Trump's Iran Strategy, Tesla's Robotaxi Rollout, and Meta's AI Ambitions

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Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher, and I'm at HQ Vox. Hello, Scott. And I'm Scott Galloway. I'm jealous that I'm not going to Bezos' wedding this weekend. I had lunch with three guys who shall go nameless who seem like really fun, cool guys, and they're all going. They're all going. And we're not going. You're still not invited. Still not invited.

Did you see they had a phone party? It was so you, Scott. They had a phone party on the yacht, on the Kuru or whatever the hell they call it. I didn't see that. Yeah. Lauren and Jeff were in a phone party, which someone commented to me they hadn't done since they were 25 years old.

Apparently it was for her son, who was turning 19. But they had a foam party on the deck of the yacht. Good for them. Enjoy it. Lean into the foam. The rumor is, Lauren has been calling people and saying, I need more single men. Oh. I think it'd be a really good time. Oh, yeah. Well, we weren't invited, Scott.

You had an outside chance possibly of being invited. Yeah, I think you brought me down. I think I would have been invited had it not been for my affiliation with you. I know. I feel that that's the case. I feel like you could have been. Because you're kind of an interesting man. You're attractive enough for them. You have to be attractive.

fit, you would have fit the bill. You drink, you're down for it. Ever since the scrotum lift, it's all coming together. Yeah, you're DTF, as I like to say. I'm also on testosterone. I'm on the NAD. Yeah. The NAD, you're just like them. I don't know why you're not friends with them. I don't know why the Kardashians have moved their way in and you haven't. I just don't.

There's something wrong. I agree with you. We can fix it. I actually would have rather gone. I think I'd rather go to the bachelor's party. I think I'd rather go to the wedding. Supposedly, the wedding vows include a commitment to provide emotional support within 48 hours. And also, every wedding plate has a list of items that says, if you chose this wedding, you might also like. Oh, okay. A little Amazon humor. Actually, it's not Netflix humor. Anyways. Anyway, congratulations, Bezos.

Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, so let's dig right in. Obviously, the big story, the Pentagon says three of Iran's nuclear sites sustained extremely severe damage following the U.S. strikes over the weekend, but it's too soon to know whether Iran still has nuclear capability.

And the administration is saying different things, including J.D. Vance versus the president, etc. President Trump declared the mission a spectacular military success on Saturday, and he claimed the nuclear sites were completely and totally obliterated. Trump also said the strikes should...

force Iran to make peace and threaten future attacks if it doesn't happen. Iran's foreign minister is calling the attacks outrageous and warning of everlasting consequences. That's an interesting word, everlasting. Trump is also now floating the idea of regime change in Iran. Posting on True Social, Make Iran Great Again, Armiga.

Though the vice president, J.D. Vance, said on Meet the Press, the U.S. is not at war with Iran, we're at war with Iran's nuclear program. Vance also attempted to explain why this attack won't lead to a broader U.S. involvement in the Middle East. He is much more on the non-involvement wing. Just repeat.

even though he's doing this for the president. Let's listen. I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East. I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then-

We had dumb presidents and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives. So this is not going to be some long drawn out thing. We've got in, we've done the job of setting their nuclear program back. We're going to now work to permanently dismantle that nuclear program over the coming years. And that is what the president has set out to do. Yeah, it sounds like a long war, essentially. Calling ex-presidents dumb is just ridiculous.

What an idiot. Yeah, I don't get that either. What an idiot. He also, a lot of the other people in the administration are countering what Trump is saying. They don't know how much damage is done. General Cain in particular was like, we don't know because he's an adult and he can say they don't know.

Obviously, he made an effort to do so. A lot of people think it's a bold move. Other people think it's going to be part of a long, drawn-out war. We'll get to the Trump of it all in a second. But overall thoughts? My favorite thing is the name of it, Midnight Operation Hammer. Midnight Hammer. Midnight Hammer. Operation Midnight Hammer. I think that was the WhatsApp group planning Hegseth's bachelor party where he got his first DUI. Or it's...

He got hammered too, from what I understand. It's the stage name of a porn star who's addicted to Red Bull. Midnight Hammer. Midnight Hammer. Yeah. So I've been thinking about, you know. You'd be proud of me. I've been called by two fairly big networks and asked to come on and talk about it. And I'm like, okay, I'm willing to talk about a lot of things I don't have expertise in. This is not one of them. Yeah, good for you. I see geopolitical.

strength is having three legs of the stool. The first is kinetic power, the second is alliances, and the third is competence. So just in reverse order, Israel has demonstrated more competence than any. The IDF just knows how to do more with less than any organization in the world right now militarily. You know, they have executed perfectly across some incredible operations, including taking out the air defenses of Iran.

And going back to kinetic power, we have the most kinetic power in the world. And I do believe that if you're going to spend $800 billion on your military, that you want to go off your heels and onto your toes and exert and proactively. display power and offensively protect your national interests.

I think there's a really good argument that we shouldn't be in forever wars, none of our business, then fine, take military spending down to $200 billion and spend it somewhere else. But Canada's not invading. Buffalo. So unless we're going to do things like this that project our power.

I don't see why he'd spend so much money. And flying B-2 bombers that deliver bunker busters, both of which are armaments and ordinances that nobody else has in the world, I do think it's impressive and sends a strong signal to our adversaries and our allies. It sounds to me like the operation was executed really well. I do think this was a moment in time to go on the offense, trying to put aside my disdain for the administration. So kinetic power.

that box is checked the second is alliances and this is really where we start to fall down and that is despite having you know we have five percent of the world's population 25 of the world's gdp The only successful, really successful military operations are basically a gauge for them is how much support you have from other democracies. And in every other military operation like this, immediately other Western nations weigh in and offer support.

