Epstein Files Fallout, Trump's Fed Chair Pick, and Musk Merger

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Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. I'm Scott Galloway. Resist and unsubscribe February has begun. How's it going? You you've been putting up a lot you've been really getting rid of shit. I've been getting rid of a lot, but not like you. I still have Uber. I was just gonna pause it and use Lyft instead. Yeah, it sucks when you gotta walk the walk. Um I know, I know.

So I mean I'm inside y you'd be a better judge of how it's gone than me. I mean I've literally I've gotten hundreds and I'm about to cross a thousand emails of people with screenshots of them unsubscribing. Obviously you need Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. I'm going on CNN, M S N B C P V I'm doing all I'm doing the rounds there. I think it's taken off. I have to tell you. I'm hearing it from lots of people. Oh thanks. I think

Well, I hope you're right. You're probably being generous'cause you like me, but I've heard from about a third of the companies, either their CEOs, and they've been very polite, but they're like you realize that I supported this and I'm against ICE. And I'm like, yeah, to me you are, but I haven't heard you say dick publicly. Not dick. Um and what's interesting is through the process For example, I unsubscribed from

Uber? Alright, cancel my Uber account? That was a big one. I thought that was a big deal. Oh my God. Before you go, it tells you, all right, I've ordered 37 times from Uber Eats. How many Ubers have I taken in the last 10 years? Guess I don't know. Thousands. Thirty seven hundred and forty seven. Yeah. Yeah. And I did some I did some math here.

Everyone thought you had a private driver. I'm like, he doesn't have a fucking private driver. Yeah, that's right. Anyways, I absolutely love Uber locks and this is a story of privilege. Let me do my land acknowledgments. Most people don't have the money I have. Anyways, but I've Taking three hundred and fifty Ubers a year for the last ten years on average. The average price of Uber Lux has gone from forty to sixty dollars to eighty to one hundred twenty. And this is what these companies do.

They do predatory pricing, they price it below market, incredible value proposition, they wait till they consolidate the market, then they start raising prices, which Uber has done seven to ten percent a year for the last decade. So this year. In twenty twenty five, do you know how much I'm spending a year on Uber? No. What? I'm spending thirty four thousand dollars a year on Uber. What? Where are you going? I figured it out.

go everywhere. I go everywhere. You could have hired a driver. Yeah. Okay. No. Better yet, I figured it out. I'm now taking the tube here. I'm taking the subway. By the way, the subway in New York is amazing. And I'm I'm I'm filling in the gaps with Uber X, whatever it's called, the cheap one where you get an air freshener and um you know, uh a guy who can't figure out ways. Uh that was probably a hate crime. Anyways.

And then but I figured out the money I'm gonna save, I could buy, including insurance and parking, I could lease a Mercedes G-Wagon, a Range Rover, or the new BMW i Series 7. People do not realize how much money they are spending on these platforms because they get you in, they automatically renew, time goes faster than you think. Right. I found out I have three Chat GPT subscriptions. I'm not sure why, but I had three. A drunken night.

I have four Apple T V plus subscriptions. I'm like, how do I log on here? And I just log on again or I just create a new account. I have been I switched from ATT, which has been a supporter of ICE. I'm saving approximately seventy dollars a month on AT and T switching over to Noble, which I did before.

Anyways, I'm I'm doing I'm trying to unsubscribe some some from something every day and do some analysis around what I've spent and w what it's cost. But May I ask a question?'Cause someone didn't bring this up. Would you get rid of your stocks in these companies? Oh, that's a tough one. I know. That's what I thought. I thought it was a good question. Okay. This is the bottom line. I think I'm gonna have to. Um, I'm also thinking about transferring all of my stocks and bonds and assets from

From Goldman and uh going either to a regional bank or even a Canadian bank. Canadian R B C whatever. I just don't wanna hate Amer I don't wanna hurt Americans, but I think I might go to a regional bank. Uh, but I am I am gonna I am gonna try and walk the walk here and every day I'm s I'm unsubscribing or canceling from

From something. But yeah. Yeah, it gets easy to harder. That's it was a good question from a listener. I thought, All right, let's listen to some of what our listeners have called in to tell us they've done. I unsubscribe from Apple TV. I have personally unsubscribed from every streaming service that is currently out there. Personally, I had given up Amazon three egregious Jeff Bezos acts ago. I had been guiltily keeping

The Kindle Unlimited, that is gone as of today, as is Apple Fitness. This is Michael in Cameroon and I have canceled my ChatGPT Pro and Amazon Prime. Amazon acquired IMDB twenty five years ago. I've been paying for the pro membership uh subscription for the last twenty years. It's a pain, but I can find this information elsewhere. So Click.

This is all different. You don't realise how how we how much stuff we pay these people everywhere. And also what's really helpful is you gave examples of what you can go to. Like I think you said go to oh music service. You got rid of a music and you went to a different one. Yeah. You know, helping people go to other things. Now, can I just make one point? Uh not everything is perfect. No company uh all companies have been involved in all kinds of nefarious activities that you don't like.

But you've got to meet the moment for now and you could always go back to them, right? At at some point. That's the thing. It's you're t sending a message right now like Uh I have to give up the Amazon stuff. I gotta work on that today. Like I I use Amazon a lot. My wife's ships shifted to local retailers, which

one of the problems is you can't find products'cause of the tariffs. Like and that's diff stuff you use every day. Um, but I'm really um i I think this is a great effort, Scott Galloway. Thanks. And Th the w I mean a few things. One, I'm not telling people not to go to work or not to buy groceries. I don't think someone who has the blessings I have is in a position to tell people

to take risks with their employment or really sacrifice around things like food. What I'm suggesting is this is a signal and a framework for how you inflict the maximum damage with a minimum amount of sacrifice. And that is if you were to say stop shopping at Kroger's and reduce your grocery spend, I think you have X impact.

