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We're talking to Chris Hayes about how our digital devices have changed us. Now it's like traffic or air travel. Like, it's a thing that we all just experience as a bummer. That you just talk to about like... Doesn't it suck that, you know, we can't pay attention. The phones are always going off. Listen to The Gray Area with me, Sean Elling. New episodes every Monday, available everywhere.
From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Channels. Peter Kafka, that is me. I'm also the chief correspondent at Business Insider. And the plan for this week's show is to call up Jessica Lesson. She's the veteran technology journalist who runs the information. which is an excellent news publisher, about the relationship between Silicon Valley and Donald Trump, because we have never seen anything like this parade of tech leaders going to Mar-a-Lago and out of Washington.
And I wanted Jessica, who knows these men very, very well, to get inside their heads and tell me what they really think is going on, what they really think about what they're doing in public and private. The good news is we had that conversation. Even better news is that this has been a giant tech news week for non-Trump reasons, and we got to talk about that too.
Jessica and I started off this chat by talking about DeepSeek, the Chinese AI company that seems to have upended some of the biggest, most powerful companies in the world.
spoiler we still don't know how this is going to shake out but in our chat we do get to talk about what's at stake here from market caps to global politics and i guess the future of technology question mark And for all my fellow media people and frankly, anyone trying to make sense of the news today, Jessica and I talk about the best way to cover Trump 2.0 and whether anyone is going to pay attention to what we're saying in writing.
Okay, this is a good chat. You're going to like it. Here's me and Jessica Lesson. Jessica Lesson, welcome back. Hi, Peter. So happy to be here. Oh, I'm sorry. It's your first time on channels. I've had you on other podcasts in the past. So thank you for joining me. I am an avid fan of all your podcasts.
Feels like old times. And I'm a fan of yours. So we'll get that out of the way. Things are moving so fast right now. I was talking to you a few days ago and said, hey, would you come on and talk about Trump and Silicon Valley and the view from your neck of the woods? And we're going to do that.
But of course, we have to start with the new news, which is Deep Seek, which has upended the Valley, Wall Street, maybe the world. We're recording this on Tuesday, so things could change. Maybe Donald Trump will announce that he has... The U.S. government has now bought DeepSeek by the time this podcast comes out. But assuming that hasn't happened, I just want to maybe have had a chance to catch your breath. There was panic.
yesterday. Lots of hot takes. This company is screwed. No, this company isn't screwed. Does it feel any more settled today, Tuesday, as we're talking about what in terms of what DeepSeek is and isn't going to mean for the AI boom? It doesn't feel very settled, Peter. And I think what's happening here is DeepSeek is striking at a question that is so important.
which is what is the comparative advantage that businesses can have around AI and where's the money going to be made over the very long term? And we've seen extraordinary growth, extraordinary products coming out of AI. But the big question is still, everyone says we're in early innings and we are. And so... How is this technology going to advance? How easy is it going to be for others to build great, great models? And what great businesses are going to be built? And I think today...
I've been feeling like that's an open question for many, many months. And I feel like what happened with DeepSeek is... everyone kind of realized, wow, this is still a very open question. Because you and I have been talking about AI together for some time, and it seemed like maybe over the last... six months, nine months, maybe the last year, there seemed to be some sort of conventional wisdom gelling that, oh, the people who are going to most benefit from AI are the...
biggest technology companies, the ones that can afford all the chips, all the engineers afford to pay for all the power, the enormous power these things use. And these little companies that were trying to get it on the edge, you know, building applications on top of that, probably not a big future.
for them. And as you say, this has upended everything. It was fascinating to watch Wall Street yesterday. Not that Wall Street gets this stuff right all the time, but they were very confused. On Monday morning, all tech stocks were down. Yep. Everything was down. And then by the end of the day, it sort of sorted out. Meta, which had been down, was now up. Apple, which was down, was now up. Microsoft and Google were down. And then the chip companies, largely Nvidia, had tanked.
Do you feel like Wall Street sort of feels like, all right, this is where things are for the moment? We've got a sense of these companies? Well, I think what Wall Street is doing is, in some way, this is actually like... a meme moment in some way. I mean, not to get too meta here, but Deep Sea kind of had that feeling, right? I mean, the model's been out for a while. They released another model.
All of a sudden, Marc Andreessen and Bill Gurley are tweeting about it. It captures Silicon Valley's imagination slash paranoia. And so I think Wall Street did what Wall Street does, which is sort of have blunt reactions on all fronts.