And there's coordinated kind of nonverbal support from unexpected countries, including the Kingdom or Jordan. And if you'll notice, the only countries that are... putting out press releases are russia claiming that we have exaggerated the damage done and china saying here they go again making the world more uncertain and so going about this is in my opinion the first real example of the fact that

Our alliances have somewhat been sequestered to an alliance where it puts us hip to hip with Israel, which I like because I'm very pro-Israel. But the reality is the Israeli brand globally is not very strong right now. I think that not going into this. War unilaterally. Strength and greatness are in the agency of others. And it struck me just how few alliances we have of people willing to. Yeah, people willing the next day to say. Great job. We, of course, used.

they could use our airspace. And MI6 provided intelligence, typically when any responsible president of which J.D. Vance thinks they're stupid, whereas he's a genius. They coordinate like crazy with their allies to say, we would really appreciate you coming out the next day in support of this. And it creates greater, I think, emphasis. Sure.

and strengthen a unified front. And then the third thing is competence. And this is really where we fall down, in my view, because something that Americans, I don't think, focus on nearly enough is that When you have our National Guard and our military and agents of the government focused on raiding a Home Depot in Westlake, California, it detracts from the focus we should have our military on operations such as this when you decide to declare economic warfare on everyone with

tariffs that were derived from bad prompts to ChatGPT, it shows that you're incompetent. And then on this specific operation, Secretary Gabbard comes out and says there's no evidence they're moving towards a nuclear bomb. He says, my intelligence community is wrong. Secretaries Hegseth and Rubio state we don't want regime change. Hours later, he says, I'm in favor. Of regime change. These guys just look like...

They just look incompetent in terms of their messaging. Right. Or they don't have control over him. That's really it. He doesn't care what any of them say. And they've been trying to message it. That's for sure. And one of the things that they tried to do is act like this was all possible.

part of a chess game when, as we always notice, he's not playing chess. He's throwing the checkers everywhere and eating them, essentially. But, you know, he said he was waiting up to two weeks to decide on an attack plan. to be a decoy move, or maybe not, who knows. Which was effective, to call balls and strikes. It fooled me. If that was what he was doing.

If that was what he was doing. Yeah, fair point. Reportedly, he made the decision to bomb Iran earlier in the week, according to The Atlantic. Now, he also had a lunch with Bannon, which would show that he was maybe not going to do anything because Bannon's sort of anti any of this. It's probably a fake move, but maybe it's not. Now, Republicans are rallying behind Trump, but Democrats and a few Republicans are calling the tech unconstitutional since Trump.

did not have congressional approval. To be fair, again, balls and strikes, other presidents have done this, have done attacks. It's just that he's so violative of most laws that it just seems even worse when he does it. But other presidents, to be fair, have done this. this. And I think the braggadocio about whether we're successful, I think probably you say very little.

One of the things that's interesting is that whether it creates a fracture in the MAGA coalition, MAGA's pretending it's not, but there's clearly, they're trying to signal as best they can. They don't like this, even in the soft language they're using.

never using his name. But there's got to be a real problem here because once you get involved in this stuff, you don't get uninvolved. It's very hard to get, it's very easy to get into war, very hard to get out. The markets have had a muted response, which is interesting.

And that's what I really think we should focus on because we actually do know something about that. The U.S. markets are up as of this recording. Oil prices jumped after the strikes this weekend but are falling now. Trump is watching those oil prices. He posted on True Social on Monday morning. Everyone.

Keep oil prices down, you're playing right into the hands of the enemy. So talk a little bit about that because nobody knows what to make of it. It must mean that they don't think he's going to escalate. That would be one thing. That said, if Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz...

as they've threatened to do, those oil prices could spike. It's not clear whether they can actually close it or we can open it right back up. But nonetheless, there's uncertainty, but the response has been muted. Why do you think that's the case? I generally believe.

Trump is looking to bask in some macho light. I do think this was a well-executed military operation. We won't know the extent of the damage. And unfortunately, because we can't trust our intelligence services anymore, it's hard to get accurate information. And I'm not sure that we can count on Trump. I don't think Trump did this as an act of support of Israel. I think he did it as an act of trying to, he got jealous of this dick measuring contest where Netanyahu looked like the bigger.

package and so he showed up and he wanted some of it yeah but i think he's looking to get the hell out of dodge and not and not be drawn into a larger conflict and unfortunately similar to our elected public The IRGC is run by, you know, Khamenei, who is an 86-year-old theocrat. And who knows what this guy— Right, what's happening internally. What's running through this guy's head. He's not in a good position the way he was.

previously. He has to make a bad choice between bad choices. But the Strait of Hormuz, which everyone is worried about them seizing it up, the reality, Cara, is that if the Strait of Hormuz gets blocked, it hurts China a lot more than it hurts us. China gets 5.4 million barrels a day through the strait. India gets 2 million, South Korea 1.7. We barely get anything.

