Feds Flew Predator Drones Over The LA Protests

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I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are 404 Media co-founders, Sam Cole

and Jason Kebler.

Hello, good to be here.

So, tiny bit of housekeeping.

On Wednesday, 18th of June, at 1 p.m.

Eastern, we will have our latest FOIA forum.

This is a live-streamed event where paid 404 Media subscribers can join, and we will tell them how to pry records from the government.

We've done a few of these.

Sometimes it's pretty hard to find time to schedule them, but really looking forward to this one.

Jason, just briefly, what is the story we're going to be explaining to subscribers, like how we got these government records?

Yeah, we are going to primarily be talking about this article that Emmanuel and I did called About Massive Blue, which was where cops were deploying AI avatars to social media in order order to gather evidence.

The reason that we're doing this one is because the actual FOIA process was really interesting, I think, and it was pretty complicated.

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Are we going to talk at all about Flock?

If there's time, maybe we'll talk briefly about Flock stuff as well because we've been doing a lot of FOIA reporting there.

But I assume that there'll be some time to talk a little bit about that reporting as well.

Yeah, if we don't do it on this one, we should absolutely do a dedicated one.

Like we've spoken about Flock and Fusis before, which is sort of another surveillance platform that we've done a lot of public records work around.

The stuff Jason's referring to is to

public records that found immigration-related lookups into Flock license plate readers and abortion-related ones as well.

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All right, Jason, do you want to take the headline of this story and ask me some questions?

Because I wrote it.

Yeah.

So this week we are going to be talking during the normal podcast all about the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles.

This first story is DHS Blackhawks and military aircraft surveill the LA protests.

I guess to preface this a little bit,

many of you know that I live in Los Angeles.

I have actually been traveling this last week, though.

I'm not in Los Angeles right now, so I haven't been able to go to any of the protests, which I was hoping to do to do some reporting and talk to people about what they're protesting, sort of like get a vibe check.

But I guess to set the stage here,

I am only able to follow this the same way that everyone else has been following it, like over social media, talking to friends who are there, and also sort of like watching some of the news coverage there.

I mean, I have a lot of the sort of geographical knowledge and neighborhood knowledge about what is happening.

But ideally, I would be there sort of like on the ground reporting.

I just haven't been there.

But basically on Friday in a city called Paramount, which is in Los Angeles County, but is outside of sort of the actual city,

ICE did some raids at a Home Depot.

And this spurred spontaneous protests in Paramount.

And these protests have continued throughout the weekend and into early this week.

in downtown Los Angeles.

And

Joseph, you have sort of been tracking the airplanes and aircraft that are in the sky above these protests because in previous years, like during the George Floyd protests, for example, we knew that sort of like state, local, and also federal surveillance aircraft fly around to sort of,

I don't know, they fly around for all sorts of reasons.

So let's talk about it.

So what did you find in the flight data Saturday and Sunday?

Yeah.

so, I mean, basically, whenever there is a significant event or protest or something like that, I will log on to adsbexchange.com, which is a website which collects flight data and makes it very easy for anybody to access and search.

It's all donated or collected by volunteers.

So you will get a little bit of gear, costs about 400 bucks, or you'll make your own,

I believe, for a lot cheaper.

That scans for aircraft traffic and then adds it to this database.

It's similar to, you know, Flight Radar or one of these other websites as well.

I just kind of prefer the UI and the data of ADS-B.

So I spent Saturday and Sunday.

looking at Paramount, where you said the protests started, and then later at downtown LA.

And immediately there was like some interesting things.

There was the California Highway Patrol, right?

Which is a state law enforcement agency.

And they were flying a small aircraft over the area.

That's not unusual, like at all, really.

But that's sort of where it starts.

Then it goes up to, I saw DHS flying.

multiple Black Hawk helicopters and we actually saw videos of some of those Black Hawks landing and delivering, I don't know, items, boxes.

Some people speculated it was ammunition.

I don't know if we actually saw reporting that verified that, but they were landing and then moving items

into the area.

Then there were some more unusual flights as well.

Yeah, so

you saw these flights from the March Air Reserve Base, which is in Southern California, I believe.

And then also these hexagon-shaped flight patterns.

So basically, like you were able to look at the map and you saw,

I mean, they're hexagons, they fly basically like, you know, six sides, but they're circling directly above the protest, correct?

Yeah, so there's two things.

