The Websites An ICE Contractor is Monitoring

You're a guy who just wants to look nice.

The kind of nice where you might get a nice compliment on the niceness of your nice new outfit.

Good thing Min's Warehouse has everything from polos to jeans and yes suits, plus a team to help you find the perfect fit to make sure you look nice.

Nice.

Love the way you look.

Men's warehouse.

In today's world, data breaches happen all the time, and even the most secure companies can't always protect their employees' personal information from ending up in the wrong hands.

That's where Delete Me comes in.

Delete Me is a service that removes your employees' sensitive information from hundreds of data broker websites.

Sites where hackers can find phone numbers and emails within seconds.

Rachel Toback, CEO of Social Proof Security, says attackers use this data to target employees with phishing messages and AI-powered phone scams.

But DeleteMe makes it harder for these bad actors by scrubbing your employees' details regularly.

It's simple.

Attackers are lazy.

If it's too hard to find contact info, they'll move on to easier targets.

DeleteMe takes care of this for you, doing the heavy lifting so you don't have to.

And over time, they keep removing the information so it stays down, protecting your team from constant exposure.

If your business has a social presence or deals with clients, you need DeleteMe.

Visit deleteme.com/slash 404media and start safeguarding your team's information today.

That's deleteme.com slash 404media.

Hello, and welcome to the 404 Media podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL.

404 Media is a journalist-founded company and needs your support to subscribe.

Go to 404media.co, as well as bonus content every single week.

Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments.

Gain access to that content at 404media.co.

I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are two of the other 404 Media co-founders.

The first is Sam Cole.

Hello.

And the other is Emmanuel Mayberg.

Hello.

Emmanuel, you recently went on a podcast run by friends of ours, Remap Radio.

Do you just want to very briefly tell people

what you did and maybe, you know, to direct them to it?

Yeah, so our good friends at Remap, who are the folks who used to run Waypoint back when we all worked at Vice

have a podcast about homeownership and home renovations and

just kind of like that everyday life stuff and

you all know very well because you lived through this with me but I went through a big unexpected renovation at my place because of a flood and me and Rob just talked about for two hours and it was really fun and very therapeutic for me and hopefully

if you care about that sort of thing there's some useful advice and

emotional support in that podcast for you.

And the reason I asked you to explain it is because, yes, we're going to talk about tech now, like we do every week, and then we talk about all of this depressing stuff.

And what you spoke about on Remap Radio was also very depressing in its own way.

But sometimes, if you just want to escape from tech, I don't know.

Here's another fun, another fun podcast that one of us was on.

So that's the reason I wanted to shout it out.

But shall we start talking about this week's stories?

Yeah, and yeah, I really enjoyed that podcast just for another recommendation.

Yeah, let's get started with one of Joe's.

The headline is the 200 plus sites an ICE surveillance contractor is monitoring.

Yeah, so obviously the headline kind of explains what's going on, but I don't think you really grasp.

the breadth of the sites impacted here until you click through on the site.

We have the list published in the story.

It's a lot of sites.

It's a long-ass spreadsheet.

So yeah,

and it's a lot of stuff that you probably use.

And I definitely use a lot of these.

So yeah, Joe, what is Shadow Dragon?

Just to kind of get us started here.

Yeah, so Shadow Dragon is a private US company.

And I suppose you could, well, I call it a surveillance contractor.

That's one way I phrase it.

Another would be sort of a open source intelligence company, open source intelligence, the acronym being OSINT.

And these are companies that really focus on gathering data that's out there in the public or the semi-public internet.

So you can imagine social media networks,

forums, websites, sometimes even apps as well.

And I was about to say, I think people would be surprised about how much information is available about the male.

I don't think people are surprised by that anymore.

Not the listeners of this podcast, probably.

Exactly.

Definitely not the listeners of this podcast, but just in general, I mean, even ever since, I don't know, Cambridge Analytica, and I still think that was a massively overblown story for various reasons, but it kind of put into people's minds that, oh, this stuff I'm doing on social networks can be acquired by third parties.

So Shadow Dragon isn't in the Cambridge Analytica world of, you know, sort of political analysis, all of that.