People just don't realize how incredibly blessed we are and how productive our economy is. We're actually pretty much a self-sustaining nation. We're food and energy independent. There are maybe three other Western countries that can say that right now. So if the Strait of Hormuz gets blocked, China gets very upset and pissed off. Now, the way it hurts us is that you could see a spike in oil prices, which would hurt us. That's a good point.

for every 10 bucks i think a barrel goes up it translates to 25 cents in gas here but the reality is The Strait of Hormuz coming under blockage or dissent or tumult or chaos hurts Asia a lot more than it hurts the United States. Yeah, that still is an indicator. I think they won't be able to do that either. But the oil markets are saying they're not worried. They're not worried. The oil markets, if you hadn't known this.

had happened and you were looking at the markets, you wouldn't know this had happened. It doesn't look as if the markets are yawning right now. The markets are saying, and who knows, they can be wrong. That this will be that Iran will have some sort of symbolic gesture similar to what they did with Israel sending over all those ballistics, the majority of which didn't impact them. And that this will quote unquote deescalate and that Trump gets his macho participation.

trophy and we all move on. Yeah, one of the things that's really interesting in the Trump era is we all move on. Like, it's something that happened, like, what was a couple weeks ago? Something, every week is something unprecedented and then... It's precedented, essentially. And what's interesting about it is, look, no other president has tried this. And I agree with you. I think sometimes you do the big move, the big grand gesture, and then move out. And I think the question is,

You're right. They will attack Israel. They may attack U.S. bases abroad. As we record this, Iran has launched an attack on a U.S. base in Qatar, which is home to about 10,000 U.S. troops. Qatar closed its airspace and suspended flights as a... cautionary measure. A Qatari spokesman says the missiles were intercepted, and so far, no injuries have been reported. I would expect more attacks in the region. Yeah, it looks as if they also attacked in Iraq.

You never know, but so far this looks like what I'll call a saving face attack. It doesn't look like it's, it looks like they needed to do something. Let's hope this is all they do. Now one thing that was striking to me was the polling on this thing. Most Americans don't want anything to do with it, even an attack. It's fascinating that he just did it without Allied support, without polling support, without anything.

That is one reason I'm like, this guy, you know, this fucking guy, he's just doing it because he wants to, he doesn't seem to care about polls. He doesn't seem, well, why would he? He doesn't have to run again, really. They were perfect for a moment, or they had the perfect statement. This is not a war or an attack on the Iranian people. This was an attack on nuclear facilities. That was J.D. Vance. That was exactly right. But then they can't help themselves. Well, he can't.

He can. And he starts talking about regime change. And here's the thing about regime change. We don't want to do that. It's an oxymoron. When regime change is forced externally, it doesn't work. It's not truly regime change. So we tried that once in Iran. was a democratically elected president of Iran. He was overthrown by the CIA and MI6 because he had this crazy notion that Iranian oil belonged to Iranians. So we got him thrown out and we put in the Shah of Iran, who was an autocrat.

And ultimately, he was thrown out. And then the Islamic Republic came in. 50% of the time where you think you have a democratic regime change, it ends up going back to something else. You can't. We should just never be in the regime change business. It doesn't work. The people have to decide. But at the same time, I'm sort of, I mean, the IDF has done an amazing job taking down.

their defense infrastructure, their aerial defense infrastructure. And the people. They've killed a lot of like. Well, it depends how you define it. They've killed a lot of senior level military officers, but there's actually been very little death here. Right. They keep taking out leadership is what they keep doing. Yeah. And they've sent a very, very strong signal. We've punched. The biggest mistake you make in strategy is you think you're punching a speed bag.

And there's always a law of unintended consequences, not only in war, but Jesus Christ, in the Middle East, no one can predict. I mean, it is so difficult to predict. There are so many X factors flying around, anything involving the Middle East. And to think that they might not respond.

I don't know. We can all guess. But at this point, anybody who lays out what they know is going to happen doesn't know what they're talking about. You're 100 percent right. I think the issues this has been good for. for Israel. That's what it's been good for. It's been less good for us, but...

We'll see. We'll see. If Trump keeps his mouth shut. Like, I do think Vance and the others and Cain are signaling the, we don't know how much we've hit. This is only to stop the nuclear. If they stick to the nuclear program, Iran should never have a nuclear device.

period. And that's in our interests. That's that. That should be that. And the question is, can it be that? And unfortunately, many other people have been dragged in here, many other presidents. But by the way, Jamie is calling presidents dumb. Just you're dumb.

You're dumb. Why are you? Why? Why add that line in? You're like, it was a good line. And then you add it. Why are you destroying alliances with former Republicans? And also Americans in our kind of our tendency and our fascination with self-hate.

We aren't willing to take a victory lap in the sense that if you think of us as having four enemies, China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran. Yeah, why not go over there? The Ukrainian army has beaten the shit out of Russia and through support from Western Europe and the U.S.

basically defanged Russia. And quite frankly, if Russia had not gone into Ukraine, or if in fact they'd ended up in Kiev within seven days, And Russia was still the scary military power we all thought it was. I'm not sure we would have done this because if Russia had still had its proxies in Syria and could be more supportive of Iran directly with technology. I think we would have been less bold around Iran. So the West right now, when it comes to two of our enemies, Iran and Russia,

We are kicking the shit out of them. Right, that's true. And we should celebrate that, that the West is winning. The question is, and these guys never ask, I don't think this question is, what now? And what bothers me is that we don't have a unified front with all of our Western allies around what is next here.

Or within the Trump administration, that's clear. They can't get their own messaging straight. I was sort of like, what? Huh? Like they keep saying, anyway, it's because Trump, you never know what he's going to say at any given minute. Anyway, we'll see what happens. We're not experts here, but it certainly seems the market's going.

Oh, well, OK. Like another thing. What's he going to do next week? We'll see. We'll see what happens. Let's hope very little happens, actually. OK, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Elon's robo taxis hit the road. Emphasis on hit.

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Scott, we're back. Tesla's long-awaited robo-taxi service is now on the streets of Austin with a few caveats. This initial rollout has Tesla employees riding in the front passenger seat to ensure safety. The service is also currently invite-only to fans.

