Transcripts For CSPAN2 After 20240704

Kara swisher ighted to be here with you. Its a real honor to talk about fern book, which you we have to i think for the cspan audience, webook in context. Can you give us can you give us th book is an expression actually mean girls is out now, ich isbook you write things you really think about people and youre not. Re supposed to see it. And of course, thats the whole premise of that movie and you have fun with it and its sort of gossipy and mean a little bit, but funny and so i decided thats what i was doing in my memoirat my 30 years covering Silicon Valley. The same time that subhead is a tech love story because i love tech. Yeah. So i dont want this idea that, you know, theres a lot of tropes out there. You know, tech is terrible. Itno terrible. Its how how its being used essentially. And so i want to say i love tech, but let meppened. Yeah. Yeah. Journey to do these people beconghe powerful people. And youve been there since the beginning. I its interesting becae, you know, you have a bunch of you have a bunch of great blurbs from a lot of people. Youve loved and hated or that youve trashed that list and have trashed you. And the thing that i actually love about this and this is the first thing i want to get into is you are, i think, a self appointed reporter, preneur. Is that the word. No, i dont use that word. It was i never beat that word oc horrible word. Terrible word. But shes an entrepreneur, entrepreneurial reporter. Youre an entrepreneuria and thg first of all, i think there should be way more of that. I■ s so crucial because you are owning all your in fact, youre even owning the things that people say about you ■tand so yeah, i would love it actually if you could sort of d tell us just a little bit of the journey of you as a journalist before we get into the other the other folks and the fact that pretty early on you saw tnt media. Yeah, you need to be on top of it. You had to buck a lot of powerful interests to get there and to eventually. So one of the things that i saw very traditionlywaame food chait existed before i started off. I went to i worked at the college ne went to columbia joum school, was offered a lot of jobs at places across the country, which i didnt want to live in. I was gay. I did not one live in dnt want to do the town hall reporting there like that. I felt l n happening for kara. And so i wanted to start at the top. I started at the bottom of the Washington Post as a newsy in the style section, which i actually, its very its a great place to be to watch how politics works in a newsroom. Of in that period where everything was going up and to the right as many Media Companies were, was■ well. It was postwatergate, but it still wasnt a very heady tim]j for media, for especially newspapers. And i worked my waydid as i wory way up slowly at first as a news aide, doing all you know, mostlt up eventually to become a reporter in the business section, which was the backwater. Im always, yeah, everyone, you know, politi iord or metro or Something Like that. But i,ody else and did all kinds of stories and then the business section. At the time, barbarians at the gate sexy, right . That really turnedlverything. And i started covering anything they threw at me. I was like, ill cover that. Ill cover this. And one covered retail for many years and watching the Retail Sector disintegrate in washington. I was a Business Reporter and i was studying business. That was one of the structures of theg. I was like, well, this isnt going to turn out well. And for some paying attention. Why do you think theyre not Business People . I was like, yeah, this is not good. If this way. And then walmart was ng in and walmart was a very technologically savvy company. They didnt advertise as they knew how to get to people. Right. And it wasnt just internet, it was and Everything Else. Direct mail, email, things like that. And■i i actually emails didnt exist, but it was a lot. They were very technical. They knew when to have milk at the ri place. Yeah. You know, i didnt just guess everything. And so one of the things that i felt was important was to understand the business youre in right . Interested and fascinating and i was like, well, if theres no a problem here. Like, what do you think . They can keep doing out of hearts, and im going to do that. And so i focused on that. And then i was the young person in the room, theyre like this this Online Services thing is really getting big. This companies are prodigy. Theres this Little Company they didnt call it aol at the time. Why dont you, young person go out there and the minute i saw it, i■m was like, oh, this is really bad for media and really interesting. And it was preinternet, really. Internet did exist, but it was mostly via these compuserve and stuff. And so i also at the same time started to really lo the, the technology that was being used starting to being used a trash eigh■oes which were the these little tiny radioshack i use the post single or cell phone they then the gordon gekko version. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And i was like like a brick. Yes. I was like, oh, look, you dont need to be in a wsroom anymore. Why do you need to be here at all . Because everything is portable. Th is all g portable and boom is like, haha ll be l. I kept that like we like star trek and and i just kept running , oh, its going to be this way forever and ever and ever until the end ofhistory is littered wh businesses. Who did■e thant . And so as i started to spend time with the internet people, as it grew, i had an email, ev was like, why do i have an email . Readers will talk to you. Im like, yeah, i idea. And then when you started to understand the World Wide Web an■0nd how things digitally, bos included, i was like, it■a de industries and it creates new ones. And as i started to meet these people, they were talking my language right . And so i was m going to cover this because this is this is the beginning of television he radio. I was a student of history and i did. And i moved out to Silicon Valley. I wrote a book on aol, and then i moved out to Silicon Valley to ■gcover the nascent internet. This is the early the midnight 1990s. Well, so i it wasar you going o excite. I mean, these places that dont even