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- [00:01]
Kara Swisher
Support for pivot comes from BetterHelp. We often hear about red flags, but what if we spend more time looking for green flags in new friends and partners? Whether you're single, dating, married, or just looking to improve your relationship with yourself, therapy can help you find and nurture connections that keep you energized. And BetterHelp online therapy can be a great way to start. BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient, serving over 5 million people worldwide. Discover your relationship green flags with BetterHelp. You can visit betterhelp.com pivot today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com pivot this episode is brought to.
- [00:43]
Scott Galloway
You by On Investing an original podcast from Charles Schwab.
- [00:47]
Kara Swisher
I'm Kathy Jones, Schwab's Chief fixed income Strategist.
- [00:50]
Scott Galloway
And I'm Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment strategist. 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. We know that investors have a lot of questions about the markets and the economy, and we're here to help. So download the latest episode and subscribe@schwab.com oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:13]
Kara Swisher
Remember last year's amazing trip? That cute first birthday party? All those photos, all those memories can be freed from your phone with a Shutterfly photo book rediscover and share your favorite moments with those you love. You'll be amazed how easy it is to make a photobook with Shutterfly and enjoy it for years to come. Get 40% off orders over $29 with code pod40@shutterfly.com and make something that means something. And I also occasionally if I have both a gummy and a couple makers and ginger, I put in my AirPods and I dance to 80s music without my shirt on.
- [01:51]
Scott Galloway
Can you put a camera in your house so I can watch that? Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher and I am in San Francisco and was on a flight last night having to read about Doge working all weekend taking over the government.
- [02:09]
Kara Swisher
Good to see you Kara.
- [02:11]
Scott Galloway
I'm so tired.
- [02:12]
Kara Swisher
Are you? Why are you back in San Francisco?
- [02:14]
Scott Galloway
Oh, I have a bunch of things to do here. I'm speaking in front of a group from Columbia University Journalism School. I've got some appointments, I've got a whole bunch of stuff I'm doing here in San Francisco. I like to come and visit the place every now and then to find out. I do. I do. I don't have a lot of time here this time, but I'm excited to be here anyway. It was a long weekend. Listen, this whole Doge thing has got me off to a bad start, but I am glad I'm in San Francisco, that's for sure. How are you doing?
- [02:45]
Kara Swisher
Good. I'm about to get on a plane for Orlando.
- [02:48]
Scott Galloway
Oh, nice.
- [02:50]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. Um. I have a speaking gig at Walt Disney World.
- [02:54]
Scott Galloway
What?
- [02:55]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. I don't ask. I don't know. I don't know. I just go where they send me. Which place? What's that?
- [03:02]
Scott Galloway
Why? Who is at Walt Disney World?
- [03:04]
Kara Swisher
They do a lot of conventions there, I guess. I don't know. Foreigners? I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. I just know I'm going, and then I spend a day there, and then I go to New York for three or four days and I'm back.
- [03:17]
Scott Galloway
Oh, nice. That's really nice, Scott. Yeah. Yeah. It's. February's gonna be a big month. It's gonna be a big month. And it has been in Washington, as I said. But it's just. It seems very active. It used to be a lot slower in the winter. Now it seems crazy. Maybe just I'm tired from flying all night and then being here.
- [03:34]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. I don't know. I don't. You spend. It's interesting. As close as we are professionally and personally, we are never in the same place. You spend most of your time in D.C. and San Francisco, and I am never in D.C. or San Francisco.
- [03:50]
Scott Galloway
Well, that's why we're so close.
- [03:51]
Kara Swisher
You see? It's funny you say that. So just to bring this back to me, I have a really nice relationship with my sister. She's my dad's daughter by his third marriage. I'm the son by his second marriage. And I'm convinced one of the reasons that we're so close now is that we didn't live in the same household. I've always been shocked by how many siblings are not that close, even though they're both really good people. And I'm convinced it's because something traumatic happens that creates a fissure when they're living together as children. And when you're a sibling, you feel that familial bond, but the fact that you never lived together, I don't know. She looks like a different species. She's attractive. She's blonde. She kind of looks Irish. Joke she looks like Aryan youth. She has big, beautiful blue eyes and platinum blonde hair.
- [04:36]
Scott Galloway
Okay. All right. That's an interesting reference. Okay.
- [04:40]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. She likes that.
- [04:41]
Scott Galloway
Oh, she likes that. Yeah. I'm sure we have a lot to get to today. May I start off by saying something? Someone who is a big listener of ours wrote me and someone they knew died in that plane crash and said we were a little too glib about the plane crash, making it political. And I thought about it, and I really do think we were trying hard to separate it from the politics. And there's no getting around it. This is a terrible tragedy of people dying. And I get it. For a lot of people, it's been turned into a political thing, and maybe we did a little bit more than we should have because we said we weren't going to. So I wanted to bring that up. I don't know how you feel about that, but I wanted to say these families, they're finally finding everybody there. They still have not found everybody in the Potomac, but reading these stories this week of these families was really heartbreaking. I found it very heartbreaking.
- [05:40]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. It's impossible. Not. That's an impossible. I don't call it accusation, but it's an impossible comment to not land. Because if you knew somebody on one of those flights, you're devastated. Right. They're losing a loved one unexpectedly and in such a harsh spectacle is, you know, you're kind of. I can't imagine any of those people, including their families, are ever going to be the same again. You know, my. My view is taking a step back. I mean, it was sort of like when the wildfires came, I think. Oh. At least the point I was trying to make. I won't put words in your mouth, is that rather than, I would argue, empathy for the people on, you know, who lost their homes or the people who lost their lives, the left says it's climate change. The right says it's dei. In this instance, the right mostly. The left was mostly quiet. The right was. This is dei. And it's just a shame that a lot of that empathy gets. It gets some bullshit nods from people, thoughts and prayers, and they immediately go to, how can I politicize this? And our point was. Or not our point. My point is the following. The FAA is arguably one of the most successful government agencies in history. And as someone who's invested in aviation, the error rate you have to test to is 10 to the negative. 8th with. To get civil aviation aircraft certified to fly passengers. I mean, in the ability at any moment there's something like 7,000 planes in the air in our airspace. And the fact that they're able to minimize or keep the number of these horrific tragedies. It is more dangerous to walk up your stairs to get on a plane.
- [07:28]
Scott Galloway
No, I get that. I get it.
- [07:29]
Kara Swisher
And so the, and just let me finish here. I am not a fan of dei. I've said in the university setting I think that apparatus should be disassembled. I think in the corporate setting there is absolutely still a role for dei and people don't realize that dei, the removal of DEI will impact veterans ability to get jobs. But in the instance of, if you were to say that the DEI has infected the faa, then all you could say is based on the performance of the FAA, then DEI should be incorporated into every organization because whatever the FAA has been doing the last 30 or 40 years has resulted in outstanding metrics. But I just want to circle back. I feel whoever wrote that, I trust.
- [08:14]
Scott Galloway
And hope I'm a huge fan of ours.
- [08:15]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, I apologize sincerely if in any way our comments come across as coarse. That was not our intention.
- [08:24]
Scott Galloway
Yeah, not at all. Let me just say I would avail myself sometimes. You can complain about media, but these stories about these people, and I read a bunch of them, are wonderful, especially this, you know, this group of skaters and friends. And it's, you know, I know plane crashes do get more attention than other things and as you say, not as many people die. But there's, it's such a sort of horrific way to die and the way it becomes spectacle is also horrific. But let's just remember there's people on this flight. That's all I want to say. I just, I did that after 9, 11. I read so many of the biographies and stuff like that. And you don't do that for everybody every day of the year who dies. But in that case, it gives you a real sense of mortality when those happens to everybody. And it just was. Anyway, we're sorry, that was not our intent and let's hope we figure out what happened and stop accidents like that. Because Scott is right, our air travel is safe comparatively, going forward. Anyway, we've got a lot to get today. Trump set off a firestorm over the weekend, slapping 25% tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico and 10% on China's products set to go into effect this week. What do you think, Scott?
