Zoë Schiffer: Deviance and freaks, the brand new identify of our podcast. And that is, I imply, simply going again to crimson teaming, that is work {that a} belief and security workforce sometimes does. And people groups—
Leah Feiger: We do not have these anymore.
Zoë Schiffer: They don’t seem to be as massive as they was once. There’s simply not as a lot work. So yeah, I imply, will probably be attention-grabbing to see how this performs out. Clearly inside Meta, we have been speaking to people this week who type of met the information with SI. 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 individuals being like, “Effectively, how’s it going now?” The hack was type of an excuse to speak to individuals, see how they’re doing. And so they’re like, “I imply, as you’d count on, we’re requested to do two jobs now as a substitute of on.” So you may think about how that is taking part in out.
Brian Barrett: I additionally, we had been speaking about AI regulation earlier and all this emphasis on nationwide safety and these excessive degree issues, however once more, not as a lot on client dealing with merchandise, which might be in the event you had say some kind of bureau that sorted client funds and defending that, that may be useful to have on this second as nicely. We used to have a type of. Technically, I assume 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 accessible are usually not. These new instruments are very fallible. We will see much more of this.
Leah Feiger: Can I carry 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 method to tie it again in.
Zoë Schiffer: We are able to. We are able to.
Leah Feiger: No, completely not. Effectively, OK. This story is one thing that we now have been occupied with, protecting, 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 14th, 2025, Dan Berulis, an IT staffer on the Nationwide Labor Relations Board, the NLRB, filed a whistleblower criticism with a large declare. He stated 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 response to a disclosure shared with Congress, “Round 10 gigabytes of knowledge, the equal of a full stack of encyclopedia is price if somebody printed these information as exhausting copy paperwork.”
Leah Feiger: This was a large 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 identify was connected 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 somewhat bit, Berulis has now filed a defamation lawsuit in a DC courtroom towards Elon Musk. He stated that Musk made him a goal of additional violence by falsely stating that Berulis’s whistleblower declare towards DOGE was pretend. This can be a actually intense declare for quite a lot of causes and what this all actually harkens again to is Musk final yr re-sharing an expose from a right-wing influencer claiming that DOGE had been cleared and that this whistleblower’s testimony was pretend mainly. After that occurred—