You guys had a story which I assume contributed to the panic saying, you know, Meadow over the weekend had spun up these war rooms to figure out what they were going to do about Deep Sea. And when you see a story like that coming from your publication, you go, oh, shit, Mark Zuckerberg is worried about this. We should.
be worried about this if you're Wall Street, for instance. Yeah, I think that's true. Although you also made the point that meta moved, I think, some of the least. Even when it was down early, it wasn't down as much as others. You know, I just think Wall Street is still trying to figure out what to make of AI in general, right? We are days after, just last week, major infrastructure announcements. that investors of all stripes are trying to digest. Now we have this evidence that...
you know, it may be easier to catch up in part of the models where we thought there wasn't. So I think so much remains to be seen. But I, to your earlier point, still think the largest companies have a lot to gain with AI. they have the distribution. They have the existing business lines that can be turbocharged with it. And I don't think that's changed with this announcement. One argument you've been seeing a lot over the last day, is it Jayvon's paradox? Oh my goodness, not this.
again yes i know we're gonna hear it by the way publishing a glossary of all the latest you know open weights jayvon's paradox it's all this stuff that we have to we have to pretend that we have familiarity with that we'd never heard of until a day or two ago some of us had heard
For Lehman, right, the general idea of like, hey, just because costs, if this is true, if DeepSea can actually do what they say they're doing, and there's still questions about that, that doesn't screw the NVIDIAs and the Googles and all these folks that have made these giant investments. It makes their investments more.
valuable, actually, because the cost will come down and more people will use more stuff that still benefits them. And then there's an argument that this is what people in tech now called COPE. Right. This is this is this we're just you're just justifying all the money and investment you've made and you're actually really screwed. Well, that that's a really important point, Peter. And I think in my now.
20 years in covering Silicon Valley, there is this pattern, which is, you know, venture capital floods into the hot new thing. and tries to kind of shape the zeitgeist and the thinking to kind of justify that it's the next new thing. Because if it's not, why do you need venture capital? AI is so interesting because the technology is so powerful and so interesting, but it's not, it's going through that same Silicon Valley wheel.
of needing to fuel the hype. I mean, I've lost track of how many times OpenAI has told us. It is or isn't on the cusp of AGI. And I sort of feel like it's correlated to fundraising needs, right? And they're not alone in doing that. That's literally how Silicon Valley works. And so, yeah, we are seeing now.
I mean, you could call it whatever you want. And also many of these tech leaders like a good Twitter soundbite. So they like to call it something, an X soundbite. But I think we just don't know. But it should be troubling to invest. that the moat around some of these AI businesses seems to be getting a lot shallower. And again, there have been many voices in Silicon Valley who have said, you know what, I think it's already pretty shallow.
And so it's not that that point of view hasn't been here. It's sort of been drowned out by the other point of view. And I think that's what's turned in the last 48 hours. I'm assuming your readers are gripped by this. Do you have a sense of sort of outside of the valley?
how normal people are using open chat GPT, any of the tech. There's stats that say, oh, this chat GPT is the fastest ever to 100 million users. But that really means people went on the website, used it once, and maybe they've come back. My kid uses it to study or cheat in school, depending on what day you ask him. I keep hearing that smart people are figuring out how to use these tools. I don't see a lot of evidence in my day-to-day life of application. I'm sure there will be.
but do you think I'm missing something? I think they're growing. I see what you're saying, but I feel both, you know, and what we have is mostly anecdotal. Although, you know, OpenAI boasts incredible active user numbers and around chat GPT and so forth. I think they're growing. It's an interesting question, though, because I think it points to the fact that the way AI consumer apps are going to touch billions of people.
or through the internet services that already touch billions of people, at least first, right? So Mark Zuckerberg bragged last week that he thought this year Lama would be... you know, the largest chat assistant. And he can say that with confidence because it's embedded into apps that billions and billions of people use regularly. So what they've done is taken the search bar.
on all their apps and made it an AI bar without you asking for that. Totally. It isn't what the user wants when they go to search. Very frustrating that we're not complaining about that. Well, and Google too. I mean, and again, I'm sort of, Google's gotten... It's hand slapped a little for not being more forward in AI. But every time I now go to one of my favorite apps, Google Photos, I just want to search.
