Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Droning for Dollars

Episode Date: April 27, 2017

Can a Self-Droning drone start up save the Trump Presidency? Our special correspondent Chris fills us in on YouFired!

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What is posting disease and do you have it? Why can it be so scary and yet feel so great to block someone on social media? The Neverpost team wonders why the internet and the world because of the internet is the way it is. They talk to artists, lawyers, linguists, content creators, sociologists, historians, and more about our current tech and media moment. From PRX's Radiotopia, Never Post, a podcast for and about the Internet. Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. This installment is called Drowning for Dollars. I was at a barbecue this last weekend. It was a going-away party for a friend.

I've done a lot of work with him over the years. Where is he moving to? To Canada. I see. Even the deep state is moving to Canada. Well, to be fair, Canada is on a super aggressive recruiting spree. Canada wants to make sure they are prepared for the refugees. What are you talking about? Climate change.

So, these friends of yours, they're all leaving because Trump is president. Well, most of the folks I know here in D.C. came here for one of two reasons. They came because of 9-11, or they came because of Obama's election. But they all came because they wanted to serve. They're true believers in America. What's different now with Trump, and this is what a lot of us were talking about at the party this weekend, is that now this mindset is a total liability. In fact, for most of my friends who are still working in the USG, if they put forward any ideas about how to make their department work better or make their teams more efficient, they're just going to be sidelined or pushed out. Can you explain to me how this actually plays out? Like the people who are coming to D.C.

to now work for Trump, are they really like, hi, I'm here because I want to help dismantle the government? Well, come on. It's not like any of this is hidden. I mean, the Trump doctrine is pretty clear. The way to make America great again is by deconstructing the American government. Yes, but it's illogical. Like, how do you go to D.C. with the intention of working for the government and the intention of taking the government apart? I think you're confused because you left out the other half of the Trump doctrine. The way to make America great again is to make American business great again. One side of the coin is deconstruction.

The other side of the coin is reconstruction. For who? American businessmen. And that's who you have right now coming to D.C. For example, this young guy I met at the barbecue, he's from Silicon Valley. He was a big executive at Uber, and I think he started at Groupon. Total startup guy, okay? He gave me the line about how he wants to make the world a better place through the products and services he builds.

But he's also a traditional American businessman, in that he believes with deadly certainty that what is good for his company is also good for America. So he's like the modern day Henry Ford. Exactly. And what does this guy do? Drones. He wants to build the Uber of drones.

And the word is, this guy is about to get a big military contract. As you know, Trump's poll numbers are abysmal right now. It's been 100 days of total failure. And let's be clear, Trump is kind of right when he complains that this whole first hundred days thing is actually just a media milestone. But there is one item that the media has put in the plus category for Trump's first hundred days. And that's the blowjob, bend over and grab my ankles plus category. You mean the missile strike? Yeah. And this is really, really important.

It's like a lab rat. Once he figures out that pushing the button gets him a food pellet, that's all he wants to do. Ah, so this startup drone bro has arrived on the scene at exactly the right moment. I should note that he's also

dating one of Ivanka's close friends, but yes, he's got exactly what Trump is looking for right now. Drones. Self-droning drones. Here's the way this guy said it went down.

He laid the whole thing out to me at this party. He says Ivanka walked him into the Oval Office a few weeks ago to introduce him to her father. And after they say their hellos, this guy could see that Trump was visibly upset. So he asked the president, what's bothering him? And Trump tells him about how mad he is about Assad, who just gassed all those beautiful babies. And so this guy whips out his iPhone and shows Trump his app.

He zooms in on Syria and he zooms in on this Assad air base. And then he hands his phone to Trump and says, press the red button. So Trump presses the button and calls up a drone. And in less than three minutes, he's dropping bombs on this airbase. Real bombs. No, no, the whole thing is a simulation. It's meant to showcase how the app would work. But Trump, he can't stop wondering how much time would it take for the actual U.S. military to do the same thing.

This is why he launched the strike. Come on. Well, this guy showed me a text he got from Trump later that day. Four hours, 37 minutes and 26 seconds from order to explosion. Sad. So Trump has Ivanka bring this guy back to the Oval Office the next day. And Trump tells him, I want to fund you. Fund what, though? You said it was a simulation. Does Trump not know what vaporware is?

To be honest, technology isn't the issue here. You're saying it wouldn't be that difficult to build an app that would allow anyone with the click of a button to control a bunch of drone arm drones that are just flying around waiting to drone people. That would take like a day. But again, it's not the technology that grabbed Trump's attention. It's the it's the idea that a startup, a business could do droning better and faster than, say, the entrenched establishment. You mean the military? Yeah. The Trump doctrine is all about business, not government. So does this business have a name yet?

Trump wants them to call it You Fired. Oh, Jesus. This totally is going to happen. It is. It's all about moving fast and breaking things now. People are already working on the tech and Trump's addressing how You Fired will be able to hire drone operators without running into security clearances, training bases, you know, red tape. But hold on. You said that these are self-droning drones. In theory, yeah. I suppose one day we could train drones with machine learning algorithms to recognize the when and who to drone. But for now, someone has to hit the button. And I know I keep bringing up Uber, but it's really the same thing.

For Uber, the self-driving car thing, it's a futuristic possibility, but it's also smoke and mirrors that distracts the media from talking about the driver issue. You mean how they don't want their drivers to be recognized as actual Uber employees? Yeah, exactly. This U-Fired guy wants to pull off the same trick. The people doing the drones can't be recognized as drone operators because then the military is involved. We're talking training, security clearances, pensions, uniforms. And accountability.

That's one of the things Trump is most excited about. A U-fired user accidentally takes out a wedding? Not his fault. Not even U-fired's fault. Whose fault is it, then? Well, according to this hotshot CEO I just met, Trump has promised that these kinds of questions won't get in the way. So you fired, we'll be able to build up, it won't be an army.

We'll probably need a new word for it. Happy? So these people who will be doing the droning, they won't be military, just regular gig economy workers. If they roll this out the way Trump wants to, yeah. Any American who downloads the app will be able to drone. Steve Bannon thinks the base is going to love it. Jared's even thinking Trump could get some Democrats on board.

If there were, say, student loan reductions offered as incentives to get people to enlist or download the app. This really is going to happen. Like I said, Trump wants to move fast. They're already talking about a pilot project on the southern border. There's no way this is going in the plus category. He gets that, right? Yeah, but it might work. In fact, you fired just might be the very thing that makes America great again. You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything.

This installment is called Drawing for Dollars. This episode was produced by myself, Benjamin Walker, and it featured TOE special correspondent Chris. The Theory of Everything is a proud founding member of Radiotopia, home to some of the world's best podcasts. You should go right now to Radiotopia.fm and choose one you haven't tried out yet and give it an immediate spin. Thanks to our launch sponsor, the Knight Foundation, and to PRX, our home base. And as always, special thanks

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