It is much more gathering data which could be useful to um government clients and to private clients and I didn't even go into that in the story but they do have private uh clients as well

yeah um and they make a tool right so they that's kind of like how they get a hold of this data.

The tool is called social network sounds sounds innocuous.

What does the tool do though?

Like how does it work?

Yeah.

So this was actually something that was kind of complicated to figure out.

And I think we'll hear about that when I bring up what some of the impacted companies said.

But in one way, you could read it, that Shadow Dragon scrapes the internet.

And I'll get into the nuances in a second.

But scraping obviously is where you access a service.

Maybe there's a public Twitter feed, or maybe you have to log into Blue Sky or something like that to then access information.

But you're doing it in sort of an automated way rather than just manually scrolling.

What makes Shadow Dragon a little bit different is that you have this UI, you'll type in, say, a username,

you know, just say Joseph Cox or whatever, and then it will bring up, well, do you want to search Blue Sky for that?

Do you want to search Twitter for that?

And all of that sort of thing.

And the tool in this,

you know, I presume pretty, well, I've seen it, a pretty slick interface will then go and pull that data from those various websites.

So you enter a phone number, you then see where else that phone number is being used.

You enter an email address, you see maybe what sites it's been signed up to, that sort of thing.

But it isn't,

there isn't like a big database of data that Shadow Dragon has already scraped.

It's not like Clearview AI, the facial recognition company, which has all of these billions or whatever of faces scraped from social media.

Shadow Dragon's social net is much more live.

It's like, oh, it goes grabs, it grabs the data when you want it to, which, again,

maybe they're going to be, maybe they're not going to violate scraping terms of service with that.

Maybe they are.

But the end result is that you have this tool.

for its customers.

And rather than them having to go, oh man, so what social network do I want to search?

And potentially, you know, accidentally revealing their identity if they like somebody's post or whatever and reveal that they're being monitored, this tool allows Shadow Dragon's clients to search

the web in a really, really efficient manner.

There's explicitly designed to track targets' movements, um, behavior, relationships, all of that sort of thing.

It's like OSINT

streamlined on steroids, it seems like.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, this is coming at a time that that, I mean, it's, that's a horrifying prospect anytime, but right now, because Shadow Dragon is an ICE contractor, right?

Um,

and

the main thing in the news lately, as it should be, is

these

promises/slash threats of mass deportation by the new administration, uh, by the Trump administration.

And then, obviously, right after

this story came out,

we saw that ICE detained a lawful

green card holder, and it's been happening more and more since then.

So it's a really scary prospect to think that ICE, especially, which is trying to like hit these numbers, I guess, like some kind of quota that we don't know,

to deport people, essentially, is using a tool like this that could just kind of dig through all of your online activity and find anything that could be construed or twisted or projected into being,

you know, like threatening or criminal or whatever it is, or anti-American or whatever you want to call it, siding with Hamas, which is what they accused Mahmoud Kahila of.

So, yeah, and there's a really good quote in here in your story from Jermaine Scott, Jeremy Scott, sorry.

He's at Electronic Privacy Information Center, their project on surveillance insight.

He said, social net is just one example of the unchecked surveillance ecosystem that lacks any meaningful transparency, oversight, or accountability that allows the government to circumvent constitutional and statutory protections to access sensitive personal data.

So he's basically saying this is like, this is just one example of the

ridiculousness that is occurring.

And it's great to bring that example to light.

But ICE is not

the only one using Shadow Dragons services, right?

Like who else are their clients?

Yeah, and then and then just before on that, you mentioned the Mahmoud Khalil stuff.

There is also the State Department

plan.

I guess we don't really have many specifics right now.

It was reported in Axios somewhat recently that they're planning to use AI to automatically detect that sort of sentiment on students' social media accounts.

Now, there's no indication that Shadow Dragon is part of that.

If anything, Shadow Dragon is actually quite explicit in its marketing that it doesn't use AI.

It's almost we're the bespoke OSYNC guys, and you don't need to worry about all of that sort of thing.

But it definitely sits

in that context.

But yeah, as you say, it's not just ICE.

You can go and find U.S.

public, U.S.

government procurement data.

You just scroll through it.

And there's the State Department again on there.

There's the Fish and Wildlife Service.

It's really funny.

Whenever you write about a surveillance contractor, you'll find the normal ones, like all the federal law enforcement agencies.

And then you'll find like a random one, like Department of Agriculture or some shit and it's just like what are they using that for and it must be well i'm going to speculate a little bit here fish and wildlife service i don't know protecting wildlife protecting the environment something like that somebody doing dumb crap around areas that they're trying to protect that sort of thing um but then you have the normal ones like dea uh is in there as well and i think we previously reported when we first wrote about shadow dragon a couple of years ago uh at this point they briefly mentioned that they've they've worked with or they've had like communications with the FBI as well.

And we got some emails actually from Epic, the privacy organization you mentioned previously, and they showed

that parts of DHS moved from another tool called BabelX, made by Babel Street that we've spoken about before, and they moved over to Shadow Dragon in part for the price, which I think is funny because you'll look all these emails, you call these capabilities, and all these surveillance contractors doing all these sorts of things.

And then at the end of the day, sometimes it just comes down to, well, this one's like 10K cheaper.

So we're just going to get that probably.

But yeah, they are, I would say they're not like a massive

US government contractor, but they're definitely picking up more customers in part with that DHS switch.

But, you know, I just check the databases every so often and I see Shadow Dragon again and again.

Yeah, so let's kind of get into, I guess, the specifics of the 200 plus websites that you mentioned in the headline.

I mean, I don't know.

It's like, it's a lot.

It's like, if you asked me to list every website in an app, this would be the list.

It's everything from like OnlyFans and eBay to Fur Affinity, Gab, Duolingo.

Bing, all trails, my precious all trails, my unproblematic all trails.

Well, it's funny.

Yeah, it's funny bring up all trails because I think that's one way of looking at it.

It's like, when I first got the list, it's almost like overwhelming.

Like, oh my gosh.

Well, obviously always plans to publish the list because I think it's useful for people to see that, either for their own activity or for,

you know, policy experts or whatever.

It's useful to see the specifics, but you can kind of pull it into

brackets.

And this is what I did in the article.

With the oil the all trails one i almost put that sort of in the in the bracket of hobbies and that sort of thing so as well as all trails i put a book crossing some book website uh chess.com it's a pretty funny one a cigar review site called cigar dojo and like by themselves you'll think what so they're gonna like know that i like cigars or i like chess or something yeah sure but then on the other side the all trails one i mean maybe that could have some useful information about, oh, they like hikes in California or Southern California or Northern California.

It's like very like pinpointed location data, too.

I mean, it follows you all along a very specific path.

And

this didn't come up specifically in this list, but it does remind me, obviously, of the Strava leak, Strava, I think that was it, the running app.

Yeah.

Right.

And how that was revealing.

the location of sort of

unpublished or undocumented U.S.

military bases and that sort of thing.

This isn't quite the same because it's not so much about revealing locations as it is about tracking an individual person.

But if you know that somebody's

using those sorts of hobby apps, maybe you can drill down and get some more information from them.

And you mentioned OnlyFans as well.

And I'd really be interested to hear your thoughts on this, Sam.

But there's clearly some sex worker sites in here.

Yeah, there's a lot of porn sites.

There's like every major porn site is on here.

Pornhub, Xhampster, X Videos, ePorner.

Yeah, it's a ton of them.

Now,

to be fair to Shadow Dragon, they do explicitly talk about in lots of videos about combating child sexual abuse.

I'm not saying that it's these sites specifically, but you can see where there might be

sexual sites in the list.

That being said, you know,

if ICE or DHS or whoever wishes to more aggressively go after sex workers, I mean, which they already do, right?

For visa issues or anything else, they can just scrape OnlyFans or just for fans.

Does that sound right to you, Sam?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, I mean, it's

something that

sex workers have been talking about for years, obviously, but and it's kind of come to light in various different other contexts too, where tools are being tools like this are being used.

But it's like someone will be denied an Airbnb booking because they suspect that like the host knows that they produce porn um

or you know it's like someone who's trying to like get a custody battle for their kids is on OnlyFans and then it's like the

opposition finds out that they're on OnlyFans and then they use that against them and they can't get their kids.

