90-Second Read: Trump’s Tech Posse in China, Who’s Winning in Musk v. Altman, and Hantavirus Conspiracy Theories

Plus, Leah shares with us some of the most outlandish conspiracy theories that have been swirling around the Hantavirus outbreak. Leah Feiger : We'll also get into the wild conspiracy theories that have been increasingly swirling around the Hantavirus from wellness influencers and grifters. A lot of them have been recycling very similar conspiracy theories from the Covid-19 pandemic. Today on "Uncanny Valley," we discuss how Donald Trump's visit to China could influence conversations between world leaders at a moment when the economic and foreign policy stakes couldn't be higher.

Brian Barrett : Also happening this week, President Trump is headed to China. Leah Feiger : Also around this time, maybe a little bit more than a year ago, but we're also talking about the tariffs that the Trump administration worked very hard at levying against China. WIRED's David Gilbert, this week he reported on how conspiracy theorists, wellness influencers, and grifters have all started promoting wild claims about the outbreak. We also break down the latest developments in Elon Musk's lawsuit against Sam Altman, alleging that OpenAI abandoned its original nonprofit mission for profit-driven goals, and whether either side is actually gaining an edge in the trial.

Brian Barrett : He's got his own thing and he's actually, if anything, he split with Sam Altman pretty publicly. So the fact that there's an expectation of a discussion between Trump and Xi about the US-China Board of Trade, the US-China Board of Investment, et cetera, et cetera, is very, very interesting to me. And there's something so upsetting about that too, because you have at the root of so many conspiracy theories is unfortunately very understandable kernels, if not of truth, but a fear. But also WIRED's reporter Emily Mullin wrote a story this week that we are developing tests for the Andes strain of the Hantavirus.

We're talking about Ilya Sutskever, who's the former OpenAI chief scientist, who was part of the effort to oust Sam Altman as CEO back in November 2023. Zoë Schiffer : Since we're still talking about the people that he is going to China with, what do we know about why Jensen Huang was left off the list and then re-added last minute? The other one, and this is really tricky, is that he only realized that it had violated these agreements in 2023 when Sam Altman was ousted as CEO.