AI Antitrust Investigations, Nvidia Stock Split, and OpenAI Whistleblowers

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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 Scott Galloway.

I'm back in California, Scott.

Wait, wait.

So you were there?

You came back to DC and then when you went back to California?

This is the third time in three weeks I've been here.

I understand what's going on.

Why do you do this to yourself?

I don't know because I don't know.

I need a private plane, but that would be wrong.

Why would it be right?

Oh, it's so right, Kara.

It's right as rain.

Yeah, it's not for me.

I was doing this thing called Godmothers of AI at Stanford.

It was Fei Fei Lee and a number of really prominent early women in AI.

AI used to be a backwater.

Godmothers.

AI used to be a backwater of

computing.

Well, we called it machine learning back when it was Sir Dorks.

Oh, machine learning, yes.

Anyway, it wasn't the area everyone was, that was hot, hot, hot.

And now it is, of course.

And so we were celebrating some of the early women, including Ada Lovelace, who wasn't living.

She was not there.

But it was really cool.

Dave A.

Lee, Barbara Gross,

Karina Cortez, all these people who were super early and big, made big changes in AI at the beginning and still today.

So it was cool.

It was at the stamp, one of the big Stanford Institutes on human-centered AI.

It was cool.

It was Stanford is way ahead in terms of ethics, and they're trying very hard.

So

it was neat.

40% of all venture capitalists either graduated from Harvard and Stanford, and I bet 70 to 80% of all capital allocated,

I would speculate, I know the 40% number, I'm speculating that 70 to 80% of gross dollar volume allocated by venture capitalists comes from graduates of Stanford and Harvard.

So what do you know?

A concierge healthcare system in Palo Alto gets funding, but anything around femme does not get funding.

Anyway.

Well, these women pointed out quite a number of the problems in AI, too.

So it was great.

It was great.

It was a real privilege for me to do it.

So speaking of women, I have, let's bring this back to me.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

I love that.

Oh, no.

So, you know, those memories that Apple does where they spin up a video from your life.

Oh, yeah.

I hate them.

Oh, no.

I'm playing them on my deathbed.

They typically involve my children, and it's like waterworks for me, but I love them.

I think they're amazing.

I think that is probably the portion of ai that's affected me the most other than netflix figuring out what movie i want to watch next but anyways

i had this this memory come up and it was

well let me back up i was on pierce morgan last week and he asked me who would you want to be president and he asked me if i was running for president i said no and then i i said i had this word salad of Senators Klobuchar or Bennett or Governor Newsome.

I was totally unprepared to answer the question.

And I started thinking about it after who would be, who would be the best president?

Of anyone I have ever met, ever, who would be, who do I wish could be president?

And I thought about it.

And literally that day, this Apple memory came up that got me so fucking angry.

And it was from eight years ago.

And the answer is the person I canvassed for in 2016, Hillary Clinton would have been

standing president.

I saw you put that up.

I didn't know that.

She would have been a little bit more.

I didn't even do stuff like that.

That's amazing.

But go ahead.

Oh my God.

Canvassing for Hillary Clinton in what I'll call the great inland empire of Florida was not fun.

We're talking pit bulls and angry white people.

And I know that's identity politics, but

I always thought to myself, when my son gets older,

I got to bring him on this so he can get used to rejection and get some thick skin.

Because when you're banging on a door in a lower middle income neighborhood to talk about Hillary, and you know, and at that moment, I I realized she was going to lose because I would knock on the door.

This is 2008, right?

Correct?

Yeah.

No, 2016.

Okay.

2016 when she was running against Trump.

And I would knock on the door of a black household and they'd open the door and they would say, thank you, really nice.

And I'm like, are you voting for Madam Secretary Clinton?

And they're like, yeah.

And I'm like, do you know where your polling booth is?

And they'd say, no.

And I'm like, oh, fuck, she's going to lose.

They aren't going to turn out.

They're just humoring me.

They feel good about her, but

they're not going to show up to the polling station.

And this video came up.

And you want to talk about how important elections are?

If she had been elected president,

we wouldn't have, in my opinion, the runaway deficit spending we have on a very boring but important topic because she is actually fiscally more moderate and has more discipline than the majority of vast majority of Democrats.

She is outstanding if you've seen her talk about Ukraine and Israel.

She's incredibly pragmatic.

And you know what else?

One in five women, and this is probably in my opinion, and there's a lot of things to be outraged about, but in terms of what really impacts people on a ground level in America right now, slowly but surely, or I would say crisply but surely, one in five women who need to terminate a pregnancy now have to leave their state.

That's right.

And that just would not have happened if President Hillary Clinton were in office.

Not just that.

Scott, yesterday, the Senate rejected, the Senate Republicans rejected contraception as a federal right, but go go ahead.

She was the most qualified person.

I mean,

let's be clear.

She triggers people.

She's not likable.

She's a lot more likable today because you go back to the city.

She's the most competent, experienced, intelligent, thoughtful, pragmatic person to have ever run for president.

It is

two things.

Two things.

One, if you go back and look at her predictions of Trump, they're spot on.