When you go after big tech, who has the presidents and the markets year and subscription revenue, where these companies are trading at thirty, fifty, a hundred times revenues. You have forty X the impact on the administration, with what is, in my view, a fairly minimal sacrifice when you look at how many substitutes there are and when you actually uncover how much money you're spending.

and what is really required to not participate, it's not as much as you'd think. I uh uh there is there's the tube, there's Uber X, there are a ton of streaming media platforms, there are free thirty day Spotify accounts if you cancel and then resubscribe. It's there's a lot of ways here to have a big impact.

without a huge charge. You don't have to take your entire Saturday and go to a protest. And I'm not discouraging peop people from doing that, but if you want to look at maximum impact relative to the investment or the sacrifice. Uh I think this is it. Yep. I like the three three egregious Jeff Bezos axego. We're in like ten at this point. Anyway, keep going, keep going, keep putting those things up. I'll keep w people you can find

hund hundreds of dollars that you can take away from them and and they will know. And it does add up. A g a little tiny drop becomes a great stream and then an ocean.

So anyway, we've got a lot to get to today. So let's dig in. The Justice Department released this was something over the weekend, three point five million new pages of Epstein related files late last week. They're not even the worst ones. There's three million more that must be the worst, including two thousand videos and one hundred and eighty thousand images a mere forty two days after the federally mandated deadline. By the way they are not

following the law, there are millions more they need to release. They said they weren't going to, but they are gonna have to, I think. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch said the release brings the DOJ into compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. It doesn't. The lawmakers and survivors are calling the document dump inadequate and filled with redaction errors.

At least fifty three hundred documents mention Donald Trump. A lot of these are unverified tips, but Trump said he's been told the latest release absolves him. It does not. The files show how Epstein's network stretched across Hollywood, Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley. That's what's really quite Fascinating here with people like Brett Ratner, who was just at the White House, with he did the Melania document, Howard Lutnick, who lied about being in touch with.

Epstein he made a big show of not thinking he was awful and then was hanging out with him in his place i i in in the Caribbean. Bill Gates, Elon Musk all appearing the documents, Elon Musk looked like he's losing a having a a stroke in real time. uh over these things and trying to pretend he doesn't uh m m mean anything. So talk about this and obviously another person's kinda caught up some we've talked about p uh Peter Atio, a number of really distasteful

text thousands of them, um, actually. Uh so lots of people involved. They really strut the the gamut and they're all very social with each other. Casey Wasserman, who's running the Olympic effort, for example, apologized. Um, I'll take note, just so you know, a lot of fake Elon emails floating out there, but it's clear his relationship with Elon is not how he's framed it in the past, which is he wasn't interested.

He's been posting on X all weekend saying there's a where uh his emails to Epstein could be misinterpreted. He's also back and forth with Reed Hoffman, who uh Reed really got him saying if you really cared about the victims, you wouldn't have spent two hundred and ten million dollars on Donald Trump and

also have all that uh c non consensual uh uh uh st stuff on on on Grok, which I think is absolutely right. So thoughts, Scott? I mean it's been pretty riveting in a lot of ways. I mean there's just so much here. One I think you have to put on your critical thinking cap and discern between different acts, criminal acts, poor judgment, and people who are just unlucky.

Um, any other administration would be taking advantage of the moment to say we have appointed a special counsel here and we are going to prosecute people based on this information. And the criminal I if if you had sex with an underage girl, you should be subject to criminal prosecution. And these files seem to

seem to indicate that that absolutely happened here. And if all this bullshit about concern over the victims, well, okay. The way you bring closure and create incentives such that other people don't do this is you criminally prosecute. There's another group of people that I think is even bigger, and that is the people who have demonstrated really poor judgment by

Cohorting, collaborating, commiserating with a convicted pedophile. So let me add, Steve Bannon was right up in his group. He was they were like Frickin frack. Right. And those people should be shamed. Maybe those people, maybe we should not be comfortable with those people in leadership positions. I'd like to think the bar for

you know, precedent is i th that that would not clear that bar. So but people get to decide if they're comfortable with that those errors and judgment. And then I think an even bigger concentric circle is a lot of people who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I don't, I I, you know, I don't wanna, I'm not saying I absolve them of all or I I don't think they're guiltless.

But I do think a lot of people got invited to some conference about philanthropy or whatever and ended up in the Epstein files. Yeah. No, I know I listen, uh oddly enough, I I will say full disclosure, I we sent Epstein a note to go to dive into media because we bought a Ted list and he was a big th th a lot of those people in these files are all ex Ted people, they were. And so we bought mailing lists and there's an email.

uh that which which is a mailing list email. It wasn't from me. Um, he was on it. And then for some reason some of the people around him sent him articles I wrote. And that's, you know, so I searched myself immediately. And that's the pretty m that's the extent what I can find. I have been at parties, as I said, where uh uh big huge dinner events at like Ted. Ted was where he showed up a lot.

um where he m apparently was. I never met him. But I mean you y that's what you're talking about, correct? Look, I uh Elon Musk, who appears to have been, you know, had a lot decent amount of interaction with Jeffrey Epstein, immediately goes on the offensive and tries to start pulling Reed Hoffman into it.

And Reed looks like he was squarely on the outer circle here. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would agree. I know a lot about his own. That's how gross this is getting. The other observation is that there's pedophilia And what's going on here in some ways is worse. What do I mean by that? I do think there are pedophiles who have a sa a psych psychiatric ailment

where they are unnaturally attracted sexually to children. And I think a lot of them, not a lot of them, some of them, recognize this ailment and seek treatment.

Some do not and some end up becoming pedophiles and should end up in prison. I think in some ways this is worse in the sense that I think the people guilty of having sex with underage girls here While the term is pedophilia, what it is is a group of people who feel they are not subject to laws and the standards that everyone else is subject to.

I think they think, oh, this is fun, it's a party, and if I have sex with an underage girl, I can that's fun and it's a thrill, and I can do it because I am not subject to the same standards and laws as everyone else. So while I think a lot of these people, if in fact there was and it appears there was, criminal

uh rape. I I'm not sure they're pedophiles. What they are is people who've decided that because of their money, power, and proximity to power, that they're not subject to any standards whatsoever. W in my opinion, in some ways, Th that's that's the sickness that infects our powerful Well the what's interesting is how it cuts across l party lines, right? You have all these Democrat leaning people. Ki kibbitzing with like a Steve Bannon, kibbutzing with a

All unified around parting and having sex with safe barts. Yeah. Yeah. And stuff like that. That's what was gross. I do think I I wanna zero in on the judgment thing here because there is judgment of what you what you should and shouldn't do. Like I you know, e everyone knew what this guy was back then. Trust me, they did, and they went anyway. And so

Uh bad judgment on Bill Gates' part and I think Melinda Gates has talked about this. Howard Lutnick like literally went out of his way to say what a good judgment he had by never he had a massage table in his living room and went bragged on how he rejected him. And then was at his place, stayed at his house, was like super friendly. Fuck that guy. Like the judgment, but I'm sorry, there's m there's more there than that. The same thing with Peter Atia.