- [09:39]
Kara Swisher
Well, just on a human level, for the first time in my life, and this is an odd feeling and it's a mix of shame and surprise, I'm Rooting for Canada, not the U.S. so let's start with the tariffs and let's do a strong man or steel man. His argument is that countries. That the America has been too soft and that America should command the space it occupies and charge more and create a revenue source for access to what is the largest economy in the world. And that our trade agreements have been asymmetric. And that is they have. We have been taken advantage of. First, my personal experience, having literally done business in almost every Western nation and even negotiated agreements between private companies and world leaders, America flexes its power every fucking day. I mean, the notion that somehow we're always on the wrong end of deals when you show up almost every trade agreement. We have 700 military bases in 80 countries. China has one in Djibouti. And you think we just asked for those? You think we just said, hey, wouldn't it be a great idea to have a military base? We flex our power every day. So first, the base notion that somehow.
- [10:48]
Scott Galloway
We'Ve been getting taken advantage of, getting.
- [10:50]
Kara Swisher
Taken advantage of is literally common. Now, let's talk about the tariffs themselves. You could make the argument, all right, with China, the argument would be, and I'm trying to call balls and stripes here, a lot of the tariffs initially imposed in the first Trump administration were actually kept in place by Biden. This takes it to such a deeper, weirder level because, for example, with Canada, 25%, this will just immediately raise prices for both nations. The definition of stupid is you hurt yourself and you hurt others. In addition, you don't think China might get a military base at Colombia at some point. You don't think, can Canada, the Canadian embassy in Tehran. Those people risked their lives to try and covertly get American hostages out of Iran. They risked their lives because Canada sees themselves as. As friends, brothers, siblings of America. They followed us into Afghanistan. They followed us into Iraq. We have Major League Baseball, National Basketball association team called an ally in Canada. It's more than an ally. They are with us. And Canada right now can't even answer the question, what do you want from us? What's the end game here? Why didn't you call us, your good friend, and say, this is our concern and this is what we're trying to achieve? I don't even think they know. They can't even answer the question, what is his end game here in this bullshit that, well, we've gotta reduce the level of fentanyl. You can sort of make that argument against China and Mexico. You can't make it against Canada.
- [12:33]
Scott Galloway
He Wants to be the 51st state. There's that thrown in there that Canada.
- [12:37]
Kara Swisher
So, okay, you've managed to raise prices, to diminish the quality of life of a friend, to diminish goodwill that has been built up over 150 years and it's just going to raise consumer prices. It's not only reckless, it is literally the definition of stupid is doing something that hurts others and hurts yourself, especially the one against Canada. I can sort of see the argument, at least theoretically, about the drug trade and fentanyl coming through Mexico. Fine. The immigrants, the 250,000 people coming over the border, maybe China. I can sort of make an argument. I still don't think it's smart. But the tariffs against Canada.
- [13:18]
Scott Galloway
Right. All right. One of the. I mean, the Mexican president who seems much more aggressive than previous presidents was making the point. Stop wanting drugs so much. Do something about your own drug problem within the country and the demand, which you never do. There has been an effort by the Mexican government to slow all that down. Right. There has been progress made. Just a note, we recorded this episode on Monday morning. Since then, Mexico has announced that it has struck a deal with the Trump administration to put tariffs on hold for a month, which is exactly what Mark Cuban said would happen. But again, this seems like in Trump's head, and I've read economist after economist, that is just like this is the world's worst thing to happen to everybody. And it will be a tax. You know, there were a couple of anchors who just doesn't seem to know math. It'll be a tax on the American consumer that they're not gonna get through tax breaks. Cause the tax breaks are going to the very wealthy. They're not going to. And this is a direct tax on the American consumer. It's really quite something. And the price of everything, all this weird. I had no idea that so much stuff. And I know that we're doing lots of trade. Vaguely. But in terms of when you start to get the specifics of what we import, fresh fruits and vegetables, gas, obviously maple syrup, things like that. But some of it, you know, cars that go back and forth across the border. I was vaguely aware of that. But it's really. We are. They aren't the 51st state, but they sure as hell aren't just another country. That is true. And I think the same with Mexico. We have so much trade with them. And there was a hope that we'd put more technology engineering there. So it was closer and less at risk than in China. Right. He thinks It's a negotiating tactic. And one of the things, let me look it up, Mark Cuban said, which I thought was smart, is that he'll make some calls and call them off right away and then declare victory, essentially do a pinky promise. I think that's what he said, that he was tough and then he can take his win and go home, essentially, which it sounded like a pretty reasonable idea of what this idiot's going to do. Essentially.
- [15:32]
Kara Swisher
If you were to game theory this out, the most likely outcome is that immediately you're going to see a spike in prices or near immediately. A lot of companies have been stockpiling. I was on the board of a retailer and I was speaking to the CEO the other day and he said, yeah, the tariffs in China, we knew they were coming, so we've been stockpiling things and get, trying to get, get them in until this gets solved. So you're not. I actually don't think you're going to see price increases as quickly as people think. Maybe we will, but we will see price increases and then he will come up with some sort of. He'll declare victory and say he got something and most likely rolled him back somewhat or all. That's the most likely scenario. What we're not thinking about is that people have memories, people have egos and we're no longer a trusted ally, we no longer can be counted on. You're going to see that the Canadians are going to be more likely to import BYD electric vehicles.
- [16:21]
Scott Galloway
This is from China for people who don't know.
- [16:22]
Kara Swisher
And what's interesting about this, and it gets more Machiavellian and mendacious as you look at it, it's clear Musk's fingerprints are all over this. Because if you look at Tesla, they actually have to their credit the greatest manufacturing depth. What do I mean by that? If you're an American car maker, sometimes certain car parts or components literally go up and down Canada and cross Mexican borders 6, 8, 10 times. There's tariffs going to be everywhere in American automobile companies except Tesla. The majority of their parts are manufactured vertically here in the us the majority of, of the automobiles they sell in China, which would be subject to the reciprocal tariffs that China is going to impose on American products. The majority of Teslas sold in China are actually manufactured in China now. And Tesla is suing Europe for their seven half percent tariff they put on Tesla sold, manufactured in China. So actually these tariffs in my view were massaged and written and negotiated to a certain extent by Elon Musk. Because what this amounts to in the automobile industry is it's going to seriously impair US Auto companies, but it's not going to impair Tesla. But this is what people don't realize. He'll try and get some sort of political win, flex his muscle. America's back. But the amount of goodwill that we are eroding long term, this isn't how you operate a business. This isn't how you operate a country.
- [17:55]
Scott Galloway
No, it's called distributed negotiations, or one is a winner and a loser. I was reading a whole thing about his negotiating style, which doesn't work on the international stage. This is what Cuban said. He's going to say, pinky swear, you will protect our border and buy more booze and stuff from us. They will say, yes, won't actually buy this stuff, and he will declare victory. Trumponomics.
- [18:14]
Kara Swisher
And long term, they're just not going to be as inclined to cooperate with our Central Intelligence Agency when there's a terrorist threat cell in their country. The reason the US Is the most powerful nation in the world is for a variety of reasons. Our geography, our natural resources, but also the incredible amount of admiration and goodwill our allies have for us.
- [18:34]
Scott Galloway
Let's listen to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Essentially called Trump's actions a betrayal of our alliance, which he just said. Together we've built the most successful economic.
- [18:46]
Kara Swisher
Military and security partnership the world has ever seen. A relationship that has been the envy of the world. Yes, we've had our differences in the past, but we've always found a way to get past them. As I've said before, if President Trump.
- [19:06]
Scott Galloway
Wants to usher in a new golden.
- [19:09]
Kara Swisher
Age for the United States, the better.