Like if you go back, not just a little spot on, like as if she knew exactly what was going to happen and she describes it perfectly secondly um

she he threatened to jail her yesterday uh in a in an interview he threatened to jail her again and then pretended he didn't say lock her up he said i never said that but of course then they bring out the videos of him saying lock her up um he's such a liar he's and then he actually said maybe i should maybe that's what we should do is jail my end amazing uh so anyway is and thirdly the the take on her i agree i think she would have made a great president the take on her of course, among those people is always that she is among the group that likes forever wars.

And that is the one thing that I think I disagree with her on a little bit more than maybe you did.

But she would have been an excellent, I'm just saying that's the negative take, obviously, the Bill Clinton stuff and everything else.

But that was more, that was not, that was not, it pales in comparison to Trump.

Count me among the group of warhawks who believe that if it was a President Clinton, that Putin would have thought twice before pouring over the border he hated her

but yeah but but secretary clinton was absolutely not afraid to use american force and there's a reason why we have decided to spend more uh money on our military than all other nations combined or the top 10 biggest spenders combined.

And I think it's because, unfortunately, there are some very angry, mean people out there who, if and when they can, will take our Netflix and our Nespresso by force the moment they feel they can.

I don't, I absolutely do not think Putin would have come over the border border in Ukraine had a secretary,

had the president been President Clinton.

Anyways, beyond all of this, I'm going to reverse engineer.

I literally think if we look back in history around the biggest errors

in our society, I think we'll look at our entry into Southeast Asia in the 60s of the escalation there.

I think the entry into Iraq was a fucking disaster.

And I think a real pivotal moment that has set us back dramatically was not, uh, was, was, was, Madam Secretary Clinton not being elected president.

I think she would have been fantastic.

Well, that's interesting.

Uh, just so you're aware, but speaking of the jailing thing, I have an interview today, I believe it posted with Representative Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria Ocasio, AOC.

She talks about that she thinks he would jail her too.

Anyway, it's a really, it's full of news, the interview, but that's, you know, just keep that in mind.

I'm gonna be honest, AOC Behind Bars make a very good film for cinematic.

Oh, stop.

Is that wrong?

Is that wrong?

You're proving that.

No, that is wrong.

In any case,

in all seriousness, Scott, he's talking about jailing people like Clinton, which is something he would do.

Anyway, it won't be funny when he actually does it.

New York could become the latest state to legally restrict social media for kids.

Speaking of restrictions, a tentative agreement would force social media companies to do away with algorithms for children's content.

Instead, they have only to show posts by accounts kids follow in order that they were posted.

The legislation also prohibits platforms from sending notifications to minors during overnight hours.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she believes this regulation will make social media less addictive for kids.

This is something right up your alley, Scott.

What do you think about the government coming in here?

There might be, I wonder if there'll be first, of course there won't be First Amendment challenges here, but what is your thoughts on this?

The way I express affection is with money.

And I immediately sent Governor Hochul a contribution.

I think that she's showing real leadership here.

I don't think anyone under the age of 16 should be on social media.

What has done more damage to youth?

Pornography?

Alcohol?

Like what's done more or social media.

And these mendacious fucks are claiming that they're worried about their First Amendment rights.

Anyone, I'm dealing with this right now.

There's cigarette companies, as Mark Benioff said to me so famously in that interview.

They're cigarette companies and we regulate cigarettes.

It's not your first, it's not your right to have cigarettes, it's John.

Right, but not nearly as many 13-year-olds were accessing cigarettes as they were accessing social media.

I think it's a good thing.

So it's cigarettes, but worse.

Yes.

A parent who is dealing with this, you think, well, okay,

just take the phone away and don't let your kid on Snap or on Instagram said no,

no one who has kids,

unless we collectively pass.

legislation that bans phones in schools and age gates.

I mean, really age gates, not this bullshit put in a date.

We're going to continue.

This is the thing we're going to regret most is what we let happen to our kids.

So, anyway.

Yeah, I think it's interesting because,

you know, I think this should be a national law too.

I think it's, this is nothing to do with the First Amendment.

We regulate kids online.

Even with their children.

Driving, drinking.

This is very similar.

And

that's what they're going to employ.

This will probably go to the Supreme Court, would be my guess.

I don't know why these companies would resist this particular thing, but there will be elements that want to resist it.

And it's costly for them to do what they're doing.

But this is this,

it's the algorithms that's a problem.

Showing posts by the accounts kids follow is

just, it's what they pick.

And then,

you know, it just, it removes the algorithmic

intensity around these kids that they get, you know, oh, you like this?

You might like this.

And I do tell that story of my son.

He wanted to listen to Ben Shapiro to hear what he was saying.

I said, great, you should listen to him.

I think he's an idiot, but you should listen to him just so you can make your own decision.

He was older, maybe 14, 15 at this point.

And I said, I think you'll find him an idiotic, but go ahead.

And he did.

And then he found him idiotic, which is what happened.

Ben, stop saying I prevented my son from seeing him.

I did not.

I wanted him to.

And then what was problematic to me is how it then degenerated.

And this is not Ben Shapiro's fault, into really disturbing and more standard tears down.

Yes, exactly.

I don't know if it was Andrew Tate or whoever it was, but when I saw what it degenerated into, and I had a discussion with Susan Wojewski about this, who ran YouTube, it was shocking

the algorithmic degeneration and down the rabbit hole.