There was, I saw these circular flights, which I think were at about 9,000 to 10,000 feet, something like that.

And the UI of ADS-B is really good in that it color codes the the craft depending on their altitude so you can very quickly see oh it's orange or yellow that means it's low altitude that's going to be like an lapd chopper or something like that and then sort of in the mid-range you have green and that's sort of more than nine to ten thousand and i kept seeing these repeating circles above paramount and then above downtown la and i followed back huh well where did these aircraft come from and they actually came from as you say the march air Air Reserve Base, which is to the east of Los Angeles.

I mean, that's very, very interesting when even though the craft didn't have a call sign, which is ordinarily how you determine, oh, well, that's that type of aircraft.

I can Google the call sign.

I can look up FAA registration information like you would with the California Highway Patrol or anything like that.

And then you can then go, oh, well, that's owned by that agency.

And that's that type of aircraft.

That was kind of a mystery that I left.

And I got battered around between so many agencies.

I pinged the National Guard because, of course, Trump has deployed thousands of National Guard troops into Los Angeles.

And now the Marines at the time we're recording this as well, or at least there are plans to.

I pinged the National Guard.

I got, I think, battered over to the main Pentagon inbox.

The main Pentagon said go to Air Force.

I went to Air Force.

They said, go to DHS.

And basically, nobody was taking responsibility for flying those craft that took off from an air reserve base and I've actually got some tips and photos of the craft I'll have a look at probably after we record this.

That was sort of the first very interesting thing.

The second is what you mentioned with the hexagons and

I mean,

you're kind of looking for two things when you dig through flight data.

I think you're looking for planes without a call sign because it's like, huh,

why don't they have a call sign?

That's pretty weird.

And then if there's very distinctive flight patterns, and sometimes that's just, you know, a plane, maybe a small aircraft going round and round and round in a circle above a particular area.

Well, that's probably surveilling that particular location, right?

That's a very obvious one to point out.

But as you say.

There were some really distinctive flight patterns which were in a hexagon.

And maybe that's the way they're flying.

Maybe that's just the way that the data is being translated or collected.

But as soon as I saw that, it made me think, oh, I've seen these hexagons before during the 2020 George Floyd protests.

Right.

And you did a big story then that sort of showed that these were customs and border patrol predator drones that were flying over Minneapolis and in this same pattern, correct?

Yeah, so

other

people who were looking at flight data saw that at the time in 2020.

They posted it to Twitter.

I think that's the site we were using in 2020.

I then verified that.

I think got confirmation from Customs and Border Protection.

And CPP has a fleet of drones, you know, and they look, I mean, they are predator drones.

They are literally the same drones that are flown in war zones.

It's just these aren't carrying Hellfire missiles, you know, as far as I know.

I'm pretty sure.

No, they're not.

They're not.

So back at Motherboard a long time time ago, I actually went to Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, North Dakota, I believe,

because there was sort of like this opportunity, this press junket to see

how

drones were being flown internationally.

They were flying Global Hawk drones, which are surveillance drones, really big ones that were piloted out of Grand Forks

Air Force Base.

But while I was there, I also learned that Customs and Border Patrol was starting to fly predator drones along the Canada-U.S.

border.

And these are

DHS drones, which are not armed,

but they are the same drones.

It's like the company that makes it is called General Atomics.

And for the CIA and the Air Force, they have Hellfire missiles on them.

Don't quote me on what the name of the missiles are, but they have missiles on them.

But then when they're flown in the United States, they don't.

But they're like incredibly sophisticated surveillance technology on it.

And this has been like quite controversial over the years because

they've only been flown within the United States like not that often.

And

more than people would expect though.

More than you'd expect, but they're primarily flown along the borders.

They're primarily flown along the Mexico-U.S.

border and the Canada-U.S.

border.

And then only in these like really like these moments of protests have they been flown

kind of like over other things.

And then there was one story, one of my first stories that I ever did as a journalist.

There was this guy named Rodney Brossart, also in North Dakota, and he was a cattle farmer.

And the local police, he was like a sovereign citizen type, and he holed up in

this ranch and the

Department of Homeland Security flew a predator drone over his house and or over the ranch that he was like barricaded up in.

I think that this was in like 2010, maybe it was a long time ago.

And he was arrested.

Like they raided him using the surveillance footage from that drone to basically determine like, oh, it's safe to go in now.