With a geofenced area of Austin, a small area, riders are paying a flat fee of $420. The launch comes just days after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a new law regulating self-driving cars. The legislation takes effect in September and requires companies to get permits.

operates self-driving vehicles. The state can revoke those permits if safety becomes a concern. You know, this is just, shares are up 10%. I can't believe this because it's like the smallest little service going. It's not going to create the billions and billions, tens of billions or trillions that

Elon has promised. There are very many competitors. And by the way, VW is getting into the game. The company just unveiled a robo-taxi that will be used by Uber's fleet next year. This ID they make is beautiful. I'd love to have an ID, a Volkswagen ID, actually.

Great looking electric cars look fun and interesting to drive. So who knows what's going to happen here. He's also facing other challenges. His startup XAI is reportedly burning a billion dollars a month while generating just $500 million in revenue this year. According to Bloomberg, the company is now seeking $9.3 billion in debt and equity to close the gap. And what SpaceX is calling a major anomaly, Starship rocket exploded during routine testing for the launch last week. test actually.

I have been saying this over and over again. His leverage is very tight. He's got a lot of tight. Everything is depending on it. It's like a Jenga. It feels very Jenga-like what's happening here. He often does pull a rabbit out of the hat, but it seems like... given the competitors in both the robotaxi and the car space, the competitors in the AI space, and SpaceX seems to be...

struggling a little bit and still hasn't gone public and hasn't provided him the funding he needs. What do you think is going on here? It seems a little precarious for Elon Musk. Yeah, I think some of your bias is coming out.

Look, the reason he's the wealthiest man in the world is he's incredibly risk-aggressive. That's right. Yes, he is, 100%. And he makes these just dramatic huge bets. The difference now versus making the huge bets he made on Tesla when he legitimately could have gone bankrupt. 100%. didn't get a $50 million loan or personal loan from Larry or Sergey, whoever it was, is that he now has businesses in space, EVs, AI.

brain implants and any one of those if they hit to the same extent that tesla hit for a while SpaceX is still a remarkable company. The anomaly or the explosion, to a certain extent, that's what makes SpaceX what SpaceX is, and that is NASA can't blow up rockets. Right. I've said that. You know I've said that. You've said that. Absolutely. Yes, yes. Many times. Starlink is still a superior service. The Robotaxi thing, I mean, it all comes down to this.

He uses technology. Waymo uses LiDAR, which strikes me as better technology, safer technology, and much more expensive. Correct. It costs about a quarter of a million dollars to put a LiDAR-enabled autonomous car on the road. Whereas Tesla is saying, if this works, we can produce these things for $36,000. Now, if they're able to show that they can deploy these things safely, of which you pointed out, and it's true, there's some concern.

they're going to have a real cost advantage. And they also have a lot of data from the Teslas already on the street. I think consumers win here. I think Waymo is way ahead. But, you know, we'll see. There's also Zooks from Amazon. There's also the Zooks car, which has been testing for a long... I've been in Zooks for years. I think the issue is he's been slow. It doesn't mean that he can't catch up. You're 100% right. Like, I agree with you. I just think that he's acting like...

Like he's the king of this area where he is not the king. He's the Johnny-come-lately in this area and shouldn't have been. He should have been far ahead in robo-taxis and sort of the pace setter. And the same thing with AI. He should have been.

the pace setter in AI. Well, all this stuff is going on in AI and obviously it's still unsettled with various investments. There's rumors that perplexity is going to get bought by Apple. There's rumors, you know, there's all kinds of like who's going to get bought, who's going to get sold, et cetera, et cetera.

But he should have been out front here and he's not out front. What he succeeded in is areas nobody else will enter because he's so risk aggressive, which is great, which is a really great quality that he's had. He was in areas nobody was in. Right now he's competing in areas other people are doing rather well in. And that's where...

I find the problems for him. The only one that is not the case, which is in Starlink, but the Chinese are coming in, the Europeans are coming in, Jeff Bezos is coming in. He's in competitive areas and he doesn't, just simply doesn't.

His boldness doesn't work here. It's a level of quality of service that you provide with these robo-taxis that requires a little more discipline than just oh well we've crashed a couple of cars you can't do it anymore because the others aren't crashing gm was thrown out for crashing so I feel like it's not a bias. It's like the aggression is not an advantage in most of these businesses necessarily. Cost might be.

As you pointed out, that might be the case. But I think those other companies will figure out a way to bring down costs, too. Like, I don't think he has a definite advantage in any of these areas.

including Starlink at this point. I think eventually they will catch up with him and sooner than later. See, I see it as if you're going to bifurcate his winners and losers in terms of his portfolio, my sense of him is he's... able to create such a vision and create so much awareness around the vision that he's able to pull cheap capital forward and run away from everyone else i think he's the ultimate case study and first mover advantage and his first mover advantage is apparent at

Tesla with EVs and SpaceX with space launch cargo launch capability. I think both of those companies, Tesla has already provided him, made him the wealthiest man in the world. I think SpaceX is going to be a monster, probably the biggest IPO at 26.

The other areas where he's trying to be a fast follower, whether it's AI or autonomous driving, I don't think he's as good at because there's other people who are already... able to sort of you know they have the advantage the market is already maturing he's he's better as a quote unquote first mover than a fast follower agree and that's how it would quote unquote bifurcate his portfolio in terms of winners and losers

I do think Starlink, though, is going to have challengers now. No one thought anyone would catch up to Tesla, and I think companies are catching up to Tesla, very clearly catching up, whether it's BYD. Same thing in Starlink. He is... Let me pay him a compliment. He's always out front on lots of stuff, but he's furthered away his advantage in most of these areas. He should have had...