exist anymore, but yahoo doesahoo does the truth. Thats true. Thats true. But i dont yeah, thats becausr came later. Google w later. Yahoo and amazon were the very early ones. So im curiou■ hgs at what poin . Dont be evil because and i looked at sort of the antitrust issueswhich yoget into a little bit. Im curious at what point in that■l journey i think you went out and was it 97,i. 96, 96 that you began to feel like, oh, okay, this a bunch of cool people doing stuff and not being evil. Bigger, potentially more problematic. When the first te i used a browser, i was like, oh, it links to other things and you go wherever you want to go. Its endless. It was so easy to understand it and very few, a lot of the focus in tech at the time was on chips and about and computers that were sort of moving. You know, i had a mac and a macintosh in college, but very few people used it. They had very little interest in computers at college or at Journalism School. D i kept saying, you need to know computers. It seems like this will be like theand i the penny dropped right very early when i downloaded a book onto my hard drive and i was like, oh, did you see at that point, oh, copyright problems. I did data for the google people. I did. That was later. But initially it was like just a directory. Yahoo was not a search engine. It was a directory where people hand put things in. But you could see whe it coul ws like, oh, yes, of course its going to be algorithmic. Its going to be this. And that was not was not until 1998 or whenever it started. I did one of the first stories about their funding and went to the garage where they started the cleanirage and it was all of what i was talking to the Washington Post about internet stuff, i kept saying this is its so clear where this is going. And youre and i toldon graham, youre on youre on a lower flood plain and the waters rising. And he didnt put his waders on, not saying, no, i guess im going in a biggent have a big enough boat of whats happening. Its about to swamp. And you could craigslist to me was a moment of revelation. Yeah. Because it was anoercoso i focut then i moved to si people were y resistant to napster and everythi e why are you giving us albums . We want individuals songs. And when the ipod came out, you know, you could just youd wate ignoring consumers and theyre ignoring and consume everybody, whoever is being affected by mers. And then you got to understand that the power lay in the hands of the tech people n and not the Entertainment Companies and the Media Companies or the es or the finance. I was like, no, no, the power is in the distribution and the technology that distributes it. Yeah, thats really interesting. I want to read a couple of passages from interesting, passages youre talking a, this. The tech titans would argue that they were no worse than Cable Networks like fox news. True, but a very low bar. Fair enough. And there was no easily provable causality that they polarized the populace a nearly impossible thing to measure. Stn dismissed any weaponization as unintended consequences. To where we are now. Essentially, the weaponization of t internet, the silo bubbles. Maybe so, but it was not an unin consequence. French philosopher Paul Virgilio has a quote that i think lot when you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck. When you invent the plane, you also invent the plane crash. And when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution. Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technology progress. Thats correct. So talk a little bit about what you began to see in terms of, wow, yove mtioned■ a lot of the innovations and what could be better, but what about the really dark side of thgs■q . Well, you know, it started off like what was unusual about this ple. Like if you were talking to a Big Pharma Company or finance or wall street or insurance, theyd the world with our products, you know, maybe pharma people woubut they knew it was , you know, essentially. Ere making things, ande biotech then theyre buying them. And thats the whole exchange that the techhings were really interesting. Theyre juvenile ization of themse and physically they would create offices that were children. Yeah, because we want to stay childlike. And i was ke im looking at. Like adult people using slide ey aso you have to talk about of my favorite anecdotes in this ok is the surrogate. Well, i was going to say the sergey brin work birthday party, that baby me shower wherever but you and gavin newsom were the only ones that rejected wearing diapers. And once and once pajamas. Yeah. What is this about . What . What is that infantilizing. Its fun. Its for fun. There was a lot of forced fun. Like. And i kept thinking, did you not have childhood . Because i dont know. Whats that . Because im done with that party life and, you know, theyd be like, okay, you know,ult, not as im not particularly fun, but it was really funny because i was fascinated by the performative aspects of itthen , that was the other thing. Its like were really wack■ colorful balls, like, and im like, is thatust performatively doing that . Every industry has its owns fle. And cotton and the comfortable clothes was interesting to me as we dont wear ties around it, we dont have titles. Yeah, but you are. You sure knew who was in charge, right . 100 . You know, and its interesting because l hings have now become mass market. You know, that kind of give a you know what hoodie, but its cashmere or the leather now, or even cubicle called no cubicle, open t work for a lot of people. But is the status quo■ . Cultural change, they like that. And i was like, i think they just wanted to be generous. But Nursery School was more my you ow hey sandpits like it was weird they ball pit. I went to a google party once and they had ball pits and slip and slide and i was like, what the he that. Its the idea of of that they can go back to youth brings you this that its the glorification brings you creativity, which is not true. So jobs proved that over and over. Deed, ■■ was an adult, by the way. He didnt there was nothing like that at apple, and they did just ne in the creative department. I came away feeling like he was the guy that you really. I do, lord of of all of them. I dont like everything about