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Get the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash vox. netsuite.com slash vox. Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Eli Patel, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today, I'm talking with Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat and the senior senator from Oregon.
He's been in the Senate for almost 30 years, which makes him one of the longest serving members of the institution. He's also deeply involved in tech policy. In fact, Senator Wyden co-authored Section 230 in 1996. That's the law that says tech platforms like YouTube and TikTok and Facebook aren't generally liable for what their users post on them. The law that basically allows the modern social media landscape we have today to even exist.
Now, we actually scheduled this interview with Senator Wyden a while ago. He's got a new book out called It Takes Chutzpah, How to Fight Fearlessly for Progressive Change, and he was going to come on and talk about that book. But recent events made it vastly more important to talk about the state of our federal government.
Specifically, what Elon Musk and Doge are doing as they seize power in various federal agencies. Doge has some level of access to the Treasury Department, and now it has its sights set on the Labor and Education Departments as well.
Some agencies have been completely closed, and others have had their funding frozen, with workers locked out and told to resign or put on leave, all while lawsuits are being filed and courts are telling the administration to hold on. It is utter chaos, and it is not slowing down. So I asked Senator Wyden as bluntly as I could. What the fuck is going on? And can Congress and the courts even keep up with it? And the senator did not mince words here. He said it looks like a coup.
You'll hear us get into the mechanisms that Elon Musk has used to seize power in the government, and why it feels like attempts to slow it down feel so flat-footed. We also talked about whether you can trust anything these people say. Wyden basically called bullshit on virtually every promise and declaration coming out of Doge, especially everything they're saying about how much access its staffers have to sensitive data and systems.
It's the story of the moment, and we dove into it. But if not for Doge and its associated chaos, the big tech policy story right now would be TikTok. which was legally banned by an act of Congress upheld by the Supreme Court, but enforcement of that ban was paused for 75 days by Donald Trump so the company could figure out how to sell itself. Right now, it's just an illegal gray area, and that clock is ticking.
So I asked Senator Wyden, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, what's going on with that ban? And if President Trump can really just keep delaying enforcement of the law, which is also not a great legal situation.
The senator seems to think a deal can get done, and I did my best to get any hints about who might buy it. There's a lot more in this one, including some discussion of our communication networks themselves and Trump's newly censorious FCC, but I think it's probably best to just get into it. If you pay attention, you'll notice that Senator Wyden manages to seamlessly plug his book throughout this episode. Okay, Senator Ron Wyden, here we go.
Senator Ron Wyden, welcome to Decoder. Hey, thanks for having me again. Thank you for being on. There's an awful lot to talk about, Senator. You have a new book. The government is having an escalating series of catastrophes. There's TikTok to talk about. It's still banned, but unbanned in a liminal state. I want to ask you about that. I was listening to our audience. I was talking to our staff.
Can I ask you the first question in just the bluntest way that I can think of? Sure. Can I have your permission for that? Yeah. Permission granted. Bluntness. All right. Senator, what the fuck is going on? That is... the question of the hour, and it is almost impossible to divine an answer because it moves from minute to minute. Donald Trump...
essentially governs by whim. And he gets up and out of nowhere, he will suddenly put our whole economy in play with a really colossally stupid approach on tariffs. Tariffs, he has lied about nonstop to the American people for well over a year. He always tells them that foreigners will pay the tariff. That's factually wrong. all of the people who are listening to your program the fans of the good work you all do they pay the tariffs and so this weekend was just
perpetual bedlam, and foreign leaders were basically laughing at us. They were making fake promises. They knew that Trump just wanted to be able to get some kind of headline. I'm sure we'll talk about other aspects of the bizarre nature of the times, but you probably know that last Friday... I blew the whistle as a result of getting input from whistleblowers that the Secretary of Treasury had signed off on giving Elon Musk.
access to the federal payments program, which has enormous implications for hacking and abuse and violations of privacy, and the list could go on and on. That's just a little bit of the last few days. Let's start there. Again, just hearing from our audience, our listeners and our readers of The Verge, there is a sense that what is happening right now is Donald Trump is sitting in the White House.
signing executive orders that may or may not be legal, may or may not have impact, may or may not mean anything at all, talking about building hotels in Gaza. And that is all a distraction. from Elon Musk and Doge taking over the government, right? We're all the way, is this a coup? I really want to start there. Is that where you're at? Do you think that there's a coup going on? I'm very troubled.
by the type of policies that they are pursuing that when you add them up, looks and feels like a coup. And the reality is we are... working very hard to derail them at various steps. And let me give you a couple of examples. Last week, Donald Trump basically undertook a kind of freeze of the budget. And he wanted to do it unilaterally. And there was a lot of back and forth about what the authority might possibly be. We knew there wasn't any, but we heard him out. And then we went to court.
