Silicon Valley Tech Workers Are Campaigning to Get ICE Out of US Cities

You both work in the tech industry,

you have for a long time.

You're among the many, many

who've now signed the ICE Out letter.

Tell me, each of you, what made you decide

to put your name on this letter?

I signed the letter for a bunch of reasons.

I think one of the primary ones is,

it feels that we are entering

an economic and governance crisis.

When the government starts killing people on the streets

and then denying or reframing what is clearly documented,

it's really a bad situation.

Just purely thinking about the economics of it,

in those circumstances, capital starts to flee.

People can and will leave, start companies elsewhere,

choose to work elsewhere.

And this is not hypothetical,

this is happening in front of us right now.

And so I suppose it is risky within the tech community

and when thinking about potential retaliation

from the Trump administration,

but the stakes are too high not to act

and not to speak up.

Pete, what about you?

A big one was seeing how much courage

the people of Minneapolis were showing.

Nobody in the tech industry was willing

to risk a ding to their career

in order to actually do whatever we can to,

you know, stop this happening, save people's lives.

Really felt like it was the least I could do.

And you know, the other side as well

is that I know a lot of my former colleagues,

you know, I spent five years at Apple,

seven years at Google,

a lot of them are too afraid to speak up.

And I'm a startup founder,

so, you know, there may be retaliation,

but I'm not gonna get fired.

And a lot of my former colleagues are rightfully afraid

that they will get fired if they speak up.

[Katie] I'm Katie Drummond,

the Global Editorial Director of WIRED,

and I'm hosting our new podcast series, The Big Interview.

You can find The Big Interview

in the same place you find Uncanny Valley.

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