steve jobs. I get the negati parts. Im not here to judge his personal life. Im not sorry. And i dont think im not here to judge the business. Same thing with mark zrb looks. Im like, why are we discussing this . Right . Hes not my business, right . I felt like he was a peis consist buoyantly creating exciting pruc that were what he wanted to make and he didnt do it b committee. He was like, i like this. And if im right, ille ong. He he was never pretending it was not a product and i appreciated that. Sometimes did the art and science, the beauty. But it was beautiful,t just was. And so i didnt mind his marketing, but he kind of did it like a marketing at chanel, you know, and people like carrie, his reality distortion field. Im like, im fully aware, but its delightful. Yeah. To tell you. Hes really good at selling things and so that i appreciated about him. I appreciated his presence on podcasting, onvacy, on if you go back to our interviews, it is a astonishing the things heghtful person and he was a smart person. And so i liked that about him. I also thought he was full of passion, which v■y many of these people were not. They were in it for the money. I thinhe, Travis Kalanick yeah, he was really well, he had various toxic masculinity. Yeah, toxic masculinity. But this is the uber, not the founder. He was he was the one who reay pushed it forward. So i liked him. I like i enjoyed every inraction ihim even when we were arguing because i felt like it was he never you never wilted like a hothouse flower. He jusdidnt it was like, you know, he just didnt he like we argued all the time and i appreciated that. Didnt have to agree, but we could have disagreements. I dnpartner, walt mossberg, buti they were just it was always interesting to talk to someone who was thinking all the time and had cultural references andp culture references. A lot of times with these otherh college. They lived in their little bubbles. They ate the foods. They all they dressed the same. And i thought they were not creative in a way. And i think and then when they made could tell you about Everything Else andnuts. I mean, i see that all across dtculte, politics, Business Today still, although i think the bloom is a little bit off the rose. Im going to come back to that point. But i want to kind of tap something, you know, when you talk about how theyre all eating the same food, theyre all doing the same thing. I was struck towards the end of the book. You talked about Silicon Valley at this point being in the business of assisted living for millennials. Yeah. And andg, but i think what youre getting at is this kind of an app for consumerist cultuy through life, comfort, what y y. If we assume that thats what Silicon Valley is doing right now, which i think is right, are there other placeking about . Boston, maybe, or parts of your there . Are there places where Tech Revolution . No, i think Silicon Valley was this. The people tried to create th in boston. Theres lots of great Tech Companies that started inwo, th. Was there all kinds of there close to mit. Often when theres a college or an important college that happens. Austin certainly had its resurgence with dell and some other and apple located a big there. That was interesting, but still t whe would goes like this. Awesome. Let me clarify the question, because actually what i assumer tech and the Consumer Internet wa valley, now that were entering a period where were really ming internet of things, supply chains, industrial internet, agriculture lking about earlier, is that going to be someplace else or is going to be every its going to be it can be everywhere. Its so much more in something to do with the woman who came up with the unicorn, which was the billion value companies. And the numbers are still clearly heavily calif. They just are. And actually, theres just a really good wall street journal. You california because it was terrible. Theyre back, right . Because they. So no more texas and not as much. They suddenly move back. What dont they like about texas and florida . Low taxes. They like the low tax that if youre going somewhere just for the money, you know how that sets up. You know, perfectly fine by the way, austin, again, very vibrant. And i think, you know, space stuff there, for example, ceai can steve case, who wabout. And i do thi t forward, that you can be things everywhere, but there still is a plus to being like i right now cted in San Francisco. Is that right . Interesting. Really is. And of course, chinasome other. But for the most part, its california. Sobubble. The first one, there was several. There were sever■xkal, but im talking about 99, really. And for my sins, i have to admit,fession. Youre catholic. So and maybe not practicing confession. Left a media owned Media Company and worked for a tech startup in europe, one in 1999, which that if i was actually thinking straight as a Business Reporter, it should have been like, oh, weve reached a high watermark if theyre hiring journalists to do that, like me to do this. But but i did it. And it was an incredible experience. I mean, what i came away feeling was i believed even less of what i was hearing from the mouths of the people. But i was actually more admiring of anything that got done because i rd how hard it was, 100 , right . Yeah, absolutely. I do somah, i think, you know, e is an the positive elements of tech people in general are risk. Theyre not risk averse, which is great. Neither am i, whichhink, a good quality. I have. They dont mind failing. They love that Thomas Edison quote, i have not failed to have ten, 10,000 ways. It doem like, sometimes its jt lets just movelong it. And certain people get to suffer failure easier. I would say white men, and its very clear, you know, im like, look around, look around. ■ everybody. They they turn. That is a good quality. The ability to move along changa suspension of disbelief. You know, crypto, crypto, crypto. Oh, no, no, no, no. I and i kind of like that because they sort of convince themselves and whatever particular hype cycle there happenedo be in, some of them are very real mobile. Was i generative . Is crypto. I was like, yeah, moneys already digital. Yeah. Now its just you want to hide it, right . Or you want to find another way of moving value. I get it. I sure it needed as much hypase interesti. No, its a well, i always thought with Digital Currency that id rather have it be still digital and then backed by an actual central bank complicated. Complicated. They just feel like they want to disrupt everything■2 and their whole little meme is like, were going to disrupt this now. And im like, why . Why this like that . It was always my question is something certainly needed to be disrupted. Ot things to disrupt, for disrupt sake is just a toddler, is it . Youre just a toddler, essentially. I read Something Interesting recently. I wonder what you would say in theof looking at the dot com bubble. 