I I feel like the the everyone knew what was happening here. And so there should be a you can decide what you want to do with these people, but there should be a price for this level of It's in the same genre of we can do whatever we want. Who cares? You know, ha ha ha. You know, pussy is low carb. Like, are you kidding me? Like, I mean It it would be it's stupid joke if the guy you weren't talking to was a sexual predator, right? And so that's why I find it a little more I see I'm I'm less and

It's safer just to say this is awful and these people should be canceled. I do think that people, when they send private emails, should be granted a lot of license. And if they aren't guilty of a crime, you can decide not to listen to their podcast.

criminal activity with poor judgment. And I think you have to draw bright lines between them. And I don't to me it it just is like someone has accidentally mentioned in the Epstein files because they flew on a plane with other people to some nonprofit event talking about technology, and people who might have been

I in the files, there is report of an individual who impregnated an eleven year old. Yeah. Yep. I mean, one is spend the rest of your life in prison. The other was, okay, maybe you should do more diligence on the planes you're on. And it feels like it's all been wrapped up into one amorphous block. I get it.

I agree. I agree. But there are some very clear lines when I'm talking about Lutnick. He went out of his way to say how much he hated the guy and then write in emails he did. I'm trying to rewrite history. Yes, he's a liar. So that that we know. Same thing with Musk He was he just fine. Just you made it can't you just say I mean you know who did that? Katie Kirk went to a dinner at this at Epstein's house. One of these dinners used to have these like influencer dinners.

She went, she said, I should have done more research. I apologize. I abhor him. Like she just took she just took responsibility for her stupid judgment there, right? And I think that's fine. I don't think we should like But it brings up a point. Should Katie Kirk do research on every dinner invitation? No, not necessarily, but when it when it was came to pass, what it was very clear. She apologized. She apologized and said, Oh duh.

You're not hearing from Howard Lutt you're not hearing from Peter Atia. Like I'm sure he's engaged a very expensive crisis manager, uh, here. But and then Elon sp he is spinning He's gone on the attack. He's trying to pretend that he somehow was protected or like was a uh just Just so offended by Jeffrey Epson and can you believe what Reed Hoffman did meanwhile? Yes.

to last Sunday because he's right. Elon, if you actually cared about women, you'd you'd have helped the victims financially instead of giving money to Donald Trump. you'd have gotten your non consensual sex off of grog. But you don't care. You don't care. You don't care. Like you don't have an interest in But again, the really shocking thing to me is and I I know very powerful and wealthy people. Mm-hmm.

just the belief that they can just do anything. Right. And they're going to be immune. They do. They're like that. That it was a weird scene. I have friends who are who are um, fairly famous actors. And if they walk into a scenario with a lot of women or a party scene, they're like, I can't be here.

I I d I can't be here. I'm I I'm not gonna do anything. I'm not even gonna flirt with anybody, but I can't be here because if it hits the press, it'll upset my wife. It will create um talking points that aren't good They will insinuate I mean, I know people who are so careful And shape their lives realizing that unfair unfair are not

Of you with And then these guys Jeffrey Epstein. These guys go to an island and start having sex with underage women and aren't worried or like believe that this isn't gonna come back to haunt them? There's also a lot of people that enabled them and one person that po by the way, I searched you immediately. Um what? In the Epstein boss? Of course. Um Yeah. No. That's one party I wasn't invited to. Yeah, you weren't. Um but uh

Did you really search for me? I searched everybody. Did you really search for me? I did it. I had to. I work with you. I have to make certain. Okay. All right. Thank God. Yeah. Come on, I search ever I've searched like twenty names of people I know. Season two, gay hockey with the dog, proxy. That's what you gotta worry about. I'm gonna be an extra. I don't worry about that. I would welcome any sexual expression, consensual My next career, fluffer for gay.

For Gabe Badminton, the new original series on HBO. I welcome any joyful second sensual sexual expression you wanna have, Scott Galloway's line. At this point when I orgasm it's just mist coming out. There's just literally It's gotta be a Pam Greer film, a cattle prod up my ass, and literally like a Ciala shake. And I gotta snort Viagra and watch Jackie Brown and then it's go time. It's go time.

I would say the people that are worse are s are not even worse, they're just as bad or some of these enablers and I will name them John Brockman is throughout it and I w uh urge you to look up. He was a guy who was involved with all these intellectuals who were who Epstein was funding. He ran a billionaire's dinner at Ted. I have attended that. Uh he obviously the facilitators, these kind of people.

uh have to be looked at too the way they they sort of facilitated what you're talking about, which is this very easy peasy. let's get together and talk intellectual stuff. The which they loved. Let me tell you, the reason you're seeing a lot of tech people in this group and you are, is because they desperately sought out um y validation through intellectual discourse. They used to love having these events whether whatever they happen to be and

Thank God. W you know one thing I did have our our staff for our code conference look ever him up. He was on the wait list of D five, the one with uh gates and jobs, and we we didn't let him in. I d I remember not particularly not letting him in. Um but he did somehow show up and talk to Tim Cook on the sidelines of one of my conference, which I wasn't aware of. It was in the files too. But Yeah, my view is you go my view is you go much harder on the people who are criminals. Yes.

And quite frankly, you go much lighter on the people who Look, i i you get invited by a billionaire to go party on an island. If you see crime you leave. But I don't I think a lot of people for a lot of different reasons this guy had a big sphere around. He really did. He was he was like an octopus in terms of trying to meet people and a lot of people facilitated that for him. So but

There needs to be more prison and more judgment around who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yes, I agree. But there's a lot of people who knew exactly what they were doing. So I think there there's a there's there's it's a stack ranking of what people were doing uh in some cases. And people like Peter Ati and others really deserve some. You can censure him or not, but I think he's grotesque. Anyway, uh let's go on a quick break when we come back. Trump's new Fed chair.