And I press something that wants me to talk to it and analyze when I'm looking for a picture of my kids. So I think Google and Meta are both using the same playbook there, which... is the playbook they should use given their strength. But of course, they don't want to irritate users. So maybe I'm missing something, but it's striking to me how little we've heard from the Trump administration about this. Obviously, very complex and contradictory.
of view about depending on really what minute you asked Donald Trump about China, but you might think that this would be on their radar and that Donald Trump would be making some sort of proclamation about it. And again, a big part of U.S.-China policy over the last several years was about... these chips and the fact that the u.s was going to restrict sort of the most powerful chips to china that was supposed to basically prevent them from doing what deep seek says they've done
Do you think the Valley is waiting for Washington to weigh in and either help them or restrict China in some way? Or does no one have any real idea about what's going to happen? I agree. I'm waiting for that statement. You know, our team asked the Trump administration at the start of the week about it and got a very generic statement that didn't speak to it.
I had to do a double take. I think it was Marc Andreessen on X over the weekend, just cheering Deep Seek from, you know, on every dimension. And I, you know, you can be impressed by the technology, but for someone who's so pro America first, so we have to beat China at all costs. And I should double check that it was him. It was if not him. No, no, he was he was raving about it. He also called it the Sputnik moment. And I was kind of doing some parsing and like...
Oh, is he saying this is good because it will spur more America? It will spur Americans to work that much harder. It will convince American regulators to see the world the way he's been seeing it. And maybe that's the way he's thinking about it. Maybe. If only Mark Andreessen talked to reporters and told them. You know, if only. But it...
So there are some major contradictions here. I mean, if you're inside an information news meeting at the moment, right, a third of it is about what's happening with the TikTok ban and who's going to buy it. And, you know, and a third of it's about like the new Chip X. court rules than whether they're going to be rolled through the new administration. And then a third's about the fallout of deep seek. So, you know, we'll, we will see. And, and I imagine.
I mean, it's also a bit strange. We're used to Trump saying lots of things about things all the time. So maybe actually his silence or the administration's silence here is of note. It also just may be that just he... hasn't been in a microphone long enough for someone to ask him that question because they're asking about fighting Colombia and taking over Greenland and TikTok. And he never says no comment.
Right. Yeah. So I imagine it will get to him. I was really struck on I think I guess his first day in office when he starts holding forth that in that press conference and is going on about tick tock and how much how great it is for him. But he's got a line saying, I don't really know why people are so concerned. this being a spy app because it's for kids and if the chinese are going to spy on our kids who really cares i'm paraphrasing but just barely i'm sort of used to see hearing trump
Two seat of the pants stuff and go back and forth. Really striking to hear the president of the United States saying, so what if China is going to spy on our kids? You know, I think. TikTok poses a real conundrum for Trump. Let's remember he was the first one who tried to ban the app when he was president the first time. Ban or force them to sell, right? Correct.
ban or yes and which at the time a sale seemed very unlikely because the chinese government wouldn't allow it still going to be a high wire act to pull off And then, of course, based on his friends who were investors in TikTok or how mad he was at Meta, he sort of oscillated, but was faced on his first day in office with a... legislation that shut it down and, you know, appears now to be trying to use it to negotiate with China over tariffs. But the idea that...
those are on the same level as geopolitical issues. You know, TikTok and terrorists with China is a little hard to comprehend. But I think it's a real problem for him because he's set a timeline up. He's bought it a reprieve, but he's going to have to declare victory some way or another here.
I mean, I do want to come back to that reprieve because it gets at something that I want to talk about later on. But in theory, he's got this 75-day extension that would force them to sell, force ByteDance to sell off its U.S. interest at a minute. minimum in TikTok. It's Tuesday. Things can change. Who do you think the most, if there is a buyer, a U.S. buyer or a non-Chinese buyer for TikTok, who do you think that would be?
So I go back to where we were in 2019-ish when this came around. And the conversations were furthest along with a sort of consortium that included Microsoft, Walmart. Oracle and Oracle was involved. And then there were ByteDance's existing investors in and out to different degrees.
And what it basically revealed was a race. What was, you know, TikTok is strategically valuable to these big tech companies because it's one of the largest customers in the world of cloud computing, AI, chips, data centers, and so forth. forth. And so I sort of believe and know to some degree all of those entities are back at the table. You know, Microsoft is interesting. Back then, this is pre-Activision.
