Dissecting Elon Musk’s Hostile Takeover with Anne Applebaum, Eoin Higgins & Ryan Mac

Summary

Podcast Summary: On with Kara Swisher – "Dissecting Elon Musk’s Hostile Takeover with Anne Applebaum, Eoin Higgins & Ryan Mac" (February 6, 2025)

Introduction

In this riveting episode of On with Kara Swisher, host Kara Swisher delves into the alarming and unprecedented actions of Elon Musk as he orchestrates what Swisher describes as a "hostile takeover of the federal government." Joined by three esteemed journalists—Anne Applebaum, Eoin Higgins, and Ryan Mac—Swisher navigates through the complexities of Musk’s aggressive maneuvers to control various federal agencies, drawing parallels to historical and global instances of authoritarianism.

Elon Musk’s Government Takeover

Swisher opens the discussion by highlighting Musk's recent moves to commandeer key federal agencies such as the General Services Administration (GSA) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). She emphasizes the lack of media attention, describing the situation as being covered "with a big shrug" despite its gravity (00:12).

Key Takeaways from Experts

1. Anne Applebaum on Musk’s Playbook (04:37)

   • Applebaum compares Musk’s tactics to his takeover of Twitter, noting his reliance on a "high confidence" approach despite lacking expertise in governmental operations.
   • Notable Quote: “He is the expert cutter. He’s someone who prioritizes engineering above everything...” (05:18)

2. Ryan Mac’s Historical Perspective (05:18)

   • Mac likens Musk’s actions to Stalin’s takeover of the Soviet Communist Party, focusing on the control of personnel to reshape the institution.
   • Notable Quote: “This breaks so many lines of illegality that as I said, it looks much more like a hostile takeover by an outside power.” (09:50)

3. Eoin Higgins on Lack of Accountability (07:33)

   • Higgins expresses concern over the lack of transparency and accountability within federal agencies now under Musk’s influence.
   • Notable Quote: “I'm more afraid that there’ll be information that he will kind of curate and put out there to attack his political enemies.” (07:36)

Parallels to Historical and Global Authoritarianism

Applebaum draws comparisons between Musk’s actions and Eastern European kleptocracies post-Iron Curtain, where power is consolidated by a few to control government functions and suppress opposition (10:33).

Tech Industry’s Political Shift and "Techno Authoritarianism"

Higgins introduces the concept of techno authoritarianism, where tech leaders disguise their authoritarian agendas under the guise of libertarianism. This ideology involves controlling discourse through social media and manipulating information to entrench their power.

• Notable Quote: “It’s like a perpetual emotion machine. It just adds to itself and radicalizes.” (24:23)

Impact on Journalism and Media

The discussion shifts to the influence of tech billionaires on journalism. Higgins highlights how independent and left-leaning journalists are increasingly susceptible to financial backing from right-wing entities, leading to potential biases and suppression of dissenting voices.

• Notable Quote: “Once you're kind of in this world, then you have the opportunity to continue to make money. And the implicit trade-off is that you kind of talk about the things that they want to talk about.” (52:30)

International Reactions and Regulatory Challenges

Applebaum and Mack discuss the global implications of Musk’s control over U.S. federal agencies, emphasizing how other democracies, particularly in Europe, are beginning to resist through regulations like the EU’s Digital Services Act. However, they warn that Musk’s support for far-right parties poses a significant threat to these regulations.

• Notable Quote: “This has created a kind of crisis in Germany because he has so much greater reach on X than any normal German media.” (46:55)

Future Implications and Potential Outcomes

The panelists express deep concern over the future, with Mac rating his fear level at a 9 out of 10 regarding the potential for a sustained authoritarian regime. They discuss the long-term risks to democratic institutions and the economy, drawing parallels to the economic decline seen in countries like Hungary and Russia under similar circumstances.

• Notable Quote: “What happens here in these instances when people are sort of closing lawsuits... the consequences could be quite effective.” (36:26)

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode concludes, the guests reflect on the urgent need for accountability and the role of the media in combating Musk’s authoritarian strategies. They underscore the importance of public awareness and governmental pushback to prevent the erosion of democratic norms.

• Anne Applebaum’s Closing Statement: “There’s just nothing in the way. There’s nothing in the way of accountability here.” (56:15)

Key Insights and Takeaways

• Hostile Takeover Tactics: Musk employs strategies similar to his Twitter acquisition, focusing on personnel control and ideological imposition without legal authority.
• Techno Authoritarianism: A growing ideology where tech leaders manipulate information and discourse to consolidate power.
• Global Repercussions: International democracies are recognizing and beginning to counteract the influence of tech moguls like Musk, though challenges remain.
• Media and Journalism: The integrity of journalism is at risk due to financial dependencies on ideologically driven platforms and entities.
• Urgency for Accountability: There is a critical need for governmental and public institutions to respond to and challenge Musk’s overreach to preserve democratic integrity.

Notable Quotes

• Anne Applebaum (05:18): “He is the expert cutter. He’s someone who prioritizes engineering above everything...”
• Ryan Mac (09:50): “This breaks so many lines of illegality that as I said, it looks much more like a hostile takeover by an outside power.”
• Eoin Higgins (07:36): “I'm more afraid that there’ll be information that he will kind of curate and put out there to attack his political enemies.”
• Eoin Higgins (24:23): “It’s like a perpetual emotion machine. It just adds to itself and radicalizes.”
• Ryan Mac (46:55): “This has created a kind of crisis in Germany because he has so much greater reach on X than any normal German media.”
• Ryan Mac (36:26): “The consequences could be quite effective.”
• Anne Applebaum (56:15): “There’s just nothing in the way. There’s nothing in the way of accountability here.”

Conclusion

This episode of On with Kara Swisher presents a critical examination of Elon Musk’s attempts to exert control over federal agencies, likening his actions to historical instances of authoritarian takeovers. Through insightful discussions with top journalists, the podcast underscores the dangers of unchecked power in the hands of tech billionaires and the urgent need for mechanisms to restore accountability and protect democratic institutions.