And that was what I was disturbed about.

And I didn't quite know what to do because I wanted him to be able to sample this person

and decide on his own.

But where it went was really disturbing as a parent.

It was quite an eye-opening moment for me, for sure.

Just a couple of things.

I find a lot of Ben's views disagreeable.

I don't think idiot is the right word.

He is an incredibly intelligent young man.

He's also a very good business operator.

I think anyone in high school who is on the debate team should absolutely tune in to Ben Shapiro to understand how he makes his arguments and how incredibly crisp and agile he is on his feet.

I don't agree with Mehdi Hassan's views on certain issues, but I think young people who are interested in understanding critical thinking and arguing and debating should watch him because I think he's very intelligent and makes very forceful arguments.

And the same is true of Ben.

The thing about the algorithms is the following.

Is that the algorithms are there solely to create shareholder value?

And these indifferent amoral algorithms have figured out that rage and things that make you feel bad that you can't turn away from.

Oh, you like Ben Shapiro?

Well, you'll like Andrew Tate saying that women are property.

Or you'll hate it so much that you won't be able to turn away from it.

And it gets you to, oh, you're feeling bad about yourself.

Well, I'll tell you what, we're going to have this, we're going to have a video of a woman who is 5'9,

95 pounds talking about suicide because you're not going to be able to turn away from it.

And before you know it,

you're normalizing extremist, radical

self-harm ideas, these algorithms.

And not only that, we blame the algorithms.

It's the mendacious fucks who know what the algorithms are doing that should be held accountable.

Or they should show transparency of how they make them, the transparency and out the black box so we know what they're doing.

Anyway, we have to move on, but we are for this, Governor Hochold.

So here we are.

Speaking of problematic content, speaking on the other side, X users can now post, view, and share adult nudity and sexual content thanks to a new formalized policies.

This is a road that Jack Dorsey thought about going down and pulled back from and thought about going down.

But under the policies, X will allow consensually produced and distributed adult pornographic content.

Good luck controlling that, X, because you're not good at anything else, as long as it's properly labeled and not prominently displayed.

I don't know what that means, because again, they don't have the staff to control it.

The platform will still prohibit content that's exploitative, non-consensual, and promotes sexualization of minors.

On the last one, they better, because they will be in a world of hurt if they don't.

Adult material is also allowed under pre-Elon Twitter, although no official policy in place.

They're just, you know, they're saying, come one, come all.

It was there, but I got to tell you, I've never seen so much pornography

on Twitter since he took over.

It's really, it's all my feed, all my ads

constantly when I go on there, which I don't very much at all anymore, but there's not a day that I don't get 10 or 12 pornographic content that is unwelcome.

And I can't figure out a way to stop it

and make it go away.

I'm of two minds on this.

I think pornography, I think adults should be allowed to consume pornography.

And I think as long as they understand, caveat amtar, that there might be porn on the site and they're given the ability to opt out, I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

I think adult content, there's even some data showing that pornography is not as harmful

for teens as a lot of people believe.

But anyways, what is

the most frightening thing here?

And let me back up, Tumblr was a porn site.

And the moment

they stopped pretending,

people got so sick of them pretending it wasn't a porn site that they said, okay, and they were forced to take the porn down.

It immediately went from a company that was acquired for $1.1 billion to a company that was eventually reacquired for $3 million.

Right.

So porn works online.

Some of the biggest sites in the world are porn companies.

The top three global pornography sites each have more traffic than Amazon, Netflix, TikTok, and OpenAI.

So I think pornography is something that I think that's fine as long as people know what they're in for.

What is really problematic about Twitter as it relates to porn is that it's a slow incremental

step to what Twitter is responsible.

Twitter is responsible for 49%

of child sexual abuse content found across social media search engines and cloud services from 2017 to 2019.

So

if you believe this could be this free-for-all could be a dangerous step to and then and then you layer in 230 protection.

Twitter has a bigger problem here, and that is, you know, this, this content, which is not only, not only wrong, but it's dangerous and puts kids in harm's way.

Half of it, I mean, Twitter has single-digit market share across social, but it has.

It owns half of child sexual abuse content.

That's not a good number for market share.

So I'm kind of, I'm sort of like, I'm a mixed mind here.

It's bad for the product.

It makes their product shittier and shittier.

That's really it.

I agree.

You should be able to do it, but it's just, I can't even tell you.

It's a Nazi bar with pornography now.

I just don't know what to say.

It's like, whatever.

Good luck with your pornography business, Eon.

I would urge, I've asked you to do it and I'll ask everyone else to do it.

And that is what I do.

People send me links to stories on X that I can click on.

I haven't posted on X in a year and I write back, I'm sorry I'm not on X.

Can you please send me the article directly?

Yeah.

Yep.

And there's no

and you, I constantly parrot a statement that you made that kind of brought it home for me.

Why are we painting this guy's fence?

And I thought, she's absolutely right.

Why am I getting more clicks and more Nissan ads?

I have to see what they're up to because I talk about it a lot more, but I would agree with you completely.

Last thing, someone's back.

Speaking of guess who's back, back again.

Shane Smith, co-founder of Vice Media, a character, is returning to the forefront of Vice News.

He's kind of, he's a little bit like the Adam Newman of content.