It was also the latest of Microsoft's many chapters to make more of a consumer push. I got my chops started. reporting back when Yahoo was trying to buy Microsoft. So I remember that Microsoft consumer push, I'm sorry, Microsoft was trying to buy Yahoo. That pushed well. So I think... There's a rationale for those companies to be hanging around the hoop. Obviously, Oracle, with its computing partnership and data partnership, is as well.
You know, Trump has been trying to muddy the waters around that. And, you know, you can't count out Elon Musk. It's surprising how quiet he is about all of this. He said maybe a couple of things. I mean, I don't clock every tweet, thankfully. Yeah. I'm the same person. You have a life, yes. But as far as I can tell, he said a couple things. Basically, what he hasn't done is that I'm very interested in this.
put a Twitter, should I also own TikTok? In a normal world, you say he obviously can't own TikTok. He can't own Twitter and TikTok. That's antitrust. That doesn't seem like it's going to be relevant in this world. I can't imagine why that wouldn't just be irresistible for him. You know, what I know, Peter, is that he has been talking to Yi Ming, the founder of ByteDance. They have known each other.
I am actually told going back to an event the information hosted many, many years ago, a trip where Yu Ming came out to the Bay Area for that event. And I think after our event, I'm told, was introduced to Elon. So they've had a relationship. There's been back and forth. I think many people have gone to Elon as they've gone to every rich person over the years and said, would you want to buy TikTok?
And we'll sort of see. I mean, you can actually picture it as part of X, I got to say. I mean, not that that's... what determines these things. I mean, and if you're him, right? Like you bought Twitter and in many ways it hasn't worked out. You could argue that it has worked for him in other ways. It's way more influential. TikTok is way more influential than Twitter.
ever was or could be, I think he would have a much harder time sort of like manipulating it. Or I think he's probably not someone who's going to. get the same enjoyment out of firing off TikTok clips as he does with Twitter. Oh, my goodness. I just had a vision of that, Peter. And now I'm not going to be able to escape. So that seems less appealing. But I mean, it's if you want to. It's not his medium so far.
But if you want to reach a gazillion people, that's the way to do it. Well, I think what Elon wants, and we don't have to get too in the weeds here, but of his many challenges, getting to Mars, so on and so forth, selling... Tesla's with full self driving capabilities in China is near the top of the list. He is not allowed to do it. It's hurting his position in the China market, which is essential.
So he's looking for every bargaining chip possible. I think his relationship with Trump has been driven in part by this need to negotiate with China. I think that's important context here. And I'm sure, like any good businessman, he'd be trying to use this to his advantage. I think we're going to have to just...
play this out a little bit and see what happens. And all options are still on the table. I mean, you could also have the Chinese government just saying, no way. Just enjoy TikTok when you visit England, Americans. i'll be right back with jessica lesson but first a word from a sponsor and we're back
So we've been talking about Trump. I want to talk more about Trump, the view from Silicon Valley. It seems quite clear to me that there's a playbook for tech, but really for all anyone running a company, frankly, in America, which is you not only go... try to curry favor with Donald Trump, you do it in public. You make sure that everyone sees that you're doing it in public. I'm sure there's lots of stuff happening.
Off camera as well, but you make a public display of it and you're doing it either because you think you can get something out of him. He's transactional or you don't want him to punish you. Am I summing up the view from the Valley correctly that that's sort of the main. animating force here? I think that is explaining why we saw that row of tech leaders positioned.
ahead of the cabinet and more prominent seats, you know, at Trump's inauguration. And the well-documented visits to Mar-a-Lago. Exactly. Yes. You know, it's not like Mark Zuckerberg met with him. You know, I'm sure he met with him, you know. out of view but he made sure that he was in view of everyone assembled at the mar-a-lago court and stood up and did the pledge of allegiance to the j6 choir like it was a full full presentation of i am down with donald trump yeah
I think that's right. They're playing into the, pageantry is the wrong word, but the spectacle of it. I think one of the interesting questions is why. And here I think the story is a little more complicated than just wanting to be in his good graces. I think Silicon Valley senses there is a moment to unwind many policies ranging from tax law to DEI of the last several years.
And so tech leaders are really taking this moment. They are aligned with Trump on many issues. And so they're taking this moment to try and seize that to get their companies back to where they want them to be.
