In April 2026, Elon Musk and Sam Altman faced each other in a federal courthouse in Oakland, California — two men who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 on a shared promise to build AI for humanity, now arguing in front of nine jurors about who owns the soul of it.

In this episode, Joel and Stephen go deep on the full story. Who are these two men, really? Where did they come from, what drives them, and were they ever actually compatible? Joel breaks down the founding, the power struggle, and the trial itself — including the Greg Brockman diary entry that's now sitting in front of a federal jury, and the Microsoft partnership restructuring that OpenAI announced on the same morning the trial opened. Stephen, drawing on decades of experience inside technology organisations, gives his unfiltered read on whether this is a values clash, a power struggle, or — as he puts it — just petty bullshit at the highest level of the industry.

They also get into what the verdict actually means: whether OpenAI is already too big to unwind regardless of the outcome, why Anthropic may be the quiet winner of this whole saga, and what it signals about AI governance when the most important question in the industry is being decided by a judge in Oakland rather than anyone who was elected to decide it.

Stephen's prediction: OpenAI wins. Musk walks away looking like an angry, disgruntled founder. The law book will settle it — and it'll come down to what was written, not what was promised over dinner in 2015.

Also referenced in this episode: Van Wijk & Ferreira Gomes, "The GOALS of the Techno-Libertarian", Netherlands Institute of International Relations, 2026 · Drexel & Withers, "Terms & Concerns," Catalyzing Crisis, Center for a New American Security, 2024 · Fuchs, "The World in the Age of Trump 2.0", University of Westminster Press, 2025 · Polan, "Growth's Imagination", Bristol University Press, 2025

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Anthropic built an AI model that can find hidden vulnerabilities in the software running the world's banks, power grids, and governments. They called it Mythos. Then they decided who gets access — and every country outside the US and UK found out they weren't on the list. In this episode, Joel and Stephen break down what Mythos actually does, why the geopolitical fallout was immediate and global, and what it means for the rest of us when a private company in San Francisco becomes the most important actor in global cybersecurity — whether anyone elected them to or not.

Sam Altman was fired from OpenAI in 2023 for not being "consistently candid." He was back five days later. The question his board raised never went away — and a recent New Yorker investigation digs directly into it. Joel and Stephen unpack what the reporting actually says, and why it matters that the person running the world's most influential AI company has a documented credibility problem.

Then: Elon Musk is reportedly trying to build his own chip factory from scratch — bypassing NVIDIA, ASML, and the entire global semiconductor supply chain. Stephen explains what that actually costs, how long it takes, and why vertical integration might be the only real play.

Finally: Allbirds, the wool sneaker company that peaked at a $4B valuation and has since lost 95% of its stock value, just rebranded as NewBird AI. Their stock jumped 700% in a single session. No product. No customers. No revenue in the new category.

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