- [19:12]
Scott Galloway
Path is to partner with Canada, not to punish us. I don't know. Anyway, there's a very good. He's also gaining. He's had to leave because of pressure from conservatives, too. And now they're all joined together. Just some more things and then next thing. Larry Summers has called the tariffs against Canada and Mexico inexplicable and dangerous. He's usually right about things. He's an economist, obviously. Well known economist. Trump acknowledged it could cause some pain, but how bad could it get? As we said, alcohol, food, cars, toys, pretty much everything. These terrorists will also target that de minimis provision that allows packages of less than $800 to ship to the US duty free. That loophole has been a boon for Sheen, Tamu and others. I suspect he'll be a paper tiger here. Correct. I mean, do you imagine, I think that he's going to do exactly What.
- [20:07]
Kara Swisher
Mark says, well, a senator that both of us know heard our comments and our disappointment in the Democratic Party around messaging and hitting back and called me and said, well, what would you do? And I'm like, don't play the indignance card. Don't talk about all these federal employees being laid off. Don't be outraged. Have, have five or six different items, whether it's eggs, whether it's lumber, whether it's a toy, I don't know what, you know, a car, a new Chevrolet, and have it on the DNC website and just every day announce what the prices are. Inflation is number one on people's minds. That's what they promised to bring prices down. And I don't see any way around how interest rates or prices don't immediately or near immediately tick up. And that's what impacts people every day. And that's what he promised to immediately bring down as we were going to bring prices down. Immed immediately. This is, I don't get the end game here. I don't.
- [21:01]
Scott Galloway
Because he was, he was prices down and tax cuts, I think. And none of those things are on the thing. It's DEI at the FAA and tariffs and destroying the government, essentially, which seems to be taking advantage of his chaotic friend Elon Musk, or help who said.
- [21:18]
Kara Swisher
Well, in all of these stories that would have made huge news and had real scrutiny, one, there's fewer journalists to cover them. And you flood the zone with all of this stuff. By the way, these tax cuts they're talking about, just so you know, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway are getting a tax cut. Anyone else on this show that makes less than $300,000 a year is getting a tax hike. So these tax cuts, again, done under the COVID of flooding the Zone, are going to cut taxes on people making over the people making over $300,000 will get a small tax cut. People making over $800,000 or a million bucks a year about to get a pretty nice tax cut. Is that what you voted for? More wealth for the 1%? But no one's even talking about it because everything seems even more outrageous. There's so many things here that we can't, the media and I don't think consumers can absorb it. And that was their strategy. In some ways, it's sort of mendaciously brilliant. Just, oh, slip in a tax cut for the rich. Because they're going to be focused on all this stuff over here, all our accusations of DEI and the things we're doing at the cdc. Distraction, distraction, there's just so much here. And one thing feels more strange, weird, reckless, economically stupid than the next. They won't notice all this other stuff. Project 2025 is being implemented.
- [22:34]
Scott Galloway
Let me go through the other ones that happened. Over 8,000 US government websites have been deleted, a result of Trump's order. And programs to promote gender ideology. Information about vaccines, hate crimes and veterans care has been removed. Among the removed 3,000 pages from the CDC, 100 pages from the FDA, 200 pages from Head Start, a program for low income, and a thousand pages from the Department of Justice. A lot around January 6th, obviously, USAID was the other thing that was happening. Looks like they're closing it down. They went in over the weekend and took control of the agency, which they're trying to close down. Apparently, Elon said on X on Spaces, I guess that they are closing it down. And they also tweeted it should die. It was a criminal organization making all kinds of accusations. Sounds like he has a band of teenagers, young people helping him do this. Troublesome. They are claiming that nobody without security clearance got access. But it sounds pretty middle of the night on the weekend, which he bragged about, saying one of his advantages in superpowers is he works on the weekend. I work on the weekend, but I don't consider it a superpower.
- [23:42]
Kara Swisher
Can we talk about the sites?
- [23:44]
Scott Galloway
Yes, let's go to the sites.
- [23:46]
Kara Swisher
Well, I've always maintained. So, for example, there was an HIV transmission calculator, and I've maintained that, actually, I don't think Trump is homophobic. I'm not even sure it's fair to say that their policies are misogynistic. What I think their policies are. I don't know what the right term is here. I don't think this is a war on women. I don't think it's a war on gay people. I think it's a war on poor people. And if you have the CDC had an HIV transmission calculator, and if you're a young man discovering your sexuality and you live with a single mother, you don't have a lot of money, maybe you've dropped out of high school, it's important that these kids have this information about prep and pep and what certain types of sex result in transmission of hiv. It's important that if you have an STD and you find out that you're pregnant, what that means and what treatment are available. And all those sites have been taken down. Now, who does that impact? Would it impact my son? No, it impacts poor kids, it impacts poor women. And it's the definition of censorship and purposely regressing and taking us back. It feels like it's not. I don't think it's a war on women or lgbtq. It's a war on poor women.
- [25:05]
Scott Galloway
Oh, come on, Scott. I'm sorry. It is. It's a war on lots of things. That stuff they're taking down across the government is. It's not just poor people. They're trying to, like, abrogate. To eliminate other. Anyone else that has. Remember, they're taking down, like, they have Black History Month or Gay Pride Month.
- [25:22]
Kara Swisher
But who does it impact?
- [25:23]
Scott Galloway
Well, that kind of stuff. It's the same message. If you read Project 2025. It's not just, of course, it impacts poor people, but it also impacts the idea of any kind of identity beyond. You know, veterans need to veteran, you know, CDC needs to. Cdc. Don't talk about anything else. It's an idea. It's an idea that has driven them crazy, which is that we should celebrate diversity. I guess that's, you know, it's a broader obsession that they have with this issue. And that's how you led to sort of the FAA thing, which is it had to be diversity, equity, inclusion that caused these crashes, even though we haven't had a crash in a very, very long time when those things were in place, which probably is a tragic accident. That's really what it is, and that's what happens in life. But I think it's a bigger ideological attack of things they're trying to eliminate in schools. Let me just say, my kid's in a public school in D.C. i am very nervous they're gonna start meddling with the education system. She came home and was talking. She said, oh, I learned the word diverse today. And I said, what does that mean to you? And she goes, oh, they were all different. And she wasn't using race. She was like, oh, we're all different people from each other. And it's good to be, you know, to have differences, and it's good to have things in common. It was a very, like, you know, chalk, vanilla, strawberry way of thinking about it. But I was like, oh, they're going to take that out of her education. Just the word. Which was frightening in a lot of ways.
- [26:56]
Kara Swisher
You know, I think it's a bigger issue, you know, taking the word diversity out of preschool.
- [27:01]
Scott Galloway
No, I know. I think they're going to do a lot of meddling in education.
- [27:04]
Kara Swisher
Well, let me finish. I think in terms of actual damage on the ground, not letting. Having information around Vaccines for new mothers who may not have access to, you know, formal education, not having access to information around STDs, not having access to information around HIV transmission, not having access to who you can contact if you think your landlord is unfairly abusing you and won't give you your deposit back. I generally believe America, even under Trump, that rich people continue to have more rights at the expense of poor people. And I think that's the basic fulcrum and the injustice in our society right now. I think the majority of the people who are in special interest groups, as long as you have money, I think you're fine. This to me is just a war on poor people and they give up. I agree with you. It's ideologically driven. But what they've said is in order to execute it, we're going to give rich people a pass on all these things. They will still have access to medical abortions. They will still have access to lawyers to ensure they have civil rights. They will still have access to marriage. If they want it, they're fine. It's poor people who are going to bear the brunt of all this ideological weirdness.