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Scott, we're back. President Trump has made his pick for fed chair. I predicted it would mean those handsome of the white guys. That's right. The best hair. Um Trump nominated uh former Governor uh Kevin Walsh on Friday, calling him central casting and says he'll go down as one of the great Fed chairmen, maybe the best. Of course he did say that about Jerome Powell.

Although uh tr when he picked him, Trump also joked during his speech this weekend that he would sue Walsh if interest rates didn't get lowered. Warsh is set to take the reins from Jerome Powell in May, but he needs to get through the Senate confirmation process first, which might be hard because

Republican Senator Tom Tillis, who suddenly found his balls, is already saying he's a no until the DOJ probe uh into Powell is resolved. Good for him. T Tillis is really on fire. He's gonna use up all his troublemaking that before he leaves. He was sort of shoved to the side by Trump, uh by threats from Trump. But now he's st but he's still in power, so he can do something about it. So talk about this pick.

Um Walsh v very briefly popped up in the Epstein files that we were missing on saying. He was on a guest list, Saint Barth's Christmas twenty ten. Again, what you were talking about. I get it. I get it. In that case, that's it. So Uh, I don't think that should necessarily be a f it shouldn't be a factor unless more stuff is found out. But

Uh, talk about this uh this pick. What do you think about War? I think it's I uh to be blunt, I think it's a great pick. Okay. Uh given the context of who he could have selected. Right. Um could have been Don Jr. go ahead. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if he picked, you know, Lara Trump. I I He does my to give credit where it's due, I think around these these big financial appointments, I think he shows greater judgment around these appointments than he does around others.

But essentially this guy he's he's very qualified. Uh he's been described as a hawk. The fear around this appointment was that it was someone who would be subject to the political pressures of the presidency, would immediately start cutting interest rates and begin an upward spiral of inflation. And that fear was sending metals to record highs. Silver and gold have exploded. And the best indication that the market likes this pick is that when the pick was announced, metals crashed.

where they pulled back. This guy's known as a Hawk. He served as liaison between uh Bernanke and the Wall Street community during the O eight crisis, which most people think was handled really well. I like the fact he has a reputation as a hawk. I love the fact that these appointments I believe Explain what a hawk is. He's got he's he Well, someone who's more worried about inflation than lower growth. Someone who will keep interest rates high.

longer than maybe they should. They err on the side of lower growth, but less risk of inflation. And everyone is really worried that Trump is putting pressure and would rather err on the side of inflation. I I get that, but like he could be undergo what Howell's been undergoing criminal probes, et cetera. As far as I know, Pal's serving out his term and hasn't bent an inch.

Right. I mean, and that's why it speaks to the importance of the independence of the Fed, but Well, you wonder what this guy said to Trump, right? And it why does he say he's gonna sue him? You know, that's all weird. I find it weird. There's something about the power, and we've seen this on the Supreme Court. A lot of people show up.

with a history or say one thing to the Senate and then they get on the Supreme Court and they take advantage of their lifetime appointment and they behave differently. Uh so not in a good way. Well, actually some of the older appointees became in from our viewpoint much more progressive. Well look at Earl Warren, remember? I mean I mean they really did over time. Think about what an incredible luxury it is.

to just focus on to be granted the tenure, and this is this is the basis of tenure in colleges, to just try and pursue the truth reg and and to screen out as many external forces as possible. That is a luxury and it's reserved for what people think is the most important positions in the world, including what may be the most important position in the world, and that is

the chairman of the Federal Reserve. So I was actually quite relieved when I saw this. I have a bias. I like Morgan Stanley. Anyone who ran MAM Morgan Stanley has a pretty serious Well he's a serious candidate, right? At one point, although he was very considered a very prominent. This is, I think, a good pick. The markets like it. He's an adult. He has a command of the the markets. Has a really good relationship with Wall Street.

And I just hope that he shows they'll drop the Powell the Powell D Powl probe to get him through. Well here's the thing. Pal's gonna still be on the board of governors. Yeah. Well they're what they're trying to do. I don't I don't care who the chairman is. Yeah I don't care who the chairman is, the biggest voice in the room is still gonna be pals. Yep, yep, yep. We'll see. Anyway, good hair, Kevin. And I picked I knew the handsome man would win.

Also, besides the handsome man, I was right about Elon planning to merge SpaceX and XAI. That's is precisely what happened. The acquisition will give the combined company a valuation of one point two five trillion. Flimflammery works for Elon Musk. Investors have also been pushing the idea of bringing Tesla into this. Um, obviously he had already merged Twitter or X, the service into X AI sort of to hide it away in there, all their losses.

So now it's Twitter, SpaceX and X AI and you can just imagine Tesla being next. In in this scenario, X AI shares would be swapped for SpaceX shares. Um just for people that don't know, SpaceX is weighing a June IPO listing, could seek to raise as much as fifty billion dollars, making it the biggest IPO of all time.

Um and again, if that sounds a little familiar, guess what? Kara Swisher predicted it last April, because I know how this guy thinks. Um and again, let's listen to what I predicted last April. Let's hear. By the way, I just wanna I just want to acknowledge I've been doing research. You blew my mind with the notion of a combined Tesla, XAI. And SpaceX. I uh uh you know, and I'm I'm just like that has totally blown my mind about as long as you attributed to me.

Just attribute it. I I I do, but that the idea of him merging all of those companies, like I can't wrap my head around what that would mean. And he would do it. So let's talk about that. He's an internal flimflam man and he needed a new narrative and this works out for behiding. When he did the first Twitter XAI merger, he just got rid of the problem of everyone talking about what a shitty business t it was. Tesla's obviously troubled. XAI is being upheld by the valuations of

uh AI companies and SpaceX is a is a real winner. So wha what do you w and and in you could make an argument that they all fit together, right? Sure, why not? Like data things moving blash. Um and he'll do it. So what do you what do you think? Uh after the disaster at Chernobyl, uh where radiation leaked for I guess hundreds of thousands of square miles, there's a lot of farmland and a lot of

a lot of livestock. And what they found was okay, a lot of the the beef and lamb and chicken had traces of radiation from the radiation leak at Chernobyl. And the Russian officials decided, Okay, we're not gonna throw away this meat. We're just gonna parse it out and send small amounts mixed in with non radiated meat to different to different grocery stores'cause a little bit of radiation, as long as we mix it with non radioactive meat, it's okay.