He's much funnier, though.

As a correspondent, Smith was previously executive chairman of Vice, which last year has filed for bankruptcy protection, laid off most of its staff.

Many people blame Shane and his incredible spending.

I was there to see a lot of it.

Vice says that Smith will host a podcast for Bill Maher's Club Random Studios.

It'll run on Vice's TV channel.

Smith will also report to appear on other news networks with commentary on the 2024 election.

Oh,

he says

Shane is a character.

A lot of people do blame him for creating the mess that became vice media in the spending.

I always thought it was an artisanal advertising business and not content business, but it was sort of in-your-face hipster, like,

I don't know,

armchair more commentating and stuff like that.

I don't know.

What do you think?

They have to come back.

You know, he got a lot of money out of that company.

I don't know what to think.

I mean, good luck, Shane, I guess.

I don't know him well, but I like Shane Smith.

I had,

I think he's a character.

I think he's, for lack of a better term, I do think he's a bit of a visionary and a salesperson.

And I think this was a story of convincing people that a company was something it wasn't.

And it was just a media company addressing a valuable niche that should have never raised or received money at the valuation they did.

And then I think probably some management miscues and they couldn't, you know, the whole thing turned into a shit show, which is, I tell entrepreneurs sometimes, even if you can raise money at some crazy valuation, you do have an obligation to take it, but be thoughtful.

There's no free lunch.

When you raise money, I think at one point you raise money at like a $5 billion market capitalization.

And then all of a sudden your investors are going to realize they made a mistake and they're going to get angry and it creates dysfunction.

And then your employees think, I'm not getting any money because my options were struck so high.

Anyways, but I didn't even know.

I wasn't even sure Vice was still around, but it's got a nice brand.

That is a back in the day company.

It was Shane Smith running it.

And they had a really cool

headquarters, which I always was like, okay, this is where the money's going, right?

It was, it was these beautiful headquarters in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, hipster out the yin-yang.

Some great shows.

Fuck, that's delicious.

Everything else.

They did a lot of really, some really cool stuff.

Oh, they did some outstanding shows.

Outstanding shows.

You had one there too.

That's right.

I quit that show.

I thought it was so awful.

I remember.

In any case, they had some.

No, no, back to

Scott.

Let's go.

I finished my story.

You were just talking.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Talk about Scott.

No, no, no.

I feel bad.

I feel bad.

All right.

Let's go back to me.

So

I remember being there one time.

And when you entered the headquarters, there was a bar.

Do you remember the bar that was there right in the middle?

I never went to HQ.

All right.

HQ had a bar in the lobby, and the employees were looking, were like,

we're always drinking there, day drinking there in this bar.

And I literally looked at it, and I think it was to Shane I said it or one of them.

I go, oh, look, an HR violation waiting to happen.

And they had a lot of HR violation problems there,

a lot of stuff.

And they spent enormous amounts of money.

I remember Josh Tarangel was doing that show, the Vice News show.

And they had like 100 zillion editing booths that looked like the top.

Just the money that he spent, like, especially Rupert Murdoch's money was insane.

And I was running my little media company.

I was like, how do you

afford this?

Because I can't.

Like, you know, anyway, but I was responsible.

Go ahead.

Tell your story of your show.

They decided they wanted to get into thought leadership and they launched a show with me and Anand Geirdadas.

And it was COVID.

I had a full studio.

Anand had a show.

I had a show.

And basically they said, do whatever you want.

And, and then they cut it up and edited it in sort of like to appeal to youth, fast cuts, tons of colors everywhere.

Filmed, it was filmed literally in my garage by my tech head of technology, Drew Burroughs, and my, the, the, my partner who runs Prof G Media, Catherine Dillon, everyone in masks or remotely.

Usually there wasn't even anyone in the studio with me.

And I screened it at my house with some friends and we watched 21 minutes of it.

And then I looked over and

my wife was crying.

And I'm like, that's not a good sign.

And she's like, what's this going to mean for us?

Like, this is so bad.

Oh, wow.

Good for your wife.

I love your book.

She's,

and I remember my youngest son looking at her like, oh my God, this is really bad.

I mean, and all I could think of was like, oh, fuck.

I had signed up for six shows and I had five more.

And all I could think of was, how do I get through this in an exit?

And then after three weeks, the person who ran Vice Television called me and said, I have great news.

They love the show.

It's doing really well.

And we want to sign you up for another 12 shows.

And I'm like, there's no fucking way I'm doing another show.

I'm going to see it through the six.

I'm out.

And they called me back.

And this is, this is, I thought, provided some insight into television.

They must have called me back six times and they were genuinely flummoxed that I would leave TV.

It is so clear that when people get on TV, they literally cling to it like an African dictator clings to power.

Nobody ever wants to leave television once they're on.

I'm like, I'm out.

I hate this show.

I look like an old man having an epileptic seizure.

This is just not the vibe I want in media.

Anyways, that's my by story.

Anyway, they did do some great journalism too.

At the same time, some of the reports were quite good.

In any case, Shane, welcome back, as usual.

No one gets to go down in the internet economies.

Anyway, let's get to our first big story.

Federal regulators have reached a deal to move forward with antitrust investigations into the AI industry.

You knew this was coming.