Transcript

[Kara Swisher]

Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast network. This is on with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. We're currently in the middle of a hostile takeover of the federal government orchestrated by Elon Musk. He's bringing his Twitter destruction playbook to the US government and unfortunately much of the mainstream media is covering it with a big shrug as if it's just another Tuesday. It is not. And it's really important that the media step up and really understand what's happening at each of these federal agencies which are being run roughshod over by Elon Musk and his team at Doge. So I've gathered three of the sharpest journalists I know to begin unpacking this unprecedented government takeover, which is still unfolding. As I said. Ann Applebaum is a staff writer at the Atlantic and a Pulitzer Prize winning historian. Her latest book is A talk the Dictators who Want to Run the World. Owen Higgins is a reporter with IT Brew who covers cybersecurity, IT jobs and government tech. He's just published a book called How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. And Ryan Mack is a New York Times reporter who covers corporate accountability across the global technology industry. His book is Character How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter and it's required reading if you want to understand what Musk is doing to the federal government right now. So stick around. This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. I'm Kathy Jones, Schwab's Chief Fixed Income Strategist, and I'm Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist.

[Ryan Mack]

Between us, we have decades of experience studying the indicators that drive the economy and how they can have a direct impact on your investments.

[Kara Swisher]

We know that investors have a lot of questions about the markets and the economy and we're here to help.

[Ryan Mack]

So download the latest episode and [e-mail] on investing or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kara Swisher]

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[Owen Higgins]

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[Ann Applebaum]

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[Kara Swisher]

It is on and Owen Ryan, thanks for coming on on.

[Ryan Mack]

Thanks for having us.

[Owen Higgins]

Thank you.

[Ann Applebaum]

Thanks, Kara.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay, so it's obviously a lot of news happening this weekend was kind of crazy, so let's get to it. On Friday, after Elon Musk began to lock career staff out of the Office of Personal out of the System, I posted this is a hostile takeover of the federal government by a private citizen of unlimited means with no restrictions and no transparency. Welcome to the Deep State. I think I was underselling it. Since then, his band of young engineers and accolades have done the same to the General Services Administration or gsa. Taking control of payment systems at the Treasury Department are threatening death. The U.S. agency for International Development or USAID. Just the beginning, I assume. I'd love your top line assessment so far. And what's next? Ryan, then Ann, then Owen.

[Ann Applebaum]

I'm gonna talk my book up a little bit here. Literally, figuratively. But yeah. I mean we've seen this playbook before. This is what he did with the Twitter takeover and he is implementing that playbook now with the federal government. He's coming in with kind of a low knowledge background of how these things work, but high confidence in that he can be the expert or is the expert in a lot of these things. He's the expert cutter. He's someone who prioritizes engineering above everything and he's deploying those tactics now across, you know, OPM or GSA or any three letter agency. So yeah, that's kind of my top line.

[Kara Swisher]

All right, Ann.

[Ryan Mack]

I would describe it as a hostile ideological takeover of the US Government. He has a different view of the world. He's not an American patriot. He doesn't believe in the rule of law. He doesn't believe in the Constitution. He's attempting to impose another very different ideology on how the government works. I hate to say it with my. I won't tout my books, but my background in Soviet history, the first thing I thought of was the way that Stalin took over the Soviet Communist Party was by controlling personnel, famously personnel management, management of the cadres. This is a famous way by which you take over and transform a political institution or party to make it do what you want and to change what it was doing. That's what this looks like to me.

[Kara Swisher]

Owen?

[Owen Higgins]

Yeah, I mean, I think that the lack of accountability here is also a large part of the problem. That's probably my main takeaway. I've spoken with a couple people in different departments of the federal government and they're all kind of describing a situation where there's been so many people cut or people or either their job's been cut or they're cut out of the decision making process that now we're in a situation where nobody really knows like what's going on and how that is all going to play out. I think my two biggest fears here are one, that they're going to be. I've heard from a couple people in different agencies that there are AI recording software that's being used for just every meeting that they're having. That's one. And then two. I mean, I'm afraid not only with that, but just in general with a lot of this private personal information, whether it's individuals or sensitive information within any of these agencies, that Musk is going to do something maybe like the Twitter files and hand it over to a friendly journalist or hand over some kind of curated amount of this information and push out some public information that should be public. Sure. But then I'm more afraid that there'll be information that he will kind of curate and put out there to attack his political enemies.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, that works so well with the Twitter files, obviously.

[Owen Higgins]

Right, right.

[Kara Swisher]

It was a little bit of an egg on his face. So let's start with the opm. And Ryan, why don't you address this? Which sent an email to all federal employees offering them the generous, possibly illegal exit package if they resigned. And all the hallmarks of Elon's, as you said, Twitter tactics right down to the subject line which read fork in the road. I think he purposely did that to say it was me. On top of that, government tech workers have been called into meetings and forced to explain their coding to very young Doge people. With Gmail addresses who won't even identify themselves. They' the same with gsa. Staffing it with musk loyalists like Steve Davis and his wife, Nicole Hollander, who don't seem to have any expertise in this, as you said. Ryan, you wrote the book about Elon's Twitter takeover. Explain the parallels.

[Ann Applebaum]

Yeah, so we'll start with that email. Fork in the Road was an email he sent during the Twitter takeover. He offered these sort of buyout packages to employees. Basically, you take this, you can leave with a couple months pay, no questions asked, but if you don't take this package, you are opting in to become a, quote, unquote, extremely hardcore employee. You are, you know, working for me around the clock. We're going to build some great things and we're going to transform this company. And it was kind of a very pivotal moment in the Twitter takeover, you know, a couple weeks after he had finalized his deal to buy the company, where he was kind of, you know, drawing a line in the sand and saying, you know, we're going to separate the people that want to be here from the people that are just hanging on. And so, you know, he, he sent that same email to federal employees last week. The subject line is. Is the same. Although there was one key characteristic in that with Twitter, he made people opt in to staying, which caused a lot of problems. You know, you have to directly say, you know, you want to stay here and work with me. In this case, with federal employees, you have to opt in to resigning, essentially. And there's a lot of questions over whether that's legal, whether he has the authority to do that, whether there is even funding to, to. To provide people with these kinds of. I guess they're delayed resignations. But, you know, the hallmarks are all there, and we can see the, the, the parallels.

[Kara Swisher]

So obviously, the government's a different creature. And their argument is that they're trying to make the government more like the private sector. Essentially, that's their biggest argument. Or that brings Silicon Valley management style to it. But what it feels a little bit like, Ann, is Eastern European feel to it. Doge is getting access to incredibly sensitive information, including the Treasury Department's payment system that includes information on government contractors that are competing with Elon's companies, as well as sensitive data about people's finances. It caused the department's top career official to resign. Talk about the obvious conflicts of interest here, Anne. Does it compare to some of the kleptocracies and governments you saw in Eastern Europe after the fall of The Iron Curtain. What does this portend in that regard?

[Ryan Mack]

Yeah, so to be clear, there is no precedent in American history for a private businessman having this kind of influence over the very intimate elements of the US government. Of course, rich people have always been influential before, sometimes very influential. They've shaped legislation, they've influenced presidents and so on. But to have a private businessman who has no government position, who has not been confirmed by Congress, the people who are working for him are not government employees, or it's unclear what their status is. They don't have any right to this information, they don't have security clearances. This breaks so many lines of illegality that as I said, it looks much more like a hostile takeover by an outside power. I mean, so these are people trying to substitute their version of reality, or their version of how the world should work on top of government officials whose jobs, whose salaries, whose programs have all been approved by elected U.S. government officials.

[Kara Swisher]

Right, Right. In this case, he's saying that they have permission from the President. He noted that several times.

[Ryan Mack]

Permission from the President is completely meaningless.

[Kara Swisher]

Meaningless, exactly. But I'm noting that he's saying that.

[Ryan Mack]

Congress has control over spending. Congress allocated the money for these programs. This is illegal at a new level. And you're sense it looks much more like, as I said, the Communist Party taking over the Polish State in 1944, 1945, it's imposing a different set of rules, literally a different ideology, a belief that one person gets to decide everything, that this isn't a, that voting doesn't matter, Congress doesn't matter, the Constitution doesn't matter, and the legal system doesn't matter.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. So DOGE is already getting dogged by reports that it was set up to skirt around government transparency laws. For example, they're apparently using signal communicate. Owen, in your book Owned, you wrote about the Twitter files, which was sold as an exercise in free speech and transparency. In reality, Elon controlled access to all the data, as you notice, and doled out what might have been cherry picked files to writers he chose. He obviously did talk about that process and what it says about Elon's supposed commitment to transparency. Cause he kind of just, he gave it to friendlies who then wrote what he wanted and twisted a lot of what was in there. Several times there were meetings where management was dealing with something and they said, can you believe management dealt with this? Which is what the job of management was, in my opinion. But not that I particularly trust anybody in Silicon Valley, but it seemed a little cooked.

[Owen Higgins]

Yeah, I mean, I think that with the Twitter files. I mean, here you had Musk coming in. He took a company that was relatively successful and he instituted all of these changes, as Ryan was saying, cutting staff, slashing the workforce. There was some bad press around that. But he also wanted to kind of get back ideologically at this kind of idea of the liberal. Both the deep censorship state that he thought existed in the federal government and the elements of Twitter that he believed were kind of going along with this and making things too, quote, unquote, woke. So he found Matt Taibbi. He was recommended. Matt Taibbi by David Sacks, a fellow billionaire, reached out to him, said, hey, you can have access to some of these files. Taibbi went in, from what we understand, this was heavily curated. He didn't have access to everything. It only went up until Musk took over. And what I think the problem is, and I think that this is what bodes kind of ill here for how he's going to manage the so called Department of Governmental Efficiency and whatever he does with the federal government is that he makes a lot of noise about being committed to free speech and being committed to all of these lofty ideologies. But in reality, Musk really only cares about one thing, which is himself and his material profit. And so when it comes to something like the Twitter files, he's putting out all this information because it pushes forward.

[Kara Swisher]

To benefit himself, to benefit himself and.

[Owen Higgins]

To push forward an ideological vision that he believes is going to then wrap around and benefit himself again. So with him having access to all of this information and all of this data, all of this, who knows what he'll pick? Who knows what he'll pick?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I always say every accusation these people make is a confession most of the time. But so Ryan. Senior officials from the U.S. agency for National Development were placed on leave after they tried to block members of DOGE from accessing USAID's security system and personnel files. Earlier this weekend. According to the Washington Post, a group of about eight DOGE officials entered the USAID building Saturday and demanded access to every door and floor, despite only a few of them having security clearance. According to Senate Democratic staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the incident. When USAID personnel attempted to block access to some areas, DOGE officials threatened to call federal marshals. The aide said the DOGE officials are eventually given given access to, quote, secure spaces, including the security office. Elon responded to the showdown between Doge and USAID officials in a tweet storm against USAID included the Post On X. That said, USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die. Another one accused it of funding bioweapon research, including COVID 19, that killed millions of people recording this on Monday. And Trump must now say they're in the process of shutting down the agency. There is zero proof for anything he's tweeting, which is sort of just another Tuesday for Elon Musk. But explain what he does here and what's the tactic.

[Ann Applebaum]

The tactic here is, you know, he needs to create enemies, and he is someone who views himself as a hero, you know, a hero of his own making and a hero with millions of followers around the world, and he needs to constantly create opposition to that. And so when you see him tweet things like such and such is evil or such and such is a criminal organization which he's doing, or say someone's.

[Kara Swisher]

Heart is seething with hate. That's me. But go ahead, keep going.

[Ann Applebaum]

Kara Swisher is evil. Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

No, I'm not evil. Yoel Roth is evil. So is usaid. My heart is seething with hate.