It's just or like even with like mortgages and things like that,

it's something that sex workers deal with a lot.

So it's definitely interesting to see.

porn sites on this list for sure.

And it's also, it's a conversation that's happening in the adult industry in general is, you know, how much data

should we legally be forced to give

sites in general, but especially adult sites, because that's what's being targeted with the age verification stuff.

It's like uploading an ID or a license to pornhouse, for example.

It's like, you know, these like leaks happen all the time.

And then also you have like systems like this that can kind of pry in and see your activity.

So

yeah, it's for sure super, super interesting to see.

Yeah.

And then apart from the normal social networks, and I mentioned like Cambridge Analytica and Facebook and stuff, it's like, well, now there's Snapchat and TikTok and various meta platforms.

And like, obviously they're all included in this list.

Like you, it would be very surprising if they weren't.

Then there's

payment stuff, which I find especially interesting.

I can't remember if Vemmo's on there.

Like it must be.

Yeah, it is.

Okay.

So Vemmo's on there.

And then PayPal, which I think owns Vemmo, right?

And then stuff like Cash App or Buy Me a Coffee.

Buy Me a Coffee is interesting because like, wow, that's a relatively small one.

But

it's all these different brackets of sort of the OSINT

that they're trying to do.

And then I guess sort of the last one is just like, there are some super niche

super niche sites or forums or whatever, which are very directed towards specific

demographics.

So there's Black Planet on there, which is geared towards black people.

There is Fetlife, which is a fetish forum, right, or website.

And then

I think there's some furry stuff on there.

There's some very similar.

Okay.

Thank you for corroborating.

It's more just that.

Yes, they will go

to...

They will go to any community or any site that they think could provide some value at some point in the future to their government or private clients.

And I guess I would say like web scraping is pretty straightforward.

You know, you can write a Python web scraper very, very quickly.

Use something called Beautiful Soup, you pass it, whatever.

But as I think I've said on an earlier episode, if you're selling to the government, they're going to want the tool to be very reliable.

So like Shadow Dragon is, I think, fairly, I'm assuming this, they're going in and they're making their scrapers quite dedicated and specific.

It's like, if I'm ICE or whoever, and I click, I want to search this profile, I don't want it to fuck up.

I want it to be accurate and I want it to get the data very, very reliably.

So that is presumably a lot of the work that Shadow Dragon is putting into this.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, you talked to or you got a hold of some of these companies that are on this list, right?

Like a lot of them I know did not reply, but what did the ones that did reply have to say for this?

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe I'll bring up the list of the ones that didn't

reply as well.

I can read that in a second.

But sort of, well, on one hand, not surprisingly, a lot of the companies said, hey, this probably violates our terms of service on scraping.

and we don't like it.

Probably the one that gave me the best statement simply because it was detailed and on the record was actually chess.com, which said, you know, we were not previously aware that Shadow Dragon was scraping data from our site.

And, you know, they say they do not permit the use of personal information from our users without a valid legal basis and compliance with applicable laws.

And they said, you know, if it's done legally, fine, but like we didn't know about this.

Then you have Meta saying

the normal stuff, which is more pointing to the terms of service.

Same with Snapchat as well, Pinterest.

They all just point to the terms of service, which says, don't scrape us.

You're not allowed to to do that.

And again, that sort of brings me back to the thing I mentioned a little bit higher, which is like, is this in a legal sense scraping if it's not creating a database of the data?

And

I need to brush up on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act when it comes to scraping, because, you know, there's been a few cases somewhat.

recently in the past few years.

But I'd be interested to see what people do now with that argument argument because some of these companies clearly weren't that happy

with it.

That being said,

many

didn't get back to me.

Those are Twitch, OnlyFans, Tinder, MyFitnessPal, GitHub, FlightAware, Etsy, eBay, Duolingo, Blue Sky, Apple, Amazon, and Reddit.

And the last one I'll say is that ProtonMail got back to me because they're also in the list.

I didn't include their statement because I found it a little bit potentially misleading.

They were like,

I send you an encrypted so nobody can read your emails.

It's like, sure, but that's not what's being alleged here.

They're talking about scraping what's potentially publicly available.

