Decoder with Nilay Patel

Hey everyone, this is Nick Statt, senior producer on Decoder. We’re taking a brief publishing break while Nilay is out on vacation. We’ll resume regular programming next week, and we’ve got some great episodes in the works.

In the meantime, we wanted to share an episode from the excellent podcast The Gray Area, with host Sean Illing. In this one, Sean sat down with The Atlantic journalist Charlie Warzel to talk specifically about the state of the internet in 2026 — and what it means that it feels increasingly overrun by non-human actors.

Links:

The Gray Area with Sean Illing | Apple Podcasts

Galaxy Brain | The Atlantic

The internet is all bots now | The Gray Area (YouTube)

The feeling of control slipping away | The Atlantic

How much of the internet is fake? Turns out, a lot of it, actually| New York Magazine

How bots took over our lives | The New Yorker

The ‘dead internet theory’ is real — and it’s killing the web | Fast Company

The fanfare around the band Geese actually was a psyop | Wired

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Evan Smith, cofounder and CEO of Altana, was last on the show in early 2025 to talk about how Trump’s first few waves of tariffs were starting to affect global trade. It was a very alarming and also very illuminating chat; Evan and I got into the existential weeds of international relations and economics almost immediately.

A year and a half later, and everything is somehow even more chaotic than it was the last time Evan and I talked — and that’s true about both trade and also the world of running a software company. Agentic AI, whack-a-mole tariff policy, war in Iran — we jumped right back into weeds yet again.

Read the full interview transcript The Verge.

Links:

How Trump’s tariff chaos is already changing global trade | Decoder

Skydio CEO Adam Bry on not drawing red lines for drone use | Decoder

Trump imposes new global tariffs, drawing protests from trading partners | Reuters

Greer: USMCA Talks Could Stretch Into Next Year | Wall Street Journal

Trump hits Canada with new 50% tariffs | Associated Press

Iran weaponized the Strait of Hormuz. Now neighbors are going around it | CNN

The Iran war is testing Southeast Asia’s faith in the US | Politico

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Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder’s producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. This episode was edited by Kabir Chopra. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m talking with Hayden Field, The Verge’s senior AI reporter, about the major trade secrets lawsuit between Apple and OpenAI, and what this tells us about OpenAI’s future.

Hayden has been covering OpenAI for years now, and she also just talked to a bunch of lawyers who specialize in intellectual property and trade secret law to get a sense of how serious this case is. The answer is not entirely positive for OpenAI. This legal battle could also affect OpenAI’s hardware plans, its forthcoming IPO, and its already-damaged reputation.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links:

Sam Altman didn’t need another lawsuit | The Verge

OpenAI’s first device will be moveable, screenless speaker | Bloomberg

Apple sues OpenAI for allegedly stealing hardware secrets | The Verge

The 6 wildest claims in Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI | The Verge

OpenAI is buying Jony Ive’s AI hardware company | The Verge

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dr. Jill Lepore is one of the best writers there is at identifying institutional patterns in history, and Decoder is a show about systems and organization — so her new book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, is a perfect fit for the show.

You build systems by measuring things — gathering information, quantifying it as data, and taking action on it. The book's big thesis is that this kind of systemic measurement is really a dehumanizing act, one that flattens humanity and human concerns into something, well, artificial.

These artificial structures touch everything — not just in the more obvious places like in apps or AI, but all the way up to politics, governance, and the very future of the nation-state itself.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links:

The Artificial State | The New Yorker

‘Terminator’ to tech titans: Jill Lepore on the ‘artificial state’ | Yale Univ.

The failed ideas that drive Elon Musk | New York Times

Sam Altman | The Joe Rogan Experience

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder’s producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. This episode was edited by Xander Adams. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’ve got the first of a two-part series on the systems that run the world: I’m talking today with Bart Butler, the CTO of Proton, the company that makes private and secure productivity software.

There’s a lot of big Decoder themes in this one. That includes how Proton has structured its ownership and architected its products to align its incentives with protecting users. At the same time, Proton faces new challenges and pressures, both at home in Switzerland and from the EU and US government that are putting its values to the test.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links:

Proton now offers an entire bundle of office services | The Verge

Proton Mail helped FBI unmask anonymous ‘Stop Cop City’ protester | 404Media

Proton says it will leave Switzerland if this controversial law Is passed | Vice

Age verification is a mess but we’re doing it anyway | The Verge

Let’s build a children’s public internet | The Verge

Let me see some ID: age verification is spreading across the internet | The Verge

Why Chat Control 1.0 is the EU's most Orwellian law yet | Euronews

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices