Emil Michael, now a senior Pentagon official, says he’ll never forgive Uber investors who ousted him and Kalanick
Emil Michael, who serves as a senior technology official at the Department of Defense, is back in the spotlight over the government’s ongoing battle with Anthropic, and a newly released podcast interview offers one of the most detailed looks yet into his thinking on that dispute — as well as an unguarded settling of old scores from his Uber days. The interview, released Monday and conducted last month by Joubin Mirzadegan, a partner at Kleiner Perkins who leads the venture firm’s portfolio operating team, covered a range of topics including policy and personal history — and was recorded before the DoD’s feud with Anthropic had fully come to a head. But it is Michael’s remarks about his departure from Uber — and his barely concealed bitterness about it — that grabbed our attention first. When Mirzadegan asked him point-blank whether he had been shown the door alongside Travis Kalanick, Michael answered with a single word: “Effectively.” Michael resigned eight days before Kalanick did in June of 2017, as part of the fallout from a workplace …