- [28:19]
Scott Galloway
I very much think they're going to go after marriage. This is the hallmarks of all of it. I think they're going to go after that. They're trying to get it the Supreme Court, just like they did with affirmative action. They're trying to get libel cases with the press. There's certain this obsession about gender ideology has really twisted them in a way that's really. It's just twisted them in ways that I think is much more at the heart of ideology than just let's attack the poor people. I think they have a real. They want to push back so much of the stuff that has happened over the past couple years, probably including among their children and everything else. So we'll see where it goes. But taking down pages is really just about. It seems so needlessly cruel. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about winners and losers from the latest round of big tech earnings. We'll talk a little bit more about what Musk is doing by being the not the second president, the president. Support for Pivot comes from Coda. We talk about startups a lot on the show. But turning your back of the napkin idea into a billion dollar business requirements requires countless hours of collaboration and teamwork. It can be difficult to build a team that's aligned on everything from values to workflow. Thankfully, that's exactly what Coda was made to do. Coda is an all in one collaborative workspace that started as a napkin sketch. Now, just five years since launching in beta, Coda has helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page. With Coda, you can get the flexibility of docs, the structure of spreadsheets and the power of applications and the intelligence of AI, all built for enterprise. Coda's seamless workspace facilitates deeper collaboration and quicker creativity, giving you more time to build. If you're a startup team looking to increase alignment and agility, Coda can help you move from planning to execution in record time. To try it for yourself, go to Coda I.O. pivot today and get six three months of a team plan. For startups, that's Coda I.O. pIVOT. To get started for free and get six free months of the team plan. Coda I.O. pivot.
- [30:26]
Kara Swisher
Okay, business leaders, are you playing defense or are you on the offense? Are you just. Excuse me. Hey, I'm trying to talk business here. As I was saying, are you here just to play or are you playing to win? If you're in it to win, meet your next mvp. Netsuite by Oracle netsuite is your full business management system in one suite. With NetSuite, you're running your accounting, your financials, HR, E commerce, and more, all from your online dashboard. One source of truth means every department's working from the same numbers with no data delays. And with AI embedded throughout, you're automating manual tasks plus getting fast insights for your next move. Whether you're competing on your home turf or looking to conquer international markets, NetSuite helps you get the W. Over 40,000 businesses have already made the move to NetSuite, the number one Cloud ERP right now.
- [31:17]
Scott Galloway
Get the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com pivot. Get this free guide at netsuite.com pivot okay guys. Support for Pivot comes from Deleteme. You might be surprised how much of your data is on the web. You might be even more surprised to know that data brokers collecting that personal information make a profit off it. They treat it like a commodity where anyone can buy your private details, which can lead to identity theft, phishing attempts, harassment, and unwanted spam calls. But now you can protect your privacy with Deleteme. Deleteme sends you regular personalized privacy reports showing what info they found, where they found it and what they removed. It isn't just a one time service. Deleteme is always working for you. Constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the Internet. I've actually been using Delete Me for a while now and I have to say it's a really astonishing thing how much of my personal information is there and collated the way it is together and how much of it is wrong and at the same time how much of it is right. To put it simply, Delete Me does all the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. You can take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount to our listeners today. Get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go join DeleteMe.com pivot and use the promo code Pivot at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go join DeleteMe.com pivot and enter the code pivot at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com pivot CodePivot Scott we're back. We're recording this Monday morning. The US markets just opened a little while ago and The Dow dropped 600 points. Nasdaq is down 2% S&P down around 1.75%. Global stocks are also plunging. Scott, what do you think about this? Not a surprise.
- [33:12]
Kara Swisher
The market is a sober arbiter and has done the math really quickly. Everybody loses over the medium and long term with tariffs.
- [33:19]
Scott Galloway
Yes. Wall street thinks you're an idiot. Donald Trump it's been a few busy days for tech earnings also. Let's go through it to sort of line us up for that. Apple reported blockbuster earnings for its most recent quarter, but the numbers show a slight dip in year over year. IPhone revenue probably not a surprise showing Apple intelligence did not boost sales that they had hoped, although it introduced sort of at the end of the quarter. Microsoft reported a 12% year over year rise in revenue, although its cloud business is slowing. And Meta beat expectations with revenue rising 21% in the last quarter. Really big performance from Meta. Tesla mostly missed expectations on earnings and revenue with $25 billion in quarter revenue. Automotive revenue fell 8%. These earnings were announced during the initial deep seek frenzy last week. There's questions about the AI spending plans. Microsoft has earmarked $80 billion for AI this year. Ometa has pledged as much as 65 billion. Let's talk about obviously tariffs probably may or may not affect them and at the same time they've pledged fealty to Trump in one way or another. Another things to throw in as Meta is reportedly in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, according to the Wall Street Journal, out of Delaware. That has to do with certain lawsuits that Mark Zuckerberg is facing, I believe. But Texas seems to be the place where they all have is their safe space thoughts about the earnings.
- [34:42]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, like they continue to do. I mean all of them, it just went from sort of better, you know, good, better, best. I don't think you've seen any chill around earnings. The thing I find most interesting is that all of them have essentially said we're going big at AI except for Apple in terms of CapEx. And no one is thinking that Apple is the dumb one right now. Apple said we're going to take sort of a wait and see approach and we're going to leverage other people's technology and investments. And Apple just continues to, you know, sort of overperform. And then the other one is Meta. Using their kind of AI ad technology. They continue to serve more ads, more targeted, more effective. It's almost like what Tim Cook did to Meta was similar to what we did to China around AI. And that is we forced or Tim Cook with their opt in kind of trying to kneecap Meta actually inspired them to figure out a workaround where now their ad stack is much more robust and much more AI driven. And just as we held kind of sophisticated chip technology, chip technology from China which forced them to come up with a workaround that might in fact disrupt American AI, Apple sort of is. No one is criticizing Apple now for not making these enormous announcements about just these staggering investments.
- [36:12]
Scott Galloway
Do you see any effect of the deep seq that came at the end of the quarter? Obviously. And it did shake up the stock market and people worried about the spending.
- [36:21]
Kara Swisher
This is my, my thesis right now. And is that similar that AI may be like. I mean there's three layers to AI, loosely speaking, buckets. There's the infrastructure layer, the Nvidia guys, there's the LLMs, the anthropics, the OpenAI's perplexity in there. And then there's the application layer, an Expedia or an Airbnb or whoever comes up with AI to do more sophisticated things or make their services better. They're the customer layer. I wonder if this is going to end up being like the airline industry and the PC industry where there's a massive increase in economic value and productivity, but no one company is able to capture the majority of revenues similar to the way people are banking that Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia are going to be Able to capture it. Now, intel captured a ton of revenue and shareholders because they were the brains inside of PCs. I was on the board of Gateway Computer. Do you remember them?
- [37:12]
Scott Galloway
Oh, of course. Ted Waite.
- [37:13]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, we. Okay, get this. PCs change the world.
- [37:16]
Scott Galloway
You on that board? What?
- [37:17]
Kara Swisher
I was on the board of Gateway Computer. I know. Talk about the weakest flex in the world.
- [37:20]
Scott Galloway
No wonder what happened to it. No, sorry. Yeah, Sorry, did I say that?
- [37:23]
Kara Swisher
Anyways, so we were the second largest manufacturer of computers. Think about it. If someone had said 100 years ago, PCs are 50 years. PCs are these supercomputers that cost the government billions of dollars. We're going to be able to put one on every desk. What would the market cap of that company be? PC manufacturers. Dell for a little while, but not anyone else. Lenovo, Asus, Compaq, Packard Bell. Remember all these companies? None of them got anywhere. Maybe with the exception of Dell, in a product that revolutionized the world.
- [37:59]
Scott Galloway
That's. That's really good analogies. God, you come up with a good one, right? You really do. I hadn't thought about that.
- [38:06]
Kara Swisher
Well, I'm not done. I'm not done. So, the airline industry. I'm about to get on a plane, and in eight and a half hours, I'm going to be in fucking Disney World for like, now. Granted, I'm going to spend a shit ton of money because I'm a narcissist, but I could do it for $400. I could skirt along the surface of the atmosphere at 8, 10, the speed of sound for almost no money. Almost no money. As opposed to getting scurvy or having to eat my niece through the passage of the Andes or the Rockies, which they had to do 150 years ago. Commercial jet.