1999 years leading up and after and i today and and thinking about every i would argue i think most bubbles have a speculative part but then they have a productive thinking. Righ so youve got a lot of voltage internet. Did you lay a lot of fiber optics and then that you descrie moment in thoss froth, whats real . Where are we going to be in five years . I think very little of it is froth. I think its a really significant there are significant moments in technology, the graphical user interfacee chips, the computer, the laptop. That was sort of the, you know, the popularization and probably microsoft was another when that whole platform stuff then mobile was a shift was like that changed the iphone was a critical i think its probably if i had a point to one device that was the most important device. 200000 when i got that, my hands were like, oh, it was another like, oh, i see where this h univers. I didnt know what i wouldnt have said something. Somethings coming. I dont know what it is, great. Yeah, right, exactly. U] so. So you could see those shifts and i think social was another one, generative eyes, another one because its what its doing is, is taking the internet and opening it up like going like cracking open thitself and servu in new ways, in speeds that are astonishing and you dont quite. Theres so much data out there now, it itll starto re this mae data and begin to change,h ense its like saying electricity. What did electricity do . Ll is what did the internet do . It wasnt the internet itself. Things, whether its music or or commerce or finance. This is the same thing now. Its going to aim a lot more at whited< collar work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like someone was like, well, in ■mfacti more loss. So see, its why have them. Theres no reason. Its just data thatds that. You just had people do like monks and scribes, so yeah, like hearing that, but youre sort of like, i dont know what to tellthat for a minute. Cause this is something i think a lot about. If, if we look at the ti of the moment and this is what i argued in my last book that disrupting 8 of 8 to 12 of manufacturer jobs, depending on how■0 you count itn part got us to trump, but not the only factor. But ittaly got us there. Were about to potentially disrupt 30 to 40 of white collar work. I mean, i dont see us having a really serious conversation about our government. Isnt our government. Is. And were going to have. So i believe but i dont think ubi i in those fantasies a libertarian fantasy is coming on the ballot here nancy is really interesting, actually. Work. , it works in some levels. Creativity. Everyone becomes an entrepreneur. If you have a minute. Not everybody, but we don■t teach entrepreneurism. Right. Like true. We do teach pull youwrself by your own bootstraps and give any nobody any help. That is a very different thing. So lots of but what i do think is that, look, every single like i had at a dinner the other night and they were all it was all 8[journals and one it was that high minded kind of. And i try to avoid at all times ■ and i was talking, they askede about i said, well, like its going to change journalism rather significantly. Im like, in a good way, say like headline is right and i want to headline awarding Journalism School golden pike. It was called i thinknt do thau just dont theyre the kerning happens on the computer and i said so and i think it will generate 100 headlines that might work in seconds. The guy in the corner there takes 50 friggin minutes for a not a good one, right . Not a good one. And then you get one out of him and theyre like, we have to have people do headlines. Im like, why does it why why cant theythen you look and then looks at them and picks two. The person doesnt just whats. And i would let me finish. So i go. So i go. So we have we have to do s. Im like, can i ask you a question . Did you like getting those 4 strawberries . Because they dont cost 4. They cost 4 because it was automated. Li amazon . E getting stuff well, thats because someone elses job. I said is coming for your job now. And so thats to me, every single one of these jobappened t happened■n with, with, with, you know, the the loom when they were making h manufacturing. Weve been here before it just happens to bat data is the is the is the gold here. I guess you think theyre going to spin it and hey, theyre going to spin intod. That bringo another topic i want to look at that you kind of touch on wa antitrust and concentration of power question about so, so a lot of folks and i think the jury is out, but a lot of folks would argue that the■p depth and breadth of this change, particularly ai powered, is it really is different. And and its just going t happen in such a way that if we dont have some kind of major safety net under people, that its going to be politically disruptive in ways that are going to make. Well, we know that and we know that because of what happened with the last round with the internet. Do what they were doin, which is radicalize. Lots of people hdisinformation,y propaganda. Lets justto disappear. Its just propaganda. Thats what it is. Its people using inaccuracies to sway a group of people to do something thats really all it is. And and so its happened. So we know now this is a sion of that which was already superpower from the book or the billboard oror the. And so we have to we should have no buy now what it does. And so if its even more potent, should have guardrails in place. Of course. What do they do in congress . They have meetings. They have meetings that are closed to people with all the power brokers. Essentially, they right