WatchCats

Kate Conger, a New York Times tech reporter and co-author of "Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter," joins Ryan Mac to dissect the ramifications of Elon Musk's leadership style. They unveil striking parallels between Musk’s Twitter strategies and his approach to federal governance, highlighting issues like chaotic layoffs and reliance on vague metrics. The discussion also delves into the culture of fear instilled by Musk, the dangers of misleading social media statistics, and the urgent need for community engagement in tech management.

Tarah Wheeler, CEO of Red Queen Dynamics and a prominent cybersecurity expert, dives deep into pressing issues surrounding legacy systems and their vulnerabilities. She discusses the alarming risks in critical sectors like healthcare and finance, emphasizing the importance of the CIA triad. The conversation also highlights the implications of government IT access control, recent cybersecurity breaches, and the need for modern strategies amidst outdated infrastructures. Additionally, Tarah challenges the influence of neo-reactionary ideologies on efficiency and bureaucracy.

We're back! After reacting to Elon Musk's latest Bart Simpson level trolling on X, we talk briefly on how we're going to ramp up production in order to meet the deluge of news and noise coming out of DOGE. Our guest this week is Professor Henry Farrell, from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Prof. Farrell was the 2019 recipient of the Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Politics and Technology and his latest book (along with Prof. Abraham Newman at Georgetown) is Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy. In order to meet the weight of the current historical moment, we shifted our editorial calendar around a bit in bringing Prof. Farrell on because we think there is a deep and poorly understood connection between the norms the United States enforces on infrastructure around the world and how it treats its own deep systems. We thought Profs. Farrell and Newman's recent post on Lawfare, "Elon Musk Weaponizes the Government" provides one of the first framework and abstraction to understand what's going on. Take a listen and let us know what you think on our socials! ~~~Want to support the podcast?Join our Substack!--SOCIALS--XBlueSky--LINKS REFERENCED--The Unaccountability Machine by Dan DaviesRecoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better by Jennifer Pahlka

In our first full episode, we interview Mikey Dickerson, the first Administrator of the United States Digital Service (USDS) – which the Trump Administration has now renamed to the US DOGE Service. We discuss his personal origin with USDS, how things get done behind the scenes in the Executive Office of the President (EOP), and the potential impacts of the DOGE Executive Order.~~~Want to support the podcast?Join our Substack!--SOCIALS--XBlueSky

Noah Kunin and Julian Sanchez introduce the idea behind WatchCats!~~~Want to support the podcast? Join our Substack!--SOCIALS--XBlueSky