And they arrested him and it became this like huge, huge deal.

It was the first like real big tech story that I actually followed ever in my career.

But still, like to this day, it is pretty controversial that predator drones fly in the United States.

So I know that was digression, but we're going to hop into your second story, which is DHS flew predator drones over LA protests audio shows.

So basically, this is a story about how you took those hexagons and attributed them to DHS predator drones.

So this starts out with

someone else analyzing and seeing the exact same thing that you saw.

And I believe they reached out to you or maybe you saw it, but who is this person and sort of what happened next?

Yeah, I think their friend pinged me on Blue Sky and then I got in touch with them.

Just to wrap up the previous story, so I see these hexagons and what I do see is the aircraft, whatever it is without a cool sign that sure looks like a predator drone, but we're not exactly sure yet.

It flies to the US-Mexico border.

So like, I'm pretty damn sure this is a DHS drone, but it's not enough to publish at this point.

So this aviation tracking enthusiast called Aeroscout, they also saw these hexagons and they decided to dig into this a little bit deeper.

And what they noticed was that the flight path of this drone or this potential drone and actually another one coming towards LA they sort of cross paths one's heading east one is heading west they're crossing paths in this particular sector of airspace below Los Angeles called sector nine

um

and

this is just I'm gonna straight up say this is like really smart investigation work and I'm really kind of impressed by what they did and the work they involved but they then

went to liveatc.com which is a website again, where the data is contributed by volunteers, but it allows you to listen to air traffic control audio, right?

Jason, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like you did a story on ATC audio.

I've done a couple stories about live ATC.

I did one many years ago in New York City where

basically the NYPD claimed that a hobby drone had flown at one of their helicopters and like not attacked them, but kind of was like flying flying menacingly at them but the air traffic control audio which was captured on live atc

uh caught the nypd basically like fabricating that because they were like joking about it they were like oh let's fly at this drone like they were the aggressor more or less and and that was captured by this air traffic control and then i did one uh more recently about the drones uh in new jersey the ufos yeah.

The like quote-unquote UFOs.

And basically what was happening was

because there were so many drone sightings, people took their hobby drones, they're like DGI Phantoms and stuff like that, they're small drones, and started flying them at blinking lights in the sky, which were passenger aircraft.

And so it was air traffic control,

like pilots basically being like, oh my God,

these idiots are flying at us it's very dangerous but like long story short this is an incredible resource uh live atc it's a it's basically a forum that has uh as you said it captures live uh air traffic control tower audio from all over the country yeah um

i

really need to look into it more it's absolutely a haystack and what aeroscop excuse me what aeroscout found here was a needle in a haystack, but it's definitely an area that we and others should look more into.

But anyway, so the flight path goes through Sector 9 and then it goes into another area to the east.

Aeroscout goes to the relevant audio on liveatc.com and hears people talking

with this cool sign called Troy.

T-R-O-Y.

And that's very interesting because Troy is a cool sign used by DHS, One of the Black Hawk helicopters that I tracked over the weekend, that was a DHS helicopter, publicly registered.

You can look it up.

And that used the call sign Troy something, something, something.

So that's already very interesting.

Clearly, these are linked to DHS in some capacity.

Then what happens when one of the craft goes east into another section?

Aero Scout pulls up that audio.

And here's an absolutely key, vital part which sort of solves the puzzle.

I'm just going to play a tiny bit of that now.

0-1 traffic total clock 1-0 miles opposite direction, another Troy Q9, 12220.

So at the end,

the air traffic controller says Troy Q9.

Troy again being DHS, but Q9 is what...

seals this as very, very likely being predator drones because the sort of official name or title of these drones is MQ9.

Q9 is sort of ATC shorthand for these drones, it seems.

So, I mean, that kind of seals a deal for me, right?

What did you think of that, Jason?

Yeah, I mean,

to be real with you, I think that just the hexagon patterns at the correct, like, like we sort of knew from the get-go, but it's like, we can't be wrong about this.

And so, you, you want some additional

level of confirmation and air traffic control saying, like, hey, watch out for the Q9,

you know, brackets because they didn't say it, but like, watch out for the predator drone is like basically what they're saying.

That's very, very good confirmation.

Yeah.

And there was another piece of audio that they found where an Alaska Airlines flight was told to watch out for drone traffic as well.

