‘Uncanny Valley’: Iran’s Threats on US Tech, Trump’s Plans for Midterms, and Polymarket’s Pop-up Flop

Summary

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a deadline-specific threat to attack over a dozen major American technology companies (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, IBM, Tesla, Palantir) across the Middle East in retaliation for leadership deaths. The threat included calls for regional employees and residents to distance themselves from company offices, marking an escalation in ongoing hostilities. The warning raises serious questions about corporate obligations to employees, regional investment security, and US government capability to prevent attacks.

Full text

CommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyThe team is back this week to discuss how top US tech companies are increasingly finding themselves as targets in the ongoing war with Iran. They also give an inside view into how Polymarket’s pop-up bar in DC went sideways. Plus, our hosts go through the steps that the Trump administration is taking to control the upcoming midterm elections.Articles mentioned in this episode:Iran Threatens to Start Attacking Major US Tech Firms on April 1Polymarket’s Coming-Out Party in Washington Was a DisasterThis Is How Trump Is Already Threatening the MidtermsYou can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett, Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer, and Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger. Write to us at [email protected].How to ListenYou can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how:If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for “uncanny valley.” We’re on Spotify too.TranscriptNote: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.Brian Barrett: Hey, it's Brian. Zoe, Leah and I have really enjoyed being your new host these past few weeks, and we want to hear from you. If you like the show and have a minute, please leave us a review in the podcast or app of your choice. It really helps us reach more people, and for any questions and comments, you can always reach us at [email protected]. Thank you for listening. On to the show.Zoë Schiffer: Leah, did you make it to Chicago?Leah Feiger: Honestly, barely. I have spent more time in airports in the last three days than I care to admit.Brian Barrett: You told me yesterday that you were excited to be flying out of Newark instead of other—which is the first time I've heard that.Leah Feiger: I was young when I said that.Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoë Schiffer, director of business and industry.Brian Barrett: I'm Brian Barrett, executive editor.Leah Feiger: And I'm Leah Feiger, senior politics editor.Zoë Schiffer: This week on the show, we have a pretty well-rounded episode for you all. A little bit of international politics as Iran threatens to target US tech firms. There's also election news as we're tracking Trump's attempts to control the midterms, and a scene report from our DC colleague who had the great assignment of hitting up the Polymarket pop-up bar, which was a bit of a Fyre Fest situation.Brian Barrett: To let people in behind the scenes of the magic of the Uncanny Valley podcast, we're recording this on a Wednesday. It's going to come out on Thursday. That's the magic. So, things could happen between then, but on this Wednesday yesterday, Tuesday, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that it planned to begin attacking more than a dozen American companies across the Middle East. If more of Iran's leaders are killed during the ongoing war, they'd made this threat before, but what was different is that they set a deadline to it. They said on April 1st, we are going to start targeting companies in these regions. There are 18 total companies on that. They actually gave a list. On that list include Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, IBM, Tesla, Palantir, a bunch more. As of now, that hasn't happened other than an attack that we can talk about later that sort of affects Amazon Web Services. But it does seem to be another one of these escalations. And I'm really curious what is going on with these companies, what obligations they have to their employees to protect them, what it means for all kinds of investment in that region, which has been increasingly important. It feels like it opens up a lot of serious questions. Regardless of whether these attacks go through, hopefully they don't, but it's really an escalatory time.Leah Feiger: I was pretty struck by parts of this where, you know, calling on employees of these tech firms in the region to distance themselves from workplaces, for residents living near offices of these companies to move away to a safe place, this is a very serious warning. And so much to me reminds us that what's happening here, this war that is very much becoming a war with a capital W is not Trump's childhood wars. We are in a globalized world where he is not going to be able to remove himself from the blowback if American companies are indeed attacked. This is very different than military. This is an impact that I think would be very hard to escape from beyond the fact that it's horrible, it's sad. These are people's lives.Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I mean, we reached out to every company on the list. It turns out that they don't largely want to comment on their feelings about this or what they're doing. I actually was kind of surprised. I was like, I don't know, you're on a target list and you don't want to say anything?Leah Feiger: No, they don't want to share what their plans are. They don't want to say if they've moved out employees. No, but they don't even want to say if they're taking it seriously because if they're taking it seriously, they're not trusting that the US government and its military is going to be able to handle it. This is a lose-lose situation. You have Trump on one side posting messages about how the US is winning, and if it's not, then they're going to reign hail fire. You have to at least pretend if you're in charge of these companies that you believe that? While putting, of course, thousands of your employees at risk.Brian Barrett: And the US did say after this latest thing, there was a comment that someone gave that was basically like, "Well, we'll respond if they do something here," which is a little bit like, "We will definitely put up a stop sign after someone gets run over." I alluded to this before. Iran is willing to do this. They've already had two strikes on Amazon Web Services data centers last month and damaged another one. It is sort of the first publicly confirmed attack on American owned hyperscale cloud infrastructure. And I guess my question is, how much do we think the targets are sort of the symbolic headquarters, even if they're empty versus actual critical infrastructure or actual infrastructure, powering the cloud, manufacturing facilities, whatever is there, curiously what shaped those targets. Take again, hopefully it's all bluster and this will move on.Zoë Schiffer: I mean, but it does come on the heels of Sam Altman's trip to the Middle East with members of the Trump administration where he was there striking deals and presumably setting up what will become large scale data centers. So, he and other AI leaders have been eyeing that region as a really lucrative place to begin doing business or expanding business. And I think that that is something that, for example, Dario Amodei said, "Hey, we should be wary about putting data centers in the Middle East." And I think they're taking that seriously. It's been interesting though. I will say, I've reached out to people at Anthropic and sources at OpenAI being like, "What do you think of the war in Iran? What is top of mind for you right now?" On the whole, people who are working in these companies in San Francisco are like, "What war?" They are just focused on what is happening here at home and do not seem to be paying an enormous amount of attention. I don't think that's true for the executives, but the rank and file are shrugging.Brian Barrett: I'm a little surprised by that because a knock-on effect of all of this is a stock market that is way down, including tech companies have been really, really hit down 20 percent in some cases. Nvidia is really pretty far down, Meta—so, I'm a little surprised in that I feel like the IPO climate is going to be less hospitable to a lot of these companies who are looking for that for their exit. And a lot of people who have or i

Entities