[Ann Applebaum]

It's hard to keep track, but he's done this with former Twitter executives when he denied their golden parachutes when he fired them from the company for cause. This language repeats itself over and over again. It's us versus them kind of tactic. He needs to be able to justify what he's doing and why he's doing it. And the simple kind of baseline answer to that all, is, everyone against Elon is evil.

[Kara Swisher]

Is it a tactic? Or does he actually believe it? From your perspective, having interviewed a lot of people, I think he believes it.

[Ann Applebaum]

I think he believes it as well. And he kind of gets lost in his own sauce. He tweets it into existence. In a way, we talk about these reality distortion fields with these supposed great men that run these tech companies. People like Steve Jobs, for example, was talked about having a reality distortion field. In some ways, you know, this is Elon's reality distortion field. He tweets something into existence and he believes it. And he gets millions of people around the world to believe it as well.

[Kara Swisher]

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[Owen Higgins]

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Sell wherever your customers are. Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. So Anne, you've spent your career reporting on Eastern Europe and the fall of Communism. Talk about the significance of USAID in that region where it's seen as a lifeline for many former Soviet states. Cause we did our own thing going in there and helping. And what's the interest of malevolent foreign players like Russia and China in this situation? Because we've spent enough time trying to burnish our reputation through usaid, which was started by John Kennedy. For people who don't know.

[Ryan Mack]

Yeah, Let me actually take a step back and say that it looks to me like what he's doing isn't just about him, himself and his power, although of course it is in additionally about that. But there is a pattern to what he attacks and particularly what he's doing. In the last few days, he's attacked usaid. He's attacked the National Endowment for Democracy. This goes along with his support for the German far right, for the British far right. He's attacking organizations and institutions that talk about and promote democracy and talk about. And maybe democracy is even the wrong word here. They promote the rule of law. They promote checks and balances. They promote rights, the idea of rights. They promote the idea of justice. These are really fundamental elements of what the United States has been, at least since 1945, probably you could make the argument for the last hundred years. These are the elements of our foreign policy, of our national definition. This is who we are. If you go to Moldova, if you go to Indonesia, if you go anywhere in the world, you'll find people who've been trained by the USAID, are trained by other U.S. programs. They've been taught what is an independent judiciary? How is the legal system supposed to work? This has been a package of ideas we've been promoting for many decades. And Musk's attack on these institutions and these organizations, I would say, again, this has an ideological edge. These are the institutions that Musk and the tech billionaires and others around him need to eliminate and get rid of if they are to enjoy absolute power. And if they're to. And if they're to help create a different kind of political system, I don't know that they're gonna succeed in creating a different kind of political system. But if that's what they were trying to do, this is what they would do. They would attack those institutions.

[Kara Swisher]

Owen, you've written that tech leaders often try to deceive the public by presenting their beliefs as general libertarianism. But in fact, their political project is best described, I think, as techno authoritarianism. Talk about what you mean by techno authoritarianism and how that plays out, following what Anne was saying.

[Owen Higgins]

Yeah, I mean, I think that the libertarianism comes from this desire, I think, on their part, to see themselves as the result of a meritocracy and to see the development of their businesses and the increase in their wealth as the result of their work and how well they've done in Silicon Valley and how they are driving the world economy. But that leaves out an important aspect to this, which is that their fortunes and their businesses have really been propelled by government spending, government investment, and government subsidization. And at some point down the line, they decided that that was good for them but not good for anyone else. They didn't want their money going to other people, whether it's foreign or domestic. But the net result of this has been a feeling, I think, on the part of these tech leaders that there's somewhat of an unfairness in how they're being treated, particularly by elements of the government, particularly by Democrats.

[Kara Swisher]

Sure, sure. They are the world's greatest victims, that's for sure.

[Owen Higgins]

Right?

[Ryan Mack]

Yeah.

[Owen Higgins]

But they see themselves as that. And I think that then you see them kind of taking this throwing the spaghetti against the wall approach to further grievances for how they feel like this is the fault of government investment in woke, or this is the fault of government investment in usaid, as Amla San, or any number of government spending programs that don't directly benefit the tech companies then become evil and bad and something to attack, and they become the victims of this, as you're saying. And that's, again, still somewhat par for the course for any industry. The problem is that once you start to control the discourse through social media and through their work on kind of subverting media, as I write about in the book, then it starts to become a problem for more of us than just the industry and the regulators. And then you get to the point, I think, where you have this kind of techno authoritarianism ideology that kind of builds out of that and then starts to. It's like a perpetual emotion machine. It just adds to itself and radicalizes.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, yeah. So I'm gonna branch out from Elon'cause he's not alone among tech ties. He's just the most irritating in embracing Trump. Larry Ellison, Mark Andreessen, the OG Peter Thiel are in that group. There's also a group of Texios that didn't necessarily endorse Trump nor like him, but has made a show of bending the knee to Trump after he won. That includes people like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, who apparently now like him when they didn't before. Bill Gates, though, donated $50 million to former Vice President Harris's campaigns. And he recently said of Silicon Valley, the fact that now There is a significant right of center group is a surprise to me. It's not a surprise to me since I never thought they had any opinions on anything except themselves. Which sort of dovetails into the current Republican Party. But is Texas embrace of Trump surprising Ryan than Ann than Owen?

[Ann Applebaum]

I don't think so. So, I mean, these guys, their best interests are their business. It doesn't matter what political party is in power, they're going to do what's best for their business. That's always been the guiding light for Elon. If you look back at his relationship with Barack Obama, for example, there were very favorable policies to SpaceX and Tesla under Obama. So he had this great relationship with the Obama White House. And you see that start to shift with Biden, you know, when he doesn't get invited to the EV summit, you know, that was obviously bad for his business. And he turns these guys are all similar, you know, I don't think it's a surprise to me. And I was actually surprised by that Bill Gates quote, you know, these guys aren't exactly hiding it by any means.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, he asked me that and I'm like, what are you talking about? Like they're like this, all that. They're such a bunch of fucking babies, Anne.

