Zoë Schiffer: Deviants and freaks, the brand new title of our podcast. And that is, I imply, simply going again to purple teaming, that is work {that a} belief and security staff sometimes does. And people groups—
Leah Feiger: We do not have these anymore.
Zoë Schiffer: They don’t seem to be as large as they was once. There’s simply not as a lot work. So yeah, I imply, it will likely be attention-grabbing to see how this performs out. Clearly inside Meta, we have been speaking to of us this week who type of met the information with a sigh. The corporate has simply laid off a big portion of the workforce. We have written about that. We have talked about that. And I checked in with folks being like, “Nicely, how’s it going now?” The hack was type of an excuse to speak to folks, see how they’re doing. They usually’re like, “I imply, as you’d count on, we’re requested to do two jobs now as a substitute of 1.” So you may think about how that is enjoying out.
Brian Barrett: I additionally, we had been speaking about AI regulation earlier and all this emphasis on nationwide safety and these high-level issues, however once more, not as a lot on consumer-facing merchandise, which might be when you had say some kind of bureau that sorted shopper funds and defending that, that might be useful to have on this second as nicely. We used to have a type of. Technically, I suppose we nonetheless do. Not likely. So all of this broader deregulation is coming at this second when the instruments that had been as soon as out there will not be. These new instruments are very fallible. We will see much more of this.
Leah Feiger: Can I convey us to a subject that has nothing to do with AI, guys?
Brian Barrett: Please.
Zoë Schiffer: Wow. I did not know one existed, however sure, go off, queen.
Brian Barrett: Additionally, I feel we will most likely attempt to discover a technique to tie it again in.
Zoë Schiffer: We will. We will.
Leah Feiger: No, completely not. Nicely, OK. This story is one thing that now we have been fascinated by, overlaying, for a very long time, however it’s all a few DOGE whistleblower who just filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk. This all actually began final yr. On April 14, 2025, Dan Berulis, an IT staffer on the Nationwide Labor Relations Board, the NLRB, filed a whistleblower criticism with an enormous declare. He mentioned that DOGE had compromised the company’s knowledge and seemed to be exfiltrating it out of the NLRB.
Archival audio: A whistleblower is coming ahead with claims that DOGE not solely accessed knowledge from his company but additionally took a considerable quantity of delicate knowledge with them. In accordance with a disclosure shared with Congress, “Round 10 gigabytes of knowledge, the equal of a full stack of encyclopedia is value if somebody printed these information as exhausting copy paperwork.”
Leah Feiger: This was an enormous declare, particularly similtaneously you guys very a lot keep in mind, DOGE groups had been firing federal staff and accessing delicate knowledge throughout the nation. We had been within the top of this final yr in April. Berulis went public in an NPR article. His title was hooked up to it, and he claimed a threatening be aware had been taped to his door, and he was already scared about talking out. Quick-forward slightly bit, Berulis has now filed a defamation lawsuit in a DC courtroom in opposition to Elon Musk. He mentioned that Musk made him a goal of additional violence by falsely stating that Berulis’ whistleblower declare in opposition to DOGE was pretend. It is a actually intense declare for a wide range of causes, and what this all actually harkens again to is Musk final yr resharing an X submit from a right-wing influencer claiming that DOGE had been cleared and that this whistleblower’s testimony was pretend principally. After that occurred—