So that again confirms it's some sort of unmanned aircraft rather than, you know, an ordinary plane in the sky.

yeah.

Yeah, uh, so has CBP said anything

about this yet?

Not really.

I contacted Customs and Border Protection either on Saturday or Sunday, certainly over the weekend, for initial comment when I found the hexagons.

Um, they appear to be very, very busy at the moment, which I maybe this is too behind the scenes for most people, but like I used to, and I still do occasionally get pretty quick reliable information from customs and border protection that has changed in this administration especially over the last few months as well it can be quite difficult uh i get the impression they're swamped that's not them saying that that's just my interpretation um I then followed up with the audio that Aeroscout found as well, and they still haven't commented.

They haven't denied that this is their predator drone, but we're waiting to see, you know, and of course, we'll update or we'll do another article if they do provide a statement.

But the audio and the flight data is amazing, in my opinion.

Yeah, and I mean, I guess

it's an extremely volatile time right now in Los Angeles.

We're going to keep talking about in the second half of this show, but

there's a lot of stuff in the sky right now.

And I imagine that you're going to

continue

looking at ADS-B and just sort of trying to figure out like what is in the sky, like what is it equipped with.

I know that you are trying to learn more information about like

what types of surveillance technologies some of these planes have, I would imagine.

But yeah, what do you think happens next?

Yeah, I mean, there are plenty more events coming up.

On Saturday, there is the military parade in Washington, D.C.,

where

it would be insane if there weren't surveillance craft flying in the air at that time.

President Trump has already said that any people protesting this parade, even those doing so peacefully, will be met

with force, essentially.

I would be surprised if surveillance craft aren't in the air as well.

So I guess I'm going to be spending my weekend looking at that.

as well again.

And then, of course, you know,

I'll be very curious how Customs and Border Protection continues to use its drones.

Is that

something, I don't know, maybe they use it in conjunction with ICE for raids?

I don't really know how that would work.

Because the key thing is CPP sometimes deploys these drones at the request of other agencies.

I believe the EFF found that several years ago, where it's not just CPP going, oh, let's go fly a drone.

There'll be a request from local cops or another agency or something like that.

So,

yeah, we'll keep an eye on that.

It should be noted that I think of the three of us, Sam is the only one who has spoken to air traffic control.

Not me, not personally.

I've been in

the cockpit of a small plane and heard ATC.

They talk really fast.

They talk so fast.

It's incredibly hard to, yeah, how do they do this?

I don't know.

I don't know.

It's a real...

I don't know.

It takes a real strong mind to do ATC work, I think.

So, yeah, let alone.

Maybe we'll do more reporting about that at some point because there's an ATC crisis in this country.

So if you know more about that, please, please let us know.

Yeah.

Joseph, you look surprised.

Did you not hear about Newark?

No, no, no.

I'm just really enthusiastic about it because like I've been reading all the coverage about ATC being a shit show out of that airport.

And

I feel like there's way more to tell there, you know?

Yeah.

All right.

Let's leave that there.

When we come back after the break, more on the LA protests, but this time on the ground and on fire.

We'll be right back after this.

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All right, and we are back.

This is one that Jason wrote: Waymo pauses service in downtown LA neighborhood where they're getting lit on fire.

Well, the end of that headline kind of says what happened, but what happened to Waymo in LA, uh, Jason?

Yeah, uh, I believe it's now been confirmed that five Waymo driverless driverless cars were lit on fire in downtown LA.

You know, I don't know who did it.

I believe it was the protesters.

I don't think that the cops did this, but basically they have been defaced and lit on fire.

And it's become some of the like

most enduring imagery thus far of these protests.

And yeah, for people who are like unaware, Waymos are driverless taxis.

They're essentially driverless Ubers that are owned by Google, or rather, like Waymo is a Google company.

And they're operating in San Francisco, where notoriously a few of them have been vandalized and attacked.

And then they've been operating in Los Angeles for maybe the last like

six or eight months, something like that.

And, well, it's a little longer than that because they were definitely here last year.

But they become really popular.

Like, I see them all the time.

And so.

Is it not just the tech people taking them?

Like, what's your reason?

Oh, I mean, a lot of my friends take them for like, you know, all sorts of reasons.

It's become truly like a competitor to Uber.

And,

you know, frankly, it's like, it's cheaper than Uber because there's no driver.

And

it's just like every day, it seems like there's more and more and more of them.