And we won, and he had to drop it. And let me give you a little small snapshot of the kind of work I do. My background is working with senior citizens. I was the director of the Grey Panthers for about seven years before I got elected to Congress. So during the freeze... I found out that the Medicaid portals which they have in all of the states were essentially
off. They weren't available for the senior citizens and the disabled to get information about their medicine and nursing homes and the like. And so I put it up online. Immediately, I said whistleblowers, which was all truthful, had told me about the tremendous problems that were being caused for the vulnerable and seniors and the like, and that it was important.
for citizens to get in touch with their elected officials and their community groups and their organizations and talk about why this was so unfair. Nobody voted to cause harm and discomfort. to seniors and the disabled. And there was this outpouring of calls and letters and the like. And within about three hours, the Trump people were backpedaling. And by late at night, they said it'll all be fixed the next day. Now, this is just a small snapshot of what went on one day. But people mobilized.
The whistleblowers that I work with, particularly on senior citizens' issues, came through, and this was something where... Trump and Musk were stopped cold as they tried to abuse the federal budget. Small snapshot, but it's the kind of thing that I try to do. And if I were to embrace it. in a sentence, apropos of what the hell is going on here, is Trump and Musk are ignoring the checks and balances that are the foundation of our republic.
And for all practical purposes, I'd call that a coup. When you think about the mechanism that you just laid out, right, you heard about something that was happening that was bad because of a policy that was hastily rolled out. You mobilized some attention.
there was a swarm of feedback, negative feedback for the policy, and then eventually the administration backed down. Maybe it's fixed, maybe it's not, right? This is an open question. I know in your state, like Head Start programs are still being unfunded, right? I will tell you on this point. We check every day to make sure that the seniors can get their Medicaid and their medicine and access to nursing home information. But your general point is correct.
Is there still a flood of abuses in a whole variety of programs across the government? Can that mechanism of I need to blow the whistle and then there's a flood of outrage and maybe that'll fix it or maybe we'll file a lawsuit in our courts. We'll fix it. Can that keep up with the pace and the scale of just the chaos that's happening right now? We're going to use every possible tool. Court actions, legislative actions, whistleblowers, the bully pulpit. We're going to use it all. We are still...
trying to find our way through the array of remedies that you have. My wife agreed to marry me. She said, aren't a real lawyer. You worked with the Grey Panthers and so I'll marry you because you're not a real lawyer. But we're now looking through all of the legal tools to make sure that we can protect our rights. But it is not going to be, you know, any.
walk in the park. This is in some of these areas, like the federal payments, nobody ever even thought of doing what Trump is doing, which is why it's so important that we stop him. Let's talk about that for a second. Do you know how much access Elon Musk has to the overall federal government right now? Has that been quantified for you? Or is it just ever increasing because it's chaos? We believe it is ever increasing. We believe it is ever increasing because to a great extent.
Mr. Musk tells us that it is increasing. There was a big story that there really wasn't much being done, just general information kind of thing. And I got asked by the press about it late last night, and I said, you've got to be kidding me. just look at all the stuff that he claims he's doing. The first thing we went after was a charity. It didn't have anything to do with waste and fraud and abuse. So I believe that we will move. quickly in the days ahead to build more.
tools for a legal strike approach. And we're talking about that as members of the Democratic Caucus. And I've been tasked particularly with promoting privacy. for those who would be concerned that their data would be peddled hither and yon in the whole payments system.
I can tell you that from a privacy standpoint, giving out people's home addresses and the like, this will be a privacy horror show. There's a big question right now over whether Musk and his team's access to that system is read-only. or if they have the ability to write code. They have said it's read-only. There's some reporting that says they have the ability to write code. Do you know if it's read-only? I believe...
that this is data that's being abused now. Part of this is also semantics, and I'm not taking anything off the table in terms of what they're doing. How would you or Congress? I mean, they can write code. There's no question about that. So you think this argument over whether or not it's read-only is a semantic distraction? They have full access to the system. Yes, correct. Oh, there is no question that this...
description is designed to lull people into thinking what Elon Musk is not what he tells people he's doing. I mean, he tells people that he is out doing all these things, and then they put out these, you know. cover-up stories about you know how he's not really doing it do you think again we have a very technical audience they're very worried that we have increased
the surface area for cyber attacks, right? By having people who are unvetted writing code. No question about it. Let me save you some time. No question about it. Have you heard this from our intelligence agencies? Is this something Congress is worried about? I am on the Intelligence Committee, and so I can't say anything about that.
Okay. Is the Trump administration broadly being responsive to these concerns? Because we are at risk of cyber attack is a pretty bipartisan concern. No, the Trump people aren't telling us anything about anything. Do you think they know what Elon is doing fully? It's not completely clear to me that...
You asked me about, does Trump just sit in the office and issue executive orders? I think that's largely what's going on. I'm sure they have some conversations, but I don't get the feeling that there are any checks and balances on Elon, that's for sure. There's a weird gap in every Trump administration here in Trump 2.0. I think it's even weirder where Republican officials will not criticize the president in public. Are they?
understanding or aware of the scale of the problem in private when you talk to them? They're saying very little in the consideration of the Robert Kennedy. nomination yesterday. I brought up, for example, our committee, the Senate Finance Committee, had passed a bipartisan measure to rein in these PBMs, the pharmaceutical benefit managers, who are ripping off seniors and taxpayers.
people of all ages, in the purchase of medicine. And I pointed out that those programs, Medicare and Medicaid, are under the jurisdiction of our committee and are subject to the kind of abuses that could happen with Musk. on the federal payments. And they looked up. It was clear that, you know, what I said was registering them. And I said, this is important. This is something that all of you have voted for.