now, because they cant pass actual legislation, they have abipartis and put up guidelines. Thats be be fair, im going to push back a little bit, isnt it . Because congress is pretty much bought out by the tech titans. I mean, thats not thats not an excuse. I donts nouse, but its a its a mutual say. Yes, but its that look, we have done this. Weve legislated airlines, not perfectly. We have leslated form. We have legislated finance. We have legislated insurance. We do legislate like football, for goodness sake. We legislate media. We do theres the 25 year, 30 years that the internet hase internet powers have grown, the Top Ten Companies in the world are Tech Companies, the top most valued except for thedis with aramco. Yeah. And maybe one of the Louis Vuitton people or Something Like that. But if you look, i have a lot of targets, literally all tech people, the top richt people in the world are either oil people and theyre not many of them tech people. If you look at the top ten, theyre tech people for the most part, not an ounce of legislation. An address is them money, but guess what . Weve been here before. We were here with andrew carnegie. We were here with john rockefeller. We were here with standard oil. We were in the at t. Do you think we cant do it . To say we cant do itexcuse on . Well, i think youre getting at something important. And this is clearly to do, which is deal with power, not price, because this is a is a barter. Things have changed. Culture of the valley for a minute and some of thenal stories that you tell in this book. First of all, i would love your perspective. 96j the weird mix of kind of hippie libertarianism, just i dont get thatay, okay. I dont even think they know what it means. Explain. I dont if i if i pressed them and made them define it, they wouldnt know. Now, i just dont like people bothering me. Im like, that is a two year old, right . You know, or teenager back to teenager like i dont want people bothering me. Dont s really what theyre hopeful. I dont know if thats a philosophy or a political thing, area. I dont know what it is, but i thth things at play is which is persistent lying to themselves abo what they are. And it gets back to what we were just talking about, which is its capitalism. Thats all im sorry. Youre not changing the world. You want to make money and we treat them like theyre magicians. What i want to. Its funny that you just said ■cthat becau was opening opening the book to read another passage which gets said just this. Internet people love to do things like this. Youre talking about some of the childish behavio since it gave them an air of i dont care for corporate formalities which appeal to the audience they were aiming at and made good copy, much of it is is of course performaling to the public these inventors were going to seize power and have a good time doing it. I even wrote a story about the lives of Silicon Valley, which holds up rather well a quarter century later. No wonder then that and youre quoting selfcongratulation and selfdeception and are now a part of the valleys ethos right up there with fearless risk taking money, effort and programing genius. I wrote listing lines like, its not about it was. Its not about the fame. It also was thxreres no dress code special parking spaces, no fancy offices here becau■d wiye. They were just different ones. No one is really in charge here. Oh, i could go on. I could go on. But this is early. This was. Wll knock them pretty quickly. Any other lies that we should be paying a the moment that they know better and right that theyre lecture us on things . Venture capital is giving us people, giving us Foreign Policy advice. Right . Ally rather they sit dow im going to listen it. Dont eat lincoln and gun it. Im going to i know its crazy on experts that experts dont know what theyre talking about. You got interview the elon musk where he lectured me on covid befo it every study i know. I was like, listen, doctor welby, sorry, not i dont recal you getting a medical degree and i dont very least, you dont know. Like, lets start with that. But they cant knowledge that thats really nuts that entering into other areas, whether its any there is no topic they arent an expert on and they arent an expert on any topic except the narrow thing they do. I wonder sometimes of them are some. Yeah, i wonder sometimes if thats a rich person. And im thinking about the ways in whichcome philosopher, just n and he really. Well, no, but its ray dalio. George soros mean they all want to become writers and philosophers after. They make the money with what they would. It got them there, right . Yeah, i guess so. Butunger, which maybe its the conditions when you get that re enablers g. What you just said isnot. Yeah, yeah. So i think thats the problem is. Theytt people, their worlds get smaller and smaller and smaller over time. I think they depict that super well in succession. You notice they yeah, they planes to the apartmts to the cars, to the, you know, tight got tighter and tighter over the seasons. Thats really and in the last a bar with regular people. You know, thats thats observ. I was well, i did the podcast for it, so i paid a lot of attention ■ah■÷ but it really is and you started to see it with them is in sometimes theyd be like talking to you like oh yeah, youre right. And ain. And theyre like, thats not what they say. My, my staff says, i was right. I was like, oh, did they did your staff say right . How interesting do taylor like you know, alls are aligned withu know i think recently the wall Silicon Valley, which was drug use by these tech people, look at i dont know. Well see where. This gse of these things happening and they get to do whatever they want. Depicted it really well. This is an elon musk case and the effect it might be having on him. And i think it explains a lot, actually. Combined with Health Challenge iand feeling le world and wealth and covid like you can see where how we got to we are pretty easily what they did that was very deft in the journal and i thought they did i have to give kudos to them forft part out loud. Was that the reason the board was letting you get to know this stuff was because they all were benefiting by hundreds of millions of dollars. Well, okay. Oh, i see now. And ithat was smart. You