I mean I’m having a hard time seeing this any other way. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some critics claim that it was deeper, because Sabra, the hummus brand, was a boycott target over its parent company’s support of the IDF. Then others pointed out that the word Sabra, a prickly pear cactus fruit, has been used to describe Jewish people born in Israel. One of the panelists was Jewish, but that didn’t stop the accusations of antisemitism. Clips of the panel went viral, kicking off a frenzy of backlash. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We make multiple references to hummus on that panel. So we’re very clearly talking about hummus. But there was this massive campaign to pretend like, no, we were making this Jew to Arab tier list, which is insane. It doesn’t make any sense because we put a bunch of people who weren’t Jewish, myself included in the bottom tier list. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s worth noting that all five of the creators on that panel are left-leaning and make content about supporting progressive political issues. And they’re all vocally pro-Palestine.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Denims:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> …and Twitch caved and banned us for 30 days, which was insane because again, you’re just telling the platform, you’re telling everyone on that platform, hey, if you pressure us hard enough we’ll just cave and wrongfully ban anyone you want which is not, it’s not good for the health of the platform.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nathan described Twitch’s approach to moderating political content as haphazard. The site was relatively left-leaning until recently, thanks to Hasan’s influence and the platform’s strict policies against harassment and hate speech. These violations are pretty clear-cut when a streamer says a slur, for example. But Twitch has struggled to draw clear boundaries around political speech. Critics say the company tends to cave to backlash. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Twitch is always reactive when it comes to this stuff. They are not proactive. They don’t really know how to moderate this. I think that they don’t mind that because it gives them legitimacy, but they also don’t want to engage with the full ramifications of it. So they’re just sort of flying by the seat of their pants. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Denims, for one, has been frustrated by this inconsistency. She and the other panelists received 30-day bans for last year’s Twitch con tier list. Asmongold, a right-wing political streamer, was banned for 14 days for violating Twitch’s hateful conduct policy with a racist tirade against Palestinians. Denims noted that other creators have been allowed to return to the platform, even though they’ve received multiple bans for saying slurs on stream. But streamers who talk about politics, even if it’s just explaining a news story, are under more\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s sad because it doesn’t actually matter what you’re doing on Twitch. You can do basically anything on Twitch and you won’t get banned for it, almost anything, as long as there isn’t anyone actively trying to organize a campaign to get you banned. They’re in desperate need of help on figuring out how to handle politics on Twitch \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ethan Klein’s efforts to pick fights with Hasan, and anyone associated with him, have also been picked up by actual elected officials. Like last year, when Congressman Ritchie Torres penned an open letter to Twitch executives, calling on them to rein in anti-Semitism on the platform. He cited Hasan’s comments criticizing Israel, which Hasan said were clipped and taken out of context. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The backlash against progressive voices on Twitch has been mounting since Trump took office. Charlie Kirk’s death only intensified it. The accused shooter Tyler Robinson had made references to memes and video games in his Discord messages and on the bullet casings. In the days following the shooting, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requested the attendance of the CEOs of Discord, Steam, Reddit, and Twitch at a hearing on radicalization and extremism on their sites. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The hearing was postponed because of the government shutdown, but the increased criticism of online political speech has made talking about current events especially complicated for streamers like Denims. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On Twitch, if you say anything and there are any people hate-watching, they will try as hard as they can to clip you, right? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: …\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Clipping as\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">in literally pulling clips from streams and posting them on Twitter or TikTok and sites like that. Sometimes viewers will go out of their way to post clips out of context. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think I’ve just gotten, again, so internet brainrotted that when I speak, I will speak in full sentences and like, reiterate points over and over and over again. So, like, during the Charlie Kirk assassination, I said multiple times, like every two sentences I was saying, ‘I don’t condone the assassinating of any political content creators or political media influencers, or any of these any pundits.’ Like, because you have to because you can’t say any sentences without immediately having that because you wanna make it as hard as possible to be clipped for anything you say to be posted. Cause even the few things that I have been clipped for, it’s like you play for like another 20 seconds and there’s context there. What I will say is it’s just more frustrating than it is anything else because we should collectively be able to talk about issues without worrying whether or not there was enough context in a 30 second clip. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But would Twitch ever really ban political content? And if they did, is there any space on the internet to still engage in these conversations? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open one more tab. Where can you stream besides Twitch? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s super unlikely that any creator would be able to launch and maintain their own version of Twitch. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Creating a site like that is easier said than done because streaming is super expensive. You know, this has been Twitch’s own problem over the years. Twitch is not profitable, has not been profitable because there’s just so much bandwidth involved and when you are a streaming platform, your operation becomes more expensive as it gets bigger. And so in some ways it’s bad to grow, but, you know, it’ll be interesting to see.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Adding to the economic complexity is the fact that political content on Twitch rarely has ads. That’s because last year, Twitch rolled out a label for politics and sensitive social issues. Streamers have to label their content if they include former or current politicians talking about policies, coverage of elections, discussions of foreign policy, and any commentary and topics like gender, race, sexuality, or religion in a, “polarizing or inflammatory manner.” Basically, it lets advertisers opt out of advertising next to anything political and it also silos this kind of content. I asked Denims if she’d ever jump ship if Twitch continues to demonetize political speech. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Not really, no, because your alternatives are like streaming on YouTube, streaming on TikTok, which I don’t know to be fair, how good or bad TikTok live streaming is. I genuinely just like, I struggle to use the platform because I’m just not Zoomer enough yet for it. And then what’s the alternative like Kick? Yeah, you can be right next to the other 1700 gambling streamers. So there isn’t really, like, another place that I think a lot of people could call home. I think most people would end up just going to YouTube, which again should incentivize Twitch to improve their platform because why would you want to lose a bunch of creators to YouTube? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. After the shooting and after the response and all these crackdowns, a lot of people were speculating that Twitch would just ban political content in response to that. Do you ever see that happening? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Denims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No, I don’t think Twitch will ever ban political content. I think that they understand that it’s too lucrative is the wrong word, but that it legitimizes the platform too much for them to remove it. It’s the same reason that YouTube would rather go through all of these proceedings with Congress than ever take down political content on YouTube because they enjoy the hegemony that they have over media. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s the thing with Twitch. Twitch doesn’t wanna lose its spot as being like the number one live streaming platform because they decided they couldn’t handle the heat of politics. I think that they want it. And I think they want that market share. I think that they just don’t know how to thread the needle just yet. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I feel like there’s been a massive pushback against general right-wing restriction of freedom of speech. And so I feel on Twitch, yeah, people are more cautious, but I think also people want to see other people fight and people want to fight. I mean, at one point, was it four million people canceled their like Disney subscription because Kimmel got put off the shelf? Like, that’s insane. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The congressional hearing on radicalization and online extremism was supposed to happen earlier this month. It’s unclear when or if the hearing will be rescheduled. The pressure to crack down on political speech isn’t unique to Twitch. Like we’ve talked about on the show before, this suppression is happening all over the internet. So then, what does the future of political streaming look like? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s hard to say. I think that if Twitch has its way, things won’t change too much, which of course, I don’t think they want anything to really change. They just wanna keep adding more layers of monetization to the site. But, you know, the hearing could go any number of ways and so at least in some regard, it will decide that future. If Hasan gets banned, then that’s an entirely different set of circumstances. That’s like a whole different reality. You know it’s the flap of the butterfly’s wings. Like we’ll see. I cannot predict that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The uncertainty hasn’t discouraged Denims from streaming. She’s been sued, doxed, harassed, and threatened, but she’s determined to keep her morning show going. For her, it’s about more than free speech than politics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I just believe in what I say and I want to say what I believe and I think what I believe is empathy driven and it’s encouraging a world that makes everyone’s life better. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Regardless of whether or not I agree with you, I still want you to have health care. Whether or I agree, I still want you have housing. I still want you to have clean water, clean air. I think it’s cowardly to stop fighting for that, especially from, like, the comfort of my own home. Even if it, like, means a bunch of people will hate me, I don’t really care. It’s hard to care when I know that what I’m talking about is just improving everyone’s lives. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s happening on Twitch is a case study on the political content creator sphere as a whole. Across social media, across all the apps, these creators have amassed influence. The new generation of political pundits has proven that this niche can be lucrative. These content creators are incredibly valuable for social media companies if they’re making money, and also valuable to political figures to access new audiences. That is, until people use platforms like TikTok and Twitch to express dissent. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And yet… People love to post, and they love consuming content. There will always be a demand for this kind of commentary, especially as younger generations rely on political content creators to explain the news. So we don’t know what the future of political streaming looks like, but it’s clear that it’s not going away anytime soon. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode is produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa. Close All Tabs producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our senior editor. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Additional editing by Chris Hambrick and Jen Chien, who is KQED’s director of podcasts. Original music, including our theme song and credits, by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager and Ethan Tovin-Lindsey is our editor-in-chief. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink dust silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, and I know it’s a podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives and want us to keep making more, It would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org/podcasts. Follow us on Instagram @CloseAlltabspod or TikTok @Closealltabs. And join our Discord. We’re in the Close All Tabs channel at discord.gg/KQED. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "TwitchCon, Twitch’s annual convention in San Diego for all things streaming and gaming, is facing heightened scrutiny after streamer Emiru was assaulted there during a meet-and-greet. The incident occurred after a series of streamers pulled out of the event over safety concerns and the growing specter of political violence. All of this has highlighted questions about the role of political commentary on Twitch — a genre that's exploded in the last few years, transforming the platform into much more than a gaming site. In this episode, Morgan is joined by author and reporter Nathan Grayson and political streamer Denims to explore Twitch’s rise as a hub for political speech, the company’s inconsistent handling of backlash against political creators, and whether any real alternatives exist for this new wave of commentators.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TwitchCon, Twitch’s annual convention in San Diego for all things streaming and gaming, is facing heightened scrutiny after streamer Emiru was assaulted there during a meet-and-greet. The incident occurred after a series of streamers pulled out of the event over safety concerns and the growing specter of political violence. All of this has highlighted questions about the role of political commentary on Twitch — a genre that’s exploded in the last few years, transforming the platform into much more than a gaming site. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, Morgan is joined by author and reporter Nathan Grayson and political streamer Denims to explore Twitch’s rise as a hub for political speech, the company’s inconsistent handling of backlash against political creators, and whether any real alternatives exist for this new wave of commentators. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC6693258081\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://aftermath.site/author/nathan-grayson\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nathan Grayson\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, co-founder and reporter at Aftermath \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.twitch.tv/denims\">Denims,\u003c/a> political streamer on Twitch\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading/listening: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://aftermath.site/twitch-twitchcon-2025-security-emiru-assault-irl-streamers\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Beefed Up TwitchCon Security Couldn’t Stop The Internet’s Issues From Spilling Over Into Real Life\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Nathan Grayson, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Aftermath\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.usermag.co/p/can-twitch-survive-ceo-dan-clancy-at-twitchcon-interview\">Can Twitch Survive? CEO Dan Clancy at Twitchcon\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taylor Lorenz\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003ci>User Mag\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Stream-Big/Nathan-Grayson/9781982156763\">Stream Big: The Triumphs and Turmoils of Twitch and the Stars Behind the Screen\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Nathan Grayson\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://mashable.com/article/twitchcon-unsafe-for-streamers\">Why is TwitchCon so uniquely unsafe for streamers?\u003c/a> — Christianna Silva, \u003ci>Mashable\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>bbno$ speaking to a crowd: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Get a hell yeah!\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Crowd: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">hell yeah!\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>bbno$:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Twitchcon!\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Crowd: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Twitchcon!\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>bbno$: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right click! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Two weekends ago, the live streaming platform Twitch held its 10th annual TwitchCon. That’s Twitch’s annual convention in San Diego for all things streaming and gaming. And the tape you just heard was the rapper turned cosplayer, bbno$, performing at one of the creator after parties. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>bbno$: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">F*ck yeah, TwitchCon! \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I went into this weekend’s planning to cover Twitch’s evolution as an influential platform for political speech. These creators have massive audiences and have the potential to educate and inspire entire generations into civic engagement. And my quest to talk to them brought me here… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>bbno$: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right click! \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TwitchCon has had its controversies in the past, from the infamous foam pit that severely injured multiple attendees to streamers from the rival platform Kick sneaking in to harass Twitch creators. But this time, the event was held in the shadow of this country’s mounting political violence, most notably the recent assassination of right-wing political commentator Charlie Kirk. In the weeks leading up to the convention, high-profile streamers like Hasan Piker dropped out of the event citing concern over public safety and political violence. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Hasan Piker speaking during a livestream: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m worried about the safety of others. I don’t want to put them in the f*cking crosshairs if some psycho freak decides like, I’m gonna go there. I’m very publicly not going to TwitchCon for that reason. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And concerns about safety boiled over completely when, on the first day of the event, a streamer named Emiru was assaulted during her Twitch-organized meet and greet. A man was able to cross multiple barriers through other creators’ meet and greet lines before he grabbed Emiru and tried to forcibly kiss her. In a statement, Twitch said that, “Law enforcement and event security were on site and responded to the incident.” But Emiru said that event staff didn’t step in to stop him. It was her own private security that intervened. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emiru speaking to an audience : \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, if you watch the clip, the security guard who pushes the guy away is my security, the woman who pulls me to the back, my manager. If you’re a small streamer and you don’t have those resources or someone in your line is not filming, what the f*ck do you do? \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Twitch did significantly beef up security before this year’s event. We’re talking more surveillance, more bodyguards, the whole nine yards. Still, the assault haunted TwitchCon all weekend. Other streamers, the overwhelming majority of whom were women, posted that they were nervous about going to the convention center. Some hired their own private security last minute, or even canceled their meet and greets. Several posted about getting harassed by fans and other male streamers during the event. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the last day of the convention, Twitch hosted an open Q&A for streamers and fans to talk directly to the company’s CEO, Dan Clancy. Finally, in the middle of the panel, an attendee stepped up to the mic. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Q&A Attendee: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How’s it going? I’ve been coming to TwitchCon since 2016. I love Twitch’s platform. I think the elephant in the room right now is just like there’s a lot of big creators that don’t necessarily feel that this is the safest space in person or necessarily online and I was just curious as to the additional steps that Twitch is going to take to make that, to change that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Clancy during Q&A: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Livestreaming offers some advantages in terms of the ability to control your community, but it’s still this issue that people of all sizes, it’s not just, you know, women of course have a challenge, but also underrepresented groups often have this problem of harassment online. And it’s something we care deeply about and we’re always looking for how we continue to invest to help protect creators as they go on their journey. So thanks for the question. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This weekend was a reckoning for Twitch. The streaming community has been embroiled in debate over the culture of misogyny on the platform and the parasocial relationships that endanger creators. And it highlighted questions about the role of political commentary in streaming, a genre of content that’s exploded in the last few years, establishing Twitch as more than a gaming site. Now it’s a legitimate platform for political discourse and not everyone is happy about that. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, we’re diving into Twitch, political speech online, and whether creators have anywhere else to go if they can’t talk about it on Twitch. This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many people associate political commentary with traditional formats, like broadcast talk shows and op-eds, that kind of thing. But over the last few election cycles, an alternative information ecosystem has been growing across social media, including Twitch. But throughout its growth, Twitch hasn’t figured out how to handle this kind of content, from moderation to responding to public backlash. And as commentary streamers gain more influence Twitch has faced increasing scrutiny from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers who aren’t thrilled about this growing sphere of leftist discussion. Some are pushing Twitch to crack down on political speech and after the Charlie Kirk shooting, that pressure has been kicked into overdrive. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To understand how we got here, let’s go back to the very beginning by opening a new tab. When did Twitch get so political? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To get into this, let’s talk to my friend Nathan Grayson, co-founder and reporter at Aftermath. It’s a worker-owned publication reporting on video games. He’s also the author of Stream Big, which explains the history of Twitch by profiling nine different streamers. Twitch has changed and morphed many times since it spun off from the live streaming site Justin.tv in 2011. And for much of that time, Twitch had a singular focus, gaming.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For a long time in Twitch’s history, you were required to be playing a video game while streaming, like that was a rule and people tried to get around it and all these like really funny ways. Like there was an era where somebody would like invert kind of the size of their camera views. So instead of the game being really big and them being small, they’d be huge and there’d be a tiny little like bit of gameplay in the corner. That wasn’t technically allowed so people would get in trouble for it. But yeah, so it was that kind of a thing. And so it was pretty hard, you know, to like be a political commentator when you also had to be like, keeping up with a League of Legends match and Twitch finally said like, ‘Hey, you know, you guys clearly want to just talk to your audiences. We hear you, we’re going to let you.’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 2017, Twitch launched two new categories, Just Chatting and IRL, short for in real life. They paved the way for a new type of streamer, a chronically online talk show host. Hasan Piker, who was then a producer for the Young Turks, started streaming on Twitch the next year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Hasan Piker speaking to a livestream audience: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s going on, everybody? I’m going to get really quickly into it. OK, today we have an awesome episode… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He started getting big around 2019, you know, it was like, he started that year with like a hundred thousand followers and ended it with like close to half a million. And so 2020, I think definitely, especially like, allowed us all to take off because we were all stuck inside as a result of the pandemic and there’s an election. The internet, when it comes to politics, especially, and then these like major events in the political landscape, like elections, it’s just chaos. There’s so much happening. And the role that somebody like Hasan serves is that they curate it for you, you know? And they do it in a language that you, as somebody who regularly like browses the internet, can understand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Hasan Piker speaking to a livestream audience: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So let me like walk you through it. The reason why you push for a shutdown in this situation is to really highlight what you are seeking to protect, okay? And what you’re seeking to protect in this circumstance is $800 billion of cuts for Medicaid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is it about this particular moment in internet history that made political streams so popular on Twitch, beyond just Hassan? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, one of the things is a pandemic. You cannot understate the importance of that moment in that I would say that is when everybody’s world inverted. Before that, real life was the main thing and the internet was supplementary to it. And then with everybody stuck inside because of the pandemic, suddenly the internet became the real thing and real life with supplementary to it. And we never really went back. And as a result, I mean like, you know, the pandemic itself is heavily politicized. Um, there was a big election that year, you know, Trump and Biden, which was going to decide the future of America. Um, not long after January 6th happened. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of these landmark political events as like, you now, Gen Z in particular was coming of age, they were becoming kind of, I guess, like politically activated in that moment. And these are the people doing the job because, you know, the old institutions were failing them. A lot of news networks were not covering this moment, um, accurately or usefully. And then you had people like a Hasan step and be like, okay, ‘well I’m gonna tell you how things are actually as I see them’ as opposed to like, you know, it’s business as usual because it clearly wasn’t. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then there is this pivotal moment for pandemic-era politics online, the Among Us stream. In 2020, in the weeks leading up to the election, representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar hosted a voter outreach event entirely on stream. They invited popular creators to play Among Us, a game that had become a phenomenon during the pandemic. Everyone plays as cute little characters, but one of them is a secret killer. If you’ve ever played Mafia, you get the idea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Game play conversation]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Speaker 1: Ilhan you need to vote. You need to click on AOC and then… AOC: Are you, are you really gonna do this to me, Ilhan? \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ilhan: No, I’m not voting for Alex. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AOC: Thank you. Thank you very much. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Among Us was the game at that time because Among Us allowed people to, you know, have a place to play together during this time of intense separation. And so it blew up and like, they capitalized on that zeitgeist and they’re like, yeah, as a politician, I’m going to play it with a bunch of people that you’ve heard of. So I’m gonna reach these new audiences, maybe you’ve of me, but like, don’t really know me that well and aren’t that into politics. And these streamers definitely are political streamers, aside from Hasan. Most of them are semi-progressive, but they’re not like experts in the field. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, yeah, they, they pulled, you know, hundreds of thousands of viewers, um, and just generally managed to do something that nobody really had before, at least in that space. And I think at the time, a lot of people saw that and they said, okay, you know this is it, this is the new politics meta. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hasan’s popularity and influence, and all of the other political streamers that followed in his footsteps, launched Twitch into the spotlight. But all of that attention comes with a hefty dose of criticism. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s something Denims has become very familiar with. She’s a political streamer who basically runs a morning talk show on Twitch, streaming five days a week.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think Hassan really put Twitch on the radar in a more general sense because prior to that it was just like, oh, isn’t that some gaming website if you even knew about it at all. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah.\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How has your experience as a political content creator changed on Twitch? \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Denims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of people were a lot more lackadaisical with how they would stream and I think I’ve noticed myself as well as a lot other people be a lot cautious with the things that they talk about because there are a lot bad faith actors that do want to see left-wing voices silenced. I mean, under the Trumpian era, he’s practically just saying if you have an opinion that isn’t pro-me, I don’t want you on the air. That’s the reason Kimmel got off the air. Because Donald Trump didn’t want him on the air because he didn’t like the things that he was saying because he was making fun of Donald Trump. So yeah, it does feel like everyone has to be more cautious on Twitch because there’s a bigger magnifier on it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today’s political climate is very different from the one that Hasan began streaming in. The vibe has shifted, and the stakes are higher. What does this mean for Twitch? And more importantly, what does it tell us about the state of political speech online? We’re diving into that after this break. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, we’re back. Time to open another tab. Is political speech still allowed on Twitch? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Politicians have been trying to capitalize on Twitch’s popularity among young voters for years, with mixed results. Former Congressman Matt Gaetz, for instance, streamed on Twitch and peaked at six viewers. Then you have Senator Bernie Sanders going on stream and learning a lot about the internet. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from Bernie Sanders livestream]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Poki: Mr. Sanders, my name’s Poki. So nice to meet you. I’m a big fan, as you can tell. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bernie Sanders: Thank you very much. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Saikuno: I’m Saikuno. Do you know what a VTuber is? Have you heard of a Vtuber before? \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bernie Sanders: Nope. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Saikuno: No.? That’s all right. I’m the first one.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Speaker: Yeah, it’s the first one. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Saikuno: Thank you so much for supporting Vtubers.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there’s California governor Gavin Newsom showing off his elite gaming skills. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from Fortnite Friday w/ Governor Gavin Newsom]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Connor Eats Pants: Gavin press press the press the X button or Y.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Governor Gavin Newsom: Oh, yeah, where am I man? Where are we? No, sorry. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That last clip is from a few weeks ago, when Newsom joined Fortnite Friday, a weekly show in which a streamer who goes by Connor Eats Pants interviews guests while they play Fortnite. The quality of the guests’ play varies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from Fortnite Friday w/ Governor Gavin Newsom]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Governor Gavin Newsom: Jesus Christ, I closed things out. See, I don’t like this Nintendo Switch stuff. I’m back in, man. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s Aftermath reporter Nathan again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of those are not necessarily political streamers, political content creators and so if you do it right, you’re reaching people you would never otherwise reach. And the way that you do that is a little different than like, you know, I’m gonna go on this debate and talk about my policies. It’s, I’m going to talk to this person that, you know, other people find relatable, and I’m just gonna like, hang out, laugh, tell jokes, get a little bit more personal with things, or at least appear more personal. You know, that the ConnorEatsPants stream with Gavin Newsom is illustrative because I think that Gavin Newsom talked a very big game and then, you know, a few days later vetoed a bunch of pro-trans legislation after being like… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from Fortnite Friday w/ Governor Gavin Newsom]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Governor Gavin Newsom: You know, you’re talking to a guy who’s been a champion of LGBT rights. I take a backseat to no one in signing more bills for the community. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that we’re also seeing, like, at least in the case of somebody like Connor, you know, these people who came up on the internet, pretty young, like growing up. And even as he was like, kind of decamping from the Gavin Newsom stream, he was talking about how like, he’s had to kind of become better versed in a lot of these things as he’s talked to more and more political figures. He’s also interviewed people like George Santos. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so people were asking him why he didn’t push harder on a couple subjects and he was like, ‘I just didn’t feel like I was informed enough to do it well, and I want to do it right instead of, you know, like stumbling through it and then letting him off easy,’ Um, but he still did a crazy good job. I mean, like, I don’t know if anyone has held Gavin Newsom’s feet to the fire on like Israel Palestine stuff that well, he just like kept him on track. It was really impressive.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While playing Fortnite, it was incredible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And he’s good at Fortnite too. Gavin Newsom is not good at Fortnight. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from Fortnite Friday w/ Governor Gavin Newsom]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ConnorEatsPants: \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You closed out of it on the switch. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Governor Gavin Newsom: \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I know. I don’t like this. I can’t, this switch is not \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">suboptimal.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ConnorEatsPants: You gotta get a Switch 2, they fixed it. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But it seems like political streamers on Twitch have faced constant backlash in the last few years. What was the turning point for this? Like, when did they suddenly become so controversial? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, Israel/Palestine, um, and in particular Hasan being pro-Palestinian because then you had all of these other people trying to bring him down because he’s such an outspoken and like visible pro-Palestinian voice. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A few years ago, Hasan collaborated with another YouTuber, Ethan Klein, on a weekly politics and culture podcast called Leftovers. They don’t work together anymore. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">October 7th occurred and they started to drift in terms of their viewpoints.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For context, Ethan’s wife is Israeli. Hasan and Ethan did one last very emotional, hours-long episode of Leftovers together, in which they try to explain their opposing views to each other. But they ultimately put the show on hiatus. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Since their breakup, Ethan has gone from criticizing Hasan’s political stances to making frequent personal attacks about Hasan and anyone critical of Israel. Hasan, meanwhile, started gaining more mainstream attention and viewership, and has rarely acknowledged Ethan since. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then Ethan was like, well, then I’m gonna come after people that you know. And that’s like what resulted in those streamers getting banned after the TwitchCon panel and all that. And ever since then, it’s been much more personal and much more of a back and forth. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Nathan says ‘streamers getting banned after a TwitchCon panel,’ he’s actually referring to an incident with denims. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Denims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I got banned for 30 days for a tier list about who can say the word habibi, which is just the arab word for like love or like my love. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last year, Denims participated in a panel, organized by Twitch, with other Arab-American creators. They made a tier list—it’s a meme format for ranking things. At the top of the list were creators who Denims and the other panelists deemed worthy of saying Habibi. The tiers ranked from Arab, Arab-coded, asks permission to say Habibi, thinks the word is a slur and then…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the bottom of the list, it says “loves Sabra”, because sabra is a sh*tty type of hummus that’s not good. And anyone who’s had Sabra and had actual good hummus, you know that Sabra’s got this bitter taste. It’s like buying freezer pie. It’s just not good. Like, you should just make it from scratch. And so if you love Sabra hummus you’re like, this is my favorite hummus, you do not get the pass, you don’t get the pass. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Analysts placed Ethan Klein in the loves Sabra category. He very quickly posted his response. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip from Twitch Has a Major Problem Youtube post]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ethan Klein: I mean, it’s kind of just Arab good, Jew bad. I mean I’m having a hard time seeing this any other way. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some critics claim that it was deeper, because Sabra, the hummus brand, was a boycott target over its parent company’s support of the IDF. Then others pointed out that the word Sabra, a prickly pear cactus fruit, has been used to describe Jewish people born in Israel. One of the panelists was Jewish, but that didn’t stop the accusations of antisemitism. Clips of the panel went viral, kicking off a frenzy of backlash. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We make multiple references to hummus on that panel. So we’re very clearly talking about hummus. But there was this massive campaign to pretend like, no, we were making this Jew to Arab tier list, which is insane. It doesn’t make any sense because we put a bunch of people who weren’t Jewish, myself included in the bottom tier list. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s worth noting that all five of the creators on that panel are left-leaning and make content about supporting progressive political issues. And they’re all vocally pro-Palestine.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Denims:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> …and Twitch caved and banned us for 30 days, which was insane because again, you’re just telling the platform, you’re telling everyone on that platform, hey, if you pressure us hard enough we’ll just cave and wrongfully ban anyone you want which is not, it’s not good for the health of the platform.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nathan described Twitch’s approach to moderating political content as haphazard. The site was relatively left-leaning until recently, thanks to Hasan’s influence and the platform’s strict policies against harassment and hate speech. These violations are pretty clear-cut when a streamer says a slur, for example. But Twitch has struggled to draw clear boundaries around political speech. Critics say the company tends to cave to backlash. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Twitch is always reactive when it comes to this stuff. They are not proactive. They don’t really know how to moderate this. I think that they don’t mind that because it gives them legitimacy, but they also don’t want to engage with the full ramifications of it. So they’re just sort of flying by the seat of their pants. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Denims, for one, has been frustrated by this inconsistency. She and the other panelists received 30-day bans for last year’s Twitch con tier list. Asmongold, a right-wing political streamer, was banned for 14 days for violating Twitch’s hateful conduct policy with a racist tirade against Palestinians. Denims noted that other creators have been allowed to return to the platform, even though they’ve received multiple bans for saying slurs on stream. But streamers who talk about politics, even if it’s just explaining a news story, are under more\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s sad because it doesn’t actually matter what you’re doing on Twitch. You can do basically anything on Twitch and you won’t get banned for it, almost anything, as long as there isn’t anyone actively trying to organize a campaign to get you banned. They’re in desperate need of help on figuring out how to handle politics on Twitch \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ethan Klein’s efforts to pick fights with Hasan, and anyone associated with him, have also been picked up by actual elected officials. Like last year, when Congressman Ritchie Torres penned an open letter to Twitch executives, calling on them to rein in anti-Semitism on the platform. He cited Hasan’s comments criticizing Israel, which Hasan said were clipped and taken out of context. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The backlash against progressive voices on Twitch has been mounting since Trump took office. Charlie Kirk’s death only intensified it. The accused shooter Tyler Robinson had made references to memes and video games in his Discord messages and on the bullet casings. In the days following the shooting, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requested the attendance of the CEOs of Discord, Steam, Reddit, and Twitch at a hearing on radicalization and extremism on their sites. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The hearing was postponed because of the government shutdown, but the increased criticism of online political speech has made talking about current events especially complicated for streamers like Denims. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On Twitch, if you say anything and there are any people hate-watching, they will try as hard as they can to clip you, right? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: …\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Clipping as\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">in literally pulling clips from streams and posting them on Twitter or TikTok and sites like that. Sometimes viewers will go out of their way to post clips out of context. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think I’ve just gotten, again, so internet brainrotted that when I speak, I will speak in full sentences and like, reiterate points over and over and over again. So, like, during the Charlie Kirk assassination, I said multiple times, like every two sentences I was saying, ‘I don’t condone the assassinating of any political content creators or political media influencers, or any of these any pundits.’ Like, because you have to because you can’t say any sentences without immediately having that because you wanna make it as hard as possible to be clipped for anything you say to be posted. Cause even the few things that I have been clipped for, it’s like you play for like another 20 seconds and there’s context there. What I will say is it’s just more frustrating than it is anything else because we should collectively be able to talk about issues without worrying whether or not there was enough context in a 30 second clip. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But would Twitch ever really ban political content? And if they did, is there any space on the internet to still engage in these conversations? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open one more tab. Where can you stream besides Twitch? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s super unlikely that any creator would be able to launch and maintain their own version of Twitch. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Creating a site like that is easier said than done because streaming is super expensive. You know, this has been Twitch’s own problem over the years. Twitch is not profitable, has not been profitable because there’s just so much bandwidth involved and when you are a streaming platform, your operation becomes more expensive as it gets bigger. And so in some ways it’s bad to grow, but, you know, it’ll be interesting to see.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Adding to the economic complexity is the fact that political content on Twitch rarely has ads. That’s because last year, Twitch rolled out a label for politics and sensitive social issues. Streamers have to label their content if they include former or current politicians talking about policies, coverage of elections, discussions of foreign policy, and any commentary and topics like gender, race, sexuality, or religion in a, “polarizing or inflammatory manner.” Basically, it lets advertisers opt out of advertising next to anything political and it also silos this kind of content. I asked Denims if she’d ever jump ship if Twitch continues to demonetize political speech. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Not really, no, because your alternatives are like streaming on YouTube, streaming on TikTok, which I don’t know to be fair, how good or bad TikTok live streaming is. I genuinely just like, I struggle to use the platform because I’m just not Zoomer enough yet for it. And then what’s the alternative like Kick? Yeah, you can be right next to the other 1700 gambling streamers. So there isn’t really, like, another place that I think a lot of people could call home. I think most people would end up just going to YouTube, which again should incentivize Twitch to improve their platform because why would you want to lose a bunch of creators to YouTube? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. After the shooting and after the response and all these crackdowns, a lot of people were speculating that Twitch would just ban political content in response to that. Do you ever see that happening? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Denims: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No, I don’t think Twitch will ever ban political content. I think that they understand that it’s too lucrative is the wrong word, but that it legitimizes the platform too much for them to remove it. It’s the same reason that YouTube would rather go through all of these proceedings with Congress than ever take down political content on YouTube because they enjoy the hegemony that they have over media. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s the thing with Twitch. Twitch doesn’t wanna lose its spot as being like the number one live streaming platform because they decided they couldn’t handle the heat of politics. I think that they want it. And I think they want that market share. I think that they just don’t know how to thread the needle just yet. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I feel like there’s been a massive pushback against general right-wing restriction of freedom of speech. And so I feel on Twitch, yeah, people are more cautious, but I think also people want to see other people fight and people want to fight. I mean, at one point, was it four million people canceled their like Disney subscription because Kimmel got put off the shelf? Like, that’s insane. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The congressional hearing on radicalization and online extremism was supposed to happen earlier this month. It’s unclear when or if the hearing will be rescheduled. The pressure to crack down on political speech isn’t unique to Twitch. Like we’ve talked about on the show before, this suppression is happening all over the internet. So then, what does the future of political streaming look like? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nathan Grayson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s hard to say. I think that if Twitch has its way, things won’t change too much, which of course, I don’t think they want anything to really change. They just wanna keep adding more layers of monetization to the site. But, you know, the hearing could go any number of ways and so at least in some regard, it will decide that future. If Hasan gets banned, then that’s an entirely different set of circumstances. That’s like a whole different reality. You know it’s the flap of the butterfly’s wings. Like we’ll see. I cannot predict that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The uncertainty hasn’t discouraged Denims from streaming. She’s been sued, doxed, harassed, and threatened, but she’s determined to keep her morning show going. For her, it’s about more than free speech than politics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Denims:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I just believe in what I say and I want to say what I believe and I think what I believe is empathy driven and it’s encouraging a world that makes everyone’s life better. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Regardless of whether or not I agree with you, I still want you to have health care. Whether or I agree, I still want you have housing. I still want you to have clean water, clean air. I think it’s cowardly to stop fighting for that, especially from, like, the comfort of my own home. Even if it, like, means a bunch of people will hate me, I don’t really care. It’s hard to care when I know that what I’m talking about is just improving everyone’s lives. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s happening on Twitch is a case study on the political content creator sphere as a whole. Across social media, across all the apps, these creators have amassed influence. The new generation of political pundits has proven that this niche can be lucrative. These content creators are incredibly valuable for social media companies if they’re making money, and also valuable to political figures to access new audiences. That is, until people use platforms like TikTok and Twitch to express dissent. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And yet… People love to post, and they love consuming content. There will always be a demand for this kind of commentary, especially as younger generations rely on political content creators to explain the news. So we don’t know what the future of political streaming looks like, but it’s clear that it’s not going away anytime soon. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode is produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa. Close All Tabs producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our senior editor. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Additional editing by Chris Hambrick and Jen Chien, who is KQED’s director of podcasts. Original music, including our theme song and credits, by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager and Ethan Tovin-Lindsey is our editor-in-chief. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink dust silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, and I know it’s a podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives and want us to keep making more, It would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org/podcasts. Follow us on Instagram @CloseAlltabspod or TikTok @Closealltabs. And join our Discord. We’re in the Close All Tabs channel at discord.gg/KQED. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"content": "\u003cp>FRESNO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom this month signed a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007520/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-the-reports-police-write\">first-of-its-kind California law\u003c/a> requiring police to disclose how they use generative artificial intelligence, a move aimed at boosting transparency and public trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is among the first states to address the issue. KQED \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007520/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-the-reports-police-write\">first reported\u003c/a> last October on local departments adopting AI tools. The reporting was cited in the legislative analysis of the bill that ultimately became the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Senate Bill 524, signed into law Oct. 10, requires police officers to disclose when they use AI to write police reports. The tools include Draft One, an AI assistant that transcribes and summarizes body-camera footage to produce a draft report, which officers can then revise and edit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Specifically, the law now requires a written disclosure to appear at the bottom of each page of a police report for which Draft One or other similar tools were used. The legislation also requires an “audit trail” that would preserve the original draft as well as identify the source bodycam footage or audio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Police departments in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007520/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-the-reports-police-write\">East Palo Alto\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kvpr.org/government-politics/2024-11-15/ai-is-helping-fresno-police-officers-write-their-reports-could-it-outperform-them\">Fresno\u003c/a> were among the first in the state to adopt the technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Axon, the company that developed Draft One, told KVPR and KQED last year that its developers built safeguards into their software. For example, officers must fill in prompts within the generated report, then sign off on the report’s accuracy before it can be submitted. The tool also includes a disclaimer that Draft One was used, though police agencies have thus far been able to customize where in a report it’s placed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12006138\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12006138\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"The torso of a person dressed in a police uniform holds a hand over a body camera.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An East Palo Alto Police officer’s Axon body camera in East Palo Alto on Sept. 23, 2024. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Police departments have said the technology saves officers significant time, and even that some AI-generated reports are better than the ones written entirely by officers. Nevertheless, the bill arose out of concerns that bias or errors generated by AI software could make their way into final incident reports, which play a key role in charging, detaining and sentencing suspects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association, which sponsored the bill, said she’s grateful the measure became law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Due process requires transparency,” Chatfield wrote in a public statement. “Everyone in the legal system — judges, juries, attorneys and the accused — deserve to know who wrote the police report.”[aside postID=news_12050772 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-03-KQED.jpg?ver=1727233046']“With SB 524, California is sending a clear message: Innovation in policing must be tethered to accountability,” state Sen. Jesse Arreguín, who wrote the bill, said in the statement. “No more opaque reports, no more guessing whether AI shaped the narrative.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kevin Little, a defense attorney in Fresno, said the law is a step in the right direction, but not a true remedy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My own experience with AI in an unrelated context leads me to conclude that AI platforms have a significant amount of user bias and tend to support the agendas of the user,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larry Bowlan, a spokesperson for the Fresno Police Department, said the agency had already implemented some of the safeguards now required by the law and does not expect the new rules to be especially burdensome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our AI-powered narrative assistant … already generates a disclosure and requires our users to sign acknowledgements. Draft One also already produces the requisite audit trail,” he wrote in an email. “We are actively working with our vendor on the best solution for preserving and storing the first draft provided by the assistant, as well as a minor tweak to ensure the disclosure is present on each printed page, rather than just the first page as it is now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for the East Palo Alto Department said his agency has no official response to the law at this time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12007615\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12007615\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5.jpg\" alt=\"A woman dressed in a police uniform sits at a desk in an office looking at a computer screen.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">East Palo Alto Police Officer Wendy Venegas reviews body camera footage and uses Axon’s Draft One AI-based system to draft reports based on the audio from the camera at police headquarters in East Palo Alto on Sept. 23, 2024. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Opponents of the bill included the California Police Chiefs Association and the Police Officers Research Association of California, a police union advocacy and lobbying group. The Chiefs Association did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, PORAC President Brian R. Marvel said the signed version of the law is an improvement over earlier drafts.