- [38:42]
Scott Galloway
Not willingly, but go ahead.
- [38:43]
Kara Swisher
But you see what I'm saying?
- [38:45]
Scott Galloway
Yes.
- [38:45]
Kara Swisher
Commercial jet transportation has been remarkable. And guess what? The airlines have lost more money than they've made because there's no barriers of entry. Everyone copied each other and all of the value was recognized by the general public. And I now believe, after what I saw with deep seat, by the way, I just fucking love that Sam Altman was copying everything and then someone copied him. Karma's a bitch, Sam. Anyways, this might be a tectonic shift, and I'm drunk on this idea. I'm intoxicated by this idea that AI might be the airline or the PC industry, where there's a enormous value created and it's all captured by consumers and the public and the Commonwealth, but no one company is able to capture the trillions of dollars in value that we've become used to in big tech.
- [39:34]
Scott Galloway
So who's the Microsoft, who's the Google? Anyway, let me you most noted OpenAI, they're in talks to raise $40 billion in a funding round which would value the company as high as $300 billion. SoftBank would lead the round, investing between 15 and 25 billion. There was several good Masayoshison things. I'd forgotten how much success he's had too. Even though he's had so many disasters, he's like one or the other. It's fascinating. I looked at Lionel and Barber's book called Gambling man, which was really quite good. I recommend it. OpenAI was valued at $157 billion in October. Meanwhile, Sam is giving competition some credit on Reddit. In AMA this weekend, when asked if OpenAI would show users all of the thinking steps, Altman said yes and give credit to R1, also known as Deep Seek. When asked you to consider more open source approach like metislama, he said the company was discussing doing so and he feels we've been on the wrong side of history. What do you think of him admitting the company needs to make changes? And of course this fundraising round, he certainly moves fast. I'll tell you that.
- [40:38]
Kara Swisher
I have never heard a bell signaling the top. Like the fucking gong of Masiu Toussaint saying he's going to invest 50 billion.
- [40:48]
Scott Galloway
Yeah.
- [40:49]
Kara Swisher
In OpenAI.
- [40:49]
Scott Galloway
15. 15.
- [40:52]
Kara Swisher
I read that it was gonna be as much as 45. It's 15.
- [40:54]
Scott Galloway
No, 15 and 25 billion. There's a $40 billion fundraising and he's gonna be 15 or 25 billion of it.
- [41:03]
Kara Swisher
So 15 of a $40 billion round at a valuation I read that is greater than the valuation on ByteDance right now at somewhere between 300 and 350 billion.
- [41:14]
Scott Galloway
Yes, that's correct.
- [41:16]
Kara Swisher
So when Masayoshi San says we need to be crazy, he's living up to it. I think this will be. I think this will go down as arguably in terms of gross tonnage, gross capital lost. I think this is just so fucking ridiculous.
- [41:33]
Scott Galloway
Not a fan. You're thinking we work here versus one of the others where he's made a ton of money.
- [41:37]
Kara Swisher
Wework was renting desk space. It wasn't a tech company. This is a tech company. There's a non zero probability that given how smart Sam is, given this unbelievable technology which I am using 50 times a day, they will figure out a way. I don't see how it right now given the fact that the Chinese appear to have come up with something very robust for a fraction or less. The lack of barriers of entry, the regulatory issues. I don't see how this is today one of the 15 most valuable companies in the world. Now, what they're saying is for Masayoshi san to get his limited partners the return they expect with the risk here, he's saying this will be one of the five or seven most valuable companies within three years in the world. This, to me is an asymmetrically, incredibly bad bet. And he is known for, and to be fair, he did army. He had a big win there. He's had some wins, but his vision funds, his vision funds have underperformed the market. He himself is a great entrepreneur. SoftBank or his telco has done really well, but the funds themselves have underperformed the benchmarks. And to me, this is literally. I saw the valuation here and when I look at the risks facing OpenAI, the fact they have no vertical distribution, even if AI ends up being as big as it is, even if, if I'm wrong and there is private company capture along the lines of what cloud and smartphones were, there's so many competitors who have direct distribution or existing relationships. Whether it's Microsoft that has a direct relationship with 97% of every corporation over a million dollars in the world, whether it's Apple with their iPhones, whether it's Anthropic, which has a large investment from Amazon, where 80% of households are in a monogamous relationship via of Prime. And then there's OpenAI, which Masayoshi San is telling his limited partners at this valuation is going to be one of the seven most valuable companies in the world in the next 36 months. I just think it's nuts.
- [43:47]
Scott Galloway
And gambling man. He's a gambling man.
- [43:49]
Kara Swisher
There you go.
- [43:50]
Scott Galloway
Gambling man.
- [43:51]
Kara Swisher
Yeah.
- [43:51]
Scott Galloway
It's really interesting to look at his history because he really has gotten some huge wins and some enormous. And WeWork, obviously was his most famous one, but there's been others. What do you think of Sam shifting this? Like, shifting. Oh, yes, Deep Seek and then also the open source thing. Like a lot of the Facebook people, Yann Lecun was like, huh? Interesting, because they've been touting open source, of course, the whole time.
- [44:18]
Kara Swisher
I just think if you go to OpenAI right now and type in what is karma? There's a picture of Sam Altman crawling everyone's information and stealing it. And then when he goes to sleep, someone crawls his information and steals from him.
- [44:28]
Scott Galloway
People have noted that.
- [44:29]
Kara Swisher
I just, I think this is such comeuppance from OpenAI.
- [44:34]
Scott Galloway
So what happens to this company?
- [44:35]
Kara Swisher
I think it probably ends up being an amazing company doing amazing things. And the limiteds at the vision fund go, what the fuck were we thinking? Investing at $350 billion valuation? This guy is so good. The technology is so amazing. I'm not suggesting it's not going to be an incredible company.
- [44:54]
Scott Galloway
Not a WeWork is what you're saying. Not a WeWork.
- [44:56]
Kara Swisher
Here we work with literally the definition of insanity. Let's create an app for scheduling the conference room and call ourselves a tech company. Let's buy office space for a million dollars and lease it out at 200,000 a year just to show growth that make no fucking sense. There is a non zero probability here that they lead the revolution. That's the most seminal change in technology in history. I am now betting that the majority of that capture is going to be by the larger economy. And based on the fact they have no vertical distribution, based on the fact that China has popped up and said, hey, we're here again and guess what? We're making similar shit for cheaper as we've always done. Based on the fact their competitors have vertical distribution. Stupid fucking idea. If he raises money. If they were raising money at 50 billion, I'd try. I'd be calling Masa and say, I think you're amazing. I've been a Sprint customer back from the 90s. Can I get on this deal at 350 billion?
- [45:50]
Scott Galloway
It was 157 in October. So that is kind of a leap at this time. I think one thing that OpenAI and Sam Alton didn't have is this ability to be flexible and say one thing on Tuesday and a very different thing on Thursday. Whatever it takes. The open source thing is sort of interesting as they move forward. Obviously Microsoft won that open close thing with Apple many years ago, although you would say you'd rather have been Apple in many ways. So it'll be interesting. What will happen to this company? I sort of wonder. I've always thought, is it Netscape or is it Google? That's always been my question about them. And it'll be really interesting to see how he navigates himself.
- [46:35]
Kara Swisher
What do you think?
- [46:36]
Scott Galloway
I have not done enough reporting to understand what's happening here. When you see him saying we've been on the wrong side of history, that's quite a statement, right? What does that mean precisely? Consider a more open source approach. He better hurry. That's all I have to say. If he's going to want to dominate that. And in that case, it's not quite the same company. But it is hard. As you said, vertical distribution is critical. I think here if you're going to do anything, maybe a merger, I kept thinking a merger with someone, Microsoft, Apple, someone like that.