This is Musk basically taking his radioactive meat and that is Tesla, which isn't ten x the value of what it should be trading at. XAI, which is sort of working, isn't, and then wrapping it in the non radioactive meet, which is SpaceX, which in my opinion is one of the most impressive companies with the greatest differentiation in history right now. Ninety percent of launch capability. Two thirds of low Earth satellites.

And he's basically gonna take all of it and say, Okay, autonomous AI, space launch capability. And take it all into one giant one giant musk, AI, innovation, stuff. That will get robots. that will say, this is, you have to own this company. Because when you look at the when you look at Tesla, it's like, okay, it's an automobile company that should be trading at thirty bucks a share and not four hundred or whatever it's at.

When you look at XAI, all right, it's a distant seventh LLM. When you look at robots, those make no fucking sense. But if you wrap all of that AI autonomous stew oh in Twitter, you know, a platform that's probably worth ten billion, not what he paid. wrap it all into a communications, satellites, space launch, AI, automated driving, and it's the kind of stock that everyone has to own. So this is an attempt to create, you know, individual uh ingredients, which some of which are amazing.

And some of which have real problems and put it all into one stew. I think it's a smart move, quite frankly. That's why I thought. I think like a put a really a fucked up fling plan man. That's how I think. Right? That's I was like, Who I sit there and I go, What will he do? Uh That's how I thought of it. That's exactly. Let's still brainstorm about it on an island. I got this guy's really smart. I was not on the island.

These amazing parties with like thought leaders. And and by the way, I am so shocked I am not on that list because the only reason I get invited to Davos, I get invited to a place like that. We're called, I refer to us. I say to I saw Jonathan Haidt and I saw Adam Grant at Davos. I'm like, you realize where we are? And I'm like, wow, I'm like, We're intellectual support animals. We're here to make people feel dancing fucking dogs. Yeah, we're fucking poodles.

We're dan we're Phoebe the dance. We're like dance for your dinner. We have CO BlackRock and Chairman of Finland. Now dance now tell us something about young men. Can I tell you? So many powerful people texted me like Scott's so amusing.

Amusing, that's the word I guess. You know what I mean? Like he's so interesting. I was like, Oh my god, he's totally your dancing monkey is what's happening. Yeah, that was my moment at Davos. I sit next to a woman I have never met before. Yeah. And all of a sudden she starts going Kara's texted me and says I'm next to you. I'm like, how the fuck does she know I'm here? Rich people were writing me. You're like the East German.

Stasi. You know every move. I see why you like him. Well, because they call, they text. Who is what's her name? She was lovely. Dina Powell. That's probably sexist. I wouldn't say that about a man. She is lovely. She is lovely. She's lovely. She's the new president of Meta, just so you know. No, so she started telling me what she's doing and she was very measured. I'm like, why are you choosing your words so carefully? And then about five minutes later, I'm like, Oh, you're a shill for Meta. Oh

She's trying to organize the bailout. She's gonna organize the bailout attacks. Like anybody, anybody who can get him away from what a power couple. Yeah, David. Yeah. Yeah, he's McCormick. He was with uh Ray Dalio, right? He was with Ray Dalio. That's his.

I can't believe you searched for me in the files. Why wouldn't I? Are you kidding? That was numero Uno. Uno, you oh come on. Whatever. In any case. I pay for my search. We know why he's doing it. All right, we're gonna take I had to. You know? Trust but verify. Uh Scott, let's go on a quick break and we come back, tons of AI news. A lot of us have spent a lot of the last week watching videos of what's happening on the streets of Minneapolis and understanding what it is that we're seeing.

But also what's real and what isn't and what's AI and who is taking these videos and how we're supposed to understand the source feels harder than ever. So this week on the VergeCast, we're talking about what's happening in Minneapolis, how information moves in an AI age. and what it means to make sense of it all. All that, plus what's new with the new TikTok, why everything feels like it's falling apart on TikTok, and more on the VergeCast wherever you get caught. Imagine there's no foot.

It's not easy, right? Football is by far the dominant force in American culture. It is the only thing propping up TV. And, Chuck Klosterman says, one day all of that is gonna change. change. It's too big, its tentacles are too far, it's so wide, and when it collapses, Something that size collapses hard. I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, the show about what happens when media and tech collide. And you can hear my conversation with Chuck Kloesterman right now.

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Scott, we're back now onto some rapid fire news, AI news, because there's so much. Let me go through'em. Amazon is reportedly discussing an investment of up to fifty billion dollars in open AI. Meanwhile, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is pushing back on reports that his company is looking to scale back on its investment in open AI, and that was in the Wall Street Journal. I thought it was an excellent article.

This all comes as OpenAI is seeking to raise over$100 billion. It prepares for a public listing in the fourth quarter. It's trying to beat anthropic. to that punch and Anthropic is clashing with the Pentagon over whether its AI would be used for surveillance and autonomously their operations, putting two hundred million dollar contract at risk. Um, your choice, Scott. Any of the above? I think the most fragile company with respect to its valuation right now, maybe the exception of Palantir.

is probably open AI. I think open AI is racing to establish a leadership position. Uh but if you look at the fact that it doesn't have the fire hose of billions of people built in that that Alphabet has. Uh, I don't think and you look at they're getting I think they're getting attacked from the top, and that is Alphabet and Gemini.

Which has doubled its share, I think, in the last eighteen months. Which was inevitable, right? Inevitable. But if you have a billion people or two billion people a day coming to your interface and you start introducing AI That's just very powerful. It has a Netscape feel to it, but go ahead. And then you have um Microsoft, which has a recurring revenue relationship with ninety nine point nine percent of the corporations above a million dollars in revenue.