[Ryan Mack]

I think I am surprised and given that, that all of these people, one way or the other, have been the beneficiaries, as you've just said, of US government subsidies, in some cases of excellent American education, their workers, the people who have money, the people who work for them are educated in the United States. They're beneficiaries of the political culture and the economic freedom that we have in the United States. Loans, money, capital markets, investment, I mean, all those things. It's not an accident that those companies were created in the US At a particular moment in a time and place. And what surprises me is the revelation of their lack of patriotism, that they don't value the systems that created them, that they are turning on their own political system, that they've become entranced by. I mean, I'm not sure what we're calling it yet. Techno authoritarianism is good enough. Neo monarchy, maybe that's a good system too. I mean, I feel like we're just at the beginning of understanding this. Maybe we don't have the right words yet, but they are turning away from the political system that created them, that nurtured them, that helped them and that gave them the possibilities in order to create something else. I really can't stress enough, I see this as I'm not saying they will succeed, but it's pretty clear to me that they're trying to break and change the political system that we have and lead us to something else. And yes, I'm surprised by it.

[Owen Higgins]

Okay, Owen, I mean, I think it depends on who you're talking about. I probably tend more toward Ryan's interpretation here that these guys are mostly just interested in their bottom line and that's the thing that kind of motivates them. But I do think that it's worth noting that while people in business may tilt right or left for whichever reason, and that may be somewhat fluid when it comes to someone like Zuckerberg, certainly Elon, very happy to flip kind of back and forth politically from the right to the left. Someone like Peter Thiel has had a far right political project for decades. He has not made a secret of it. And Trump in many ways may be a more vulgar expression of what Thiel believes in, but the far right ideology that is behind Trump is not something that is, I think, alien to Thiel. And Marc Andreessen for over 10 years has been headed in this direction pretty consistently. So I do think that 20, I'll.

[Kara Swisher]

Tell you, 20 years if you ever have breakfast with them.

[Owen Higgins]

Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is that if you're looking at tech people, especially like Musk and Zuckerberg, you're gonna see people who have the kind of flexible and flu fluid ideology depending on who's in power, because that's who can help them immediately. That's who can keep funneling the government dollars toward them, while someone like Teeler Andreessen is more hardcore. Hardcore. And I would also say that Bezos making the decision to not have the Washington Post endorse in the presidential election a week or two before voting. I think that that's an interesting point because I think Bezos is also ideologically flexible in the same way that these guys are. But he made a very clear calculation that if he did this, he wasn't going to face any consequences from the Democrats. But that if he didn't do this and Trump did win, he might face consequences.

[Kara Swisher]

Absolutely.

[Owen Higgins]

And when you have, when there's there are billions and billions of dollars in public contracts for Amazon Web services, that's the kind of thing that you want to make sure that all you do is.

[Kara Swisher]

He didn't mind going against them before, though. I think it's a life change he's going through. And honestly, he was one of the more conservative ones. He's from Wall Street. People forget that Jeff was An adult from Wall street when he started, so he had much more conservative personality. So one of the first group that you talked about, Andreedsen and also Elon and Peter Thiel to an extent have complained about DEI wokeness, what they see as censor. They also have, as you said, financial reasons for backing a candidate who promises tax cuts and thinks they can get a more hands off approach to regulation on everything from AI and crypto to antitrust. Just briefly, I'd like each of you to talk about the culture war issues versus deregulation and the different roles that played in motivating them to get behind maga. Anne, why don't you start? What do you think their biggest issue is? Personally, I think it's self interest, always to their core and typically a very problematic childhood. I don't know what else to say. Or just a personality development that is broken in some fashion.

[Ryan Mack]

Yeah, I mean, you know, you know these guys better than me, so I'll go with what you think.

[Kara Swisher]

I do call Marc Andreessen Baby Huey. And I've thought that for 20 years. But go ahead.

[Ryan Mack]

It's always seemed to me that, you know, there is a real issue around what we're calling woke and some of the arguments inside the Democratic Party that weren't useful or the some forms of identity politics that weren't useful. But it seemed to me that these guys were willing to use propaganda to create and blow up and enlarge that culture war for their own purposes. They looked for issues that bothered Americans or that they could exaggerate or play up in order to divide Americans in a way that was advantageous for Trump and for them. And they used it in that sense. What they actually believe, I mean, I really have no idea.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. Oh, and you write about this in the book, this attention to the media. They've been very interested in the media for a like very. And manipulating it. Mark was one of the most egregious manipulators of media over the years. Such an enormous gossip for people who don't know and drops dimes on everybody right and left for his own business interests. But they do understand the power of that. So let's get to the group of second tech leaders. They didn't donate to the campaign. They've been openly trying to curry favor with them ever since. Tim Cook is probably the only CEO in the bunch who already had a relationship with Trump. Ryan, many of these titans of industry personally donated to his inauguration, appeared on the as props, I think visited him at Mar A Lago Fawned over him on social media. Mark Zuckerberg just settled a spurious lawsuit. 25 million to get inside the tent. What is the role here of these larger billionaires? What do you sense has shifted here?

[Ann Applebaum]

I think we, I've been comparing it a lot to what happened in 2016, 2017. We get that famous Trump Tower meeting where you have all those leaders making those faces in those photos, sitting around the table with Trump and Peter Thiel and just looking miserable. And I don't think they got anything out of that. They were the face of the resistance for a couple months and then they kind of faded and they went back to business as usual. And I think that tactic didn't work well for them.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, they weren't that resistant. They were there and they got their tax breaks and they got their repatriated money. And I happened to break that story. So they were embarrassed. Embarrassed to say they were there to make.

[Ann Applebaum]

You also had Sergey Brin at the, at SFO protesting the Muslim ban. And you had, you had Sundar, Sundar holding a very kind of energetic all hands at Google, you know, saying, we're not going to support these immigration policies. We stand with you, our fellow employees, and you. Fast forward eight years later and Sundar is standing right behind Trump next to Bezos and Elon Musk. You have Sergey a little bit further in the back, in one of the back rows next to Vivek Ramaswamy. This is a guy who said, you.