My suspicion is that you enter an email address and it then checks whether you enter a username.

And then Shadow Dragon then checks, well, is there a username?

associated with an email address on ProtonMail.

That's my assumption.

But, you know, I don't have that solid enough to put in a full article.

But yeah, I just thought it was interesting and important and a good time to get this sort of list out, basically.

Yeah.

And what did Shadow Dragon have to say for themselves?

So when I asked Shadow Dragon if this constitutes scraping, and I, you know, sent the list of sites as well, they said Shadow Dragon doesn't log customer inquiries or the resulting data.

So we can't provide information that violates the privacy settings of individual account owners using these platforms, including data they've deleted.

So as I say in the article, in other words, the searches are performed live on the sites when the Shadow Dragon user requests it.

And Shadow Dragon is saying we're not violating

terms of service because we're not like making this massive database of information.

I don't know.

I guess we'll see

what people make of that.

You know, I'm sure this is not the end of Shadow Dragon.

No.

Okay.

Let's leave that there, as Joe says.

And then we'll be back with a story by Emmanuel about Marain Drain.

Cue the music.

One of the smartest apps you can have on your phone in 2025 is Upside.

Upside gives you the power to earn more on the stuff you buy all the time.

Whether you're filling up your tank, going out to eat, or shopping for groceries, the Upside app lets you earn cash back on every purchase.

Upside users are making as much as $280 a year.

I recently downloaded Upside and I've quickly incorporated it into my daily routine.

Whenever I'm at a restaurant, gas station, grocery store, or convenience store, I just check my Upside app to see if I can earn cash back.

I've been pleasantly surprised to learn that it fits into my lifestyle.

Upside cash back offers are available at a lot of the places I'm already going to.

It's also helped me find new places I never visited before.

To get started, download the free Upside app.

Use our promo code 404 and get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas.

Next, claim an offer for whatever you're buying on Upside.

Then pay as usual with a credit or debit card, follow the steps in in the app, and get paid.

There are over 100,000 gas stations, grocery stores, and restaurants on the upside app, ensuring that cash back is always just around the corner.

You can earn an average of 8% on restaurant and grocery purchases.

And the best part, you can even stack your upside cash back on top of your credit and debit card rewards.

Download the free Upside app and use promo code 404 to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas.

That's an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas using promo code 404.

Hey, it's Joseph again.

If you're a new listener to the 404 media podcast or even a long time one, you might not be aware of all of the impact our journalism has had recently or how we even got here in the first place.

In 2023, the four of us quit corporate media to go independent.

We were sick of working for a VC-backed company that put profits before journalism.

That gave birth to 404 Media.

Since then, we've stopped the spread of AI books in public libraries, triggered class action lawsuits against AI companies, got Congress to pressure big tech in various ways, and we've even shut down surveillance companies.

This real-world impact is only possible because of our paying subscribers.

As a journalist-owned business, they are the engine that powers our journalism and where the vast, vast majority of our revenue comes from.

So please consider signing signing up today for $10 a month or $100 a year at 404media.co slash membership and get bonus content every week and access to all of our articles.

Thank you and enjoy the rest of the podcast.

All right, and we are back.

This story is written by Emmanuel.

The headline is, NASA, Yale, and Stanford scientists consider, quote, scientific exile, end quote, French university says.

Sorry, Emmanuel.

This actually starts with another story you did.

I can't remember we spoke about it on the pod, but you did this first story about this French university and then this new one.

So just briefly, what is this French university and what did they previously announce?

So in early March, I got a press release from this university in France called Aix-Marseille University.

It's the largest, I believe, research university in the country.

And

they announced this program called Safe Place for Science.

It is something that they've done under

other names in different forms over the years, but basically it exists to allow people, scientists, researchers in countries where they're no longer able to do their research because of the political situation and inviting them to this university in France in order to continue to do that research there, both to support the scientists and also to support this research, which

in many cases is about climate, health, things that will benefit all of humanity.

And

the difference is that this time the program is targeted specifically at American scientists who

we have heard from

since Trump got into office and started issuing all these executive orders that we've reported on that

ultimately result in pulling funding from universities, from government agencies that do research for clearly political reasons.