He bragged about that fucking robo-taxi a decade ago to me. Why didn't he have it? Because he's undisciplined. Because he can't, like, doing a robo-taxi takes a lot of hard, detailed work, of which he loves a splash. Right. And I agree. He should have gone into what did he sit around waiting to do XAI for for a decade? Like he was he was the first person who ever told me about these businesses. And yet he's an also ran in that space.

So why? Like I'm saying it's OK to be a pioneer, but the planes are covered with the bodies of pioneers as far as I can tell. And I think I wish he would just discipline himself and we'll see what happens with the SpaceX thing. But blowing these things, I get that I always.

We say, well, he can blow things up. There's a point where he can't blow any more things up, right? This is the fourth in a row, I think, of a blow up of these things. He's got to get it right and make it efficient. And I don't think they expected this particular thing to blow up. and it's costly and delaying and et cetera, et cetera. I still think Starlink's an incredible product and arguably has the most differentiated product lead of any.

product that that is that important to people it's like water for wealthy people is broadband it's just and and there's just no comparison especially if you're on a plane and they have starlink you literally you start salivating oh this is i'm going to be so much more productive on this flight. The extent to which other competitors can catch up.

You know, I don't know. I've just been contacted quite a lot by the Amazon folks there. Is it Kuiper? Kuiper. But I don't know. What I'd be curious to know is he controls 60% of low-orbit satellites. I don't know. Do you need 2%, 10%, 20% to have a viable product?

I just don't know what the technology is involved in. I feel like everyone's going to chase him here and he's not going to have that advantage forever. Well, and that's what we want, right? We want competition. Right, 100%. He'll either innovate and maintain his lead or he won't. The one that I think is his biggest...

weakness is, I just think, XAI. I think he's emotional about it and trying to catch up. And he's not even the number two. He's the distant number three or four. Four or five. Yeah. They're projecting 500 million revenues, and I think OpenAI is projecting around 13 billion. Anthropic is projecting about 2 billion, and it's carved out sort of an interesting brand as the number two player, if you will. They have.

And they're chewing through so much cash at XAI. I think they're spending about a billion dollars a month. And he's going... $500 million in revenue, $12 billion a year, $500 million in revenue. That's a lot of fucking... He's building out this data center in Tennessee called Colossus, which is powered by, over, get this, 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs. It's going to be the largest supercomputing cluster.

uh in the world but he's also facing legal challenges there because of the energy the way he's doing energy is that right yeah because it's just i don't know why he wasn't first in several of these things previously the robo I can't tell you how many times he talked about robo-taxis and autonomous cars years ago. And I like the vision, but I would like a delivery and everyone else delivered. And he needs to focus on, I just don't think, it's also, why did he have to say it? It's like, why?

Why did J.D. Vance have to say they're dumb presidents? Why did he have to say it's a trillion dollar business? Why not not say that? Because now that's the number he has to beat.

Right? The first robotaxi I got in, it immediately dropped down an air freshener. I don't know what that means. Have you ridden in one yet? Yeah, I rode in one, and I was so blown away. I was in L.A., and I called a Waymo, and it pulled up. And immediately I go to an intersection where there's an accident and there's a cop with a yellow vest and cones. And I'm like, there's no fucking way this thing is going to be able to figure it out. And it drove like a...

16-year-old girl who just got her license, or I'm sorry, 16-year-old boy who just got his license. Very careful. And you know what? The thing figured it out. It was unbelievable. It said, The amount of sensors and processing power to go, okay, this is a law enforcement official telling me to go into the wrong lane on the other side of the yellow line, and I'm going to do it. It didn't used to be able to do that. Because I have sensed that this person is a law enforcement official.

they are waving me over to this lane. And I'm like, wow. It's amazing. You know what they used to have problems with is plastic bags blowing. Oh, that's interesting. Of course, the people who really don't like Tesla are doing all the tests with the Tesla robo taxis and they keep running over like fake children, you know, like dummies. And, you know, that's not any good for their brand. And so I would not get. in a Tesla.

Right now, because I don't feel like their safety is their biggest concern. I wouldn't do it. I don't like getting them to them as an Uber, but that's a different thing. That's my bias. That is my bias. I love robo taxis, as you know. And so I'm very eager to get in these things, but I would not find. it safe enough, I would not trust it.

I just don't. I don't think they've squared every corner the way that I think the Waymo people have. And I'll be in, Zoox was a very good experience too, by the way. Anyway, and by the way, I wouldn't get in GMs either. This is not an Elon thing. I was very worried.

about there when they were doing their business. Now, maybe they'll come back, maybe they won't, but we'll see. Anyway, good luck, Elon. All right, let's go. I wonder if he's going to the wedding. Do you think he's going? I don't know.

No, I don't think they like each other. Just so you know, Jeff, Scott is free. Yeah, I got nothing going on this weekend. He'll come at the last minute. He'll just show up. Yeah, yeah. He'll wait on you hand and foot if that's what needs to happen. Well, we're just joking about... Coming at the last minute, I've become the Albert Einstein of sex. And that is, I'll say to my partner, that was fast for you. Get it? Get it? Oh my God, it's so bad.

You need to up the game on the penis jokes, okay? Yeah. Come on. You need some help. I don't know. I hope Godzilla comes to that wedding. And the great thing about watching Godzilla have sex is you can see it coming a mile away. Oh, my God. All right. We're moving on. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, investors.

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Scott, we're back with more news. Mark Zuckerberg's support for President Trump isn't a shock to people who know or work with him, according to your report in the Financial Times, which wrote a very kind piece about you, by the way, recently. Who did the New York Times write a kind piece about? Yeah, they did. They did. Those close to Zuck. About who? About me.