[Kara Swisher]

Notice he was in the back rows though. They were trying to be in the back rows.

[Ann Applebaum]

Sure.

[Kara Swisher]

One of them called me the single greatest engineering feat of all time to be in the back row. Anyway, I was like, courage, you're so courageous. Anyway.

[Ann Applebaum]

And so, I don't know. It's as simple as currying favor. It's as simple as if I show up here at this inauguration, maybe, maybe the Trump administration won't pursue me at my companies. And I don't think it's any more complicated than that.

[Kara Swisher]

All right, Ann, as you said, the CEOs are doing their job, look after shareholders. Even if being obsequious to Trump is good for business in the short term, in the long run, it's not gonna be good for businesses. Cuz these are, this is a kleptocracy that is being built and people are throwing on the word oligarch quite a lot. What happens here in these instances when people are sort of doing closing lawsuits that they never would have done, vying for proximity, which was one thing, looking like props, like they did at the inauguration.

[Ryan Mack]

So you are absolutely right. This in historically and in other countries that you can look at around the world, this doesn't end well. When you no longer have a political system where there's separation between business and politics, at least, you know, at least formally, where you create the idea that people who are close to the leader prosper and people who are not close to the leader do not, then sooner or later you will also get a system where the leader begins to pick winners. So what happened when Putin took over in Russia? He got rid of the first group of oligarchs who were there at the time, and he replaced them with his own oligarchs. What happened in Viktor Orban's Hungary? He's gotten rid of almost every independent businessman at a high level that exists, and he's replaced the, with, I mean, in some cases literally, you know, his, his, his family and people who are close to him. So the temptation for an autocratic leader to use that power to decide who prospers and who doesn't is going to be very, very strong. And so it is a pretty profound mistake that they are making by demonstrating this kind of strange fealty. You know, it's not, it's not going to be advantageous to them in the long term and not going to be advantageous to the American economy. I mean, the Hungarian economy is now, depending on how you count, is the second or third poorest in Europe. Russia is now, you know, has been led down this path to destruction and disaster and more. You know, these are, these are not political systems that end well for, for business.

[Kara Swisher]

We'll be back in a minute. This episode is brought to you by. Meundies underwear drawers are like the Wild West.

[Ryan Mack]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Owen Higgins]

Hey, this is Peter Kafka.

[Ann Applebaum]

I'm the host of Channels, a podcast.

[Owen Higgins]

About technology and media. And maybe you've noticed that a lot of people are investing a lot of money trying to encourage you to bet on sports right now, right from your phone. That is a huge change. And it's happened so fast that most of us haven't spent much time thinking, thinking about what it means and if it's a good thing.

[Ann Applebaum]

But Michael Lewis, that's the guy who.

[Owen Higgins]

Wrote Moneyball and the Big Short and Liars Poker, has been thinking a lot about it, and he tells me that he's pretty worried.

[Ann Applebaum]

I mean, there was never a delivery mechanism for cigarettes as efficient as the.

[Kara Swisher]

Phone is for delivering the gambling apps.

[Ann Applebaum]

It's like the world has created less and less friction for the behavior when what it needs is more and more.

[Owen Higgins]

You can hear my chat with Michael Lewis right now on Twitter channels, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kara Swisher]

Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert fluoride Kennedy Jr. Went before the Senate today in fiery confirmation hearings.

[Owen Higgins]

Did you say Lyme disease is a highly likely militarily engineered bioweapon?

[Kara Swisher]

I probably did say that. Kennedy makes two big arguments about our health, and the first is deeply divisive. He is skeptical of vaccines. Well, I do believe that autism does come from vaccines.

[Ryan Mack]

Science disagrees.

[Kara Swisher]

The second argument is something that a lot of Americans, regardless of their politics, have concluded. He says our food system is serving.

[Ryan Mack]

Us garbage, and that garbage is making us sick.

[Kara Swisher]

Coming up on Today explained a confidant.

[Ryan Mack]

Of Kennedy's, in fact, the the man who helped facilitate his introduction to Donald.

[Kara Swisher]

Trump on what the Make America Healthy Again movement wants today. Explain weekdays wherever you get your podcasts. So, Owen, after January 6th, all the major platforms kicked Trump off. Apple, Google, Amazon basically killed Parler after its CEO said on my New York Times podcast sway, I don't feel responsible for any of this and neither should the platform. That was not a good interview for him. But Parler's back under new ownership and Trump is obviously, obviously back on all the platforms. What happens if it seems like Trump incites violence again? Can you imagine any of these CEOs doing anything about it?

[Owen Higgins]

No. I think we're so far beyond any kind of normal consequences at this point for Trump, especially from the private sector, that it is hard for me to see what it would take for them to take action. I mean, I do think that if it became politically unpalatable and impossible and they were seeing a major threat to their bottom line, they might do something to take him off the platforms for inciting violence or any kind of. I mean, basically my mind just went to a bunch of even worse things that I won't put out there. But anything that he could possibly do is very to see them taking that action. Also, I think it's important to remember that when they took that action. It was after the election was certified. That was going to mean that he wasn't going to be the president in two weeks. He was a two week lame duck. I mean this wasn't some act of great courage against someone in a lot of power, you know, them to do something like this. Now why would they do that? The consequences could be, could be quite effective. And I just want to go back to something that Ann was just saying about like how these picking winners and losers, every administration is going to be favorable to the people that supported them and a little disfavorable to the people that don't. That's kind of the ebb and flow of politics. But what we're talking about here is something much more intense. So I think that it's important to contextualize whether or not they would take some sort of action against Trump within that context.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I think the answer is they would not and they weren't that brave before. You're absolutely. So Trump. Speaking of which, Ryan, obviously there's lots of gimmes and things like that for all these people. One is ignoring a bipartisan. Trump is ignoring the bipartisan bill banning TikTok. He's working on a potentially illegal deal that could the creation of a joint venture between ByteDance and American investors like Oracle and Microsoft. To be clear, both of those were involved. And the last time Trump wanted to ban before he didn't want to ban it and now whatever anyway, he was for it until he was against it. What are the downstream consequences to companies in Silicon Valley, Microsoft, Oracle or elon Musk owning TikTok? It's like sort of a grab bag of oligarchs here. And what happens if there's no deal and Everybody goes to RedNote? Give me an example here. Use this TikTok thing as an example.