They can introduce really seamlessly different things. And then you have uh an adjacent competitor and that is anthropic, which has gone after the enterprise market. So to uh uh I think I've told you this and it's the weakest flex in the world. I was on the board of Gateway Computer, and about twenty-five years ago, if you asked analysts

who had better prospects, Gateway or Dell, it was split. And Gateway was at 70 bucks a share. Anyways, 15 years later, it was at 70 cents a share because they went consumer and Dell went small and medium sized business. And we know how the story ends. The story may be unfolding the same way, and that is OpenAI has a consumer offering, but less than five percent of the people actually go to the paid.

offering and anthropic has gone after the enterprise market and quite frankly looks to be beating anthropic in the enterprise market. It's interesting because he's becoming the most interesting character, Dario Amoti, in terms of talking about safety. He's sort of Everyone sort of attacked him for that, especially that dope David Sack.

But I think actually he's he's opening a lane as the safe AI company, right? Well that used to be Altman's Lane. Right, exactly. But now he's got it, right? He's opening a lane where everyone's like, All right. Agreed. They're the they're the clean, well lit corner of the AI bookstore right now is

Anthropic. And also going after enterprise looks to be the smartest thing. Because Enterprise wants that. Enterprise, you know, why be in the surveillance and autonomous lethal operations business if you can do just as fine selling things to Costco. Yeah, and just get your media buyers at L'Oreal to be more productive. So

Um, my friend Greg Schove, who's the CEO of Section, which helps enterprises upskill for AI, had s he said something that just struck me. He said, Open AI has basically 12 months. to get massive consumer adoption because or enter or or start f which he doesn't think it's gonna do because people like there's too many free L LMs, or th they're gonna have to come up with incredible enterprise adoption.

Or there's absolutely no way they can justify this this consensual hallucination that they're gonna go public at one under one and a half trillion dollars. You know, with Elon merges all these things, everyone's gonna buy it. Will everyone not buy this?

I mean would you w you, Scott Galloway, want you of course you just got rid of Chat GPT, so you're not allowed to'cause don't want you to bird you signal the right way. Yeah, but you forget I'm a whore. I know exactly once March one comes along, it's back to Big Daddy War Bucks whore. No. But this is what this is the existential risk to open AI right now. They wanna be the leader. I I think Sam Alman maybe correctly said there's there can only be one in the world of AI.

But he's getting attacked from above, and that is big, big industrial strength conglomerates and tech that have a built-in multi-billion dollar consumer base that they can This they can point that fire hose of people at their AI offering. They're getting attacked from below, and that is Chinese open weight models, which are free, which, by the way, are technically pretty close.

So the fear is the following, or the the bull case is that this company is an incredible product. It's growing like crazy. It's doing all these big visionary deals. It is an amazing product. I was using it every day. And everybody feels like they've gotta go in on the market leader in AI, which Altman has done a good job of associating brand leadership with OpenAI and Chat GPT.

is that before they go public in the disclosure documents that the SEC mandates, it's going to be clear that everybody else is starting to eat their lunch. Right. That Gemini continues to Gemini. Gemini continues to gain market share. That there's an entire market of people that go for the open weight free model.

And people say, Okay, this is a great little company, but it should be acquired by somebody not worth a trillion and a half dollars as a standalone company. Who would be the ac acquire from your perspective? No one at this point. It's too expensive. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Unfortunately. Unfortunately it'd have to be written down. A lot. And then there'd be all sorts of antitrust arguments.

But he has and he knows it too. He's doing big deals. He's spending a ton of money. He's trying to get the best talent. Because there's a general belief here that there's the gold medal. When we call this Hunger Games economy, the Hunger Games is the right analogy. And that is whoever wins here gets all sorts of parades and li gets to live a wonderful life and whoever doesn't win is gonna die a slow death. Yeah. And that's the approach he's taking.

You're right. I think you're right here. Absolutely. We'll see what happens. Um he they are headed for the IPO though. Um Trump and his family, this story, uh we have c we cannot stress this story of corruption and the Trump family enough. He has now pulled in$4 billion linked to his presidency. Much of that comes from crypto and foreign deals that leverage his presidential status.

Last year, an investment firm with ties to the UAE bought nearly half of the Trump family's crypto company, making the two business partners. Eric Trump signed the agreement with the firm for five hundred million dollar investment days before uh Trump's January twenty twenty five inauguration. We did a chip deal with them. He r he recently said he he found out nobody cared about his international business activity while in office.

You know what, we do care. You you know, this is a guy, as I say, accusation is a confession, who went on and on about Hunter. Hunter Biden didn't have enough imagination as doing corrupt things and didn't have much pull. This is a a full scale corrupt regime that is using their status uh to to to to w feather their nest. It's also bad for national security.

all m all manner of things i i is hurtful to the United States. Uh, you know, w he does it all the time, whether he's suing the IRS for ten billion or closing the Kennedy Center'cause he ran that into the ground. But this is really you know, he does that's all ha uh you know, jazz hands compared to what's happening here. Yeah. The Republicans thought it was an impeachable of offense or required a special counsel.

because uh President Biden implicitly or explicitly used his influence such that his son, Hunter Biden, could get on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and made about four or six hundred grand. There is no reason why Hunter Biden should be on the board of any company other than his proximity to the president, even if he leveraged that contact or didn't. And there's no evidence he did.

But everyone's hair was on fire. And now we have an individual who is raking in billions. And it's not only him, Whitcoff's kids. And Wickhoff was investing. Getting people, the UAE, to invest in a a a crypto company that is kids control. And then what do you know a few weeks later?

The sale of our most sensitive chips that are security concerned for fear that the UAE who has a strong relationship with China begins to leak that sensitive information that powers nuclear guidance systems, powers submarines. I mean the level I I gotta give it to'em. They're like, here's the problem. In America, if you run a stop sign, you get shamed.

I if you if you start killing hundreds of people, there's some sort of weird leadership quality around it. It's it's like don't commit a d for God's sakes, don't commit a misdemeanor. c you know, commit mass murder and be unashamed about it and then the next day commit another crime where it all gets lost in the noise. Mm-hmm. Well that's what he said. Found out nobody cared, especially internationally. But y you know, and then killing all those people through USAID, the millions.