Say the shift is just him showing the world his authentic self instead of trying to be a good boy. One former insider said Zuckerberg saw Elon Musk was popular among the tech bros and there was, quote, a push to make him cool, unquote, with new hobbies and wardrobes. But Zuck and big tech don't. Look, let me just tell you, Mark was... always the person you're seeing now. He was never a good boy. He just did it for a while because that's what he was supposed to do. But he's always been a jerk.

Always, always, always. And this stuff that he's doing now is just a version of it, especially the outfits and stuff like that. He is so insecure and self-aware of what people think of him. He was always ever like this and he will always be like this. So that's my opinion.

Talk about the, you can talk about, Mark, if you want, but the big tech with investors, do you think there's, you know, the shine is off them? I think it's bigger than that. First off, you know, as goes big tech, so goes the rest of the market.

So effectively, the market has come back and you had essentially almost all of the losses have been recaptured with the exception. of the mag seven is still down a decent amount not a huge amount but they now make up about 34 of the index's market cap and currently Their forward-looking PE is roughly 31, which is higher than the S&P, which the rest of the S&P sits at 23 combined. I think it's about 26. But I think what you're seeing here...

is a decades-long reversal in the flows of capital. And the worst thing for our economy that I think is going to vastly diminish our prosperity is we have taken for granted the incredible torrential flows of both human and financial capital from the rest of the world into the U.S. And I think that river has reversed. And the Euro stocks is having the best relative performance of the year in comparison to the U.S. market since 2000.

In just the first quarter of this year, 26 billion euros flowed into the European equities markets, a significant shift. And this came after 12 consecutive quarters of net outflows. And currently, it looks as if in this quarter, we're going to see more than 31 billion in total positive flows, which would shatter a previous record from 2015. there's a finite amount of human and financial capital and financial capital

has traditionally over the last 15 years flowed into the U.S., which does a couple of things. It lifts the price of our stocks because people want to be in U.S. equities and they go into index funds, which is spread across all our equities. And it increases the dollar strength. And the dollar has declined. despite the fact we're offering greater interest rates if you buy our treasuries because we're no longer seen as a safe bet, the dollar has weakened about 10%. The dollar has been the weakest.

of the kind of mature economies currencies because the reality is carers a lot of people are waking up to the notion that it's been an incredible run but we're going to invest some money in asian latin american and european stocks Yeah, absolutely. I think, as you said last week, the shine is off our country in terms of brand equity and stuff like that. And we'll see if it returns, obviously, if the economy does better, etc. But it certainly is. It's not a surprise. Any thoughts on Zuckerberg?

I think he's always been the same way. I don't think he's changed one little bit. He's an unusual guy. He's very performative. You know him much better than I. Not anymore. I think most of these guys didn't get enough attention from women as younger men. Yeah, I just did. are constantly i i don't know i just think this is very these guys there's some something broken about these guys that they would i don't understand the point of all this prosperity

I think it's as easy as deep insecurity. That's all it is. It's like he's always he like sweated insecurity since the get go. He was always somehow trying to impress. What do you think? I mean, literally, the first thing he said to me is you think I'm an asshole, don't you? I was like, I don't even know you. Like, it was so weird and performative and I don't know. Whatever, Mark. Be you. I'd love to know who he is, actually, would be interesting. And if he's a jerk, he's a jerk.

And in AI news, Sam Altman says Meta has offered his employees signing bonuses as high as $100 million in an attempt to poach staffers. Let's listen to what else he had to say about Meta on the Uncapped podcast. Look, I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor. And I think it is rational for them to keep trying. Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they've hoped.

i respect like being aggressive and continuing to try new things and i and again given that i think this is like rational i expect that if this one doesn't work out they'll keep trying new ones after that it was so good at insulting backhanded compliment Okay.

He does this all the time. He's really so obvious and good at it. But, you know, it's not the only grab meta is making for AI competitors. The company's also discussed buying perplexity before investing in scale AI. You know, this is what he does. This is what Mark does. He pays and pays and pays and burns through a lot of money and tends to win.

In this case, I think he's going to have a much harder time. Again, as we discussed with Elon Musk, there are competitors here, and they're good competitors. I think probably Google is probably OpenAI's biggest competitor. Of course, there's Microsoft. There's Apple.

once it decides to, you know, pull its pants on and get going. So I think it's a little harder for him to win when he was only in the social media space and here he is in a much bigger space and it's going to be a lot harder. He's not necessarily as good at this, so. your thoughts so again i kind of bifurcated open ai has become the hertz and anthropic is the avis right the number numbers one and two

But Meta, I think, is still arguably gains more market cap from AI innovation this year than any other big company. Because what I see is a company that has incredibly... strong leadership and very strategic thinking from Mark Zuckerberg, which has sometimes been to the detriment of society at large. He's the second largest purchaser of GPUs, and he has 170 trillion tokens of grist to stuff into that furnace of GPUs in the form of data collected across.

platforms where four and five people outside of china are on these platforms you know every day yep he's got a lot of advantages he has all the assets now how does it manifest in terms of shareholder value i don't think it's llama or some sort of consumer facing ai program i think how it manifests in terms of shareholder value is i just think it's going to be a pretty grim year i think the i think anyone that's not meta is going to have basically a very very

small offering at Cannes next year because I think their offering using AI is going to be so incredible to advertisers. It's like, oh, you can only spend, your budget is $100,000. We'll produce a commercial for you in about... Two hours with decent prompts. We'll optimize the media plan. You give us the objectives. In the area they specialize in, yeah. And they're just going further and further, up and down the food chain of the 1.5% of the economy.