But they're not speaking out. In fact, yesterday, apparently, on the Republican side, there was some kind of Republican sort of show trial kind of thing where they basically all lined up and said nothing to see here. Do you think that holds? This is one, I think, the question that I have. Let me put it this way. There's no way it's going to be something they can just continue to stonewall. And let me give you an example. I announced.
five days ago that the secretary of treasury had given the keys to the to the kingdom so so to speak yesterday outside the Treasury Department, where thousands and thousands of Americans speaking out against these practices. Something like 30 members of Congress addressed this, making it clear that we were going to stay at it.
until we secured the protections that our citizens deserve. That happened all within five days. And I will tell you, I give great credit to the whistleblowers because, again, the people who told us specifically... because we heard a rumor that there was some activity going on with the treasury payments. The whistleblowers were the ones who specifically told me that Besant had signed off on giving the keys to Musk.
That set of whistleblowers, largely the federal workforce, which is appalled. They're filing their own actions from their unions as private citizens, just worker protection lawsuits. They've also all been told to quit their jobs. They've received these letters that say you should resign. Elon famously used a fork in the road, which is a letter he sent when he took over Twitter.
That may or may not be legal. There's some big questions around that. Have you been hearing from that constituency? Yeah, they'd like some answers about it. I mean, you know, you can hear. The headline, oh, you know, we'll buy you out. We'll give you all these opportunities to make a transition. But, you know, most of the experience that the.
federal workforce has had with Donald Trump and it goes to the first administration and, you know, now has not been exactly confidence building. So they'd like more details about how they and their families would be affected. not just their current and future income, but making sure that their benefits that they've accrued get treated fairly. What advice would you give to those workers that have received this offer to quit? Proceed with great caution.
Do you think that's a farce as well? Do you think there's just a cover for mass layoffs? Is that something you're worried about? Yeah. I mean, I don't trust any of this stuff. I don't want to end up sounding like the old-fashioned version of a broken record. But I don't trust any of this stuff.
You know, so often, you know, you go to these meetings and they all act like they're on the level and then they go and do everything they want. That was the, you know, the first administration. So I don't trust any of this. And when it sounds. appealing, and then you can't get any specific answers, that ought to be a wake-up call to make sure that you check. limits his ability to make mass layoffs. So that's a big part of the debate, too. We need to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
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All lowercase. That's shopify.com slash decoder to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash decoder. The Republicans have been saying lots of things. Just yesterday, their leader said he wants to own Gaza? On Monday, the Secretary of State said an entire federal agency was insubordinate. USAID in particular, they refused to tell us anything. We won't tell you what the money's going to, where the money's for, who has it. Over the weekend, Vice President Elon Musk, the richest
man on earth tweeted about the same agency that, you know, gives money to the poorest people on earth. We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. did that instead. But what have the Democrats been saying? People are aroused. I haven't seen people so aroused in a very, very long time. Huh. That's a weird way to put it, Senator. We're going to ask what exactly is the Democrats' strategy to push back on Republicans on Today Explained?
We're back with Senator Ron Wyden discussing Elon Musk's doge and what's happening right now in the federal government. Before the break, we were talking about some of the panic and confusion within federal agencies. So I wanted to know, what can actually be done about any of this? And how is a senator or Congress planning to hold Elon and his associates accountable?
We're talking on a Wednesday. We usually publish to coders on Mondays. Usually that's fine, right? There's two business days between us talking to me, talking to a politician and a publish. Usually not a lot happens. You can be sure that a lot's going to happen tomorrow, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Tomorrow, we have a hearing on international trade. I described some of the bizarre practices that they pursued in this.
space where they keep saying the foreigners are going to pay the tariffs and it's going to be your listeners instead. So you bet, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, there's no days off here on the days of... The Trump whims, as I call them. Well, the specific question I had there is Elon is tweeting, I work on the weekends when the other team is not in the field. The other team that he's describing is the federal workforce. So that is already problematic.
Congress, you know, goes into recess. People leave town on the weekends. Are you and the Democrats ready to be here all weekend to see what he's up to at night? Yeah, they're making a big deal. out of saying they want to work around the clock. And, you know, look, you know, last weekend I told you that I have this book, It Takes Chutzpah, part of the lessons in It Takes Chutzpah I've been using all week to try to tackle. the Trump administration, and I was flying.
across the country and taken red eyes and made sure I didn't miss a minute in the effort to blow the whistle. That was what we were doing late on Friday night in terms of Musk being given the keys to the Treasury. Treasury payments, and I know the Republicans are leaving town this weekend, so they managed to find ways to set an agenda that's favorable to them.