The people who will die. I mean, the kind of damage and and and feathering, nest feathering is really quite astonishing. And that leaves out all the pardons he gives to people who are who s who knows. I mean I'm one of those guys. Gives him three million bucks. I I've said this before. K if if Louie or Alex or Alec or Nolan are four sons, I'll I'll do uh go with the older ones. If one of them fucked up and ended up in prison, I'm a hundred percent confident

that with a million to three million bucks we could get him out of prison. Yeah. Find find an indirect route into a meeting with one of Trump and his acolytes and say, I'm about to buy one to three million dollars in Trump coin or I'm about to give you a two million dollar gift for the new East West Wing. And I think within three to six months, they're out.

That's where we are. And here's the thing, it creates you're gonna have more Epstein Islands. You're gonna have fewer small businesses that feel start because they're worried about the rule of law, you know, the rich are protected by the law but not bound by it. All the rest of us are bound by the law but not protected by it. And in addition, foreign companies aren't gonna wanna invest in American companies for fear that the rule of law

is not going to apply to American investment. That is exactly right. He is it's all going to be for the Trump's benefit, but not for the United States of America. That's really you have to understand this, everybody. This is This is the actual game, besides all the everything else. This is the actual game. Anyway, one more quick break, we'll be back for wins and fails. Is the fatal shooting of Alex Predi by federal agents in Minneapolis?

A moment that changes politics or a moment that changes what people tolerate. Trump always chickens out when he meets a force he cannot overwhelm. You cannot overwhelm. Seventy to seventy-five percent of America seeing these videos. Hearing blood turtling justifications for the execution of the kind of American you know would be shoveling the steps outside your house.

I'm Preet Berrara, and this week Financial Times editor Ed Luce joins me to discuss the aftermath of the shooting and why it might mark an inflection point. The episode is out now. Search and follow stay tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay, Scott. Wins and fails. You want me to go first? You go first. Well, I was gonna do the Kennedy Center, but I don't really like the Kennedy Center. I never did. But he's he's gonna close it and fix it after he ran into the ground with his stupid minion, uh, Rick and Rell. Nobody wanted to go there. Um, you know, th whatever. He just he's failed the business and so he's closing it down. It's like Trump stake or something. I don't know if he can close it down. We'll see, but um

just gross that's just a gross sidelight of the many things he's done. Um and uh we'll see. We'll see what happens there. But actually, you know, I wouldn't get more serious, Congresswoman uh Kelly Morrison of Minnesota posted the following uh on uh Blue Sky. My office has been flooded with reports of cruel, unsafe, unlawful conditions inside the Whipple detention facility in Minneapolis. This weekend I was finally granted access to perform oversight and when she went in I mean

It's absolutely grotesque of how they're they're not just abusing these populations and they're about to go do that in Ohio, but they are um they're they're abusing them once they get in there to in order to get them to self-deport. Um the cruelty Let me just tell you all you people, people will you will you will be judged someday. Maybe not today, but it's someday you will this will all come out and what you've done here is so heinous.

uh to young people. The young the young kid with that adorable hat did get out uh finally, but it was only under pressure to get him out, um, who was taken in Minnesota and brought, I think, to Texas. Um but there's he's just one kid and the only reason he got out is so much of the attention'cause of that photograph. But there's other kids.

sitting there, thousands and thousands of children and uh what you have done is so shameful, um and so horrible. And I just hope there's more photographs and more for people to understand the level of depravity. um in what they're doing to those people who are here, most of whom are here, worked hard, have contributed to our country. Um and uh it's just it makes me sick to my stomach.

Um, for a positive thing. Uh I really enjoyed the Grammys. I did. I watched them last night. I thought they were. Oh, did you enjoy it? Yeah, I did. It was fun. There was a little you know, I love Bad Buddy and Billy Eilersh, but it wasn't too much. None of it was too much, although President Trump was threatening to sue Trevor No over his Epstein joke.

uh at the Grammys. Um he I thought he was great. Trevor Noah was great. I found it very entertaining. I thought the performances were terrific. I thought Justin Bieber was did it great. I mean he was sorta naked. He was he looks good. Um he was wearing silk boxers only and I thought that was quite beautiful. I thought Lady Gaga was amazing. Reba McIntyre performed that I love Reba McIntyre. So I liked it. It felt really good.

good and it wasn't virtue signaly the way the Oscars can be. I found the speeches very heartfelt and um simple. They kept it simple. They a lot of God loving too, by the way. Uh but I liked it. I really enjoyed it. I stopped caring about the Grammys when Michael Steib stopped singing and opened a health food store in Athens, Georgia. Rick O'Kasick died.

And George Michael died. I have no interest in m and Tom Petty died from an opioid overdose. Music is dead to me. Music is dead to me. Sabrina Carpenter didn't get anything but Uh and I thought she was delightful also, by the way. Anyway, go ahead. Well, uh I'll start with my loss or fail. I interviewed Neil Ferguson who I really like and is a friend.

But he has a narrative which I disagree with and it's a narrative that's been adopted by the Trump administration and also and I would argue it's just parroting a Russian talking point and that is this This notion that this war is unsustainable for Ukraine.

It's unwinnable and they should strike the best deal they can right now. And that is the same narrative that was expected and vomited all over the media three years ago. And guess what? Since then, in the last two years, Russia has only increased their occupancy or their uh acquisition of land by one percent. A snail could literally, and this is true, move faster than the Russian army. And if you want to talk about unsustainable for somebody

This is unsustainable for Russia. And there are days where they are losing a thousand men a day. Their wartime economy is running out of money. So this war is unsustainable, but it's unsustainable for Russia. And this narrative that somehow that Ukraine has been backed into a corner and needs to come up or swallow hard and accept a peace deal that is just scheduling the next war, not preventing it, is bullshit.

This war is unsustainable, but it's unsustainable for Russia as long as the West continues to support pushback on a murderous autocrat. And it really bothers me this narrative of, well, uh Ukraine should just take the deal they can right now'cause this war is unsustainable. Bullshit. They have been kicking Russia in the nuts. literally and figuratively, and they are, in my view, they are winning this war. And so this narrative from straight out of Sergei Lavarov that

It's unsustainable. It's unsustainable for Ukraine. They can't manage this. Well, guess what, folks? They seem to have put all that to rest, all those doubts, for the last three and a half years. This is unsustainable for Russia. And we should start speaking as if the Ukrainian army is speaking from a position of strength, which they are. I like it.