[Ann Applebaum]

It's kind of a mad Libs scenario. You know, anything could happen. And I think that is, that is just kind of what we're going to see in these next couple of years where, you know, could Elon Musk buy it? Sure. Like, like who am I to say, you know, and, and that's just the reality of it and that, you know, I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg doesn't love it, you know, that TikTok is still in the picture. But how is he going to speak up? You know, he's already kind of made his bed. He's, he's donated to the inauguration. He is becoming buddy buddy with the Trump administration. So like he's just going to Take it. And I think, I think that is what we're going to see over the next four years, where you could get a lot of benefiting of Trump's allies and Zuckerberg is going to want to be there for when something else comes into play. Maybe it's not TikTok. I think they've just learned that there's no benefit in becoming the resistance or a barrier to Trump and so they're just going to wait in line and see.

[Kara Swisher]

So, Anne, what are the calculations are foreign leaders making right now with regards to what's happening? Your latest piece in the Atlantic makes the point that social media exists outside the legal system. That's true in the US because the immunity granted by section 230 in any country that doesn't have its own laws specifically regulating social media. Until recently, most didn't talk about what they do elsewhere because there are other places, the eu which are capable of reining in platform excesses and the excesses of these tech oligarchs or billionaires. I'm not sure if I should call them oligarchs yet. Also, I'd love to know what you think. So what are the calculations that other countries are making? The non autocrats. I guess the autocrats are thrilled, but go ahead.

[Ryan Mack]

Yes. No, no. First of all, I'm fine with the word oligarch. I think it applies really well. An oligarch is somebody who has both political and economic power and that's clearly what certainly Musk now has. So this is a really interesting question. There are a lot of other democracies on the planet and they have their own rules about elections, about funding, about. They have rules about limits on funding, limits on advertising, political advertising. All of those rules can now be govern got around on the tech platforms. And a great example of this was a recent election in Romania where a kind of wacky conspiracy theorist candidate won the first round of the election after someone spent more than a million dollars advertising him on TikTok, even though he had declared that he had spent no money on the campaign. He broke the system election laws that the court wound up nullifying the election. But of course that's a catastrophe for Romanian democracy as well. So it suddenly brought to light the threat to European, but also any other democracy that wants to set its own rules about elections, about conversations and so on. And this has created that plus Musk's advocacy for the German far right party, the AfD, which has created a kind of crisis in Germany because he has so much greater reach on X than Any normal German media that's created this moment where the European Union is now looking seriously at what it can do to regulate. I mean, they're particularly interested not in tech broadly, but in the social media platforms, obviously.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. He has make Europe great again mega, which they have turned into make Elon go away, which is funny. They did protests. The Germans did have 100,000 people, right? Correct. Huge amounts of people showing up to protest his support. His support particularly.

[Ryan Mack]

Yes, it's a huge issue, especially in Germany. But not only in Germany. I think pretty every country in Europe and other democracies as well, also looking at this, and let me just say briefly, I mean, Europe can do this. They have something called the Digital Services Act. And the primary thing that it could do would be to force social media platforms to create greater transparency. So this is not about restricting speech or censorship or anything like any of the language, the fake language that Musk and others use. This is about giving people who use the platform greater access to information, making more obvious how the algorithms work, giving outside researchers and others access to the algorithms. Obviously, the companies are resisting this really, really hard. And it may even be a part of the reason why they have supported Trump. I mean, for example, why Zuckerberg supported Trump because he wants. Trump needs help in the EU in fighting the eu. And again, it's not an accident that the groups and people, a lot of them that Musk is supporting, are people who are explicitly anti EU and anti European. So this may also be part of their propaganda campaign to break up Europe or weaken Europe so that it's unable to regulate these companies. I think this is a really important moment. It's a kind of make or break moment. Is it possible for other democracies to have their own rules, to have sovereign elections, and to regulate media that is essentially coming from the United States or getting infected.

[Kara Swisher]

It sounds like Canada's all united against Elon Musk, it sounds like. And the rest of them. It's interesting people that didn't agree in Canada. We'll see if it has an effect to strengthen things like those parties in Germany, the right wing parties, or to hurt them, which will be interesting in your book, Owned. It is an attempt to show how two of the most popular journalists on the left basically are corrupted by platforms run by tech billionaires. And how they shifted Glenn Greenwald and Matt and the others was really something to see. Do you worry that this playbook is gonna work for other journalists, say, on the left? It might be ultimately corrupted by the platform. And can a journalist on the left reach an audience at a scale today using a tech platform. What are the outlook since they own these platforms now and run them? They have enormous power over them.

[Owen Higgins]