- [47:04]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, but no one's going to pay 350.
- [47:06]
Scott Galloway
No one's going to pay $300 billion. I'm not going to pay too much for this muffler. Yeah, it's a good muffler.
- [47:11]
Kara Swisher
And by the way, the people investing in that round, they're not looking for 350 billion, they're looking for a trillion back. And guess what? If I type into OpenAI or ChatGPT in the voice of Kara Swisher, specifically referencing chapter seven on whatever it is Microsoft from her book Burn book, it's remarkably accurate in your voice referencing that chapter. They have crawled your book. They are using your IP without paying you. So deep Seek. Bring it on. Copy that bitches. Due to him, what he's been doing to us. I am so here for Deep Sea. It is so weird to be rooting for a Chinese company. The Canadians and the Germans.
- [47:52]
Scott Galloway
You're rooting for the Chinese, the Canadians and the Germans. Anyway, let's get on a quick break. We come back more on Elon's hostile takeover of the US government.
- [48:05]
Kara Swisher
Support for today's show comes from HubSpot. It takes a lot to grow your business. You've got to attract audiences, score leads, manage all the channels. It's a lot of long days and late nights, but with Breeze, HubSpot's new AI tools, it's never been easier to be a marketer and crush your goals fast. Which means pretty soon your company will have a lot to celebrate, like 110% more leads in just 12 months. Visit HubSpot.com marketers to learn more. Support for Pivot comes from Zocdoc. Look, going to see your doctor isn't a walk in a park. And finding the right one can cause you so much stress, you might even need to find a new doctor to deal with all of it. That's where zocdoc comes in. They can help make finding a doctor and scheduling appointments easy again. So it actually does feel like a walk in the park. ZocDoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment. Appointments made through the app can happen fast, typically within just 72 hours of booking. You can even book same day appointments to take some of that stress out. Once you find the right doctor, you can see their actual appointment openings and choose a time slot that works for you. Plus you can filter for doctors who take your insurance, are located nearby, might be a good fit for any medical need you may have and are highly rated by verified patients. You can stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to Zocdoc.com pivot to find and instantly book a top rated doctor today. That's z o c-o c.com pivot zocdoc.com pivot still getting around to that fix on your car. You got this on ebay you'll find millions of parts guaranteed to fit. Doesn't matter if it's a major engine repair or your first time swapping your windshield wipers. Ebay has that part you need ready to click perfectly into place for changes big and small, loud or quiet. Find all the parts you need at prices you'll love. Guaranteed to fit every time. But you already know that ebay things people love Eligible items only Exclusion Supply.
- [50:12]
Scott Galloway
Scott we're back. Elon Musk's doge now has access, as I said, to the federal payment system must criticize U.S. treasury Department. Obviously they're trying to close down USAID. He said he's doing it on instructions from President Trump and he's doing what he said. They're saying that obviously the concern is privacy and sensitive and classified information being accessed by a bunch of kids. That's a worry. That's sort of been a narrative around over the weekend. Obviously the way they did it was sort of in the middle of the weekend. They crashed in all kinds of people left and tried to stop them. It's quite a dramatic thing. And then Congress has no ability to do ability to stop him in some way. It is concerning that the world's richest man and a private citizen that has contracts with massive contracts with federal government has this much access and now seemingly has the power to close down entire departments. They think it's a obviously I'm doing on with some of the experts of what he did at Twitter and is doing here. But it is one way to take over a government is to be doing this. And of course they're arguing that they're trying to save money and it's the only way to do it it but they're flinging all kinds of unsupportable allegations about different things. But of course that chaos is part of the plan here. Any thoughts on this?
- [51:33]
Kara Swisher
Well, when you have the world's richest man who can deny people there's, you know, get in the way of their Medicare, Social Security, veterans benefits unilaterally based on his crew that shows up. I mean, it's the ultimate. We complain about regulatory capture and private capture. We complain the richest man in the world does now have access to who gets money from the federal government without the approval or the oversight of our elected representatives. So again, there's just so much crazy shit going on that we never thought we would see that. People don't seem to be, they're just, they're, you know, it's triage right now. There's so many incoming projectiles at everybody that they don't know how to respond and absorb this. But he is now kind of the puppet master. And the notion that he can go into a website and turn off payments for social services or government services or shut off foreign aid at his sole discretion, it's just.
- [52:36]
Scott Galloway
Well, he says he's doing it on the President's orders.
- [52:39]
Kara Swisher
Well, that's fair because he's appointed by the President and the President can remove him. But my impression is based on the tariffs, the market's reaction to taking a stock up, that basically, okay, you have one guy who the President has entrusted to make these decisions real time. And it's, you know, we. The. One of the downsides or the upsides of a bureaucracy, and what people would argue correctly, sometimes an inefficient government, is that we don't let any, you know, power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts. And what we have here is absolute power. And what do you know, it's the world's wealthiest man. And it goes back to the same thing. There has to be a check on this American experience where we just have decided that money translates to not only power, but to rights. And we are transforming more and more wealth, which subsequently means more and more power and probably most subsiding more and more rights at the expense of poor people. And what's going to happen to every company that isn't owned by Musk? And I look at these tariffs and I'm like, this is brilliant. He's figured out a way to create a tariff that pretty much exempts Tesla. Everyone's like, well, Tesla sells a lot of cars into China. No, all the cars being sold in China are manufactured in China. They're not subject to tariffs anyways. I find it very distressing and very un American.
- [54:06]
Scott Galloway
There are very little. It's interesting to see whether you saw those protests in Germany. You're not seeing him in this country. Whether. But Musk's favorables are quite low. Really quite low considering a lot of people look up to him. Which is interesting because it does look. Especially with this crew he's got around him. It feels like a movie someone made up. Right. Some of this stuff. They're all kids. They're all kids of some sort that are around him or people that work for. They're all his people that are coming in and demanding to see everything. Demanding their. They're like the evil Genius Bar essentially is going into all these places. And they did take over what was essentially the Genius Bar for the government, the U.S. digital Service. And they've renamed it the U.S. doge Service. And that gives them access. These were already set up, these offices in every federal government facility in every department. And some of them literally just a camp counselor and one kid did this astonishing computing around decoding these ancient scrolls. Brilliant people who had brilliant coding skills and brilliant computer skills. But it's this sort of team. One guy is called Big Balls. That's his nickname, which I doubt he has them. That's what his nickname is. I bet they're small Balls. It's just the whole thing feels so bizarre and people are freaking out because I don't think many people can do anything right. What do you do when he does this? It doesn't feel like Congress has. Has a handle on it. The Democrats do not control Congress. It feels like it's in plain sight. Just this is how they're going to go through every federal agency and do this unless they're stopped by courts. Which is interesting. Now, Ezra Klein was making a really interesting argument which I like. I'm going to read from it. There's a reason Trump is doing all this through executive orders rather than submitting these directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending. He opposes a reform the civil civil service to give himself powers of hiring and firing. That he seeks to write those changes into legislation, make them more durable and allow him to argue their merits in a more strategic way. Even if Trump's aim is to bring the civil service to heel, to get to rid it of his opponents and to turn it to his own ends, he would be better off arguing that he is simply trying to bring high performance management cultures of Silicon Valley to the federal government. You never want a power grab to look like a power grab. I thought that was exactly on point. I don't know what you think he's calling it. Weak. This is a weak flex.
- [56:39]
Kara Swisher
I think almost every life lesson can be extracted from one of the seasons of Game of Thrones. And I feel like Elon Musk right now is the high sparrow.
- [56:48]
Scott Galloway
Oh, that's not good for him.
