CYBER

Cyber is a show covering a diverse range of topics. We’ve covered everything from crypto to AI to online cults. If it touches technology or online culture, we’ll talk about it. That’s how you get an episode like today’s, which is both a deep dive into professional wrestling’s latest scandal and a discussion of the latest existential threat: nuclear weapons in space.

Vice features editor Timothy Marchman can do it all. First, Marchman walks us through the newest allegations against WWE boss Vince McMahon. It’s a civil case that may have wider ramifications for how the U.S. handles non-disclosure agreements. Then we get into a bit of Congressional kayfabe: the reports that Russia wants to put nuclear weapons in space.

Co-Defendant in Vince McMahon Sex Trafficking Lawsuit Says He Was a Victim Too

NDAs Vince McMahon Signed Behind WWE's Back May Be Worthless, Say Experts

Despite Denials, WWE Management Knew Wrestler Said She Had Been Raped on Military Base

WWE Wrestler Ashley Massaro Accused Vince McMahon of Sexually Preying on Wrestlers in Previously Unreleased Statement​

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An AI-generated Biden called voters in New Hampshire ahead of the primary and told them to stay home. X locked down the search term “Taylor Swift” after AI-generated nudes of the pop giant flooded the platform. In the wake of both scandals, Congress has struggled with how to fight back against the flood of fake bullshit. Keeping the world from drowning in fakes affects all of us, but some of the cures sound worse than the sickness.

This week on Cyber, Motherboard Senior Editor Janus Rose and Fight for the Future’s Lia Holland come on to talk about the limits of legislation around AI-generated scams and abuse.

Stories discussed in this episode.

Congress Is Trying to Stop AI Nudes and Deepfake Scams Because Celebrities Are Mad

Taylor Swift Is Living Every Woman’s AI Porn Nightmare

‘Palworld’ Is Tearing the Internet Apart

An AI-Generated Content Empire Is Spreading Fake Celebrity Images on Google

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Ten years ago, Big Tech reached a peak. Facebook had wormed its way into the lives of billions of people. The mainstream news covered iPhones releases like they were Taylor Swift concerts. Elon Musk was promising to colonize Mars and fill the streets with self-driving cars. In 2024, the wheels have come off all these dreams. Musk has filled the sky with satellites, but no colonists, and constantly fights people on X. Self-driving cars are killing people. Apple has released a $3,500 VR headset that’s been met with middling reviews. And Facebook’s only recent innovation is eating its own tail to churn out massive profits.

How did it come to this? This week on Cyber, PR provocateur and tech critic Ed Zitron stops by to tell us about everything he saw at the Consumer Electronics Show, the problem with most tech journalism, and why we all turned against Big Tech. He’ll explore these topics more in depth on his new podcast, Better Offline, which launches later this month.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Better Offline

Rabbit AI Introduction Video

Where’s Your Ed At

How Tech Outstayed Its Welcome

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We live in a golden age of data. Every day, hacktivists release terabytes of data on sites like DDoSecrets, but sorting through it all requires some technical knowledge. What if you don’t know XML from SQL let alone how to write a simple Python script?

Micah Lee is the director of information security for The Intercept and he’s on Cyber today to talk about his new book: Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations. The book is a manual for people who want to learn how to parse and organize hacked datasets. It also contains stories of how Lee and others handled famous cases such as Blueleaks, neo-Nazi Discord chat rooms, and the Parler leak. If you’re not interested in diving into corporate or government secrets, you might learn something about how to protect your own data.

Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations: The Art of Analyzing Hacked and Leaked Data

Stories discussed in this episode:

How to Authenticate Large Datasets

Tech Companies and Governments Are Censoring the Journalist Collective DDoSecrets

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The unreliable narrator of After World, the new novel from author Debbie Urbanski, is an AI tasked with writing a book about Sen, the last human on Earth. In this world, humanity is done. The world is moving on without us and Sen was born for a purpose: to watch the planet change itself without humanity. After World is a story about artificial intelligence, climate change, and what we can hope to leave behind for our children in a doomed future. 

On today’s episode of Cyber, Emily and Matthew sit down with Urbanski to discuss all of it.

Stories discussed in this episode:

The original short story: An Incomplete Timeline of What We Tried

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According to the hype, artificial intelligence is changing everything. The truth is more complicated, but that doesn’t mean that companies and governments aren’t rushing to embrace the new technology. It’s even being used to update an old and destructive technology: nuclear weapons.

America is modernizing its force, Russia is building new kinds of nuclear weapons, and China is increasing its nuclear stockpile. At the same time, all three countries are looking to AI to outsource the dangerous and deadly work of apocalyptic destruction.

But what, exactly, does that look like? When it comes to nukes and AI, it’s time to embrace the horrors of uncertainty. This week’s guest is Edward Geist, a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. His latest book is Deterrence Under Uncertainty: Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Warfare.

It’s a conversation that’s both fascinating and frightening with one major theme: we don’t know nearly enough. “One lamentable parallel between nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence is that both topics elicit an astonishing degree of magical thinking from otherwise intelligent people, including some with genuine expertise,” Geist wrote in his book.

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The New York Times kicked off the holiday season by suing OpenAI and Microsoft. The paper of record believes that ChatGPT is violating various copyrights by using its articles as training data. It’s a landmark case that may end up before the Supreme Court and might change copyright law in America forever. 

This week on Cyber, Sharon Goldman of VentureBeat sits down with us to discuss the lawsuit, the coming presidential election, and all the other big AI stories she’s watching in 2024.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Why NYT vs OpenAI Will Be the Copyright Fight to Watch in 2024

The 5 AI Stories I’m Waiting For in 2024

The Quest for AGI: Building Idols, Not a God

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On February 3, a train crashed in East Palestine, Ohio releasing toxic chemicals into the air. Almost a month later, another train owned by the same company also derailed in Ohio. That’s not all. Trains in Charlotte are running slower than they should. NYC can’t fit trains into its new station. The list goes on and on.

What the hell is going on with mass transit in America?

If you’re a long time Cyber listener, you might already know some of the answers to this question. That’s thanks to returning champion, Motherboard senior writer Aaron Gordon.

‘It’s Going to End Up Like Boeing’: How Freight Rail Is Courting Catastrophe

East Palestine Derailment ‘Foreseeable and Preventable,’ Ohio Attorney General Lawsuit Alleges

24 Hours of News Shows America's Transportation Hellscape

The Worst Transit Project in the U.S. Is Officially Dead

Boston's Subway Was Running at Half Speed Because It Lost Paperwork

‘We Had All the Issues That Town Has:’ East Palestine Is Not the First or Last Derailment Disaster

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As we slide into the winter holidays, Cyber is taking some time to relax with old friends and discuss the things that truly matter: the decline of the internet, creator culture, and the transcendent power of movies. 

This week on Cyber, Aftermath co-founder Gita Jackson stops by to talk about “Napoleon,” the death of film criticism, and what happens when a big name on YouTube plagiarizes you.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Please Stop Asking Me To Sue James Somerton

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Your posts matter more than you think. Social media has changed the way wars are fought and the internet has become a new battlefield. 

Twitter may be dying, but it still matters an awful lot to policy makers. TikTok is ascendent, but often because its content can be repurposed on other platforms. Telegram can give you the news on the ground, but only if you trust the sources.

With all this information flowing and everyone motivated by personal politics, who can you trust?

This week, Emerson T. Brooking joins Matthew and Emily to explain how online discussion shapes the reality on the ground in conflict zones. Brooking is a resident senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council and the co-author of LikeWar, a book about the weaponization of social media. 

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