The Rip Current

Musk Lost in Court. But Who Won, Exactly?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com [https://www.theripcurrent.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_7] A jury in Oakland took ninety minutes Monday morning to dismiss Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. The verdict didn’t touch the substantive questions — whether Altman lied to co-founders, whether the nonprofit-to-profit conversion was a betrayal, whether the company “stole a charity,” as Musk alleged. The jury found Musk filed too late. …

The CEOs Who Flew to China and Got Nothing

Trump brought a dozen of America's most powerful CEOs to Beijing this week — Jensen Huang, Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and others — to meet with Xi Jinping. The optics were big. The results were not. And the whole experience was presumably a nightmare for Trump's emotional-support CEOs.Here's why: these companies aren't trying to expand into China. They're trying to hold onto what they already have — and in most cases, they're losing it anyway. Tim Cook has built Apple's entire supply chain around China. Nvidia has gone from 95% AI chip market share in China to nearly zero. Musk is trying to sell Teslas in a country that views Starlink as a military threat.The world that made Silicon Valley possible — the open-market, borderless-money era that began when China joined the WTO in 2001 — is over. And no amount of diplomatic face time with Xi Jinping, or plane rides with Trump, is going to bring it back. Paid subscribers get early access to this and all my analysis, as well as written reports, including all the source documents. The Rip Current with Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe [https://www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Sam Altman Under Oath

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.com [https://www.theripcurrent.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_7] I watched Sam Altman testified yesterday in the Musk v. OpenAI trial in Oakland — his first and possibly only day on the stand. Within two minutes of cross-examination, Musk’s attorney Stephen Molo was asking him point-blank whether he tells lies to advance his business interests. Altman’s answers were careful to the point of being revealing: “I believe…

Sam Altman's Own Hero Calls Him a Liar. Now He Faces a Jury.

Read what Altman’s colleagues and cofounders say about his pattern of dishonesty in this morning’s piece [https://open.substack.com/pub/theripcurrent/p/a-consistent-pattern-of-lying-the?r=i3x5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true], free for everyone. Ilya Sutskever — the AI researcher who helped build OpenAI and is widely credited with turning the transformer model into ChatGPT — took the stand on Monday and confirmed under oath that he spent a year assembling a 52-page dossier on Sam Altman’s conduct, concluding that Altman “exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another.” That testimony follows sworn statements from former CTO Mira Murati, former board member Helen Toner, and former board member Tasha McCauley — all describing the same pattern. Altman is expected to take the stand today with all of that hanging over him. But here’s the thing: none of that may actually matter for the outcome of this case. I break down what the jury is actually being asked to decide, why Musk’s legal hill is steeper than it looks, and what Sutskever’s extraordinary testimony reveals about the people building the most consequential technology in the world. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe [https://www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Jake on CNN: The White House Reverses Course on A.I. Regulation

The end of David Sacks’s time as White House AI Czar seems to be the end of the administration’s hands-off policies when it comes to the technology. As Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles take Sacks’s place, suddenly the administration is talking about a “first-look” review process for new models from the big companies. I spoke with CNN’s Jim Sciutto [https://www.cnn.com/profiles/jim-sciutto] about it from New York. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe [https://www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]