You know, we've done a lot of stories about how the administration is nuking the existence of any page or paper that mentions diversity

because they have this crusade against DEI.

And that has obviously affected researchers as well.

If you're studying, let's say,

how cancer treatment is

impacting people in certain communities, certain minorities, I've heard from people who have had that type of research funding pulled.

So the university is inviting American researchers to come do this research in France.

And

it is not just words.

They have 15 million euros allocated for this.

And initially the plan was to have 15 scientists from the US come and do this research in France.

Gotcha.

So that's the context.

That's what happened before, and the broader climate in which, you know, scientists in the US are finding that they probably can't continue their work.

What happens

now?

Basically, the university had an update, right?

Yeah, so I wrote that story.

And honestly, the reason I wrote it is because

the fact that a French university would offer this

is just sort of humiliating to the United States in a way.

I mentioned this in that initial story, but when we think about scientists moving to different countries to continue their research, like the two examples that come to mind is

in Nazi Germany, a lot of Jewish scientists fled Germany to the U.S.

to continue doing their research.

That plays a big part in Oppenheimer, the movie, if you've seen that.

Thank you for making that current.

So

it's a good

portrait of that type of scientist and why they would move.

And then the other example is obviously like the Cold War and Russian scientists defecting to the West.

Like that was a big thing that was happening at the time.

It is not something

that, as far as I know, we've seen happen

from the US to other countries.

Like usually people come here to do advanced research at private companies, at universities, at government agencies.

Historically, America has been the draw for that type of thing and not pushing people away.

That's why I thought it was notable, but I kind of wrote it and moved on.

It seemed a little bit like if you read the wording of the French press release, there's a little bit of, I don't know, it's hard for me not to read it as like mocking the U.S.

a little bit.

Yeah.

And you don't know,

it is sometimes hard to tell that, yes, they say they've put money on the line, but like, have you like, like, you don't know necessarily how seriously to take it, not through any fault of their own, just because I think we're pretty skeptical people until this next story where, I mean, it looks like people are interested, right?

Yeah.

So two things happen.

So I published a story

and I immediately start hearing from scientists in the US who are like, hey, like, I just read your story.

Like, can I get more information?

Like, is there somebody I can talk to?

And how do I get involved in this?

Which was surprising.

And, you know, I just pointed them at the university's website

if they were interested.

Surprising, especially because you don't work at the university for a start.

Yeah, but it's just like it's the level of interest, right?

There was like a real level of interest.

And I was like, hmm, notable.

Like, I'll just make a note of that.

But a week later, the university put out another press release and

they

were just clear about the fact that they've heard from a lot of scientists, and it's scientists at the leading American universities and agencies here.

And I think they said they've heard from like 25

of from researchers at 25 leading institutions, and that they're already working.

There's so much interest that they're working on expanding the program and working with the government to get more funding and arrange housing for these people.

And then also possibly working with other European universities who can absorb all these scientists because the way they describe it is like there's so much interest that maybe some of them can go to other countries and do work at other universities.

Yes.

So

you managed to then actually speak to somebody who

I'll let you correct my phrasing of it, but either they have expressed interest or they're considering it or they've at least reached out to the university.

What did they have to say about this?

So, this is someone who, this is one of those people who reached out to me shortly after

I published the initial story.

And when

I started writing this story, both you and Sam gave me the very good note, which was like, okay, like, this is an interesting press release, but it would be better if we heard from one of the people who is actually interested in doing this.

So, I reached out back to this person and I said, hey, are you one of the people who is doing this?

And they are.

And they are in the middle of the application process of taking part in this program.

And I'm unfortunately not able to say a lot about what they do and where because that they believe would endanger their current position before they secure this new position.

But I would say that it is one of the top institutions at the country and it is very, um it's not like some obscure

weird um

liberal arts field of study that this person is in it's like it is a it is a hard science important field of research that that they're in but their funding was pulled because the work overlaps with some concept of uh minority focus

and

they're no longer able to do their research their funding was pulled.

They're kind of running on fumes, the money that they have already secured.

And they're thinking about what's next.

And for them, the only option is to

look for,

you know, other countries, other universities that are still interested in doing this kind of research.