You know, at first, they were just kind of like testing on my neighborhood.

Then it was like, okay, it's open, but it was invite only.

Like, you had to be invited to the app.

Now it's open to everyone.

And I took one to a basketball game.

Like, I've taken them a few times now.

Like, to watch the basketball game?

Sorry, that's just the way you said it.

I imagine the way back to the camera.

I took them to an LA Clippers game.

So I took them to an arena, and there was a line of like 15 of them, which is to say, like

they're everywhere.

They're absolutely everywhere in the city now.

And they're normalized,

which is just to say that,

I don't know, like you hear, I don't know if you're, if you don't live in Los Angeles and you hear like robo-taxis are set on fire, you're like,

there's robo-taxis.

Okay.

Right.

So they get set on fire.

Our friend Brian Merchant at Blood and the Machine went and spoke to people on the ground, I think, the day after.

And according to his reporting, people deliberately ordered the vehicles there to then set on fire.

And especially because they're in a nice little neat row, but I guess that's how Waymos move anyway.

Anyway, they get set on fire, basically destroyed, as you say, very visual imagery.

How does Waymo respond to these vehicles being torched?

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll highlight Brian's reporting because it wasn't clear why the Waymos were there, like at first, as in, it could have been protesters taking a Waymo to the protest.

It could have been people at the protest ordering Waymos in order to just like,

like, frankly, Waymos are sort of known for

like having infinite patience in a way that a

person in a like a driver would not.

So, you know, just as like an obstruction, it's also you could imagine them trying to just like traverse the area because someone ordered one and the protest was in the way.

And so they were like, oh, we're stuck now.

Because Waymo's very much like

they're, they're pretty good at driving, but when there's like construction or weird stuff happening, they don't always know what to do.

There's like lots of stories of Waymos getting stuck.

And so it was like unclear kind of like why they were there.

And

Brian's reporting shows that like some of the protesters called them in which is is pretty interesting um but yeah basically i had written a story about waymo recently that uh we'll get into in a second so i hit up their press uh person

and was like what are you doing about these

waymos that are on fire and they were like well

we're continuing to operate in the city of los angeles but we're not going to go downtown anymore um and then they also said that they were coordinating with the cops, which I thought was not great language to use at this moment.

But they said they were working with the cops to learn when it would be safe to remove the charred Waymos from downtown.

Notably, they did not say that they're working with the cops to like

share video footage and stuff with them.

I mean, whether that's happening, we don't know, but they didn't.

I asked them and they didn't answer that question.

And they didn't,

yeah, they didn't answer that question, basically.

Yeah.

Yeah, we'll get to the data stuff in a second.

I think Waymo didn't give information on this, but did they specify how they were suspending service in downtown LA or not?

Like, is there like a geofence where they draw it on the map and like no Waymo go here?

I guess they didn't get that graphic.

Yeah, that's how Waymo works already: is that they're not

everywhere in Los Angeles.

They can only go to certain neighborhoods.

And that geographic area is expanding all the time, but there are certain places where, for whatever reason, you can't order a Waymo to at this moment.

So I assume that they just like took that, like they probably geo-fenced it,

just removed it off of the map.

And interestingly, they kind of only recently expanded to downtown LA in the first place.

So it's entirely possible that they just like reverted to an older map or something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think they also suspended service service briefly in San Francisco as well, just according to something that Brian mentioned in his report as well.

So

that happens, as you say, Waymo didn't say we're working with the cops to identify the people who burned the vehicles, but at least potentially they could because

Waymo has been used by the police as basically an extension of surveillance or I guess as a criminal investigative tool.

What was this story you covered a few months ago at this point around that?

Yeah, I mean, I think this is really the biggest concern with driverless vehicles at the moment:

they work with cameras.

Like, Waymo uses LiDAR detectors as well, but there's a bunch of cameras on them as well because they need to see to

not run things over.

And so,

they are necessarily recording all the time and cops have learned that that this is happening and so

like i don't think i really don't think that waymo itself sees itself as a surveillance company in the same way that like

ring the doorbell camera sort of does see itself as a we're here to prevent crime sort of company by having cameras and they certainly don't see themselves as like a flock, which is a specific surveillance technology.

But because of the way that the product works, they are filming all the time.

And cops have realized that that's the case.

And so, in April, there was a hit and run in Koreatown, which is not that far from downtown LA.