Scott. I know you like Neil Ferguson. I find him to be a contrarian for contrarian sake, and I like your contrarianess better. Yeah, but Neil Neil brings history and it's important to have this type of dialogue. And he and I again agree on almost nothing geopolitically. But I learned from him and quite frankly it it it strengthens and creates texture around my beliefs and I think that's important. I prefer to be able to do that.

We both are really upset about the the the World Cup um draw for Scotland. We're in the same group as Morocco and Brazil. Anyways, both he and I love. Team Scotland. Anyway, my win because I'm canceling Paramount Plus today. I watch All episodes of Landman. Uh-huh. Oh my God. I think I'm Republican now. It's it's it's literally whoever that guy is, he's Rupert Murdoch of Entertainment. He's like, all this fucking liberal crazy bullshit. With all this redistribution of virtue.

on on prime time streaming programs, I am the Fox News. Of scripted entertainment. You know what? He's much more complex than that. But go ahead. He's not actually. He's not. Actually I'm telling you. This is many a person. I'm sure you've interviewed him. I no, I haven't this is basically succession if nobody went to college or HR was a rumor. It's a great show. And I love the fact that all the the fem every female character exist solely to roll their eyes

Sleep with the wrong man or remind us that feelings are inconvenient. And that every woman is in a state of perimenopause. Did you not watch F Yellowstone with the daughter? She's a hot mess. I can't I can't do Kevin Costner. I've just never loved it. He loves hot mess ladies. I like I do like I love i I like his stuff, but he's a little more complex than that. But I'm glad And it makes me feel better about myself because it's like every crisis can be solved by a phone call, a threat.

Or Billy Bob leaning back and explaining why Windy Are you liking Demi Moore? I like her character. I don't buy that John Hamm would be in a relationship with her. I don't buy it. Well, there he is. He's so good looking. Well. He's so God, he's a that guy's a tall drinker. He was one with Jennifer Anderson on the morning show. He played an Elon Musk like character, as you know.

I like his career is really taking I loved you. I met him at the morning show party. He's a lovely guy, I have to say. We had a lovely chat. Madman is still for me my second f probably my f second favorite scripted drama after He is a handsome man. I will say he's a handsome fucking man. After breaking back. He's a he's a God he's so good looking. He's a he's hugely tall too, just so you know. Very tall. Yeah. He was also great in the most recent s uh

series of uh or season of Fargo. That was really good. Yeah, he's a he's a very burst. He's he's he does a lot better work than he should'cause he's so good looking. He could do a lot less good work. Yeah. No, I learned that an oil patch is Everything about an oil patch, it's brutally honest. Also run by a bunch of people who've been divorced exactly once. Okay. I love it because It gives me hope'cause it's a story.

It's a story about men who are never wrong but always get laid. Yeah. It's just the perfect it's the perfect series for a man. Oh I I i this guy is the Rupert Murdoch of Scripted Television. He came in, he recognized the biggest opportunity was just a very good thing. He's left. He's gone for parent that was one fuck up by David Ellison, I have to say he's left.

to go over to dot the into the into the more elegant uh relationship with Donald Langley over there. She it's Billy B Bob Thornton telling us while the oil business is the last honest thing in the world. Yeah, I know, I know. But I it's just Anyway, I did I did basically eighteen hours of landmen this week. I am Republican.

Now we need you back. Watch Heated Rivalry. And I immediately made a campaign donation to Senator Ted Cruz as soon as I was done. But it's entertaining. Yeah, it is entertaining. Billy Bob Sorton's fantastic. Anyway, uh that was good. That was really good. We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51 Pivot.

Elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, this week and on with Kara Swisher, I spoke with Ben Collins, the CEO of The Onion. We talked about the importance of not being afraid to stand up against the Trump administration right now. Let's listen to a clip. The people who have caved since the start of this, universities, news organizations, everybody who who is like Okay, sir, what do you need? They just kept stepping on them afterwards.

They just kept going. They did. They do. I'm not gonna t I'm not going to tell this staff to change what they're doing at all. Like they are doing uh they're going as hard as they want. Um and if they come to me with a fifty fifty ball, I say go for it. Like

And if they come to me with a big idea, I'm like, let's find funding. Let's find a sponsor. Let's find a thing to th to make sure that this thing can happen. And Scott, before we go, we want to hear one more thing. Let's listen to a voicemail we got. Hey there, Kara. I heard The I heard you talk about the uh message this woman left on your voicemail. Uh, what a cunt, really. I mean, you are fantastic. I'm in love. And if you weren't already married, I would be courting you. So smart.

So ruthless, so truthful, so refreshing. Love you, love you, love you. Scott, you are a smart ass. Uh, I can listen to some of the stuff you say and I agree with some of the stuff you say, but honestly, dude. Some of it is just like ooh ugh. Anyway, Kara, love you. Scott, you're lucky you're working with this woman. That's it for me.

Yeah. So l let me guess who picked that clip. No, we didn't say that was so look at how happy you are. Well, because the other woman said I'm a bag of shit or whatever she calls it. When my ex-wife and I decided to get therapy, and my therapist within 10 seconds is like, You're selfish and have unreasonable expectations of what marriage is about. And I'm like, Well, I'm enjoying this. I'm enjoying this. So what if I want to have sex with other women?

Some people hate you and love me and some people love you and hate me. It's perfect. It's great. Some people love us both. Something for everybody. Yeah, something for everybody. Sweet or savory. Oh, I enjoy our listeners. Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening to the show. Look how happy you are. Look at you. Look at look look I've never seen a child. Yay! You're giddy. You know what? I was so happy.

I can't believe you're actually worried about that. Why not? It's like so many people were in those fucking vinyls you had to look. I stay home and I watch Euphoria. That's the most sexual experience I have. I think it was a good call on my part. Anyway. Uh that you weren't. I'm very of course you weren't. You w of course you aren't. Anyway, uh you have ver much better judge of than people think. Okay, thanks. Thanks for that. Good addition. Good asterisk there. All is forgiven, Kara.

That's the show. Thanks for listening. To pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. Scott, read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Nayman, Soy Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Jabrose, Mr. Severo and Dan.

Nishak Karos, Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from your magazine of Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of Tech and business. Action absorbs anxiety. Resist and unsubscribe.