Yeah.

So

what are we seeing?

Is it potentially

a brain drain?

And I mean that in two ways.

The first is that kind of what you spoke about with earlier historical cases, I would add, you know, East Germany and the Berlin Wall and there as well.

That's one thing with like

people leaving.

And then almost the much more

immediate one is just like, as you say, research being stopped.

And it's like, well, okay.

Even if they don't leave, the research is being killed, essentially.

Like, what do you think some of the impacts are that we've already seen of this?

and

what might we see in the short to medium term of this?

Yeah, so the immediate impact is real, and that is across agencies, across universities,

there is a hiring freeze, and not only a hiring freeze, people who have already been accepted to PhD programs have had those offers rescinded.

And these are not, again, not small

universities that were already teetering on the edge of insolvency or something like that.

It's like Harvard has a hiring freeze.

There is a,

sorry, one of the Massachusetts schools.

It's a UMass school, I believe, but it's a big medical school.

And they've had PhD

offers rescinded.

So these are people who have been accepted to research positions and

they thought they were going to start working there next year.

And that's not happening.

Including cancer stuff.

yeah yeah yeah and uh

there's a big one of the i live next to one of the biggest children's hospitals in the country one of the the the best ones in the world and i know somebody who is like in neuroscience there that's doing very important research and like her research was was pulled which i think is like so so there's the immediate economic job losses issue but the thing that really freaks me out and I don't know, like the way things are going now,

you can pick what you want to be freaked out about.

There's no shortage, and it's hard to like say what is the worst thing, but I don't know.

I'm pretty rocked by this idea that

it's going to take us time to feel the fact that

the administration has kind of sold the future away.

Like, if we keep going, like things can still turn around, you know, maybe

the midterms come around and they reverse course in some way, and money comes back, and funding comes back.

But if this country doesn't

have the draw for people to research cancer and anything, artificial intelligence, right?

Like a lot of that work is being done in private companies.

Maybe that work for now continues to happen here, but a lot of it is also being done at government agencies, at universities.

Like a lot of progress is being made at these places that are

no longer getting funding.

And I think because they talk about, because the administration talks a lot about the DEI aspect of it, maybe people find it easy to dismiss as, oh, we're just losing that stuff.

But it's not just that stuff.

It's like across the board, Harvard, one of the best schools in the world, no hires.

That's not a good place to be.

That's not like a world-leading

democratic country, scientific powerhouse.

That's not where you want to be as a country.

And that's where we are right now.

Yeah.

And sorry, just last thing.

What does your coverage maybe look like

in the coming weeks, months?

Is it speaking to more people who are considering leaving and that sort of thing?

Like, what are you thinking?

So, there's already been a lot of coverage about the type of science that has

lost funding.

And unfortunately, there's so much of it that I imagine that I can probably do some of that as well and just focusing in, focusing on some of the stuff that we're losing

because of these executive orders.

But then maybe also, like,

what is the future of this research?

Where is it going to happen?

Where are these people going to go?

What does it look like

for the rest of the world for the US to not be like the center of so much

scientific progress?

I'm definitely interested in that.

Like, I hope

that if these people can't get funding in other, like here in the US, that they can go to France and continue that work there.

But we don't know.

Like we haven't seen this kind of shift before.

So it'll be, it'll be definitely interesting to follow how this all shakes out.

For sure.

Well, on that horrible note, we will leave it there.

You're welcome.

Well, that's why I said at the top of the show, go listen to the other podcast for a laugh.

And then, because we're going to talk about all this sort of stuff.

But if you were listening to the free version version of the podcast, I'll now play us out.

If you are a paying 404 Media subscriber, we're going to talk about something that is actually very fun and very interesting.

How Super Nintendo consoles are getting quicker as they age, as in the hardware ages, and somehow the consoles are performing better/slash faster.

Really interesting stuff.

You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404media.co.

As a reminder, 404 Media is journalists founded and supported by subscribers.

If you do wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404media.co.

You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad-free version of this podcast.

You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week.

This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope.

Another way to support us is by leaving a five-star rating and review for the podcast.

That stuff really helps us out.

This has been For Rifle Media.

We will see you again next week.