And that gets at one of the questions I wanted to ask you specifically about, because I hear it all the time. People are speculating. You know, a lot of these people, you know, Mark Zuckerberg very well, but you interact with all these folks. Well, you know, is what we're seeing on in public display, is it a mask off? moment. Is this who they always were? Or is it again, I think maybe more nuanced and there's some stuff they agree with Trump on this other stuff.
they're just kind of holding their nose and hoping it passes. I know it's different for each CEO, and these are generally men, but if you were to sort of like spoon out the contents of these men's brains, what do you think they would really be telling us? I think this is very authentic to what many of these tech leaders believe. I mean, you can take Mark and you can take him at his word of what he said on Joe Rogan recently, where he kind of described...
you know, the ability to show the world the real Mark or something like that. I mean, it was a long podcast. And I think... In his case, if you take the free speech issue, I mean, we forgot what a seismic announcement meta rolling back content moderation was, you know, but two weeks ago, perhaps.
You know, he absolutely has been more of the camp of more free speech, less moderation for a very long time. But it's not just more free speech, right? It's the Biden administration was terrible to me. There's a lot of stuff that is, you know, they make the announcement literally on Fox and Friends like they did. It's sort of like...
Well, Donald Trump wants to watch it on TV. It wouldn't help if they did it personally for him. But it was catered specifically for Trump. There was a lot. You could make all those same arguments without putting all that mustard on it. Yeah. And I've thought a lot about this with DEI.
a topic I care a lot about, you know, I kind of wish the industry had come forward and said, hey, we tried a bunch of stuff, didn't work that well. Or maybe some of it worked, some of it didn't. Here are the consequences. So we're going to rethink it and maybe we're actually going to undo a lot of it. But here was our process.
And here's how we're thinking going forward. Instead, they all just issued memos. You know, they took content off their website, Amazon as well, as we reported in the information. And they just said, new chapter, new era. And yes, that does seem like... as a tactic and communication tactic very deliberate very different it's kind of liberating i mean i run a company it's kind of annoying you know when you can't always say what you think but you know
But you still can't say what you think, right? You have a new set of restrictions. There's a bunch of things you couldn't say out loud in front of Donald Trump now if you are running a big tech company. No, that's true. But they can all of a sudden say a bunch of things that I think have been nagging at them. and you know i think elon changed the norms here as well and every founder i mean
This is such a FOMO driven looking over your shoulder what that guy is doing industry. It's so visible. We're talking about such power, such wealth, such fame. So when you see a guy like you on Roland. Fire 70% of the staff.
say exactly what he wants all the time and not care what the New York Times writes, you know, you're kind of obvious. A ton of people in tech, way before Trump looked like a plausible candidate again, saying, oh, this is great. I wish I could do this or I'm going to do more of this. I like the cost.
savings of it. I mean, there's a whole part of the tech culture that just has real disdain for anyone who's not really, frankly, engineering, right? And they including their salespeople who they really need. And then lots of the, you know, I think they lumped DEI in with HR and just a bunch of costs. that didn't generate anything for them. They were just sort of taxes one way or the other. And I can see them all sort of pushing against that. I did want to ask you about a...
Mark Andreessen quote. He's been on a podcast tour. Oh, yeah. I was going to say, he did talk to the Times. Here he is talking about sort of his his, you know, conversion moment. You know, first he's upset about the anti-Trump movement of the 2016 era. And then he says, of course, COVID hits giant radicalizing moment. Very clearly company. are basically being hijacked.
to engines of social change, social revolution, the employee base is going feral. This is the part I wanted your response to. There were cases in the Trump era where multiple companies I know felt like they were hours, hours away from full-blown violent riots on their own. Jessica Lesson.
You run the information. Have you been suppressing news of these near full scale violent riots that were nearly breaking out on campuses? No, believe me, we would have been rushing to every violent riot, alleged violent riot. Does Mark Andreessen think that's true or does he think that's poetic license? What a question. I think it's a little poetic license and I mean this in a complimentary way, a master media manipulator he is.