Has the Doge team been responsible to you or other Democrats at all throughout this period? Absolutely not. I know of no one who's being briefed on this on the Democratic side consistently. At all, really. I guess that would be a better way to say it. Is there a way for you to get that insight as a member of Congress? We're continuing, for example, to follow up with individuals who used to work
at the treasury and tap them for their knowledge. And that's been very helpful. And obviously I can't get into that. Okay. Are you planning to find a way to hold hearings on any of the committees you're on or call Elon as a witness on any of the committees you're on? We're going to use every tool. to excavate the information that the American people deserve. This is one of the most important issues I've tackled in my time in public service. It actually is one of the first rules of chutzpah.
that I spell out in the book where it says, if you want to make a difference, you got to make some noise. We're making plenty of noise right now. We just got to keep following through until we get the job done. One of the weirder aspects of Elon Musk in all of this is that he owns a communications platform, the preferred communication platform of...
many members of government. Is that a problem that he can command attention, that he can run that algorithm any way he wishes? Do you think you have to go somewhere else? There are certainly questions with respect to how he runs his operations. And then there's certainly some questions involving China as well. And we'll have some more to say about that before long. You are famously one of the authors of Section 230, which protects service providers from...
liability for the content their users post. Elon is the service provider. He's also the user that is posting the content. Do you have any newer thoughts about Section 230 and all this mix? Do you think it's doing the job the way it's intended for it to be working? You know, look, I've always felt and I've said this on your show, the big guys of which Elon is about the biggest.
always have the biggest checking account to be able to buy what they want. I mean, Elon Musk just bought a presidential campaign. You know, he basically was the big giver. Section 230, as you and I have talked about, is all about making sure there's a voice for the little guy, the Me Too, the Black Lives Matter, the people who probably couldn't get a message out. without what 230 involves. So I think that...
230 continues to be an immensely valuable tool for the person who doesn't have a political action committee, doesn't have power, doesn't have a deep checkbook. And, you know, we're going to have a problem reining in the Elon Musks no matter. what because they can buy the kind of government they want, at least until we get rid of things like Citizens United.
The other rich guy in the mix this time is Mark Zuckerberg, also owns several large communications platforms, notably changing his moderation standards to favor the desires that the Trump administration. He's allowing more hate speech, particularly against trans people on his platform.
That's something that 230 protects, right? The platforms can moderate however they want. Ideally, you have some competition for moderation standards to push and pull and give people places to go. But we don't really see that today, right? We see sort of a herd mentality.
Yeah, and there's some competition. Anybody can sue Elon right now. He posts lies himself. 230 protects Elon's competitors against Trump's FCC. There are protections, but the bottom line is... that when you have somebody as rich as Musk, who literally bought a presidential campaign, you've got to use every tool you got, and a lot of them are not 230.
There's another platform in the mix that seemed very relevant during the presidential campaign, obviously TikTok. It was banned. The law passed. The Supreme Court upheld it. Trump paused enforcement of it. Do you think that Trump's enforcement pause on TikTok is legal? Is that just him pushing his authority some more? I don't think it's legal. But here's here's what I think this debate is all about. OK.
The reality is from day one, unlike Donald Trump, I had the same position. You know, Donald Trump was against it. Now he's for it. I always said it would be a good thing. to have an American company run it and have them tightly vetted. And that would, for example, have limited Steve Mnuchin and others who talked about, you know, getting access to it. I'm still in favor of that as a policy issue.
The question now is what the courts are going to say, given the fact there's been an act of Congress. But I have not changed my preference once since the very beginning. What were the problems with TikTok?
under by dance that required that original banner cell law well the issue was and i'm on the intelligence committee is the closeness to the chinese government and that that was a national national security issue There's a lot of young people today who would say, well, sure, but then Elon Musk is going to buy it and we see what he did to X. And that is as much of a national security problem today as the Chinese government owning the algorithm.
Musk could not pass the Ron Wyden test because you would have to have a reputable American buyer who'd been thoroughly vetted. And I don't think Musk, with all his China connections and all that, could pass the test that I've described. Have you heard about any buyers for TikTok so far? Rumors, but nothing that I'm going to splay out in front of.
the national radio audience, plenty of neighbors. But I mean, the reality is Trump, as he usually does, just governs by whim. He starts off by saying, you know.
TikTok is bad. Then he learns, heaven forbid, that there are a bunch of young people who like it. And suddenly he's trying all of these exotic ways to deal with it. I said from the very beginning that my first choice was to have an American buyer who... could pass a rigorous betting to show that they were independent and would meet the criteria of the public interest standards.
I don't think Trump's interested much in that either. In fact, if you talk about it, you really think that at some point maybe he's just going to figure out a way to hotwire a deal where he sells TikTok in some way. to musk directly and if he does that'd be about the most corrupt example i could find that vetting process right that's not contemplated in the bill right it's an interagency process that yeah this this this would take extra work
in order to lock it in place. But that's been my position from the beginning. The reason I'm just going to ask this again, the reason I'm focused on this is I see a lot of danger of... algorithmic ownership right you you see how musk has managed to distort the conversation at x because he owns that algorithm i don't know how
Changing the content moderation standards on Facebook and Instagram will play out. But my expectation is a lot of minority and queer creators are going to face a lot more harassment on those platforms because the rules have been changed. The algorithm will allow more things to happen. If the danger of TikTok is the algorithm is owned by somebody. Hey, can I just make one point that I think I may have misstepped on? I am not for the ban.
I am for finding a way to get this right with an American buyer. Right. I guess my question is, do you think if the danger with China requiring a divestiture was Chinese ownership of the algorithm, which would run counter to U.S. interests? Do you think that having some amount of algorithmic transparency or privacy protections would solve that problem with respect to American buyers as well? Because that's...
From our audience, what I hear is all you really need is algorithmic transparency. And then China should be able to do whatever it wants. And not only do you need algorithm transparency, you got a guy who's authored a bill that moves in that direction called the Algorithmic Accountability Act, my legislation. Yeah.
And is that under a Trump administration with this Congress? Do you think that will go anywhere? We'll see. You know, a lot of people are understanding that, you know, algorithms are pretty complicated. But when you're talking about protecting people's education and health care and job, they get interested. Sure. And if we hit this date, right, Trump gave 75 days, which is just a number he apparently made up, and we hit the 75 days and he says, I'm going to extend it again.
Do you think there will be litigation at that point about whether the law is actually in effect? Hard to say. Would you support that? Right. We can't just keep indefinitely postponed enforcement of the law. Well, I think I've described the path to get this done and I'm going to keep working for that. Okay. What do you say to TikTok creators right now who don't know if their businesses will last another 50 days?
I tell them I'm busting my chops to get them something resembling an American buyer who's been carefully vetted and protects their interests and all American interests. Do you think Microsoft is a good buyer? For the record, for the audio listener, Senator Wyden looked away first before he began to answer that question. Yeah. Put me down is pretty dubious, but we'll see. All right. What about Oracle? No.
All right. What about Frank McCourt's Project Liberty? No. No across the board. Right. I think we ought to bag it on these kind of folks. I'm just curious. Okay. Amazon. I'm just not going to get into a lineup evaluation batter by batter. I mean, in the tech world, this is everyone's parlor game beyond does Elon run the government. Those are the two things everyone talks about at the parties I go to. So I'm just curious. It has to get done. The clock is running out.
I think we got pretty far down the road in terms of Elon running the government and what I'm going to try to do to stop him. We probably have more ways to go in terms of TikTok, but I think I've spelled out what I think ought to be done. And at least it's consistent from day one.
Last question on TikTok, and I promise I'll move on to the FCC because I'm very curious for your opinion there as well. The clock is running, right? There's only 50, 60 more days tops. Do you think a deal can be made in time? Yeah, but you really are going to have to hustle to get the right kind of parties and go through the process. But yes, it's doable. We need to take another quick break. We'll be right back.
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Like, subscribe, follow, all that good stuff. Let's get started. We're back with Senator Ron Wyden discussing online speech, Section 230, and what it means that Trump's new FCC chair is starting to pose a serious risk to the First Amendment. Let's talk about the FCC. Again, you are a First Amendment advocate. You have said to me on this show to...
Other people on other shows that Section 230, which you co-authored, is really about the First Amendment. And most people's problems with 230 are really about First Amendment protected speech. The First Amendment, from my point of view, is under the greatest... just full frontal attack that I have ever encountered as a journalist. Could not agree more. It is bizarre to me. And it's particularly bizarre because it's wrapped up in the language of free speech.
In particular, that language comes from the new FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, who is attacking CBS, NBC, ABC radio stations now. about how they're using their spectrum and threatening to take their spectrum away. Is there anything Congress, is Congress paying attention to this? It feels like a sideshow, but to me, this is the most overt government speech regulation I've ever seen. It's not getting a lot of attention in Congress, but I'm doing everything I can to lighten it.
the place up around it because I share your view that a big chunk of what the Trump crowd in the far right want to do is act in the name of free speech. They make all these proclamations about how they're free. speech, but basically what they're trying to do is everything possible to deny the voices that they don't agree with. Do you, have you?
spoken to the chairman about the FCC? I mean, he put out a blog post today saying that he's worried about TV commercials that are too loud, which sounds like it's straight out of the 80s. And at the same time, he's opening inquiries to CBS News. Have you spoken to him? Have you pushed on him? I have not since his appointment, but it's very predictable. They basically find something which they try to make sound.
relevant, but it is completely irrelevant to the big question. And that makes it less likely the public's going to pick up on the big question. And that's why whenever I have a chance to, I've had 1100. three town hall meetings and you can read about them and it takes chutzpah and you know they they're open to all and i don't give any speeches at all i just show up and say for the next 90 minutes you can say your piece ask me any kind of kind of question I mean, it is to me, my.
kind of vision of the First Amendment. My dad was a journalist and an author. Right next to me are one of his books, for example, on the Bay of Pigs with a picture of Fidel Castro next to my dad on the book. And the caption is, Peter Wyden knows me. more about it than we do coming from Castro. So I'm a journalist kid. And I think the founding fathers who said that a free press was more important than government, they got it right. And I believe that.