But it wasn't the Waymo that hit a pedestrian.

It was another driver that hit a pedestrian, but it happened in front of a Waymo.

And the Los Angeles Police Department requested footage from that Waymo, obtained it, and then published it on its own YouTube and said,

Does anyone in the public know whose car this is?

Like and subscribe.

Yeah, that's yeah.

And we knew it was Waymo footage because the footage said Waymo, proprietary, and confidential, like more or less, like on it.

And so that just means that the cops have

realized that these are a potential source of surveillance footage.

And I honestly think that like once the cops understand that,

it's going to become routine because

we actually have seen in the past these potential

technologies that could be used for surveillance that

the cops just weren't creative enough to think of to request footage from or request data from and then it's like one cop will do it and then it becomes a really popular surveillance tool and and i guess like an example of that would be like google maps geofencing or like youtube search histories and things like that like these are um things that you have written about before joseph where this data has existed for a really long time but only recently cops realized that it could be used like it

as a tool of surveillance yeah or as we wrote about recently, push notification data, which was only really sort of revealed in 2023 by Senator Ron Wyden's office, and then we found court documents mentioning it.

But yeah, there's Ring, there's reverse location data warrants, there's DNA companies, there's push notifications.

And I think the broader thing is if law enforcement have a legal mechanism to access data, and in many cases they will have a completely legitimate use case for accessing that data and it will be legal if they can get a legal mechanism to request that data they will absolutely do that um if they can they want or they need the thing that stops that sort of thing is technical solutions such as end-to-end encryption.

You know, like law enforcement literally cannot get the content of end-to-end encrypted messages because it's just technically impossible.

Technically, they have the legal right to signal messages if they get a search warrant and this probable cause and it's searched by a judge, but they literally can't get that, obviously.

And this is just an extension of that.

And as you say, it's not just as police learn about Waymo and you can get data from it.

It's, of course, Waymo becoming way more popular across the US.

And I mean, potentially other countries as well, right?

Yeah, so there's a few things I want to highlight here, because I published this article and then a few people said, Well,

don't Teslas have cameras on them?

And the answer is yes.

And cops have cops subpoena that as well.

So that's also bad.

They also say, like,

a lot of people have dash cams.

So can't they, you know, get footage from dash cams?

And the answer to that also is yes.

But the difference here is that Waymo is a centralized company.

And so as you say, Joseph, like as these become more popular, a cop will probably be able to think, well, like, surely a Waymo was nearby.

And, you know, because of the way that Waymo works, the company knows where all of its vehicles are at any given moment.

And so, theoretically, the cops can say, well, did you have any vehicles at this intersection at this time?

And, you know, Waymo may need to give that up versus trying to get dash cam footage from a private owner, they're not going to know to ask for that, except for in very specific circumstances.

So there's that.

And then the other thing is,

I said, I don't think that Waymo sees itself as a surveillance company.

However,

we have seen in the past, like with delivery robots, which I've written about,

these companies are very invested in protecting their own assets.

And so a lot of them have

like either training manuals or like informal situations with cops where it's like

here's what you should do if you happen upon a Waymo that has been vandalized or attacked.

Here's what you should do if you see a delivery robot that's like stuck somewhere, these sorts of things.

And so

Waymo does have like a system for if a Waymo gets stuck somewhere and the cops show up, like how to contact Waymo and interact with them in some way.

And so it's just like there is a relationship between police and Waymo because Waymo doesn't really have a driver.

It doesn't have a driver in the car.

And there's only so much that you can do remotely.

And if the car gets into an accident or gets stuck or whatever,

the cops might need to know like what to do with it.

And so that is like a

wrinkle here where there already is kind of a relationship between the company and the cops for this like

business purpose, more or less.

Yeah.

and i guess just the last thing is what are your thoughts on waymo a little bit more broadly not even necessarily about the surveillance or the data stuff but this company is getting much more popular uh i believe you've used it as well like what do you think of some of the the trade-offs there and you know are people going to be okay with this do you think people are not going to be okay with waymos like what do you think Yeah, this is the question that's designed to get me in trouble, I believe.

And you have to write

very careful blue sky posts about because it's new ones.

Let's ask Sam first.

Sam please go first.

You were in a way mode as well.

Yeah, I don't know.

I rode in our Waymode out of desperation because the Ubers could not figure out how to get to the specific alleyway that I was in in LA.