The Justice Department is going to investigate NVIDIA while the FTC will look at OpenAI and Microsoft.

They split it up, as usual, Lena Kahn and John Cantor.

John Cantor, the assistant agent for antitrust, told the Financial Times that he was looking into the AI sector with urgency and specifically monopoly choke points.

I think it's good that he's getting here early.

It took them decades to get to Google.

So it's probably smart that they put everybody on notice.

It's interesting about NVIDIA and other companies could be in trouble.

I'm not sure if they'll be in trouble, but it's good that the government is looking at all these different weird deals, including that one where Microsoft essentially bought a company and pretended they didn't.

NVIDIA currently has an estimated 80% of the market in AI chips.

Now, well, that won't last.

They're sort of in the Cisco position that Cisco used to be on in the early internet.

Microsoft reportedly structured its minority stake in OpenAI in part to avoid antitrust scrutiny.

They've been very good on deals like this.

In spite of this antitrust news, it's been another big week for NVIDIA.

The company hit the $3 trillion mark on Wednesday, passing Apple, who've been the world's second most valuable company.

Microsoft still has a top slot.

NVIDIA's 10-for-one stock split goes into effect the close of trading on Friday, which will probably take it even higher, a move likely to attract more investors and the price goes up.

You're also a picture of Jensen Wong signing someone's breast, which was sort of like he he wears his leather jacket, so it looked very rock starry.

A couple of things.

First about the antitrust thing, and then we'll talk about the NVIDIA bubble, which hasn't burst at all.

Talk about the antitrust stuff first.

The two biggest tax cuts that would lower prices

for corporations and consumers globally would be, first and foremost, if China and the U.S.

kissed and made up.

Their supply chain,

our IP consumer culture, their problems around youth unemployment, our problems around inflation.

I mean, it's just a marriage made in heaven.

We need to kiss and make up.

She and Biden need to realize that the two largest economies, when they come together, creates peace and prosperity.

So I hope that happens.

The second biggest tax cut, and it might be the biggest, is if we tripled the budget of the DOJ and the FTC and we fertilized the entire corporate world with a bunch of amazing companies.

And how we would do that is the following: we look at home renovations, agriculture, chicken, beef, media,

farm.

There are so many industries where three companies control between 50 and 80 percent of the industry.

Everybody thinks the free market results in prosperity.

No, the free market results in a series of companies that perform really well, have outstanding leadership, get cheap capital, use that capital to create regulatory capture, and then get to a scale where they run away with it, and small and medium-sized companies end up dying a slow death.

The fertilizer here would be to go in and take the 50 biggest companies dominating their industry and turn them into 300 great companies.

Employers or employees would be able to charge higher rents for their labor.

There'd be more tax revenue.

This would be the biggest tax cut in history.

And it needs to start, or one of the places it should start, is in big tech.

And there has never been, as far as I can tell, a breakup where we look back and thought that was a bad idea.

Now, as it relates, let me play the other side here.

As it relates to NVIDIA, I don't think NVIDIA is where you start because what you want to be careful of is saying that because someone is so successful and so big,

that's not a catalyst for breaking up a company.

I mean, I would argue my old company, the company at the bottom of mine, Gartner, I think antitrust officials should look at that company because it is hard for anyone to emerge in syndicated research because Gartner shows up and acquires little companies, including mine, and such that no one has any choice.

And what you have is corporations all hate this company, but they all use it.

And they have what I would call kind of unfair pricing.

So being big and being worth $3 trillion doesn't necessarily mean you should be broken up.

Sure, sure.

That's the argument.

That's the argument.

But the point being, they need, besides the financial elements, which you've talked about quite a bit here, I think it's that they need to be seen on the job, the cops on the job, and looking, even if NVIDIA may be not the first one, it's the obvious company to at least mention that we're looking at you, Nvidia.

We're watching you and we're looking for competition.

We're looking for you not to try to goose prices and restrict the ability of people to get these chips and things like that.

So that's important.

The real company here to look at is Microsoft and everything it's doing.

Or Alphabet or Meta.

Yeah, right.

Absolutely.

But I'm saying these minority stakes that they're doing and including buying Inflection AI, you know, that was a purchase of a company versus a, you know, taking the taking the guy who ran it, Mustafa Soleiman.

I just, I think it's very good that can't and very canny that he is looking at them.

Whether he can do anything about it is another story, but they never have and they're doing it early.

So that to me is a good sign.

So so to your point, it's typically not the action itself that creates better behavior, but scrutiny, right?

Microsoft's, Microsoft, the decision to break up Microsoft, which was overturned in an appeal court, was not what had an impact on the ecosystem.

It was that Microsoft said, okay, we're going to stop bundling Internet Explorer

and as a result, or we're going to stop forcing Bing on people and Google emerged.

You know, my joke is without the DOJ or the FTC, we'd all be saying, I don't know, Bing It, right?

So

antitrust action works.

Again, it's the scrutiny.

It works really well.

And they have framed it incorrectly.

Right now, the Republicans and the incumbents will frame it as you're holding back winners, being bad and being rich isn't bad.

I'm going to push back on that.

You know, in this interview with AOC, and she said it's really interesting because I have found common ground with a lot of Republicans.

There's a lot of people.