[aside postID=news_12060365 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/SamAltmanGetty.jpg']“In its original form, SB 524 would have put significant administrative burden on already short-staffed police forces and created broad liability by requiring agencies to retain every AI-generated draft, interim, and final version of a report, each labeled with AI disclosure language,” he wrote. “PORAC advocated to amend this bill … We were pleased to see several of these amendments taken, with the final version of the bill significantly narrowed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Axon representative Victoria Keough said the company is committed to complying with all state and federal laws, including SB 524.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When developing AI for public safety, transparency and accountability are essential,” Keough wrote in a statement. “Responsible innovation remains at the core of how Axon designs and delivers new technology.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new requirements go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kvpr.org/people/kerry-klein\">\u003cem>Kerry Klein\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a reporter and editor with KVPR in Fresno. Additional reporting was provided by KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/slewis\">\u003cem>Sukey Lewis\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. \u003cem>The story was produced with support from \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californianewsroom\">\u003cem>The California Newsroom\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a collaboration of public media outlets throughout the state. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>FRESNO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom this month signed a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007520/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-the-reports-police-write\">first-of-its-kind California law\u003c/a> requiring police to disclose how they use generative artificial intelligence, a move aimed at boosting transparency and public trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is among the first states to address the issue. KQED \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007520/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-the-reports-police-write\">first reported\u003c/a> last October on local departments adopting AI tools. The reporting was cited in the legislative analysis of the bill that ultimately became the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Senate Bill 524, signed into law Oct. 10, requires police officers to disclose when they use AI to write police reports. The tools include Draft One, an AI assistant that transcribes and summarizes body-camera footage to produce a draft report, which officers can then revise and edit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Specifically, the law now requires a written disclosure to appear at the bottom of each page of a police report for which Draft One or other similar tools were used. The legislation also requires an “audit trail” that would preserve the original draft as well as identify the source bodycam footage or audio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Police departments in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007520/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-the-reports-police-write\">East Palo Alto\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kvpr.org/government-politics/2024-11-15/ai-is-helping-fresno-police-officers-write-their-reports-could-it-outperform-them\">Fresno\u003c/a> were among the first in the state to adopt the technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Axon, the company that developed Draft One, told KVPR and KQED last year that its developers built safeguards into their software. For example, officers must fill in prompts within the generated report, then sign off on the report’s accuracy before it can be submitted. The tool also includes a disclaimer that Draft One was used, though police agencies have thus far been able to customize where in a report it’s placed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12006138\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12006138\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"The torso of a person dressed in a police uniform holds a hand over a body camera.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An East Palo Alto Police officer’s Axon body camera in East Palo Alto on Sept. 23, 2024. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Police departments have said the technology saves officers significant time, and even that some AI-generated reports are better than the ones written entirely by officers. Nevertheless, the bill arose out of concerns that bias or errors generated by AI software could make their way into final incident reports, which play a key role in charging, detaining and sentencing suspects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association, which sponsored the bill, said she’s grateful the measure became law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Due process requires transparency,” Chatfield wrote in a public statement. “Everyone in the legal system — judges, juries, attorneys and the accused — deserve to know who wrote the police report.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“With SB 524, California is sending a clear message: Innovation in policing must be tethered to accountability,” state Sen. Jesse Arreguín, who wrote the bill, said in the statement. “No more opaque reports, no more guessing whether AI shaped the narrative.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kevin Little, a defense attorney in Fresno, said the law is a step in the right direction, but not a true remedy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My own experience with AI in an unrelated context leads me to conclude that AI platforms have a significant amount of user bias and tend to support the agendas of the user,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larry Bowlan, a spokesperson for the Fresno Police Department, said the agency had already implemented some of the safeguards now required by the law and does not expect the new rules to be especially burdensome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our AI-powered narrative assistant … already generates a disclosure and requires our users to sign acknowledgements. Draft One also already produces the requisite audit trail,” he wrote in an email. “We are actively working with our vendor on the best solution for preserving and storing the first draft provided by the assistant, as well as a minor tweak to ensure the disclosure is present on each printed page, rather than just the first page as it is now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for the East Palo Alto Department said his agency has no official response to the law at this time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12007615\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12007615\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5.jpg\" alt=\"A woman dressed in a police uniform sits at a desk in an office looking at a computer screen.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">East Palo Alto Police Officer Wendy Venegas reviews body camera footage and uses Axon’s Draft One AI-based system to draft reports based on the audio from the camera at police headquarters in East Palo Alto on Sept. 23, 2024. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Opponents of the bill included the California Police Chiefs Association and the Police Officers Research Association of California, a police union advocacy and lobbying group. The Chiefs Association did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, PORAC President Brian R. Marvel said the signed version of the law is an improvement over earlier drafts.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“In its original form, SB 524 would have put significant administrative burden on already short-staffed police forces and created broad liability by requiring agencies to retain every AI-generated draft, interim, and final version of a report, each labeled with AI disclosure language,” he wrote. “PORAC advocated to amend this bill … We were pleased to see several of these amendments taken, with the final version of the bill significantly narrowed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Axon representative Victoria Keough said the company is committed to complying with all state and federal laws, including SB 524.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When developing AI for public safety, transparency and accountability are essential,” Keough wrote in a statement. “Responsible innovation remains at the core of how Axon designs and delivers new technology.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new requirements go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kvpr.org/people/kerry-klein\">\u003cem>Kerry Klein\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a reporter and editor with KVPR in Fresno. Additional reporting was provided by KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/slewis\">\u003cem>Sukey Lewis\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. \u003cem>The story was produced with support from \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californianewsroom\">\u003cem>The California Newsroom\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a collaboration of public media outlets throughout the state. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "ChatGPT Will Soon Allow Adults to Generate Erotica. Is This the Future We Want?",
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"content": "\u003cp>OpenAI isn’t the first developer to announce plans to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038154/kids-talking-ai-companion-chatbots-stanford-researchers-say-thats-bad-idea\">offer erotic content on its chatbot\u003c/a>. But the blowback against the tech company’s decision to loosen restrictions this week has been bigger, given the San Francisco-based company’s promise to ensure its AI\u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/our-structure/\"> benefits all of humanity\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most significant change will roll out in December, when OpenAI will allow more comprehensive age-gating, allowing verified adults to generate erotic content using the tool — “as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle,” OpenAI CEO Sam \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/sama/status/1978129344598827128\">Altman posted Tuesday\u003c/a> on the social media platform X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consumer advocates say OpenAI is following the lead of xAI’s Grok, which offers loosely moderated “adult” modes with minimal age verification, raising concerns that teenage users may have access to explicit content. Meta AI is believed to be following xAI’s lead as well, and its back and forth over whether it is intentionally pushing mature content to minors has \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senator-hawley-launches-probe-into-meta-ai-policies-2025-08-15/\">prompted\u003c/a> U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, to investigate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue, we wanted to get this right,” Altman wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The announcement came less than two months after the company was sued by the parents of Adam Raine, a teenager who \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12054490/child-safety-groups-demand-mental-health-guardrails-after-california-teens-suicide-using-chatgpt\">died by suicide\u003c/a> earlier this year, for ChatGPT allegedly providing him with specific advice on how to kill himself — setting off a firestorm of news coverage and comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11989313\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11989313\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/GettyImages-2155035557-scaled-e1760733694503.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The OpenAI ChatGPT logo. \u003ccite>(Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Altman delivered \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/sama/status/1978539332215681076\">a follow-up\u003c/a> on Wednesday. “We will still not allow things that cause harm to others, and we will treat users who are having mental health crises very different from users who are not … But we are not the elected moral police of the world. In the same way that society differentiates other appropriate boundaries (R-rated movies, for example), we want to do a similar thing here,” Altman wrote, although it remains unclear whether OpenAI will extend erotica to its AI voice, image and video generation tools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Comparing content moderation of chatbot interactions with movie ratings is not really useful,” wrote Irina Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. “It downplays both the nature and the extent of the problems that we’re seeing when people get more and more dependent on and influenced by chatbot ‘relationships.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mark Cuban, the entrepreneur, investor and media personality, argued much the same in a string of \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/mcuban/status/1978317936336028016\">posts on X\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t see how OpenAI can age-gate successfully enough. I’m also not sure that it can’t psychologically damage young adults. We just don’t know yet how addictive LLMs can be. Which, in my OPINION, means that parents and schools, that would otherwise want to use ChatGPT because of its current ubiquity, will decide not to use it,” Cuban wrote.[aside postID=news_12059714 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/GavinNewsomAISF1.jpg']Others see the drive for paying subscribers and increased profit behind the move. As a private company, OpenAI does not release its shareholder reports publicly. However, \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-02/openai-completes-share-sale-at-record-500-billion-valuation?