I mean, they've already gone after the big guys. They've already gutted WP, Omnicom, and to a lesser extent, Publisi, which is Embrace Technology. They're going to go after regional agencies now. They're going to go after... Small producers that produce these little commercials for Toyota of Northern California. And they're going to say, using our AI, you don't need to go anywhere else. You don't need creative. You don't need media planning. You don't need.

So what you're saying is the area they have already excelled in, they will continue. They don't really need to win the open AI consumer product thing. They don't need a consumer facing AI. Even if Llama doesn't compete with open AI and with Anthropic or with. Claude or Claude. I don't know what they're calling it. No, it's not Claude. It's not Claude, it's Claude. My best employee at L2 was a French-Canadian woman named Claude. By the way, if someone who's a Canadian immigrant...

who was on the Yale Gymnastics team, shows up to your office, just hire them, automatic hire. Elite athletes, individual sports, female. Anyways, those were our three criteria. The backend, the tech stack they're offering to marketers right now. It's like, okay, good luck competing with that. And the only people that can compete with it are Alphabet because they have such incredible dominance around YouTube and then they can feed it with still what is 89% share of search.

But we're just a can. It cracks me up. Pretty soon, Meta's Beach is going to be Saint-Tropez. Yeah, you said that. They're going to be like, do you want to come to Saint-Tropez this entire week? It's the meta beach. It's the meta beach, the entire thing. And all of the rest of you. Goodbye. We'll invite you. Come to your, we're going to come to the best party.

Before your execution. It just strikes me that any of these people would accept an invitation to go to Meta Beach. They don't have to win everywhere. That is what you're saying, essentially. They can just win in these areas. They're already winning. Well, they're going to win among...

companies looking to acquire marketers and spend their media dollars. I think it was John Wanamaker who said, half the money I spent on advertising is wasted. The trouble is I don't know which half. They'll know which 50. Meta can tell you. And medic can say, I'll tell you what, instead of wasting that 50% with other people, bring it to us, spend 30 of it, save 20, and...

And we'll go from 50% not knowing where it's going or it's not effective to 10 to 5 to 3 to 1 because we'll test it a million times. I think the question is, can ChatGPG hold on to its Kleenex? you know, name, like, are they Google? Are they Google? Synonymous with it. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see if they can.

President Trump has extended the deadline for the TikTok ban by 90 days yet again. This marks the third extension after an initial deadline of January 19th. A reported deal came to a halt amid U.S. and China trade tensions earlier this year.

J.D. Vance was supposedly doing this with the guy who left Waltz, or he sort of left. I don't know where they put him. But that's who was working on it. It looks like they're not even working on it. And so TikTok was having a lot of parties at Cannes. So I don't know. What are you? Look, I think TikTok is the most undervalued company in tech right now. It's trading at the same valuation.

as um open ai with 15 times the revenue it's trading at like one and a half to three times revenues depending on if you're looking at forward or trailing 12 months everyone thinks oh well what about the insecurity the overhang that's keeping that valuation low because of uh insecurity around the us market

market. It's clear that Trump has decided he likes TikTok. He's not taken seriously. It's likely not going to be banned right now. Jeff Yass owns 15% of the company, gave $100 million to Republican candidates. And only 20% of the revenue comes from the United States. So this thing is a juggernaut. And also just personally, I think it's the most addictive of all the platforms. I could right now go upstairs.

take off my shoes, take an edible, and be on TikTok for 28 hours and not know what happened. I just think that algorithm is incredible. They continue to grow. And the notion somehow that he keeps extending these deadlines, I mean, they will never come to the table. Why would they? Why on earth would they take anything?

this guy takes seriously so i think it's an incredible company i think they're going to be one of the if they ever decide to go public if the chinese will let them go public it'll be i was even and i like to talk about what i'm doing to to show you know, rather than giving me financial advice, what am I doing? I have been diversifying out of U.S. stocks into European stocks for the better part of a year now.

I'm also contemplating going into the private market and going to one of these secondary markets, whether it's Setter or some of the others, and seeing if and when I can pick up a block of ByteDance. Because I think it... A valuation of $300 billion? I think there is no company performing as well at this price to sales ratio as TikTok. The overhang of the geopolitical risk of the U.S.

is vastly overestimated in terms of TikTok's valuation or ByteDance's valuation. Yep, yep. So we'll see. They're probably going to do nothing. They'll probably just decide suddenly and we'll have some... strange deal. But certainly Elon may not be part of it the way that people thought would be. They thought he had the inside track. President Xi doesn't scare this. All this arm-waving that Larry Ellison did.

that Trump's going to get to carve up, bite dance his U.S. operations like a cake and give it to his Republican buddies. She's just like, have at it. Have at it. Good luck. Do what you want. Waste your time. We're going to continue to excel. Anyway. Waste your time. We'll see. They'll probably do it sometime around the next election would be my guess. We make the mistake.

of believing that Chinese companies like America are run for profits and shareholder value. They're run for control. He's not going to give up control, even if it costs a lot in shareholder value. Anyway, Trump made a big deal of it. And now, of course, it's off to the side, as it's mostly the same thing. We're on to something else. All right. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Support for this show comes from SoFi Small Business Lending.

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Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Shall I start? Yes, please. I actually was very... With some stuff in Los Angeles, both Bob Igers, I think it's the Angels soccer team and others, and the Dodgers have donated, have been doing things, in the case of the Dodgers, they donated a million dollars to assist families impacted by immigration raids. It's a small amount of money.