could sit here and talk about just the drug use, which is like,tamine, whatever. Whats important is why is he being allowed to break rules that other people cant . Well, heres why these happeto be these rules. But yeah, its because the money and and again, the first line of was capitalism after all. And what i got tired of them. Got so tired of them telling me it wasnt likell decision yos to do with growth, even if its the se■kaof girls. Sorry, we need to make money. If its, you, misinformed, asian. Oh, sorry. Free speech. Like i was. Do you have any responsibility to what youre making . Essentially . You know, its so interesting. I mean, in of not even hiding in plain sight. Im thinking about the■n ge, go, the stanford project that tt larry and sergey did, where if you read down to page 37 to the appendix, the risks of targeted advertising are kind of right there. They knew they could represent, you know, to stick with musk for a minute because hes a big and you have a lot of thoughts on him. You you open and also with dont be evil you open with the idea that 2016 and these tech executives going to sit with donald trump, a guy that in0n wise, you know what they said their values, theyre taking them at their word right . Right. Real disjointed picture there. You call up elon to talk about it m tell us a little bit. So what happened was i was with my son was satur i think whatever day it was before this meeting. And i was good at scoops. J beat reporter. And someone said, theres a im like whos going . And they told me this. Im like, who . Like it was l essentially and happen, theres a press release or they or the pr people call mm cooks going to this meeting or whatever. There waa way it worked and it was silent and i was like, well, of course, because theyuse buty want things including repatriation of their taxes. They wanted government contracts, they wanted no regulation. And so i can see why theybut tht immigration and look, i cannot ld trump. But he said what he was going to do. Im going to ban muslims. ■ yeah. And i was like he said like and i counted how many times as much as the number got too high. How many times he said it. And im of the maya angelou school. If they say what they are, believe them, right . If they tell you whabelieve the. And and Donald Trumps not that hard to parse. He has hes hes you know, hes been being racist hes been being misogynistic for decades. This is not so they were going. And so i was going to write a news story like, look at tlqs. This is interesting. This is a it was all of them. It was■ all and the ceos. And so i called up, i srt cantr the phone. He always insted himself, which i really appreciated. And i said, what are you doing . Youre an immigran he hates immigrants. Well, no, maybe not. White immigrants like yourself, but white libertarians. Yeah, he wasnt at the time. He was sort of he had voted for obama. Hei would say it was it was hard to pin him down, but he was much more on the democrat side for a long time. And we thats how you get to be thwot riif you were kind of do w the people who shifted over after and and so he was like, well, were going in your room, you know . Going to Say Something publicly about the immigration stance because of anyinilicon valley was on by immigrants really, many people in Silicon Valley were immigrants. A lot of the leaders have been from another country and they respect immigration. They want these visas and Everything Else. And and isomething about immigrt least. Kara. E very i know. And he was also concerned about gay rights issues at the time. He was like, this antigay stuff isnt good. And hes changed his tune on and and i was like, you cant go. You cant. Weg to join this thing. Im going to hope for the best. I can. We can convince them. Its like it reminded me a g dt we got them. We got it. We got this. And i president. Its kind of a big job. And you all havto people on the planet. You might want to make a statement. You know, youre and they didnt. And and and they didnt. They skulked in they skulked release. He look he they legitimized him very quickly and then i was little like youre the richest, powerful people on the planet and youre bending your knee to this guy like you dont need to right noyou are. You have the catbird seat. And so i was kind of like really . But i think it was all about the money then too, because and then very quickly, you began to see during the trump administration, you start to see decoupling with china, you start to see cold war turning into that they want which they want, they want it. And i was fascinatedthe tech tin either sides of that debate. I mean, zuckerberg and to have f both ways at first, and then were like, no, wait, were national champions. Azon thinking, okay, were just going to go with the us and do back end infrastructure. But the military or, you know, ■p■ywhatever, i mean, its a fascinating the money is why rob a bank itwh■ere the why work for the governments where the money is thats where the next growth is and they know better. And so why wouldnt they go there . I mean, again, if they had just said we just really like the money care, id have been fine. Got it. Thank you. U for telling me the truth and now its not to say some of them d■oy always were selling how worldyeah. Its not as its not a favor to use the internet which was paid for by the Us Government and build a business off of our give you a little, that little and then not pay taxes. Its like its mind blo. And i , youre landing on something really important, which is darc darpas great work. Even tesla meaning elon spacex. Theres been a lot of talk along the reason has tesla exist today is because of government loan. Yeah you know mean he goes on about the government im like whoa do you just on that point do you have a position should we adopt, you know, say a more danish standard or an israeli standard about government takes back some of the profit . Oh, i think we should have. En more. And in tesla, i dont know why we didnt i dont know why we dont. Its os, every every bit of innovation wasnivolved in basicd stuff. They have this therethis trope now that only technology can be innovative. Well, i dont know. The governments beenah, you ko exhausting to listen to some people just constantly. I remember when is it when