Sam Altman Under Oath

Comparing Notes with Jacob Ward

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]

The Pope Slams Silicon Valley

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] Yesterday the Vatican published Magnifica Humanitas — Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical and the Catholic Church’s official moral teaching on AI. I woke up at 5am to read it, and it’s remarkable. It names algorithmic systems making decisions about credit, jobs, and welfare benefits. It names data extraction from poor countries as a new form of colonialism. …

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…