And the Waymo couldn't either, but the Uber drivers kept canceling on me because they couldn't figure it out.

They were like, fuck it, I don't know.

And the Waymo was like, I'm going to wait here and

you can find me.

And that's what I did.

It's a total skill issue.

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, Jason wrote this in the story that he wrote about Waymos and the protests.

Or maybe you said this on Blue Scout, I don't remember where you said this, but it was basically like, Waymos are more careful than most drivers.

I'm an atrocious driver, so guilty as charged.

They are.

Verified.

So, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

So

the times I've ridden to them, I was kind of surprised that it felt pretty

safe.

There are definitely moments where you're like crossing three lanes of traffic, making a a left turn, and you're like, oh God, is it going to see the cars coming?

And it does.

But, you know, again, it's because it's absolutely coded in cameras, which we've talked about on this podcast before.

I fucking hate that every car now

has cameras all over it because of the partial

like assisted driving, self-driving technologies that they all have in them now, including Teslas, but also just like normal, normal ass car brands now have all of this stuff on them too, increasingly.

I don't think it's great.

I wish more of these companies would stand up and say,

we're not going to comply with

requests from the police about our users, but maybe that's not something that's like legally feasible.

It's become a real problem for them, like an actual real problem for them.

And so.

Yeah, I think that they do need to push back a little bit more.

Yeah.

Okay, my thoughts is

we're a technology website.

We're extremely skeptical of a lot of different technologies.

We

try to talk about how technology is impacting culture and humanity and we talk a lot of shit.

But I think that we all need to pick one technology that we are going to say is good and then explain why.

And I think mine is going to be robo-taxis.

And

I think that's because I was really, really, really skeptical of driverless cars.

And I'm really skeptical of Teslas in particular because of the ways that they're being rolled out like really dangerously, just with like turn on autopilot, do whatever you want.

Like it doesn't have LiDAR.

It relies on cameras only.

Whereas Waymo has been working on this technology for a really, really long time.

They've rolled it out super slowly.

Self-driving cars from Waymo have go back to like a Google project that is over a decade old.

Only recently they've sort of like started a commercial service.

And if you have driven in Los Angeles or anywhere in the United States, human drivers are often on their phones.

A lot of people drive drunk, like more than you would want, which you would want zero to.

You know, people get distracted.

People are eating.

People are fighting.

They're singing songs, whatever.

And I've experienced this this like as a passenger.

I've experienced this as a driver.

I've experienced this as a pedestrian, as a biker, as someone who walks my dog.

And it's really, really scary.

It's like scary to cross the road in Los Angeles.

It's scary to drive on the highways in Los Angeles, so on and so forth.

And I just don't, I think that

like longer term

like robo taxis are going to be good.

I think that they solve a lot of these problems.

I think that the big things are we really, really need to solve the labor issue of like displaced people who make their money by driving.

Um,

you know, like AI and automation is

displacing a lot of jobs.

That's something that we really need to figure out, and we really, really need to figure out the surveillance aspect because

without the sort of like surveillance aspect, and if we can figure out what to do with the drivers, then like I'm all for it.

I'm extremely all for public transit, way, way, way more of it.

But I'm really like in favor of just like more and different

like transportation solutions.

And I think that like I've taken a Waymo to the train

was great, like had a good time.

I do think that it drives really safe.

It follows all rules.

One thing that is very interesting is that if you are a pedestrian, like people have realized that a Waymo is not going to run you over.

Like it's just not.

It's not going to run you unless something like crazy happens where it's like,

you know, you jump out from behind a bus and it can't detect you.

But like in normal circumstances, if you walk out in front of a Waymo and you just stand there, it will sit there forever.

And like people in LA have

like noticed that.

And so

like if you're stuck at a busy intersection, like you might never get to turn that Waymo might not ever get to turn because people will just like walk out in front of it um which is funny in a way that you would like never step out in front of a

human car uh because it might be speeding you might not make eye contact with them you might be jaywalking like and i've noticed bikers will like get in front of a waymo and they will go very slowly and like fuck with it and that is it's kind of funny uh but i i wonder what will happen there anyways I'm like pro robo-taxi with like various asterisks.

Sure.

And I mean, I guess that kind of brings us to the story again, which is people fucking with it.

Kind of brings us to the protests and potentially people calling them over there.

All right.

We will leave that there.

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