the when the the right wing the ones that hate government all the time, they all do now. But there was a group, the tea party people, i had someone call me in San Francisco and they got my number was theyre we represa party and we dont you know, governments terrible. Listen, that and i and i like to stay on the phone with these people. Said, really . Yeah. Governments terrible. I question how did you geto ani drove and i said on a [padwas bu need to get the hell off that because thats government. I was like, the governm■ t likl for all of us. Im so glad the nazis didnt win. I really feel the government innovated in space. The government. And they like to do is think they love to trash everything but them and and then you sort of start to suspect, you know, you were helped by this where is the sense of commonality and civility and the fact that this is partf great e. But its all because of you and your geniusa digital dry cleaning service. Im sorry. I st do buy. Yeah, yeah, well, that much of it, i do. Some of it is innovative and invention, but its. But, but what youre saying is its a collective effort. Its not just a matter of individuals. Yes. They love to self aggrandize in a way thats really, you , righf that. Right. Everythings about hi point all. No. Zoe shiver has a great boo he he algorithm. So everybody followed him and listened to him. What is that . But what is that . But a king who wants everybody to. Its a king, right . Its what it is. Its certainove. Its weird, actually, just sticking with the tea party line to occupy twitter. You were warning before we had the capital. Yes, i was. I wrote a full column about it. S the tip offs. I just am one of these people pe and i wanted to be in the military. Thinking how could what is the scenario . How can this go . And so i reason i was a pretty good reporter because id always been like, if this than this, if this i was one of those people and id sit down and i could because if i know enough about them, what they like, where they read, who theyre f with, you really can. Okay, what are they doing . Whats their next move . And with s pretty easy to figure that out. Like people are very gettable, there and i was looking at trump using twitter, which is, you know, everybody has their medium twitter. Trump had his and jfk had his. And our, you know, hitler had his, etc. , etc. And i just was watching him. And then i started to see some stuff about the weaponry he had [ouhe started to tweet about tht and i was like, oh, wa a really. And hes breaking the rules of platform. Theyre doing nothing about it, right . Andwrote a column in 2019 and mid 2000 in october of 2018, where i said, im putting im making up a hypothetical here that iay to people where what if trump loses the election, starts to tweet online that it was stolen over and over again. It goes up and down the food chain, which itom the very bottom and sort of the dregs for chance, and it gdown to the botm again. It has a really interesting path, but its it makes sense to me. And what if he does that and then he does repeats it again and again, like propaganda, and then he asks them or convince them to do something about it in real life. What would you do . Is like, what would throw him off the bat . I said, why dont you do it now zuckerberg about holocaust deniers. Its ground and well never get it out once you let it see, you have to stop it. We have free speech. Im like, not thats. Nou government cant do it. You can like you can. You are not you can stop the at seep in and be worse. Were where we are today because of the allowing of that stuff to go on and on and on for years now. Ears. And so that was what happened. I wrote a column saying, i think this is going to happen. When i wrote it, i got calls from all the leaders, how dare you say we woue handmaidens . I dont think i call them handmaidens to sedition, but i thats what i thoug and how dare you . This isnt where its going to go. And i was like, this is exactly the way its going to g thats. You know, i a lot about how were going to put this back in the box all the toxic and were not in not because the Business Model that weve just been talking about for the last 30 minutes or so is now kind of everybodys Business Model, you know . I mean, really, 85 of value lives in ip and data most almost every company that i can think of is monetizing data and infoio some way. What does the future look and im curious if you could link that, but lets go back to kind of yourct that you were smn most journalists very early on ■rsaying, this is my content and im going to own it and im going to buck any sys theres something coming there bencompan and data and individls say, acts is my ip, thi want more of that. What does that fight . I think right now with agi, theyre scraping peoples copyright. Thats all. You know this its not terrific. If this the law we have to use, we should have more stronger ones. Lets start there. Lets start with that. Lets start to put guardrails around. We can all agree what we dont want tkiller robots. I think we can all agree on that. Right. Maybe, maybe a few people would be like, yeah, lets have those. Lets have guidelines around where the provenance of this information is. Lets have theres some very easy stuff wes what we would le this to be. Gene■ editing. Wed like you to give back some. Wed like to have safety standards. I mean, theyes, it was recently. But it cant be an executive order. It has to be legislation, right. Theres a lot of stuff that we can figure out really quickly antitrust which you know about is another thing they cannot they cant end it because its expensive, this stuff. So where ds innovation to happen from the bottom up strength of our country is innovation from the bottom up. It is not iti isnt. Thats china, in case youre interested, th different syste. I mean, ive always thought that actually one of the great advantages for the us is decentralization and that we should be focusing on that when we think about national security. Let me go back. At a place where you get into something personal, which is the fact that as a im going to call you an overachiever. Is that fai busy, busy, busy person. You had a stroke. , youve yes, i did. You had a stroke. And its interesting because it comes at this point after youve been