- [56:49]
Kara Swisher
And Thoman is President Trump. It feels to me like Trump is just kind of massaging and coordinating everything here. And shows up with these really impressive, probably very hardworking, intensely smart group of people who show total failty to Musk like a God. And I bet Trump admires that. And Trump says to him, show that same sort of loyalty to him. And Trump says, this guy's smart. He fired 80% of Twitter staff. This is exactly what we need in the government. And they just go at it. And I don't think at this point, Trump has the regulatory checks to even slow him down unless he were to decide to fire him. So I think he's just going after it so fast and so furious.
- [57:36]
Scott Galloway
He's his junkyard dog. That's what he is. He doesn't care what he does to get there.
- [57:41]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, it just. It feels. I mean, there's a component of it that I understand. There's a kernel of, like, value. You know, it's.
- [57:48]
Scott Galloway
You can see something has to shake it up. Something has to shake it up.
- [57:51]
Kara Swisher
You can see the importance of shock value. And occasionally you do need to kind of go in with. With a hammer, not a scalpel. It strikes me that this is just so reckless that it's gonna take. It's gonna erode decades. What do you think the morale is like?
- [58:05]
Scott Galloway
Yeah, this is what he did at Twitter. This is the same tactics. You know, one of the things that, you know, when they were talking about, oh, look, the word fork in the road is in the letter. Elon Musk wanted you to see that. He wanted you to know it was, you know, it was me. Tell them it was me. You know what I mean? Like, he wanted. He wants people to have us and the journalists to write that he's trying to copy what he did at Twitter. Right. Which a lot of these moves. Remember, he seized the systems, fired people, took over people. There was worries about privacy. It's the same kind of playbook that he has. They're sleeping in the office. That's his favorite thing to do. Apparently they have beds at the Office of Personnel Management bringing in his cronies. This is the same. It's like watching Fast and Furious over and over again, except they're or a bunch of geeks. I guess this is what he wants to do. But I agree with you. I think it's really. I do think it's the mark of a loser and he wants to be seen as a king. And so he's sicing this guy on people and to scare them. And I'm not so sure they're so easily scared. I think this FBI agent that pushed back, a lot of these people at these agencies are pushing back. And we'll see if Congress has as any kind of balls, which they don't in any way. They kind of like it in some weird way. The Republicans certainly do. And the concerns, of course, are privacy and the ability for these people to download all this information about people. We'll see why these, what explanations they have, of course, but let's just say Scott and I don't trust them on first blush. All right, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.
- [59:50]
Kara Swisher
Hey there. I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, a show about technology and media and the future. And this has been a tremendously busy couple weeks for the tech industry. There's Donald Trump and his embrace by the men running the world's most powerful companies. There's TikTok and its future of the US and there's Deep Seek, the Chinese AI engine that just shook Silicon Valley and Wall Street. I wanted to get an insight perspective on all of that, so this week I turned to Jessica Lesson, the veteran tech journalist who runs the information. Jessica told me why Deep Seek is so important, who she thinks might end up owning TikTok, and why some of the Valley isn't just playing nice with Donald Trump, but really thinks he'll be good for them. You can hear all of that on channels wherever you listen to awesome podcasts.
- [60:39]
Scott Galloway
Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert Flourite Kennedy Jr. Went before the Senate today in fiery confirmation hearings.
- [60:47]
Kara Swisher
Did you say Lyme disease is a highly likely militarily engineered bioweapon?
- [60:53]
Scott Galloway
I probably did say that. Kennedy makes two big arguments about our health, and the first is deeply divisive. He is skeptical of vaccines.
- [61:02]
Kara Swisher
Well, I do believe that autism does come from vaccines.
- [61:07]
Scott Galloway
Science disagrees the same. The second argument is something that a lot of Americans, regardless of their politics, have concluded. He says our food system is serving us garbage and that garbage is making us sick. Coming up on Today, explained a confidant of Kennedy's, in fact, the man who helped facilitate his introduction to Donald Trump on what the Make America Healthy Again movement wants. Weekdays, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [61:36]
Kara Swisher
This week on Prof. G Markets, we speak with Robert Armstrong, US Financial commentator for the Financial Times. We discuss Trump's comments on interest rates and who might emerge as the biggest winners from the deep seq trade in the world we lived in. Last Friday, having a great AI model behind your applications either involved building your own or going tech. To ask OpenAI, can I run my application on top of your brilliantly good AI model? Now? Maybe this is great for Google, right? Maybe this is great for Microsoft, who were shoveling money on the assumption that they had to build it themselves at great expense. You can find that conversation and many others exclusively on the Prof. G Markets podcast.
- [62:26]
Scott Galloway
Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails.
- [62:29]
Kara Swisher
It strikes me that you need a better strategy than showing up at churches and schools and workplaces for these immigration rights. I just find it so ironic that the agencies charged with locating people, okay, starting with people who've been detained for a crime, I get it. But it just strikes me as so ironic that it they have determined the place to find these undocumented workers is at work, church, or school. Doesn't that make them the most American of us?
- [63:04]
Scott Galloway
I mean, hard workers.
- [63:06]
Kara Swisher
It's so ironic.
- [63:08]
Scott Galloway
Largely hard workers.
- [63:09]
Kara Swisher
But it appears that we've decided that if we want to find undocumented workers, we should go to a workplace or they're sending their kids to school or they're going to worship. It's just so. I find it so telling that maybe, I mean, I'm not against deporting people, but I find it illuminating that, okay, we didn't wake up one day and just find out that 17% of people on construction work sites were undocumented workers. And what I don't think we've come to grips with in terms of an honest conversation around this is one, I do believe, I don't think you're going to have open borders. But two, the reason why we have let this go so far is that the most if the secret sauce of America is immigration, the most profitable part of that secret sauce has been illegal immigration. And we don't want to have an honest conversation about it because they come in, they take care of grandma, they pick our crops, they build our houses, and then when the work dries up, they leave without taking Social Security. They pay Social Security taxes, but they never stick around for Social Security. They actually don't lean on our social services because they're worried about being deported. And have you seen what's happened at construction sites across America? They're empty. People aren't showing up. So I wonder if this strategy is just of trying to shock and awe and intimidate is very shortsighted and not good for the economy and not going to accomplish what we need to accomplish in terms of having a sane immigration strategy. That's my anyways, call it two fails in a row here. The other real fail again under the auspices of flooding the zone with mendacious shit. You know, foreign aid freeze. I think we spent about $70 billion or about $200 per citizen. And this is some of the things we do. You know, in Sudan we support 634 soup kitchens that feed almost a million people. And Thailand and Myanmar refugee hospitals funded by the US are closing their doors. Patients with tuberculosis and life threatening conditions are being carried away on makeshift stretchers. In Africa, I mean the Democratic Republic of Congo, where USAID supported four and a half million displaced people. Verge of era. We were on the verge of eradicating diseases like malaria, malnutrition because of private and public coordination. In Cambodia, where the US was close to eliminating malaria, officials now fear the disease is making a comeback.
- [65:36]
Scott Galloway
Scott, it's not helping Americans. It's not help Americans. That's the stupidest argument. It does help Americans.
- [65:43]
Kara Swisher
I think the majority of Republicans when if you sat them down and you said for 200 bucks a year, this is the good we're going to do around the world and this is the goodwill it's going to create and these are the diseases we're going to eradicate and this is how we're going to find refugees who are displaced in wars a shot at surviving. I think the majority of people go, Here's $200. Right on.
- [66:07]
Scott Galloway
I can't even. It's the cruelest. It's the cruelest and small, most petty and small minded of cut. There's so many cruel and just like cutting, like we talked about last week, cutting the security details of people who worked for this country. It's so petty, it's so small. It shows you this shiver of a little heart that we have at work here.