Yeah, I mean, I think that journalism is in a pretty precarious position right now in general. And I think for, I mean, in the book, I detail like my journey through this, right. Like, I took money from Colin, from David Sacks. I was approached by rockfin, which is like another, like kind of like a right wing alternative to Twitch, kind of that offered me, you know, money, but it was in cryptocurrencies, so no, but. And, you know, I think that the temptation is there. Feeling like you can do your work independently with financial backing that doesn't really ask you for much is a really appealing thing. And so I think that that's okay. And I think that that's good. And I think that alternative media and independent media are good. And I think, you know, that's how I came up. And I think that that's, you know, like, those are positives. Where it starts to make me feel a little uncomfortable is once you kind of get into these right wing networks that have a lot of financial backing and are willing to give you money. And the way that that can, you know, kind of manifest itself is, you know, I talk about Glenn in the book. He leaves the Intercept, he goes to Substack. He doesn't get paid to go to Substack, but he starts making a lot of money there. Then Peter Thiel and J.D. vance invest in Rumble, and then a couple months later, Rumble gives a paid deal to Glenn where he kind of moves everything over, consolidates it over there. They pay him a lot of money and he's now working for Rumble, which again is invested in by Thiel. But it's not only that, it's also he's speaking at conferences like the Network State Conference. These are allies of Thiel and Andreessen and all of these right wing guys. So once you're kind of in this world, then you have the opportunity to continue to make money. And the kind of. The implicit trade off, certainly from the outside appears to be that then you kind of talk about the things that they want to talk about, or maybe more importantly, you don't talk about the things that they don't want you to talk about. And I think that, that, that is a very appealing thing to independent journalists, certainly. And while at any publication there are going to be interests that determine what you cover and what you don't. And that's not, I'm not Being conspiratorial here, that's just like you have to make coverage decisions. Having those decisions be unduly influenced by a small cohort of extremely wealthy men who have an ideological project, an economic project. I think that is the kind of thing that's the part of it that unsettles me. And I think that often maybe people don't really even see what's happening as it's happening.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, we see it. Ryan, you wrote a piece about how Elon and X used X to woo these right wing leaders around the world and in this country and then push them to embrace policies that benefit him and his companies. Do you think he'll be able to maintain the relations over the next four years with Trump? And if he can't, what are the consequences for Tesla, SpaceX, X, the rest of his companies?

[Ann Applebaum]

I think that's the million dollar question, right? I think a lot of billion, billion dollar, trillion dollar question. You know, a lot of folks were wondering, you know, these are two big egos, when are they going to fall out? It's a question I ask pretty regularly. And, you know, I get the sense that they actually get along pretty well right now. You know, whether that'll last for four years is again, the question question. But for now, they have a mutual kind of dependence on one another. Trump gets a lot of value out of having Elon around.

[Kara Swisher]

He's his junkyard dog.

[Ann Applebaum]

Takes a lot of heat off of him. For example, we're writing about how Musk is taking over government entities right now, justifiably. But we're not talking about Trump, we're talking about Elon. And I think the only thing standing in the way of that are their egos. If one of them gets annoyed that the other is getting too much credit or vice versa, you know, that seems to be the only impediment here. But for now, they seem to be enjoying each other's companies. You know what they. And they benefit each other.

[Kara Swisher]

Who is the stronger character here?

[Ann Applebaum]

I don't know if I could answer that.

[Kara Swisher]

Musk.

[Owen Higgins]

Why?

[Ann Applebaum]

Why is that?

[Kara Swisher]

Because I think they're using Trump as a vehicle. And I think ultimately Elon has the power because he has the money, he has the influence, the relationships. And Trump is older and at the end of it, they need him for so long. So in that way, I think Elon's much more powerful, but I don't know. He is the president, but I don't know if that's as good a job as it used to be.

[Ann Applebaum]

I watched a clip Last week that was very interesting. And it was Trump being interviewed in the White House. And it was during these reports that there were being changes being made to government websites. And if they weren't being made, he didn't know they would get taken down. And he's being asked about it and he, like you said, doesn't know. He says, hey, that sounds like a good idea. You know, I support that happening. But that clearly wasn't his call, or at least he wasn't read in on it. And I thought that was mind blowing, you know, and maybe it's a tactic. I don't know, Maybe there's some 3D chess I don't know about going on.

[Kara Swisher]

Here, but like, yes, that's what's happening there. All right, so on a scale of 1 to 10, each of you, how scared are you of these billionaires? And I don't mean fearful or maybe fearful of the impact they're having right now. Ann, you go first.

[Ryan Mack]

So I'm not personally fearful, but my autocracy detection radar is very, very. And I would say I'm up to 9 or 10.

[Kara Swisher]

9 or 10. And the possibility of pushing them back. Where is that?

[Ryan Mack]

We'll see what happens in the next few days and weeks. I mean, we do still have a legitimate political opposition in the United States. We have courts, there are tools available, and I think there will be a pushback. But whether it can succeed, given the nature of the current administration, I just, just don't know yet.

[Kara Swisher]

Ryan.

[Ann Applebaum]

4.20.

[Kara Swisher]

Why?

[Ann Applebaum]

No, I'm kidding. 4. That was a 420 joke.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, ha ha.

[Ann Applebaum]

You know, 420. 69.

[Kara Swisher]

Got it. Okay.

[Ann Applebaum]

I don't like thinking about things and being in terms of, like, fearful. I just think of things in terms of accountability, and there's no accountability. You know, there he is, completely unfettered. He has no opposition, all of them, Elon in particular. And I'll keep writing about it and we'll keep reporting on it at the New York Times, but I don't know, there's just no accountability here. And that's, I think what the biggest takeaway is for me, that there's just nothing in the way.

[Kara Swisher]

Owen?

[Owen Higgins]

Yeah, I mean, I fluctuate the tactic that they're using right now of just, just going full speed ahead. And this is, you know, Trump is doing this as well. So it's kind of hard to like, see how it can be stopped. But it does fluctuate because I'm pretty at my core, I'm pretty optimistic and I just don't think that this can continue like this in this country, specifically with the national character of this country, in that it can take people a long time to motivate and to take action and to push back. But it does happen eventually. And I guess that my hope is that it happens sooner than later. Because again, how fast is the train going to go before it goes off the rails and how many things is it going to destroy on the way? So that's kind of a mixed metaphor. But, but I think you guys know what I'm saying there. Like, it's, it's disturbing. And I think, I think probably what I'm most scared of is, like, what's going to happen before it stops.

[Kara Swisher]

On with Kara Swisher is produced by Kristen Castro, Roselle, Kateri Yocum, Jolie Myers, Megan Burney and Kalyn Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get to be the team of white hat hackers that will undo all the mess that Elon's minions are making. If not, you get to join his team and have a really silly nickname like Big Balls. Go Wherever you listen to podcasts, search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.