Oh, they all hate big tech.

They all hate big tech.

Yeah.

They are with, there's all these groups that love Lena Khan that are very right-wing.

You know what I mean?

Josh Hawley wants to break it down.

Conistas or

they have a name for their con fans or Lena Khan fans.

And I asked AOC about this because she's also.

yes, she's also, well, she hangs out with Matt Gates on these issues.

And so I said, this is interesting.

You're doing a lot of these, some of these things.

She's a little old for her, but anyway.

Sorry.

She was, let me talk about a serious legend.

And she said, Kara, it's really interesting that I find common ground and there is a real common ground.

She said, for different reasons, but we are together on breaking up big tech.

She was like, we are absolutely in lockstep and fans of cons, fans of this.

So I'm not so sure.

The old Republicans are, which are like, don't restrict these innovative geniuses.

That is not who's in power in the Republican Party now.

Anyway,

let's move very quickly to the number.

The shares

crossed the trillion dollar mark last summer.

It moved to $2 trillion this past February.

Shares have riven 24%

since the first quarter earnings reported in May, 24%, with the stock surging 147% so far this year.

Apple, of course, is now I don't know if Apple should be concerned about this.

I do think this is a Cisco situation, which happened during, remember, Cisco was the top of the top, and then it wasn't.

But because it was making routers and things like that for the internet, sort of the, they were selling the picks and shovels of the internet at that time.

The stock split is good for investors.

It always is.

All these stock splits always are.

Google did it many years ago, as I recall, and it surged.

So, is this

number?

You talked about it maybe right when the earnings were around and you said, I wouldn't bet against this because it's, because this is what, this is where investors are going to put their money.

What do you do now?

I ran into someone whose husband works for NVIDIA and she was like, we don't know what to do.

All of a sudden, we're really rich.

And at the same time, selling it is, and they were there for like six years or however many years.

And

they don't know what to do.

They don't know, like they're thrilled, but at the same time, nervous as all fuck about where this is going.

So can I advise your friends first and then talk about NVIDIA?

Yeah.

When you wake up and you find yourself blessed with a large concentrated position because you're working at NVIDIA and all of a sudden you have three, five, $10, $20 million

worth of stock, there will be a lot of soft pressure to stay in the company and show that you're in it to win it.

Abso-fucking lootly, exercise those options, sell as much as you can and start diversifying.

Once you get

sometimes, you have to be concentrated in the beginning and go all in on buying a house or starting a business.

But the moment you have a million, the moment more than 80% of your net worth is in any one thing, you need to start diversifying.

Your friends don't want to get rich.

They're already rich.

They don't want to get poor.

So they need to start diversifying.

And they may think NVIDIA is amazing, just as people thought Cisco is amazing.

And let me draw the distinction because I've made the comparison and people, including Josh Brown, who I really respect, called me or texted me and said, you got one thing wrong.

As NVIDIA's stock has gone up, exploded, unlike Cisco, its actual PE ratio has gone down because their earnings have exploded even faster than the stock price.

So there's a fair distinction.

However, at $3 trillion,

the moment a company, the moment Meta or more likely Microsoft announces a new AI GPU that's fairly good, the moment a big company says we're cutting back by 60 or 80% our spend on AI, all of these companies get recalibrated because it has become insane town.

But you want to talk about NVIDIA.

NVIDIA is the most successful company in history as measured by value creation in such a short amount of time.

In May, it added $750 billion in market cap.

So NVIDIA added the value of any company in the world, except for maybe the top seven or eight more valuable, in one month.

And here's the problem with the SP and these indices.

The SP 500 is up, I think, 13 or 14% year to date.

You think, oh, the market's doing well, the economy's doing well.

That's right.

Oh, young people should be happy.

Well, guess what?

Unless you were smart enough to figure out to own NVIDIA,

your returns have barely paced with inflation.

So, what we have is income inequality squared.

And that is a small amount of companies, even the tech companies that I can't say we're AI, are losing market cap to NVIDIA.

But this thing, there's just, it is absolutely

mind-blowing what this company has been able to pull off.

And what this company represents from a larger business strategy standpoint, and what is so unique about this company is that the only way you can get to a trillion dollars of market cap now is to be an asset light and IP heavy company.

Supposedly, the thing that was always going to be the moat for AMD and Intel was this 10, 15, 20 billion dollar capex they had to make in these chip factories?

And then NVIDIA comes along and says, no, no, no, no.

The secret sauce is in the IP.

It's in the design.

And we will contract out the Slack supply of infrastructure and chip plants, which would have just been unheard.

And now they're worth more than the entire industry.

This is the go-to move.

This is the change in the economy.

Asset-like companies that are totally focused on IP versus hard assets.

So let me point out today: right now, NVIDIA at the beginning of the year started $481 a share, almost $482.

Now it's

$1,220 or triple.

It's just an astonishing situation in its max, which is crazy.

It bumped along the bottom forever until there was a little bump in 2022.

It was a gaming, it was a gaming channel and stuff like that.

And I, again, I interviewed Jensen.

I did not let him sign my boot, but he was unexciting, I would say.

You know what I mean?

He was, it was an unexciting company, although very, he's very competent and everything else.

But it was, it's an astonishing, if you go look at the charts, it's crazy.