But I kind of like that they stood up a little bit there. People are showing little signs. Even Bob Iger, they put out T-shirts about immigration for their soccer team did. I like little stand-ups. I'm seeing a lot of really cool little stand-ups. over the place, but people who should have stood up a long time ago. But I really appreciate them. And the one I appreciate the most in terms of a win was your side piece, Jessica Tarloff on Raging Moderates, your co-host.

Trump called her a disgrace to television broadcasting. I think she's killing it on The Five. And she does a very good job in your show, but on The Five is where he notices it, just so you know. I thought that was great that she got it.

I loved it. I was like, go Jessica. She's a stand-up gal is what she is. And I really appreciate how she does that. I really, I like, and she sticks to it. She's very firm, very clever. She's very funny. And so I like all these people that are doing little stand-ups that are.

that they do, but she's my favorite this week of all of the different ones. My fail are the Medicaid cuts that are coming. Well, I had two fails, but these cuts that are coming to Medicaid are going to eviscerate certain states like West Virginia.

others. It's going to be so bad if these cuts are passed. Now, I know it seems like we've forgotten about the big, beautiful bill, but when it goes into effect, I think it's going to have some of the worst. States like West Virginia, Kentucky, others, they're reliant.

on this program and these deep spending reductions with the states taking over them. In those states, it's not going to happen. And so I feel sorry for these people, even though I think the way they voted was against their self-interest. is, you know, these are states that are behind already and they're going to be more behind going forward. And that's unfortunate.

Yeah, so I love your, I was not expecting, I love your win. That'll mean a lot to Jess. She has a lot of respect for you. Your opinion matters a lot to her. And you know she's doing something right when Trump calls her out. So I think she wears that correctly. She showed us a badge of honor. Yeah. I have sort of two wins or a win and a prediction. My first win is a little less serious. Have you seen the series Mobland? No, not yet, no. It's outstanding.

Is it? Yeah, really just the cast, the writing. Really just fantastic. Tom Hardy, who I think is just a movie star. Oh, it's with, who else is in it? Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan, I love him. He's a sexy mother. Yeah, he's great. He's really. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets an award. I think it's time for him to get some recognition. I love him. He's very handsome. Patti Considine, who actually played one of the leads in...

House of Dragons is in it. There's just the cast is just the cast is fantastic. It's very violent. I like my mob story about the UK. The guy who plays Daniel Betts, he plays the rival family, the Pierce Brosnan character, the patriarch of the rival mob family. It's just outstanding. It's such good entertainment. And also... it took me it's taken me about four hours to figure out how to download paramount plus i mean it's like i haven't watched a lot on paramount plus and boy it's not easy

But anyways, my win is, and for those of you who enjoy media, Mobland's fantastic. My other win is more of a prediction, and that is Reed Hastings and my prediction joining the board of Anthropic. And the reason why... is i think reid is arguably one of the brightest business people in the world in terms of pulling off the biggest pivots and when i look at netflix's achilles heel it's the following youtube

is able to capture a minute for half the price or 40% of the price of Netflix. Why? Because they pay the creators directly and it's a commission-based program. So if Netflix could say to a doc, person i'll give you a million dollars for your documentary knowing they'll get two million back

That's a superior business model. And that's what YouTube has. And I think YouTube is going to do potentially to Netflix what Netflix did to Comcast and Fox. So as a result, I think Reed Hastings now on the board of Anthropic is going. to announce within 12 months that he is partnering with anthropic who by the way is looking for big big deals to take some oxygen away from the number one open ai and that netflix and anthropic are going to announce a tick tock like competitor

that slices and dices the fattest long tail of content in history, and that is the Netflix library, of which 99% probably gets 1% viewership. And they'll slice it and dice it, have it be open source so creators can add. Voiceovers do have fun with it. And they'll launch a competitor that attempts to recognize that this newest generation is so attention diffused and TikTok is so strong.

that they'll take the AI from Anthropic and the content of Netflix and launch a TikTok competitor. I think what's interesting about YouTube is they have no production costs. That's right. No means to production. Now, there was an interesting thing that this great analyst always does. Or TikTok. And then there's Tubi, which sort of does that too, right? It's been growing like crazy because of the way it selects things.

for people in the long tail of content, essentially. And what's interesting about it is that they can survive together because some creators want them. want the money to develop. On YouTube, you know, it's bring your own liquor to the restaurant. And so I think they could live together. But you're right, Netflix will be under siege from YouTube if YouTube starts to pay for production a little bit more. Anyway, it's an interesting time. It certainly is. That's a really good one.

Anyway, 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. And elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, this week is on with Kara Swisher. I spoke with...

writer and political commentator Molly Jungfast about her new memoir, which details her relationship with her mother. Let's listen to a clip. Sometimes the children of narcissists become stuck. on trying to fix their relationships with their narcissistic parents, despite the fact that there's not any role for them to play. They over sort of become overly guilty because of that. And that made sense. much sadness that it made me think that that's what I did.

I know all about that. Anyway, it was a great interview. Do you remember Erika Zhang, Fear of Flying? Yeah, it's a great book. All of my mom's friends had that book. Yeah, yep. Well, this is his daughter who's a really good political commentator now.

This book is really good, actually. It's really interesting, and it's not very long. Molly's a thoughtful woman. She is, but this book, I was sort of, well, I have similar experiences. Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. 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 Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, Kevin Oliver, and Corinne Ruff.

Ernie and Ernie are the hot engineer of this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Ms. Severo, Dan Shalon, and Kate Gallagher. Nishak Kerouaz, Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to them. magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Women out there, do you really want men who are more sensitive and more in touch with their feelings? All that gets us is two people crying in the car trying to parallel park. Happy wedding, Jeff Bezos. Starting with finance. It's happening across industries, across sectors, and across the world. And it's happening with Ripple.

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