But I think he's actually right that the internal sentiment was very uneasy. I mean, again, we have to remember, I mean, Google had a number of like very serious protests. over supplying technology to- Relatively small percent of their staff, but in a world where no one would dissent prior to this, you would never have anything like that. I'm sure it was shocking. Yeah, no, I think there was a lot of unease.
and fear among leadership about, you know, the actions of employees. I think that's probably fair. I mean, riot is a loaded word. But I think that sentiment is... I have no I have no reason to believe that sentiment's wrong. And but I think. Yeah, I mean, to me, it reads like he and sort of that class of leaders were. if you were generous towards them, sort of confused or upset why employees were...
asking them questions or being even more obstinate than that. And if you're less generous, you'd say they're upset that their lessers were speaking up and they should know better and they should shut up and take the check and do the work. I'll be right back with Jessica Lesson, but first, a word from a sponsor. And we're back.
I did want to ask you about Lena Kahn. Her name is sort of faded here. Yeah. From the public discussion, when I talk to tech people, they are still enormously angry about her. They use her as the stand-in. They think she's the evil one. But it was Joe Biden's administration, John Cantor. And their argument is they've killed off growth in tech in Silicon Valley because they made it essentially impossible to sell your company.
Um, and I know individual founders who feel really strongly about this. And the thing that I can't really say to their face, but I can say to you is if your option, if your. plan was either IPO, which is very, very hard, or hope a big company sells you, what were you doing starting a business? Shouldn't the plan be to do what Jessica Lesson has done, which is start a company, make it sustainable, it's profitable, and you don't?
need to sell in order to survive and then lena khan can't hurt you wow yeah that that is not the model of venture capital industry i mean lena but it wasn't it wasn't always that way though right It wasn't always hope that Google acquires you. It has become that way over the last 15 years. Well, it's become that way because the IPO markets are dead and Lina Khan killed the M&A markets. And yeah, VCs are in a tizzy.
And I don't know, I don't think what's going to come with Trump is going to be like nirvana relative to that. And what I love to do is I love to check this. If you ask like a founder who. We did this on our podcast more or less. We asked Aaron Levy of Box what he thought about antitrust in the Valley. And if you look at Aaron, he potentially can acquire lots of companies. He could be acquired himself. He competes with Microsoft.
And I think he had a much more nuanced, like, we have to look at antitrust. It's just not a blunt instrument of saying, you know, Amazon can't buy a vacuum cleaner company, which is essentially what Lena Kahn did, right? Or Google can't. You can't buy a GIF catalog.
I'm sorry, Facebook can't buy a gift catalog. Yeah, and Facebook, like a fitness virtual reality app was also one of the ones. I mean, what Lena Kahn was trying to do, and I'm interested intellectually in the idea, is saying the way antitrust law works today is...
Someone creates an illegal monopoly and then we go in retroactively and say, that's bad. And we try to retroactively break it up or punish them. And what I want to do is stop these guys from amassing that power to begin with, which by default means these tiny companies.
That could turn into something big. You acquire them and then you own that or you squelch them. And that seems like at least an argument that we should at least take seriously. Yeah. I mean, this industry is moving so fast and it's so powerful. I mean, we need to be. examining these, these are just so complicated issues, but
I think she was too blunt. At the same time, I don't think Trump's just going to remove the axe and all these big deals are going to go through. I think he's going to face a lot of pressure in his new antitrust. She has a great reputation. and kind of time will tell a little bit i mean some of the big
there are just so many of these cases that are now moving through the courts too, like the potential breakup of Google, like the FTC Meta case. Some of which were filed in the first Trump administration. Yes. I mean, and I think... I've reflected on this, Peter, because I think Lena and Antitrust took a lot of the headlines. It was sort of a very visible, one of the big issues between tech and Washington.
What's come out now, I've realized, is there were so many more. And we've seen this in people like Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Andreessen being more vocal about it. I mean, we kind of knew they were pissed about crypto. We kind of knew they were pissed about the EU. But now we know they're really, really pissed about the EU and really want America to intervene. So I think the tech policy landscape has just gotten so much bigger and vaster. And it will be very...
Interesting to see where there's alignment between tech and Trump and where there isn't. J.D. Vance, who is vice president, keeps making a point of saying, you know, no, we're still we have lots of problems with big tech. They should not think they're going to get a pass. He did an interview this weekend where he said.
something the effect of if they're going to continue to censor and suppress Americans, then they're in trouble. But if they play by the rules, they're OK. That's a different argument than they have too much antitrust. They have too much power. There's an antitrust problem. But all these things will come. I mean, we're how many days in, right? I mean, there are going to be tests. There's...
going to be tests of the deal, friend. I mean, a lot. I think the bankers are chomping at the bit to see what they can get through. So I think we'll find out sooner rather than later. I mean, the speech, I mean, that message has been sent loud and clear from... the trump administration and then it's also been reacted to loud and clear um on the platform side um but i i think there'll be many twists even crypto where you've got
people cheering all this potential deregulation it it is way more complicated there's still going to be financial regulation of the crypto sector so um When you and I were covering tech at the beginning and prior to that, there was always this divide between, well, there was always a connection between tech and the government, right? Silicon Valley is sort of a military industrial complex to begin with.