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2MDcxODQwMSwiZXhwIjoxNzYxMzIzMjAxLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUM0hLMkNHUFdDSEIwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJBM0VCRjM5ODM4RDc0RDI4QUJDREM4MDZDMDA5RTVBMiJ9.ADGZysjoeNVhUDWXwiuAxieyKueee-676dgJIAM9BvQ\">Bloomberg\u003c/a> recently reported that OpenAI has completed a deal to help employees sell shares in the company at a $500 billion valuation. According to Altman, ChatGPT is already used by \u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/06/sam-altman-says-chatgpt-has-hit-800m-weekly-active-users/\">800 million weekly active users\u003c/a>. With so much investment at stake, OpenAI is under pressure to grow its subscriber base. The company has also raised billions of dollars for a historic infrastructure buildout, an investment OpenAI eventually needs to pay back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is no secret that sexual content is one of the most popular and lucrative aspects of the internet,” wrote Jennifer King, a privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She noted that nearly 20 U.S. states have passed laws \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/2025/01/16/adult-website-age-verification-states\">requiring age verification for online adult content\u003c/a> sites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By openly embracing business models that allow access to adult content, mainstream providers like OpenAI will face the burden of demonstrating that they have robust methods for excluding children under 18 and potentially adults under the age of 21,” King said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI chatbots appear to be going the way of social media, said California Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-San Ramon, whose bill that would have required child safety guardrails for companion chatbots was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12059714/newsom-vetoes-most-watched-childrens-ai-bill-signs-16-others-targeting-tech\">vetoed earlier this week\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11802216\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11802216\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan says local jurisdictions need the power to stop a wildfire disaster before it starts. The assemblymember and other state lawmakers announced a bill to expand enforcement actions against PG&E and other utilities on February, 18, 2020.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1832x1374.jpg 1832w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1376x1032.jpg 1376w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1044x783.jpg 1044w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-632x474.jpg 632w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan on Feb. 18, 2020. \u003ccite>(Eli Walsh/Bay City News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“My fear is that we are on a path to creating the next, frankly, more addictive, more harmful version of social media for our children,” Bauer-Kahan told KQED. “I do not think that the addictive features in these chatbots that result in our children having relationships with a chatbot instead of their fellow humans is a positive thing, and the experts \u003ca href=\"https://cdt.org/insights/hand-in-hand-schools-embrace-of-ai-connected-to-increased-risks-to-students/\">confirm that\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI did not comment for this story, but the company has written that it’s \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/teen-safety-freedom-and-privacy/\">working\u003c/a> on an under-18 version of ChatGPT, which will redirect minors to age-appropriate content. A couple of weeks ago, OpenAI announced it’s rolling out safety features for minors, including an age prediction system and a way for \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/introducing-parental-controls/\">parents\u003c/a> to control their teens’ ChatGPT accounts. This week, OpenAI announced the formation of \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/expert-council-on-well-being-and-ai/\">an expert council \u003c/a>of mental health professionals to advise the company on well-being and AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In mid-September, the Federal Trade Commission launched an \u003ca href=\"https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/ftc-launches-inquiry-ai-chatbots-acting-companions\">inquiry\u003c/a> into seven AI chatbot developers, including xAI, Meta and OpenAI, “seeking information on how these firms measure, test, and monitor potentially negative impacts of this technology on children and teens.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the most part, a couple of dozen \u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/06/the-growing-debate-over-expanding-age-verification-laws/\">states\u003c/a> and their \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/AI%20Chatbot_FINAL%20%2844%29.pdf\">attorneys general\u003c/a> have taken the lead on regulation, enacting measures like age verification and requiring many online platforms to verify users’ identities before granting access. East Bay Assemblymember Buffy Wicks won the \u003ca href=\"https://a14.asmdc.org/press-releases/20250909-google-meta-among-tech-leaders-and-child-advocates-voicing-support-wicks\">support of major tech\u003c/a> companies for her measure, \u003ca href=\"https://a14.asmdc.org/press-releases/20250602-asm-wicks-bill-protect-kids-online-passes-assembly-bipartisan-support\">AB 1043\u003c/a>, which was just signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But any parent knows it’s easy for children to sidestep those controls, or reach out to older siblings or friends who can help them, Bauer-Kahan said. She said she sees a coincidence in the fact that the veto of her toughest bill was announced on Monday, and Altman’s announcement was posted on Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Here was a bill that was really requiring very clear, safe-by-design AI for children with real liability. And I think that was further than the industry wanted California to go. I just found the timing of the veto and then this announcement about access to erotica too coincidental not to call out,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>OpenAI isn’t the first developer to announce plans to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038154/kids-talking-ai-companion-chatbots-stanford-researchers-say-thats-bad-idea\">offer erotic content on its chatbot\u003c/a>. But the blowback against the tech company’s decision to loosen restrictions this week has been bigger, given the San Francisco-based company’s promise to ensure its AI\u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/our-structure/\"> benefits all of humanity\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most significant change will roll out in December, when OpenAI will allow more comprehensive age-gating, allowing verified adults to generate erotic content using the tool — “as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle,” OpenAI CEO Sam \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/sama/status/1978129344598827128\">Altman posted Tuesday\u003c/a> on the social media platform X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consumer advocates say OpenAI is following the lead of xAI’s Grok, which offers loosely moderated “adult” modes with minimal age verification, raising concerns that teenage users may have access to explicit content. Meta AI is believed to be following xAI’s lead as well, and its back and forth over whether it is intentionally pushing mature content to minors has \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senator-hawley-launches-probe-into-meta-ai-policies-2025-08-15/\">prompted\u003c/a> U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, to investigate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue, we wanted to get this right,” Altman wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The announcement came less than two months after the company was sued by the parents of Adam Raine, a teenager who \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12054490/child-safety-groups-demand-mental-health-guardrails-after-california-teens-suicide-using-chatgpt\">died by suicide\u003c/a> earlier this year, for ChatGPT allegedly providing him with specific advice on how to kill himself — setting off a firestorm of news coverage and comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11989313\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11989313\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/GettyImages-2155035557-scaled-e1760733694503.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The OpenAI ChatGPT logo. \u003ccite>(Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Altman delivered \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/sama/status/1978539332215681076\">a follow-up\u003c/a> on Wednesday. “We will still not allow things that cause harm to others, and we will treat users who are having mental health crises very different from users who are not … But we are not the elected moral police of the world. In the same way that society differentiates other appropriate boundaries (R-rated movies, for example), we want to do a similar thing here,” Altman wrote, although it remains unclear whether OpenAI will extend erotica to its AI voice, image and video generation tools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Comparing content moderation of chatbot interactions with movie ratings is not really useful,” wrote Irina Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. “It downplays both the nature and the extent of the problems that we’re seeing when people get more and more dependent on and influenced by chatbot ‘relationships.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mark Cuban, the entrepreneur, investor and media personality, argued much the same in a string of \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/mcuban/status/1978317936336028016\">posts on X\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t see how OpenAI can age-gate successfully enough. I’m also not sure that it can’t psychologically damage young adults. We just don’t know yet how addictive LLMs can be. Which, in my OPINION, means that parents and schools, that would otherwise want to use ChatGPT because of its current ubiquity, will decide not to use it,” Cuban wrote.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Others see the drive for paying subscribers and increased profit behind the move. As a private company, OpenAI does not release its shareholder reports publicly. However, \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-02/openai-completes-share-sale-at-record-500-billion-valuation?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2MDcxODQwMSwiZXhwIjoxNzYxMzIzMjAxLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUM0hLMkNHUFdDSEIwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJBM0VCRjM5ODM4RDc0RDI4QUJDREM4MDZDMDA5RTVBMiJ9.ADGZysjoeNVhUDWXwiuAxieyKueee-676dgJIAM9BvQ\">Bloomberg\u003c/a> recently reported that OpenAI has completed a deal to help employees sell shares in the company at a $500 billion valuation. According to Altman, ChatGPT is already used by \u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/06/sam-altman-says-chatgpt-has-hit-800m-weekly-active-users/\">800 million weekly active users\u003c/a>. With so much investment at stake, OpenAI is under pressure to grow its subscriber base. The company has also raised billions of dollars for a historic infrastructure buildout, an investment OpenAI eventually needs to pay back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is no secret that sexual content is one of the most popular and lucrative aspects of the internet,” wrote Jennifer King, a privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She noted that nearly 20 U.S. states have passed laws \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/2025/01/16/adult-website-age-verification-states\">requiring age verification for online adult content\u003c/a> sites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By openly embracing business models that allow access to adult content, mainstream providers like OpenAI will face the burden of demonstrating that they have robust methods for excluding children under 18 and potentially adults under the age of 21,” King said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI chatbots appear to be going the way of social media, said California Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-San Ramon, whose bill that would have required child safety guardrails for companion chatbots was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12059714/newsom-vetoes-most-watched-childrens-ai-bill-signs-16-others-targeting-tech\">vetoed earlier this week\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11802216\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11802216\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan says local jurisdictions need the power to stop a wildfire disaster before it starts. The assemblymember and other state lawmakers announced a bill to expand enforcement actions against PG&E and other utilities on February, 18, 2020.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1832x1374.jpg 1832w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1376x1032.jpg 1376w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1044x783.jpg 1044w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-632x474.jpg 632w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan on Feb. 18, 2020. \u003ccite>(Eli Walsh/Bay City News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“My fear is that we are on a path to creating the next, frankly, more addictive, more harmful version of social media for our children,” Bauer-Kahan told KQED. “I do not think that the addictive features in these chatbots that result in our children having relationships with a chatbot instead of their fellow humans is a positive thing, and the experts \u003ca href=\"https://cdt.org/insights/hand-in-hand-schools-embrace-of-ai-connected-to-increased-risks-to-students/\">confirm that\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI did not comment for this story, but the company has written that it’s \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/teen-safety-freedom-and-privacy/\">working\u003c/a> on an under-18 version of ChatGPT, which will redirect minors to age-appropriate content. A couple of weeks ago, OpenAI announced it’s rolling out safety features for minors, including an age prediction system and a way for \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/introducing-parental-controls/\">parents\u003c/a> to control their teens’ ChatGPT accounts. This week, OpenAI announced the formation of \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/expert-council-on-well-being-and-ai/\">an expert council \u003c/a>of mental health professionals to advise the company on well-being and AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In mid-September, the Federal Trade Commission launched an \u003ca href=\"https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/ftc-launches-inquiry-ai-chatbots-acting-companions\">inquiry\u003c/a> into seven AI chatbot developers, including xAI, Meta and OpenAI, “seeking information on how these firms measure, test, and monitor potentially negative impacts of this technology on children and teens.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the most part, a couple of dozen \u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/06/the-growing-debate-over-expanding-age-verification-laws/\">states\u003c/a> and their \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/AI%20Chatbot_FINAL%20%2844%29.pdf\">attorneys general\u003c/a> have taken the lead on regulation, enacting measures like age verification and requiring many online platforms to verify users’ identities before granting access. East Bay Assemblymember Buffy Wicks won the \u003ca href=\"https://a14.asmdc.org/press-releases/20250909-google-meta-among-tech-leaders-and-child-advocates-voicing-support-wicks\">support of major tech\u003c/a> companies for her measure, \u003ca href=\"https://a14.asmdc.org/press-releases/20250602-asm-wicks-bill-protect-kids-online-passes-assembly-bipartisan-support\">AB 1043\u003c/a>, which was just signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But any parent knows it’s easy for children to sidestep those controls, or reach out to older siblings or friends who can help them, Bauer-Kahan said. She said she sees a coincidence in the fact that the veto of her toughest bill was announced on Monday, and Altman’s announcement was posted on Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Here was a bill that was really requiring very clear, safe-by-design AI for children with real liability. And I think that was further than the industry wanted California to go. I just found the timing of the veto and then this announcement about access to erotica too coincidental not to call out,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "silicon-valley-dreams-at-risk-current-h-1bs-sidestep-trumps-100k-fee-for-now",
