White House vs. Microsoft, AI fighter jets, and a visit to a startup founder's Seattle recording studio

Seth Paul (0:00)

And then, I have one mic is the Octava mic. It was built in Russia.

Todd Bishop (0:05)

Oh, do I have the Russian mic? You have the Russian mic.

John Cook (0:07)

Oh, okay. I wonder what's going to happen.

Todd Bishop (0:09)

That explains a lot about this show. Hello, and welcome to GeekWire. I'm GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.

John Cook (0:21)

And I'm GeekWire co-founder John Cook.

Todd Bishop (0:23)

We are coming to you from Seattle, where we get to report each day about what's happening around us in business, technology and innovation. What happens here matters everywhere. And every week on this show, we get to talk about some of the most interesting and important stories and trends in the news.

It's been a few weeks since our last regular show. We've had some amazing live shows.

John Cook (0:41)

We've been out on the road. Good to be back home.

Todd Bishop (0:44)

It's funny because we're actually doing something a little different this week.

John Cook (0:47)

Actually, yeah, we are kind of on the road again.

Todd Bishop (0:49)

Still. Yeah, we're recording at Front Burner Studios, which is a recording studio just up the street from the Pike Place Market.

It's built around a vintage Trident console, and our host is Seth Paul, who is the studio's co-owner. He's also CEO and co-founder of the Seattle security startup, Qinsay, and he'll be joining us later on in the show to talk about his startup journey, and also this amazing space that we're in.

John Cook (1:15)

So cool. I mean, they're bongos, they're drums, there's all sorts of electric organs and keyboards.

This is pretty cool spot.

Todd Bishop (1:22)

And it's got that kind of cool low-light studio vibe, a little bit retro, a little bit fun.

It's a cool space, and we'll talk with Seth about it later on and tell the story of how we ended up in this space as well, which is a GeekWire podcast story unto itself. Coming up this week on the show, Shield AI is going to be building AI-piloted fighter jets in Des Moines. They say Des Moines there, just south of Seattle, but don't worry, everybody, it's not a data center.

John Cook (1:51)

Oh, gosh. Okay.

Todd Bishop (1:53)

The White House cracks down on Microsoft hours before President Trump gives Satya Nadella a medal.

And Seattle startups just had their biggest quarter on record even as the rest of the country cooled off. And yes, John, the return of the GeekWire trivia challenge. I have to say people loved last week's episode, the crossover between Blue City Blues and GeekWire. You were excellent on there along with the two guests that we're talking about, Seattle and San Francisco. But I have to tell you, the one complaint I got was that there was no trivia. So next time-

John Cook (2:25)

Really, people actually complained.

Todd Bishop (2:26)

Well, my mom. So next time, I think we need to plant a trivia question with the hosts if we have other hosts.

John Cook (2:33)

Right, and then have the audience participate.

Todd Bishop (2:35)

Yes, wouldn't that have been an amazing little completion of the crossover between the two shows?

John Cook (2:39)

Yeah, well let's hop into the news.

Todd Bishop (2:41)

All right, okay. It was like a split screen on Thursday morning.

JD Vance, the Vice President of the United States, announced that the Labor Department, the US Labor Department, was suspending Microsoft from a program that companies use to sponsor foreign workers for green cards, with some pretty harsh rhetoric, some pretty harsh language. And just a few hours later, President Donald Trump gave Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, an immigrant himself, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. What a bizarre world. I mean, cognitive dissonance is the only phrase I can come up with for all of this.

John Cook (3:22)

We live in interesting times. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to just tune out from society, life, news. It's just so wrong.

Todd Bishop (3:31)

See, I'm drawn to it. I'm drawn to it like a moth to the flame.

So for people who didn't follow this story, Vice President Vance said that Microsoft laid off 6,000 US workers while getting 6,300 H-1B visas. And he called those H-1B workers, quote, foreign indentured servants, which was kind of the first phrase that really caught people's attention, because these are actually really highly paid workers. I mean, these are advanced engineers, oftentimes.

John Cook (4:01)

Although there are critiques that many people on H-1B visas are not as highly skilled as, well, I would say at Microsoft, Amazon, some of the higher tech companies are using these, for the most part, to bring in very highly skilled engineering talent.