Normally, you would see these big companies look at an FCC, particularly a 2025 FCC, complaining about news distortion over their broadcast spectrum. And they would just bat it away, right? They would send the lawyers. The lawyers would fight. They would bat it away. Metta was sued by Trump himself for banning.
Trump, while Trump was president, saying that was somehow a state action. Very confusing. Metta settled this case and agreed to pay Trump $25 million for this library. CBS, it seems like they're going to end up settling the 60 Minutes case. Hey, let me give you... But I'm just asking, like, the big companies are caving on the First Amendment. They're the ones who should be fighting. They are caving like crazy. And nobody has caved more than Mark Zuckerberg.
So Mark Zuckerberg goes to Mar-a-Lago and he tells Trump what he wants to hear. There aren't going to be any fact checkers. Okay, Donald, just what you wanted. No fact checkers. He scores some points with... With Trump, my guess is you're going to have a lot of the other big players seeing how this is successful for Zuckerberg. They're going to go down to Mar-a-Lago as well, look for favors also. And in the process, What's going to happen is we're going to reconsolidate.
big communications and have even fewer small voices than we had before the internet came into being. We ought to be protecting those small voices and what Zuckerberg is now part of doing. is just doing more to help the big voices and, in effect, push the little guys out of communications. That visit by Zuckerberg. to Mar-a-Lago and what he did with the fact-checkers was a god-awful thing to do for the future of communications.
But if Zuckerberg caves and Disney caves and Sherry Redstone caves because she wants to sell Paramount to Skydance and she rolls in the CBS lawsuit and no one shows up in court and says, actually, these threats violate the First Amendment. Don't we just lose the First Amendment? Doesn't the pressure just work? How do you push back? We'll have to find ways to...
to crank up the pressure, and I'm going to do that. You have people like EFF, for example, electronic frontier folks might step in, other kinds of groups. ACLU, EFF, Ron Whiten, those are your three. Sign me up. The argument that I've heard from the other side, I'm not saying I agree with you, but I've heard it and I understand where it comes from.
is that these are mercenary moves, that meta spending its time and energy fighting a first-man loss instead of just paying the money runs the risk of them losing. It is worse for Metta to roll into courts, especially roll all the way up to the Supreme Court, which is 6-3 conservative, and lose a First Amendment lawsuit than to just pay the money and leave the law effectively where it is, even if the norms change. Do you buy that argument? No. I think that...
Both of them are harmful. And I think Zuckerberg is looking at buying whatever influence he possibly can because he sees it works. You know, it's not that complicated on this. Write big checks and you get influence. with Trump. Brendan Carr is now targeting NPR and PBS. He's saying that technically they're running ads by asking for viewer support, even though they're publicly funded, and that he should look into their content.
Is there a way for us to try to protect NPR or PBS? Well, the best way to do it is by... and we'll see if any of these rural, you know, Republicans whose farmers really like those services in the morning are going to stand up for them. I mean, this is, you know, really. What we're describing is continued good business for the big guys, and they're doing all the things possible to run out their competition, and that includes virtually everything. You can see I'm trying to find new ways.
to get voices for people who don't have power and cloud have joined with a Republican trying to get more streaming services. So we're busy looking for all the options, you know, getting C-SPAN out and streaming. You're talking about rural farmers. You spoke earlier in the show about the outcry from people and Republicans backing down. Are you seeing that?
That policy hit on some of these Republican constituents actually driving change. Are you are you able to reach those populations? I think a lot of people are worried that they're fully captured by whatever TikTok right wing influencer they're going to see. It's very early. I gave you some examples where we had some effect, but let me give you the bottom line here. I think very rarely.
Does political change start in Washington, D.C., and then trickle down? I believe it's almost always in exactly the opposite direction. When people at home... get concerned about access to communications they care about and whether they're getting plobbered by tariffs and the like. Then they go to their elected officials. They'll see them in a grocery store. They'll see them at the gas station. They'll see them someplace and say, what the hell are you doing?
and clobbered on that. And you end up making change. It's a kind of grassroots juggernaut setting in that really changes things. probably as much as any legislator used that, you know, the way we were the architect of the Pippa Sopa movement when all the power, all the money was out trying to redesign the internet for the, you know, the big guys. You know, I organized a lot of grassroots groups.
and we set a date for a vote, Harry Reid did, and suddenly 15 million texts and emails came in and we beat all the money. So the point really is, you're saying, do you see all of this happening yet? When I was with the activists yesterday at the Treasury talking about trying to rein in Musk, I said, This is really stunning. This is less than five full days after I blew the whistle on the problem. And look, we got thousands of people on the streets and 30 legislators.
Put Me Down is continuing to believe that citizens who mobilize can make a difference. That's what I describe in the book. The book, for example, gives 12 rules, runs 12 rules of chutzpah. that describe how not just people are looking at past examples, but essentially how you can use the rules that are outlined in the book.
to make a difference. That was the first rule that we used yesterday was, you know, fight bad things, make a difference in terms of speaking out for good things, and above all, make noise. The book is really about pushing for progressive political change. You have a history of doing that. I think the question that is just on everyone's mind right now is when the other side doesn't seem to care.