- [66:26]
Kara Swisher
But let's put the morality aside. So you decide. Look, I want that $200 to go to American kids, full stop. Okay? I understand the argument. I don't agree with it, but I understand it. That 200 bucks, that void we're leaving, Russia and China are going to step into that void. They're going to find people willing to be allies and who will fund groups. We have this sense of security, this cold comfort that there aren't people out there who would come for us, kill us and take our shit away. And one of the reasons they don't is because they can't because generally speaking, the vast majority of nations and the vast majority of people around the world might find us obnoxious, they might find us gluttonous, they might find us arrogant, but they think at the end of the day, we're trying to do the right thing, that we're the people who are funding that hospital, that when there's refugees, when there are homeless people and there are maternity wards being shelled in Ukraine, that American charities show up when, I mean, we're seen as the good guys, and that pays enormous dividends that we don't recognize because the homeland hasn't been attacked since September 11th. So even if you think. Even if you don't make the moral argument or you don't accept the moral argument, just from a security standpoint, political power standpoint, this is the best. 200 bucks.
- [67:50]
Scott Galloway
Canadians are booing us, people. Canadians don't boo anybody. Let's just say Canadians.
- [67:54]
Kara Swisher
Did you see the national anthem? They started booing.
- [67:56]
Scott Galloway
They're booing us. They're booing us anyway. All right, I'll start with mine. My win, obviously, has to go to Beyonce on her album of the year. Grammy wins.
- [68:07]
Kara Swisher
I'm glad you're lightening up.
- [68:08]
Scott Galloway
You know what? Watching the Grammys was great. They were. The vibe they had was like, fuck you. All of you. We're gonna be black. We're gonna be interesting. We're gonna be talented. We're gonna be enjoyable. There was not a lot of the vibe was so good at the. At the Grammys. I'm sorry.
- [68:23]
Kara Swisher
It happened.
- [68:24]
Scott Galloway
They weren't doing a lot of the, like, virtue signaling at all. In fact, they were just like, we're fucking better. We're cooler. We're so cool. We are so creative. Anyway, Beyonce's at the top of that. I love Cowboy Carter. I love that album. There's a lot of albums I love. Kendrick Lamar I liked a lot, but this one I really enjoyed and played it over and over again. She's been nominated four times in this category. This was her first album to win it and deserve it. Go listen to it. It's really a wonderful album in lots of ways and really fun, actually. Super fun and really moving and everything else. So congratulations, Beyonce. I know it's been hard for you to make it in this business. I also really enjoyed watching Taylor Swift dance her ass off throughout no Matter what. She made kind of a little like an adorable spectacle of herself dancing with kids, dancing in Cokes, and also Janelle Monae did a Michael Jackson dance. Everybody. And Lady Gaga did An amazing duet of California Dreaming with Bruno Mars. Really wonderful. The whole Grammys was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. My fail. Besides this ridiculous antics of Elon Musk, which continues into the fucking millennial, Make Elon go away is a really good, good thing to happen. He should go to Mars again. I think he should realize his dream. We should spend all that foreign aid money we're not spending on sending him to Mars immediately. But was an interview that Mitch McConnell did with Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes, which is under attack because the owners are trying to pay off Trump through settling a lawsuit, as we talked about last week. But this is a great interview with Mitch McConnell where he goes. She's like, you wrote this and this and this about Trump being a terrible person. He goes, well, that was a private conversation. And then she goes, well, it's in your book. And he's like, yes, it is. This guy had every opportunity to stop Trump in a very significant way and did not do so. And it mystifies me that he could act like he doesn't like him. He doesn't get the right not to. He facilitated Trump, and to try to pretend he didn't is really. He's a loathsome toad. He really is. Of all the people. Because you can't hate someone and then be the reason they're still here. And gave him the lifeline that he richly did not deserve. So, Mitch McConnell, you also should go away. You really should. You've been a real.
- [70:45]
Kara Swisher
He did vote against Hegseth, which is kind of.
- [70:47]
Scott Galloway
He did. Finally. Yeah.
- [70:50]
Kara Swisher
I feel like that's Hannibal Lecter deciding he's a vegan on his deathbed. It doesn't do us a lot of good now.
- [70:55]
Scott Galloway
Right. Exactly. You're no John McCain, my friend. You're just no John McCain. And I just trying to be like that right now. I don't know what he's going for, but I would like his tour to be over and I'd like him to go back to Kentucky and just get the fuck out of here. Just leave. It's all your fault, Mr. McConnell. Anyway, that is my fail.
- [71:18]
Kara Swisher
I have a quick question for you.
- [71:19]
Scott Galloway
Sure.
- [71:19]
Kara Swisher
Is Edward Snowden a traitor?
- [71:22]
Scott Galloway
Complex topic. I did an interview with him many years ago, and I think what he uncovered was astonishingly disturbing about the government spying on citizens. So in that way a good thing, in a bad thing, the way he did it, I think there's all kinds of hair all over him in ways that are disturbing. I have talked to many national security people who find him to be a Traitor. And they have very persuasive arguments. I have a hard time time deciding about that. I do. Even after doing the interview. And I hate to say that because I think that in many ways he is and in many ways he isn't. I don't know what to say. That's where I am. I don't know what else to say. I think it's a complex topic. Let's just say, and they did make reforms after he did it, but at the same time, the way he did it was traitorous, too. Why did you ask that?
- [72:15]
Kara Swisher
Because, well, I thought that was the most interesting moment. But you now as well, no longer, in my opinion, are qualified to run our National Intelligence Service. I think that's a layup of a question.
- [72:27]
Scott Galloway
All right. Okay.
- [72:28]
Kara Swisher
I'm not suggesting what was found out might not ultimately be good for America, but he's, full stop, 100% a traitor, in my view.
- [72:37]
Scott Galloway
I'm usually with the national security people on this thing. And I think he did hurt our national security apparatus. This.
- [72:43]
Kara Swisher
You lost my vote. I'll vote for you, Secretary of Defense. I'm in for you.
- [72:49]
Scott Galloway
I just have a smidge of. I don't love the government. What they did. So, anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com pivot to submit a question for the ShowRock 85551. Pivot. Elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe, I talked to Ben Stiller about severance on. On. Let's listen to a clip.
- [73:08]
Kara Swisher
There's so many different ideas of what, you know, severance could be a metaphor for.
- [73:14]
Scott Galloway
And I think we all do sever to a certain extent when we, you.
- [73:18]
Kara Swisher
Know, check out if you have a drink or, you know, you take a.
- [73:21]
Scott Galloway
Gummy or you, you know, watch a TV show or if you go on your phone. I mean, we all find ways to.
- [73:27]
Kara Swisher
Cope with the everyday sort of, you.
- [73:30]
Scott Galloway
Know, torrent of stuff that's coming at us in life. Right. It's also, I go to hardware stores and browse. What do you do to sever? Scott? We already know gummies, breathwork, what I.
- [73:42]
Kara Swisher
Hang out with my dogs. Sometimes I take a gummy. I like to write the evening is my alone kind of peace time. And I also occasionally, if I have both a gummy and a couple makers and ginger, I put in my AirPods and I dance to 80s music without my. Without my shirt on. I dance in the mirror like a 15 what I imagine like a gay 15 year old teenager would do. Is that wrong?
- [74:11]
Scott Galloway
I so want to see that. I so want to see that. Can you put a camera in your house so I can watch that? And then I will sever watching that. That would make me happy.
- [74:19]
Kara Swisher
It would literally. It would probably. It would probably decrease the amount of sex people that people have that night by like everyone would just be so freaked out and so unattracted to everybody.
- [74:29]
Scott Galloway
I would like to sever. I would like you to do that for me. I want that as a gift. I want a video where I can.
- [74:35]
Kara Swisher
Monologue DJs and Tom Petty. Little bit of edible CBD and sativa with the makers and ginger Daddy's got the moves. Hello, ladies. All right. Do you believe in love at first sight or should I walk by again?
- [74:48]
Scott Galloway
I don't know what else to say. Anyway, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more. Scott, Read us out. Dance us out.
- [74:54]
Kara Swisher
Today's show is produced by Lara Neyman, Zoe Marcus and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Underside engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Ms. Silverio and Dan Shalon. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine@nymag.com pod we'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara, have a great rest of the week.