"title": "H-1B Workers Fear Uncertainty After Trump Imposes $100,000 Visa Petition Fee",
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"content": "\u003cp>The 31-year-old South Bay software engineer was driving home from the office a couple of weeks ago, when a friend called him with the news. President Donald Trump had \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12057742/h1b-visa-executive-order-trump-green-card-citizenship-september-19\">suddenly announced\u003c/a> his administration would be slapping a $100,000 fee on companies petitioning for H-1B visas, \u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restriction-on-entry-of-certain-nonimmigrant-workers/\">effective within a few days\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Standing behind Trump in the Oval Office, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick seemed to say the fee\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1969155493701571049\"> would apply annually\u003c/a> to all H-1B holders. Employers scrambled to alert staff abroad to return immediately, before Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/PressSec/status/1969495900478488745\"> walked the chaos back on the social media platform X\u003c/a>: “This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But given the mercurial nature of this president and the chaotic nature of this announcement, there’s no telling if or when the policy will change. Silicon Valley has been well and truly rattled, especially the hundreds of thousands of foreign professionals who\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11707255/what-silicon-valley-could-lose-if-trump-revokes-h-1b-spousal-work-visas\"> rely on the program\u003c/a> to live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You cannot buy a house. You cannot raise a family if there is an uncertainty,” said the software engineer, who requested anonymity because of fears his immigration status could be jeopardized. “I don’t want to be here till the age of 40 or 45, and then this happens, and I have to leave. I won’t be in a situation to restart my career.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He has been thinking a lot about risk and how it affects his life plan ever since he arrived in San Jose five and a half years ago on an H-1B visa sponsored by his employer. “Like they say, if you want to become an actor, move to L.A. So if you want to be a great software engineer, probably S.F. and the Valley is where you should be. And yeah, here I am, exploring it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848802\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/iStock-1130785257_1_1920x.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11848802\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/iStock-1130785257_1_1920x.jpg\" alt=\"Biometric passport with visa stamp for United States\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/iStock-1130785257_1_1920x.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/iStock-1130785257_1_1920x-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/iStock-1130785257_1_1920x-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/iStock-1130785257_1_1920x-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/iStock-1130785257_1_1920x-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An H1=B visa issued Nov. 25, 2020. Hundreds of thousands of foreign professionals rely on the program to live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area. \u003ccite>(iStock)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Truth be told, his excitement to experience Silicon Valley culture cooled soon after he arrived in the Bay Area. First came the COVID-19 pandemic, which put a crimp in the social vibe he was hoping to experience, as meetups and conferences were canceled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then came the\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11933511/mass-bay-area-tech-layoffs-thrust-thousands-of-h-1b-visa-holders-into-frantic-job-hunt\"> mass layoffs\u003c/a> in tech, starting in late 2022. He’d moved between companies since he first arrived here, but decided to return to the relatively stable retail giant that sponsored him to begin with, mindful that H-1B visa holders have\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11933923/a-frantic-job-hunt-for-h-1b-visa-holders-in-tech\"> up to 60 days\u003c/a> to find new employers to sponsor them if they’re laid off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Mumbai native applied for a green card, but knew he was unlikely to receive it\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11707158/indian-entrepreneurs-with-no-green-cards-pursue-silicon-valley-dreams-elsewhere\"> during his lifetime\u003c/a>. That said, the federal government has updated immigration policy to acknowledge the backlog. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.congress.gov/committee-report/106th-congress/senate-report/260/1\">American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act\u003c/a> allows for H-1B holders who’ve applied for a green card to \u003ca href=\"https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-7-part-e-chapter-5\">maintain their legal status\u003c/a> while they wait. Even before Donald Trump became president again in 2025, the queue for Indian nationals waiting on an employment-based green card had grown impossibly long, due to antiquated caps and increased demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when he first met his wife a couple of years ago, he made sure to ask her on the first date whether she saw herself moving back to India to take care of parents and start a family, as he did. She, too, is on an H-1B visa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They recently had friends over, and when the talk turned to the visa situation, it struck him that their social circle is filled with people who’ve already given up on the United States, before the latest upset. “They just want some certainty. They cannot predict their future and life based on a visa, which is unpredictable, and it can get revoked anytime,” he said.[aside postID=news_12057742 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2236329361-2000x1333.jpg']Since the H-1B program was introduced as part of the\u003ca href=\"https://www.congress.gov/bill/101st-congress/senate-bill/358\"> Immigration Act of 1990\u003c/a>, the visa has been the primary pathway for Silicon Valley companies to take advantage of foreign talent. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Arista Networks’ Jayshree Ullal and former eBay President Jeffrey Skoll all began their careers on H-1B visas. Meta, Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Cisco and Nvidia are the \u003ca href=\"https://jointventure.org/publications/institute-publications/329-our-shared-economy/2771-acute-local-impacts-silicon-valley-s-concentrated-exposure-to-h-1b-policy\">biggest users in the Bay Area\u003c/a> today. If the region’s employers filed the same \u003ca href=\"https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employer-data-hub\">number of new petitions as last fiscal year\u003c/a> — about 7,660 applications — the bill would come to roughly $766 million in fees alone, according to \u003ca href=\"https://jointventure.org/publications/institute-publications/329-our-shared-economy/2771-acute-local-impacts-silicon-valley-s-concentrated-exposure-to-h-1b-policy\">Joint Venture Silicon Valley\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a wide-ranging\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/blqIZGXWUpU?si=1qvLcRBkN8QzSaEq&t=2622\"> conversation last year\u003c/a> with the four chatty investor-bros who host the “All In” podcast — three of whom were born overseas — then-presidential candidate Trump promised to import more of the best and brightest. “It’s so sad when we lose people from Harvard, MIT, the greatest schools, and lesser schools that are phenomenal also,” Trump said. In his next administration, he said, any foreign student who completes even a two-year degree in the U.S. would get a green card. “You need brilliant people,” he insisted. The co-hosts or “besties,” as they call themselves, agreed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Compare that with the opening line of the White House\u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restriction-on-entry-of-certain-nonimmigrant-workers/\"> proclamation\u003c/a> two weeks ago that levied a broadside at U.S. immigration policy for the last 35 years. “The H-1B nonimmigrant visa program was created to bring temporary workers into the United States to perform additive, high-skilled functions, but it has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many of my clients are senior technology executives who have lived here for 20 years,” said Sophie Alcorn, who runs\u003ca href=\"https://www.alcorn.law/\"> Alcorn Immigration Law\u003c/a> in Mountain View and writes about immigration for\u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/07/dear-sophie-how-can-i-stay-in-the-us-if-ive-been-laid-off/\"> TechCrunch\u003c/a>. She’s talking about clients still on H-1B visas, still waiting on a green card.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alcorn called Trump’s proclamation a “huge affront” to people like her clients, who have diligently played by the complicated and confusing rules the federal government has laid out. “They have advanced degrees from U.S. colleges and universities that they forked out full tuition for. They have spouses. They have U.S. citizen children who were born here. They own homes. They volunteer in the PTA. They donate. They pay taxes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Already, the Trump administration has been challenged in court over the latest changes to the H-1B program. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Northern District of California on Friday, was brought by a coalition led by recruitment firm Global Nurse Force. The coalition argues President Trump does not have the power to unilaterally impose a hefty immigration fee without the approval of Congress, and that the sudden regulatory changes violate the Administrative Procedure Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alcorn is not surprised. “Immigration lawyers are scratching our heads. We’re trying to figure out exactly what we can do, what we cannot do,” she said. “We don’t even know how we would have our clients pay the $100,000. When will there be a temporary restraining order? Because that could just simply pause all of this for the foreseeable future,” Alcorn said.[aside postID=news_12058090 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2236330121-2000x1333.jpg']Concern about the growth of H-1B visa abuse is bipartisan, however. Employers as varied as\u003ca href=\"https://insider.govtech.com/california/news/jury-finds-discrimination-in-h-1b-visa-tech-worker-case?utm_source=chatgpt.com\"> Cognizant\u003c/a>,\u003ca href=\"https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/disney-defends-lawsuit-immigrants-replacing-894469/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\"> Disney\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/02-25-16%20Hira%20Testimony.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com\"> Southern California Edison\u003c/a> have been accused of taking advantage of foreign workers, using them as a cheaper and more compliant labor force. Cognizant was found liable in 2024 in a jury verdict.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>High-tech firms have long pushed for a relaxation of the H-1B visa cap, \u003ca href=\"https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/h1b-visa-program-fact-sheet\">85,000 annually since 2006\u003c/a>. Between fiscal years 2017 and 2022, more than 380,000 H-1B petitions were approved in the San Francisco Bay Area alone, according to the\u003ca href=\"https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/h1b-visa-program-fact-sheet/#:~:text=Since%20the%20category%20was%20created,H%2D1B%20Registration%20Process\"> American Immigration Council.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a crisis that has been 35 years in the making that a competent Congress would have addressed long ago,” John Miano, a former tech worker who became an attorney to sue over the H-1B program, wrote KQED. “The United States Congress is the only national legislature in the world that has voted to make it explicitly legal to replace citizens with foreign workers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even those who hold the H-1B visas acknowledge there’s plenty of room for improvement to guard against the established abuses of the program. The South Bay software engineer said he agrees with Trump’s intentions, but not his methods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way he tries executing it is so wrong that cannot be justified, because this process was there in place,” he said. “So you cannot just flip it overnight,” without upending the lives of millions of people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, he noted that the changes are not expected to force companies, which typically pay much of the cost of an H-1B visa, to hire more Americans. Immigration experts and visa holders alike say multinational corporations are likely to replace H-1B visa holders with more workers overseas, at one of their foreign offices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for H-1B visa holders, there’s a menu of options. Their current employer might invite them to transfer to one of those far-flung offices. They might move to a country like Canada, China\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/AmbAckermann/status/1970450472642482473\"> or Germany\u003c/a>, which are inviting distressed visa holders with open arms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The software engineer, already planning his return to India, might get a job with an American company there, maybe with his current employer, which has a significant presence in the country, albeit in cities other than his hometown. But even if he has to take a less desirable job, even if he has to take a job that pays less, he accepts that might be the cost of doing what he always planned to do eventually: return home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/abandlamudi\">\u003cem>Adhiti Bandlamudi\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The 31-year-old South Bay software engineer was driving home from the office a couple of weeks ago, when a friend called him with the news. President Donald Trump had \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12057742/h1b-visa-executive-order-trump-green-card-citizenship-september-19\">suddenly announced\u003c/a> his administration would be slapping a $100,000 fee on companies petitioning for H-1B visas, \u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restriction-on-entry-of-certain-nonimmigrant-workers/\">effective within a few days\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Standing behind Trump in the Oval Office, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick seemed to say the fee\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1969155493701571049\"> would apply annually\u003c/a> to all H-1B holders. Employers scrambled to alert staff abroad to return immediately, before Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/PressSec/status/1969495900478488745\"> walked the chaos back on the social media platform X\u003c/a>: “This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But given the mercurial nature of this president and the chaotic nature of this announcement, there’s no telling if or when the policy will change. Silicon Valley has been well and truly rattled, especially the hundreds of thousands of foreign professionals who\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11707255/what-silicon-valley-could-lose-if-trump-revokes-h-1b-spousal-work-visas\"> rely on the program\u003c/a> to live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You cannot buy a house. You cannot raise a family if there is an uncertainty,” said the software engineer, who requested anonymity because of fears his immigration status could be jeopardized. “I don’t want to be here till the age of 40 or 45, and then this happens, and I have to leave. I won’t be in a situation to restart my career.