But certainly when we were coming up, there was this real disdain for sort of all things East Coast that really meant New York media and Washington politics. And sort of these were people who were the old guard and they were clinging into power in California and tech. and Silicon Valley were the future, and you could just ignore Washington. Do you think that it's-
The tech folks who are embracing Trump now still believe that? And this is just sort of a distasteful thing they have to do to get through the next X number of years? Or do you think they've fundamentally sort of rethought power and Washington and politics? I think they're shifting all their disdain to the media, to be honest. But no, I think what happened is that. Well, obviously, they just became more and more entwined when you're talking about.
the national security issues of technology and AI and so forth. I think it just became more self-evident to a group of CEOs who are ultimately pretty pragmatic. We think of visionary, wild and crazy founders. climb or build trillion-dollar organizations without being pragmatic. Yeah, and most of these guys are managers now, right? Right. I mean, there's only a few founders sort of left in the game. Everyone else is a professional manager.
Right, absolutely. And so I think it reflects just where the industry's gone. I also think as tech has grown, like... And it's almost like the tech industry is just reflecting more the rest of the world. When it was teeny tiny and this, you know, incubated in this little culture out here, and it was everyone with foosballs and whatever.
you know, a lot of left leaning leaders, so on and so forth. I think it's actually a sign of probably healthy maturation to have it just reflect, you know, many different ideologies still doesn't reflect. much in the way of diversity and so on and so forth. But I think there's a maturation of the industry, too, that kind of explains why some of those old beliefs or tenets aren't as strong. And yeah, and also Trump is saying the right things. I mean, if you look at...
the kind of America first messaging of these large tech companies, that is very, very, very appealing to them. You know, they are concerned about competition with China. ByteDance has been giving Meta a run for its money, you know, so I... We're in this moment. It's very interesting. I mean, they're also in a world where they can't do business in China, right? Correct. Yeah. Which 10 years ago.
They were all sure they were going to do business in China. Absolutely. Mark Zuckerberg is jogging through Beijing and Netflix is going to be in China. And basically, it's all shut down. Microsoft's the only one that sort of does business. I mean, obviously, Apple's don't.
makes their phones. There's still a lot of deep connections, but there's that resentment that they can't. Apple's really the only one hanging on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's been a sea change. Before I let you go, I want to ask you about something you wrote November 6th, which was the day after the election.
It's got a 1030 a.m. Pacific time stamp. So you got up and you wrote this. And the headline is, the media faces a test and is already failing. Because in addition to covering tech really well, you are... a business person and you are a journalism leader. And so you're arguing here that the press, I think at least at that moment, you thought was slipping into the trap of doing resistance journalism. You focused particularly on a headline from the time.
Times, which used the word authoritarian to describe sort of the vibe of the new Trump administration. He said, I really hate that word. I think we should be really careful about our word choices. And I appreciate that you wrote it. And it's stuck in my head ever since, because every time I see or hear of Donald Trump doing something that is authoritarian or on the way there, I go.
Wait, we can't call that authoritarian? When do we get to say it's authoritarian that Donald Trump has extracted, for instance, I think of a $16 million concession from Disney for a libel suit they would clearly have? if they wanted to pursue it. Or I think about the fact that, like we talked about, he's single-handedly overturned, he says, a law passed by Congress, upheld by the Supreme Court, that said...
TikTok can't operate in the US. We're all going along with it. To me, if they're not authoritarian, they're definitely on the road there. And my worry is... I'm just monologuing now because I've asked you a question, is that if we just say, well, we're just going to report the facts, what we're going to eventually do is keep acclimating.
day by day to an authoritarian or pick your word regime where we go well yeah this is just the way things are now and and you shouldn't be screaming and and and up on your hind legs about this you should just report the facts And it doesn't it seems like we're in my mind, it seems like we're missing something. Yeah, I agree with everything you said. And I actually went and wrote that article and then I finished my speech.
for a Committee to Protect Journalists gala, where I went on for five minutes about the threat Donald Trump poses to the, you know, act of reporting and a free press. And so I do believe that. But I think, you know, we have to acknowledge. that the trust in what we do is tanking. The trust in professional journalism is tanking. And so the challenge for all news organizations is to do what we do, is to press and report and challenge.