And you can't reach their constituents because they own the media platforms. And their algorithms are driving all kinds of views that honestly just dismiss any concerns or turn... Democrats or any opposition at all into cartoon characters, how do you drive that kind of change, that grassroots change? Because you have a lot of people who voted against their own interests here, right? They voted for cheaper
egg prices, and they're getting Trump saying they'll understand when tariffs drive prices up. Yeah, but they're also catching up here in a couple of weeks. I mean, Musk's unpopularity numbers are really low. They're finding out when Donald Trump tells them, I am going to lower. the prices of your groceries. He said that point blank in the grocery store. And then he puts up a white flag of surrender a couple of weeks later and says, nope, can't do anything about it.
We're going to build between now and 2026. Every single day, it's not sitting around and waiting. Every single day, as many wins on these issues, on matters people care about. When we did that during the first term, at the midterm, we gained a few seats and then... Two years later, we beat them all together. So this is not going to be an easy walk in the park. But I've been part of efforts where I was able to beat.
incredible odds, which is what chutzpah is about. Chutzpah is being about bold and taking on big odds and reaching out and finding people from all points of view. That's what we're going to be doing. Can you do that when you don't own the communications networks? I mean, just to boil the question down, right? Elon Musk owns Starlink in a world without net neutrality. I'm talking to you. And you guys get the message. You guys get the message out.
guy's working to make these changes that we're talking about. He's got a book that tells you how you can do more of it. There you go. I hate to hammer on it, but you can see the bigger picture, which is you have a Brennan car at the FCC. putting pressure on legacy broadcast media you have a mark zuckerberg and uh an elon musk
telling their algorithms what to do and what kind of media to disseminate and what's acceptable speech and not. You have a TikTok sale in the offing that could go to a Trump loyalist. Is there an alternative media? Do you like do you look at Blue Sky and say, OK, decentralized social media will provide a necessary check?
I'm on Blue Sky. I love it. But, I mean, if you want somebody who's just going to say, all I'm going to do all day is hang crepe because it's hopeless, I'm the wrong guy. I'm a 29-year-old Jewish kid who wanted to play in the NBA. That was a ridiculous idea. I got a scholarship, but I couldn't get that dream. And I ended up being one of the youngest people getting elected to Congress by beating an incumbent. Guess who else did that not very long ago? AOC, again, beating incredibly...
So, you know, you're talking about ways in which you can really make a difference and beat the odds. Frankly, it takes a lot of hutzpah to do it because people say it's hard to beat the powerful and the money, but I just gave you some examples of doing it. There's a big split right now in the tech community. You have a lot of regular workers at the big tech companies who are horrified at what's happening. And then you have their bosses, who all showed up and sat.
at the inauguration and are trying to get various things in the Trump administration. As you said, I think they realize they can just write checks and get what they want. But their interests are not aligned. I don't think Tim Cook's interests and Mark Zuckerberg's interests are aligned. I don't even think they like each other. I don't know if Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk like each other. I think they're pretty ferociously competitive about their rockets.
general cowboy demeanors. So it goes. Is that a split that you see that can be exploited for political gain here, that the interests of tech, which now has taken over, are not actually aligned? If you look at the chutzpah rule, you say you'll work with anybody, regardless of political philosophy.
work with them in order to get the public interest. And I think that if Trump equals chaos, we got more to work with than people think. Have you heard from that constituency at all from the big tech companies? What I have heard from their executives.
very directly, is that they thought the Biden administration hated them, that they could not work with Biden at all. They couldn't even get the meetings they needed or their people couldn't get the meetings with the right people. And what they generally got was, we're going to break you up. And then there were a lot of lawsuits aimed at breaking them up. What you might still get out of the Trump administration is we'll break you up, but you might be able to buy your way out of it. Right. Let me.
Let me tell you what I think a bunch of these big tech companies are saying. Yes, they didn't like the policies of the Biden administration, but they're seeing more and more particularly young people. You see it in school. You see it in TikTok and the like who want to have their own businesses. They want to be entrepreneurs. They want to be the future. And I think that big businesses who don't pay attention to the small guys that have ideas and.
creative approaches, they're going to be making a mistake because that's who I'm throwing in with. I'm throwing in with the little guys because I think they can make a big, big difference. And, you know, Biden was a big opponent of mine in technology for 30 years. I don't think that just being for big, big tech is the Democratic Party. I think being for small business is going to be the future of the Democratic Party.