And it just, this is what I told these people, same thing.

I was like, look, I know you're going to leave stuff on the table here because people are crazy and they are the only alternate and they're doing very well.

But boy, boy, boy, oh, boy, does that make me nervous.

Right now, the PE ratio is 104.

It was 75 yesterday.

It's certainly rising as people buy this.

And as they split it up,

it will be even more as it will.

It just will.

That's what happens when it happens.

And this is what regular people think of as the internet.

Let's get into NVIDIA.

So it's just,

it could be real bad for some people.

That's all.

And it could be real good for some people.

I love this game.

In just the last five months, NVIDIA has added the market cap of Amazon or the GDP of Australia, or in the last five months, NVIDIA has added the market cap of JPMorgan, Walmart, and Tesla combined.

Combined.

In an unrelated story, I was at a fundraiser with Emily Radikowski last night, two nights ago.

I didn't say hi to her.

I was too intimidated.

I was too intimidated.

You know who did come up and say hi?

That was Natalie Portman.

She is beautiful and she still looks 25.

Why did she say hi to you?

It was a small thing and she just came up and, you know.

Was Emily really there?

I would lie about something like that.

Yeah, she was there.

You didn't say hello to her after all of this.

You know what I was thinking about?

when i was a younger man i would have gone up and said hi i that's what i thought i thought i'll go up and say hi i'm sky cowie karis fisher's co-host on pivot but what i was thinking about and i hate this about myself i've gotten so used to people coming up to me i no longer have the mojo and i'm too arrogant to go up to other people and i gotta stop that i gotta get my mojo back here

i do it all the time

No, all right.

Okay.

Well, she didn't.

So anyway, we'll move on.

We'll see.

Nvidia people.

Good luck.

I think she still wants to speak.

In related news, do do you think AOC would sign my boob?

That's good.

No.

That's good.

Oh, goodness.

That's good.

She would eat you for lunch.

Let me just say.

It's a great interview.

Full of powerful, strong women.

Also happy to be able to do it.

Love news gorgeous.

She is as sharp as a friggin.

She is, she thinks so quickly.

I have never interviewed someone that was, I found, hard to keep up with.

Anyway, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about an open letter from OpenAI employees and take a listener mail question about a recent ruling on grants.

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Scott, we're back with our second big story.

Again, more drama at OpenAI as safety people fight non-safety people, I guess.

It was actually a topic we talked about last night, and a lot of these women were like, everybody's a little bit much on the dreamy part, and a little bit much on the dramatic, dystopian part.

So I trust these women, what they were saying.

A group of open AI insiders is demanding AI companies increased transparency and whistleblower protections.

I would agree with that.

An open letter, a group of current and former employees expressed concern that the company hasn't done enough to prevent AI from becoming dangerous.

The letter says that AI companies overall, including OpenAI, have strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight, you think.

OpenAI has recently made news for agreements departing employees are asked to sign, which threaten to revoke stock option grants for non-cooperatives.

Of course, they've said they are going to take those off.

In a statement, OpenAI said the company has an integrity hotline and a safety and security committee, which is, of course,

Sam Altman's on it, you know, kind of thing.

It's a board committee.

I don't know.

These open letters, I think this is their moment, the safety people, and they all got laid off essentially and pushed to the side in this run for the money kind of thing, not just money, but power and money.

I am not sure lawmakers will get involved.

The letter voice concerned that regular whistleblower protections aren't enough because they focus on legal activity and the industry is not yet regulated.

Although Whistleblower has worked for Francis Haugen and others.

Should the company be worried about all this bad news, OpenAI, but it was targeting all the AI companies, but it's certainly OpenAI is at the center of this, the way NVIDIA is at the center of the chip, AI chips.

At the same time, Apple is expected to announce a partnership with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT.

It keeps going, OpenAI with its news agreements, but this is an agreement with Apple to integrate ChatGPT into the iPhone operating system at next week's Worldwide Developers Conference.

The companies have reportedly discussed using ChatGPT to power Siri, which would be great.

Anybody can power Siri.

I could power Siri better than Siri does.

Or as a standalone app, Apple is reportedly still in talks with Google about using Gemini on phones, but has yet to reach a deal.

Apple's a customer of these, all these companies.

Talk a little bit about the first part.

I mean, this, the drama piles on with this, this safety group, because I'm going to just, before you comment, this company started as one thing and it's become another.

And you're going to have disappointed people who thought it was one, they thought it was, it reminds me of Google a little bit.

There are a lot of people who started Google who are very innocent and thought it was to help the world and it wasn't.

It just wasn't.

And so you're going to get this kind of

disagreement.

And the people who believe that AI is going to kill us are very intense and very believe very much this is a dangerous situation.

And those who are on the dreamy side, it's going to cure cancer and everything else are like, what are you talking about?

And then right in the middle is the money.

And that's where I look at.

That's what I look at.

So first off, I think from this point forward, we should call it Microsoft AI.

Let's just call it what it is.

It's not OpenAI.

It's Microsoft AI.

And as it relates to this notion that OpenAI employees warned of open quote, reckless race

for dominance, that's the type of people I invest in when I'm trying to make money.

And I don't, I find it just sort of cute and stupid and ineffective for former employees after they've been paid or got their severance to now say they're worried.