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He has been thinking a lot about risk and how it affects his life plan ever since he arrived in San Jose five and a half years ago on an H-1B visa sponsored by his employer. “Like they say, if you want to become an actor, move to L.A. So if you want to be a great software engineer, probably S.F. and the Valley is where you should be. And yeah, here I am, exploring it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11848802\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/iStock-1130785257_1_1920x.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11848802\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/iStock-1130785257_1_1920x.jpg\" alt=\"Biometric passport with visa stamp for United States\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/iStock-1130785257_1_1920x.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/iStock-1130785257_1_1920x-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/iStock-1130785257_1_1920x-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/iStock-1130785257_1_1920x-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/11/iStock-1130785257_1_1920x-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An H1=B visa issued Nov. 25, 2020. Hundreds of thousands of foreign professionals rely on the program to live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area. \u003ccite>(iStock)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Truth be told, his excitement to experience Silicon Valley culture cooled soon after he arrived in the Bay Area. First came the COVID-19 pandemic, which put a crimp in the social vibe he was hoping to experience, as meetups and conferences were canceled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then came the\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11933511/mass-bay-area-tech-layoffs-thrust-thousands-of-h-1b-visa-holders-into-frantic-job-hunt\"> mass layoffs\u003c/a> in tech, starting in late 2022. He’d moved between companies since he first arrived here, but decided to return to the relatively stable retail giant that sponsored him to begin with, mindful that H-1B visa holders have\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11933923/a-frantic-job-hunt-for-h-1b-visa-holders-in-tech\"> up to 60 days\u003c/a> to find new employers to sponsor them if they’re laid off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Mumbai native applied for a green card, but knew he was unlikely to receive it\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11707158/indian-entrepreneurs-with-no-green-cards-pursue-silicon-valley-dreams-elsewhere\"> during his lifetime\u003c/a>. That said, the federal government has updated immigration policy to acknowledge the backlog. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.congress.gov/committee-report/106th-congress/senate-report/260/1\">American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act\u003c/a> allows for H-1B holders who’ve applied for a green card to \u003ca href=\"https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-7-part-e-chapter-5\">maintain their legal status\u003c/a> while they wait. Even before Donald Trump became president again in 2025, the queue for Indian nationals waiting on an employment-based green card had grown impossibly long, due to antiquated caps and increased demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when he first met his wife a couple of years ago, he made sure to ask her on the first date whether she saw herself moving back to India to take care of parents and start a family, as he did. She, too, is on an H-1B visa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They recently had friends over, and when the talk turned to the visa situation, it struck him that their social circle is filled with people who’ve already given up on the United States, before the latest upset. “They just want some certainty. They cannot predict their future and life based on a visa, which is unpredictable, and it can get revoked anytime,” he said.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Since the H-1B program was introduced as part of the\u003ca href=\"https://www.congress.gov/bill/101st-congress/senate-bill/358\"> Immigration Act of 1990\u003c/a>, the visa has been the primary pathway for Silicon Valley companies to take advantage of foreign talent. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Arista Networks’ Jayshree Ullal and former eBay President Jeffrey Skoll all began their careers on H-1B visas. Meta, Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Cisco and Nvidia are the \u003ca href=\"https://jointventure.org/publications/institute-publications/329-our-shared-economy/2771-acute-local-impacts-silicon-valley-s-concentrated-exposure-to-h-1b-policy\">biggest users in the Bay Area\u003c/a> today. If the region’s employers filed the same \u003ca href=\"https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employer-data-hub\">number of new petitions as last fiscal year\u003c/a> — about 7,660 applications — the bill would come to roughly $766 million in fees alone, according to \u003ca href=\"https://jointventure.org/publications/institute-publications/329-our-shared-economy/2771-acute-local-impacts-silicon-valley-s-concentrated-exposure-to-h-1b-policy\">Joint Venture Silicon Valley\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a wide-ranging\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/blqIZGXWUpU?si=1qvLcRBkN8QzSaEq&t=2622\"> conversation last year\u003c/a> with the four chatty investor-bros who host the “All In” podcast — three of whom were born overseas — then-presidential candidate Trump promised to import more of the best and brightest. “It’s so sad when we lose people from Harvard, MIT, the greatest schools, and lesser schools that are phenomenal also,” Trump said. In his next administration, he said, any foreign student who completes even a two-year degree in the U.S. would get a green card. “You need brilliant people,” he insisted. The co-hosts or “besties,” as they call themselves, agreed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Compare that with the opening line of the White House\u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restriction-on-entry-of-certain-nonimmigrant-workers/\"> proclamation\u003c/a> two weeks ago that levied a broadside at U.S. immigration policy for the last 35 years. “The H-1B nonimmigrant visa program was created to bring temporary workers into the United States to perform additive, high-skilled functions, but it has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many of my clients are senior technology executives who have lived here for 20 years,” said Sophie Alcorn, who runs\u003ca href=\"https://www.alcorn.law/\"> Alcorn Immigration Law\u003c/a> in Mountain View and writes about immigration for\u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/07/dear-sophie-how-can-i-stay-in-the-us-if-ive-been-laid-off/\"> TechCrunch\u003c/a>. She’s talking about clients still on H-1B visas, still waiting on a green card.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alcorn called Trump’s proclamation a “huge affront” to people like her clients, who have diligently played by the complicated and confusing rules the federal government has laid out. “They have advanced degrees from U.S. colleges and universities that they forked out full tuition for. They have spouses. They have U.S. citizen children who were born here. They own homes. They volunteer in the PTA. They donate. They pay taxes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Already, the Trump administration has been challenged in court over the latest changes to the H-1B program. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Northern District of California on Friday, was brought by a coalition led by recruitment firm Global Nurse Force. The coalition argues President Trump does not have the power to unilaterally impose a hefty immigration fee without the approval of Congress, and that the sudden regulatory changes violate the Administrative Procedure Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alcorn is not surprised. “Immigration lawyers are scratching our heads. We’re trying to figure out exactly what we can do, what we cannot do,” she said. “We don’t even know how we would have our clients pay the $100,000. When will there be a temporary restraining order? Because that could just simply pause all of this for the foreseeable future,” Alcorn said.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Concern about the growth of H-1B visa abuse is bipartisan, however. Employers as varied as\u003ca href=\"https://insider.govtech.com/california/news/jury-finds-discrimination-in-h-1b-visa-tech-worker-case?utm_source=chatgpt.com\"> Cognizant\u003c/a>,\u003ca href=\"https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/disney-defends-lawsuit-immigrants-replacing-894469/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\"> Disney\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/02-25-16%20Hira%20Testimony.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com\"> Southern California Edison\u003c/a> have been accused of taking advantage of foreign workers, using them as a cheaper and more compliant labor force. Cognizant was found liable in 2024 in a jury verdict.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>High-tech firms have long pushed for a relaxation of the H-1B visa cap, \u003ca href=\"https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/h1b-visa-program-fact-sheet\">85,000 annually since 2006\u003c/a>. Between fiscal years 2017 and 2022, more than 380,000 H-1B petitions were approved in the San Francisco Bay Area alone, according to the\u003ca href=\"https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/h1b-visa-program-fact-sheet/#:~:text=Since%20the%20category%20was%20created,H%2D1B%20Registration%20Process\"> American Immigration Council.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a crisis that has been 35 years in the making that a competent Congress would have addressed long ago,” John Miano, a former tech worker who became an attorney to sue over the H-1B program, wrote KQED. “The United States Congress is the only national legislature in the world that has voted to make it explicitly legal to replace citizens with foreign workers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even those who hold the H-1B visas acknowledge there’s plenty of room for improvement to guard against the established abuses of the program. The South Bay software engineer said he agrees with Trump’s intentions, but not his methods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way he tries executing it is so wrong that cannot be justified, because this process was there in place,” he said. “So you cannot just flip it overnight,” without upending the lives of millions of people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, he noted that the changes are not expected to force companies, which typically pay much of the cost of an H-1B visa, to hire more Americans. Immigration experts and visa holders alike say multinational corporations are likely to replace H-1B visa holders with more workers overseas, at one of their foreign offices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for H-1B visa holders, there’s a menu of options. Their current employer might invite them to transfer to one of those far-flung offices. They might move to a country like Canada, China\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/AmbAckermann/status/1970450472642482473\"> or Germany\u003c/a>, which are inviting distressed visa holders with open arms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The software engineer, already planning his return to India, might get a job with an American company there, maybe with his current employer, which has a significant presence in the country, albeit in cities other than his hometown. But even if he has to take a less desirable job, even if he has to take a job that pays less, he accepts that might be the cost of doing what he always planned to do eventually: return home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/abandlamudi\">\u003cem>Adhiti Bandlamudi\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"order": 1
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"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
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"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
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"meta": {
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/show/on-our-watch",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
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"source": "pbs"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
"info": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Perspectives_Tile_Final.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Perspectives",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
"subscribe": {
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"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432309616/perspectives",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/perspectives/category/perspectives/feed/",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93dzIua3FlZC5vcmcvcGVyc3BlY3RpdmVzL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BlcnNwZWN0aXZlcy9mZWVkLw"
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},
"planet-money": {
"id": "planet-money",
"title": "Planet Money",
"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/sections/money/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/M4f5",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Planet-Money-p164680/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml"
}
},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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