And to do so from a place of curiosity, but also a place of, you know, persistence on these important questions. And then to try and package it in a way where as many people as possible will believe us.
And Peter, I don't even know. I mean, there's a huge portion of the world that's never going to believe a headline in the New York Times, one of the best journalism institutions in the world, no matter what you say. And I know many people who feel that way because of a headline they messed up over Gaza.
that was fixed within 12 minutes by a night editor right but that's just the reality of the world that we're in and so i do think you know what i was reacting to very quickly was like a push notification I got from The Times when I woke up that morning, or I saw my phone, you know, I don't remember, that seemed like it wanted me, you know, again, they're...
pushing me this stuff. Yes, there are 10,000 other articles on the website. But in that moment, the New York Times is telling me Donald Trump is authoritarian, right? And that lands very different. Then if I'm consuming and analyzing every bit of news they publish, but guess what? No one is. And so this is the real challenge the media faces and how you can put in context.
You know, what, of course, are unprecedented and many of them very troubling actions is a real, real challenge. And I think the bigger challenge is if you do that, who's going to believe you anyway?
Because of all these other dynamics. Yeah, I agree with you on the last part for sure, which is just we're increasingly speaking to a smaller audience, right? And the people who could have these discussions, like, well, how should that Gaza headline should have been handled? Like, that's a... pretty small chunk of the world that's even going to engage in that.
Period. Yes. And the people, the theoretical straw men that you're talking, and again, I'm assuming it's actually many information readers who say, oh, I hate the way the Times called them authoritarian because they should be more sort of down the middle and let us decide. I think that's a pretty small group. I struggle with, separate from that, the idea of just saying, this is fucking crazy that he's overturned the law.
Or at least there's no discussion about the fact that he's overturned the law. Well, he thinks he's overturned the law, right? Apple doesn't think he's turned the law overturned. He hasn't put it back in the App Store. So I wrote a column that said that, and I feel like I'm going to write many more of those saying...
hey, here's a thing that doesn't make any sense. Well, I think that's exactly what you should do and what journalists should be doing, right? I am going to. I worry that it will seem very unsatisfying at the conclusion. I'll say, well, I did all the right things and I pointed it all out. And here we are. You know, like how, what's truth? How do we convince people? These are very big questions. But I think, you know, I was reflecting on where, what's happened since I wrote that.
And if I think everyone's still failing or not. And you know what I think? I think everything is just so curated. Everything feels curated. And on the day of Trump's election. I did not feel like I could just read the Times. I did not feel like I could just read the FT. I did not feel like – I mean, actually, the journal is probably the most straight up in the middle, actually, and I felt like –
When I went to the website, I was getting all the important stuff and I was learning. But I think everyone else is... You know, who's leading with the transgender issues? Yes, these issues are important. They should be written about. But who's leading with them? Who's, you know, these are decisions that all news organizations have to make.
And they're important, and they have consequences, and they have real consequences to how we explain our role in society. I mean, I sit here and live in the world of Silicon Valley where tech leaders think... X and meta and, you know, are the mainstream media now, right? Or this has become one of their new points they've picked up from Trump. And so I tend to...
I'm trying to kind of go back to first principles and be like, what is it that we do? You know, fundamentally getting new important facts in the public's domain. That wouldn't be there. You know, if the information hadn't reported many years ago that the Chinese government had a financial ownership stake in ByteDance.
And that actually had a seat on one of its boards. I think the conversation about regulation over ByteDance and TikTok would be very different, you know. So the more we as the news media can, A, produce that hard to produce expensive reporting. And then B, kind of not give our enemies more reason to hate us.
That's what I've currently come up with is the best formula. And I still don't know if it's going to work, but it's important. We're all muddling through. The best we can do is to do good work. You do great work, Jessica. Thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me.
Thanks again to Jessica for coming on. She's great. Love having her on the show. Thanks again to Jelani Carter, who produces and edits the show. Also great. Other great people include advertisers who bring this show to you for free. And you guys are great, too. We've got a fun show for you next week, if I can speak properly. I'll figure it out by then. See you soon.