In fact, small business and users, the two people that I've fought for in the tech space are going to be my vision for the Democratic Party going forward. You can count on that. Is there any lesson you took away from DeepSeek, right? The big tech companies are spending or want to spend enormous amounts of money on data centers, on energy, on compute. The real message is...
how important open source is. Open source communications have got to be the ball game and I've continued to push them through all my time in public life and it's even more important today than it was. The other lesson there is that restricting chips to China didn't work, right? The Chinese companies were able to take somewhat underpowered Nvidia chips, over-optimize them, and then out-compete. OpenAI. The Chinese and let me...
because I think we're probably wrapping up pretty soon. Let me just mention the Chinese are engaged in all kinds of abusive practices. I mean, Salt Typhoon, for example. I mean, the phone companies were supposed to have secured the phones 20 years ago, and I've been screaming my...
lungs out about it. I'll be introducing another bill on this because a bunch of conservatives in the Congress, when this latest set of breaches took place, said, this is the biggest hack in American history. Well, I'm going to make sure. sure that we get another debate at this whole set of abuses, assault, typhoon. My bill will be going in soon.
Salt Iphone didn't collect a lot of attention, right? But this is a massive breach of the American phone system. The Biden administration was telling people to use secure and encrypted communications. Why do you think that went so unnoticed? I think that, you know, a bunch of the big companies you mentioned, you know, Microsoft all said that they were taking care of things and tried to lull people, you know, through it. And it wasn't until the Chinese actually got away with it. Anybody woke up.
that, oh my goodness, Mildred, we've got a problem. On the same note, right? I mean, that's obviously offensive. But on the same note, the notion that we would ban them from having our chips and that that would keep them from competing in AI.
I don't know if that worked, right? Like, I honestly am looking at DeepSeek and saying, okay, well, they constraint breeds creativity, they got really creative, and they built a cheaper model that performs as well as our most expensive models. Do you think that it's time to rethink that approach to technology limitation?
Yeah, I think that's a fair kind of judgment. I mean, look, we understand that we have national security interests, and we're also certainly trying to compete with these people all over the world. And I think rethinking this through is... It's a sensible, sensible idea. And, you know, I think we can't stop China from getting, you know, chips, but we can certainly notice if it's more expensive.
We can make it more expensive. To bring that all the way back around to the top, Elon Musk, who may or may not be running part of our government, has significant ties to China, right? Tesla is a... It's a huge market for Tesla. You'll hear a bit more from me on this very soon. Okay. Can you give us a preview? Nope. I've got to go through all the security rules and all the rest, but you'll hear more about it soon.
Okay. And do you think that that will provide whatever you have to reveal there will provide the necessary momentum to stop the chaos run of Elon Musk through the government? I think people are going to pay attention to it. It'll be an important part of the debate.
Okay. Senator Wyden, I think we're out of time. Thank you so much for being on Decoder. This is great. Thank you for letting me ask that question so bluntly at the top as well. I appreciate it. You guys haven't really cared about policy issues, and thank goodness.
You know, I will tell you this. Let me ask you for your advice. I mean this sincerely, and we'll wrap with this. Last question. The Verge has always only cared about policy issues. This has been like a thing that we say. We write about policy, not politics. Because policy is important to people. It's real. But it seems...
Like here in 2025, politics and policy are the same thing. Do you feel that, that that's a change? It certainly makes me... reflect on the policy that I've always said, which is, if you ask me, and it comes up at a town hall meeting all the time, I say the best politics, folks, is good policy. Because you get in a position to be able to win people over for the right reasons and the like. And the reality is that these are really serious questions that don't lend themselves to...
any kind of quick thought. I just think that... You know, the reality is that we have to be ready to battle on both fronts. Let's get the best policy ideas that we can and then work like hell to have the grassroots support in order to get them passed.
But I'm just going to ask – here's my pushback. I'm just going to ask it again. It seems like right now the politics are winning, right? The politics are just collecting as much attention and being as loud on social media and being as quote-unquote authentic as you can be. That lets you do whatever harebrained policy idea you want, including announcing a takeover of Gaza from the White House. That feels like a split, like a meaningful split. How do you bring that back into a line?
I'm going to continue to say that it's possible to make this temporary and we can move on, but it's only going to come about with good ideas and then political organizing that will have to... mobilized people all across the country. I mean, you can't fake the price of eggs. You know, Donald Trump's got a problem. And if we pound that issue, a specific policy matter.
And remember, I am going to talk until I run out of larynx space about him saying he was going to lower food prices. And then two weeks later, he put up the white flag of surrender. The homeowner is worried about the price of eggs and, you know, you can't fake that stuff. And we're going to do the best policy and work like hell.
to make sure people know about it. And this last campaign was particularly hard because we made a big change in candidate, you know, very late in the game. And it's pretty hard to get your issues out that way. And we can do better. Senator Wyden, I'll let you get back to work. It sounds like you have a lot to do. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks.
I'd like to thank Senator Wyden for taking the time to speak with me and thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. If you'd like to let us know what you thought about this episode or really anything else at all, drop us a line. You can email us at decoder at theverge.com. We really do read all the emails, even the mean ones.
But send us nice ones instead. You can also hit me up directly on Threads or Blue Sky. We have a TikTok for as long as there's a TikTok. And now we're on Instagram. Check them out. It's at DecoderPod for both platforms. It's a lot of fun. If you like Decoder, please share it with your friends. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Decoder is a production.
on the verge and part of the box media podcast network our producers are kate cox and nick stat our editor is ursa wright the decoder music is our breakmaster cylinder we'll see you next time