talking to point in his life when he didnt have a wholeot longer. Thats correct. And and theres a little bit of twinning there that i picked up on that. Very much so. He affected me inhe was one of d about steve and probably why it attracted you. My dad died at a young so death was always ever present in my life and. And ephemerality. Im not a buddhist but i get he was steve was i get ephemerality i get like randomness things life isnt fair like just happens and theres no reason forhings go. So i was living like that and so that limited amount of time when steve got sick. I think thats what happened to him. Time compressed. He understood that and he gave onofe of the greatest speeches of all time, which was his stanford speech about life being too short, death being the most informative way to be so creative. He was most creative in the years he was but he was really g faster and ait maybe didnt havn that way, but thats the way it went. And and he really was very wise. And and one of the questions i him, which i think was one of the best questions i ever asked him, was we did the last rview with him before he died. Really, before you got real sick . I think we did it in june. He got he guess. Whatever. Did it in. Some but he never did another one after that and he was verythen well and then six so we watched him through several different phases of this but now it was clear when he did this interview he was he was skeletal. You know, and hes still vibrant ■]and let me just say, he was always vibrant. And you asked i thought this was so beautiful that you said, how aryou going to spend the next ten years . No, i said, what are you going do the rest of your life . Oh, i didnt say, oh, okaintere. And the crowd wasq like, she jut ask a dying man what he was going to do with the rest of his life and y knoat . He had a great and hes like, i want this, i want this and this. And it was really. And he knew what i was doing. You know, he was very aware of it. But he was he was always forward. He didnt waste his life. Right . He didnt waste his time. Really appreciated that about him when i had the stroke, it was the same thing. I was my dad died in a young age i. This is a veryle in my heart. I had a blood clot a■nd it was a it was one of those things in my face. One of my Favorite Book is franz kafkas the trial and everything is about authoritarian. Its about god■ that is about god. In my reading of it. And its because it says, you been telling lies about josef k because he was arrested one fi s stopped. It dsn me he was stopped by god. Start to thinkwh y that stroke was a is an arrest was an arrest of mead to think, what do i want to do . And i continue to im like i like what im doing. I like not working for people. I like owning my ip. I lioi feel like. Yeah, you have a beautiful Markus Aurelius quote too about you already dead. Yeah, yeah. And look and lightness come forward. Yeah, well, in thet, wasnt he . Was like that. I want to. I want to meet him. You up you e mud and all this stuff and you to pull this out of your hat. Like what . I feel like it was from the futureuys that i know a few. Yeah, but he in particular, hes very modern. Its a, its a really i keep thinking he was from the future and he went back and just decided to wear fur and the in gladiator are all right i will on that and i wao ask you whats on your reading list at the moment . Im reading this amazing book called northwoods, and im blanking on the author, but its a book about im really interested in architecture. You know, i think a lot about the architecture of the internet, right . I talk a lot about that. Like how it was built is what the reason why it enraged men equals engagement is because they built it that way. It doesnt have to be built way. Important. It doesnt have to be built that way. It can be built anotherl vein,k about northwoods in a second, but origins, i just i interviewed isabel wilkerson, who wrote origins, which it was an origins. It was cast, and then it was made into origins, which i also love by ava duvernay. That was a great book. And one of the lines in that book was, okay, was talking about racism and why we talk about caste as maybe caste in caste versus racism or ageism or whatever. And she sa, have this house and its full of cracks and the basement is didnt build this h. We have to fix it. Right. And so it was really smart things. Its like, lets stop talking about the house. Lets try to rebuild it in a way that works. And so i really appreciate it that book for that becauset yout way cast really didnt it was made a beautifulecause of that northwoods is the same thing and its about a hoe that gets built by these two people that are escaping a puritan village, salem or somethinlikeall in love, they rf to the wilderness and build a house. Now look, everybody dies in weird ways back then, and theres a lot of tragedy. But you you meet everyone whos lived in this house over since it was. So you know how it got there. You know how the Apple Orchard goteone got killed. He was eating an apple. It was in his stomach. And then and thenf the house. Right. And overstories and what happeno them. But none of them know about the other people that were there before there was so much. The house is the only thing that knows what hapne book because its about its abt history, its about death. Its about, you know, how we forget things and move on and the house endures and eventually the house. But the house also falls into disrep you know, it gets remade by someone in more modern times. I love this book and the writer is one of these. And currently he writes kinds of different chat. Weonofne of thems the maps, one of them. Its just so interesting and intricate. Its just a beautiful story about ephemerality of life and how you have to you have to take this long view, and you do northwoods and you do take along well. I hope you learn about the internet. You dont have to hate to act like this book. I dont i dont hate tech. I dont know. I mean, its clear that you dont. Its i love it. I love it attack love story, burn book, stop doing these things to my house. I love we have to fix and share. It was great to be here. We thank you so much for the appreciate thoughtfulness and stuff and you know, awesome. Great to be with you. H a absolute and true