And granted, some current employees are saying this, but enough already.

This is a Microsoft division, and it should come under FTC and DOJ scrutiny.

And two,

that safety team and those individuals need to figure out a way to get to Washington.

And if they really are serious about nonprofit and saving the world from AI,

go to work for a regulatory firm or Senator Schumer's office or something.

But all of this is a fucking soap opera and a misdirect.

And that is DC needs to get their arms around this technology, break up companies that become too powerful, powerful, like a Microsoft, like an Alphabet, like an Apple, like a Meta.

And we need people in Washington who have the power of the courts, the power of finding, the power of regulation to regulate these companies instead of listening to people who invented Frankenstein and then get worried that Frankenstein's going to start throwing your friend's kids into the river.

That's not helpful.

That's what I say.

I said, go work, go work for government.

I've said it to several people who are worried.

I was like, well, I have an idea.

Like, go work for government.

Because one of the things that's interesting, they do see me as like a fellow traveler.

Like, I'm more, I'm very worried about their power.

Let me just say, I couldn't be, I'm someone who's

always saying these companies have too much power.

Well, do something about it, not just by these open letters.

Go work for government and help regulate these companies, help create laws that are smart.

You're technical people.

You can talk up, tell us about the problems.

At the same time, being overly dramatic when there are obvious benefits, be honest about what's going on here right it's not just they're making the money i i when you talk to them it's it's literally um again i last night with these women they were they exactly laid it out they're like here's the problems here's the benefits let's figure out how to have guardrails they were so sensible because they were just older women who've been through it all and they were being so reasonable about how to deal with it there is a ground here where we can have the government involved and and and the um and these companies throttle back from what they're doing but if you think they're not going to be in the money game here I don't know what where you where you grew up you know what I mean like it's not America I guess because everything is about the money and dominance in in corporate America I just I

I and I agree with you there's gonna be dangers is the is the problem so I sit in I sit in pitches from companies to VCs or small business competitions all the time.

And if a CEO stood up and said, hi, we're so-and-so, and we're in a reckless race for dominance, I'd like that.

They say it as if it's a bad thing.

That's what for-profit companies like this one are supposed to do.

It's the whole movement, you know, move fast and break things.

You know, things have just

the people in this company.

were under the illusion that they were there to be a think tank and think about controlling AI and being thoughtful about it.

And then someone smelled hundreds of billions and said, just kidding.

And the, the, and we did call this the most ridiculous structure.

If you read it, I printed it out.

It was like, we're a nonprofit, but the nonprofit only gets money after we've delivered 100 billion in profits to our initial investors.

I'm like, let me get this.

You have to make more profits than any firm in history, maybe with the exception of Saudi Aramco, before you're actually a quote-unquote nonprofit.

It was just such jazz hands gone crazy.

And these people, like you said, it sucks to be a grown-up.

My guess is they cashed their checks.

They got severance in exchange for signing those non-disparagement agreements.

It sucks to be a grown-up.

Go to work for government.

Help us out.

Yeah, I would agree.

Get in here.

We're happy to.

I really would like really smart people doing this because it's not to limit these companies because you and I are both capitalists.

It's to make them better.

Honestly, I would put all these women on the board of OpenAI because I think they'd be great.

That's what they should put.

All these amazing technologists who were there for the early days.

There was one that was so fucking funny

about her early days of doing stuff.

And one of the women is 90 years old.

She was doing machine learning back in the 50s,

incredible woman.

And

just

really,

those are the kind of people.

I kept sitting there like, these are the kind of people we want to talk about these issues.

And she should run for president.

Anyway, let's pivot to a listener question.

This question comes from Tamara.

Let's listen.

Hi, Karen Scott.

This is Tamara from Brooklyn, New York.

And I wanted to get your thoughts on the recent federal appeals court ruling that blocks Fearless Fund from issuing grants to black women.

It just seems really ridiculous to me, honestly, that this group that is serving such an underfunded population would get blowback when billions of dollars continues to flow to white men and oftentimes from other other white men.

So would love to hear your take on this.

Love the show.

Thanks.

Tamara, what a great question.

I have been thinking about this since this happened.

This fearless fund is giving, it's a venture fund giving grants to black women who are completely underserved in the money that goes into investments.

And the guy who did the affirmative action lawsuit that won in the Supreme Court is going after a lot of companies and this is one of them of course that it's unfair that these women of color get more advantage over white men that desperately need this money, this venture money, when I think 90 bazillion percent of the money goes to white men in venture.

It is a really thorny political, I mean, not political issue, it's a thorny legal issue because of the way the laws are structured and the way the Supreme Court ruled on affirmative action.

This guy is going around stripping any kind of ability to focus in on any group that's underserved or has been underinvested in by saying they've got to compete with the white guys because it's fair.

Scott, I don't know what you think about this, but this is where it's going with those affirmative action rulings that the Supreme Court had.

I think he's right.

Look,

I mean, I'm torn here because

the statistics are just overwhelming.

When I was raising money in the 90s, it was only white dudes raising money.

And I never stopped to even think, well, why is it only white guys who look like me and went to elite colleges are raising money from venture capital?

That's a problem.

The stat,

a third of 1% of total venture capital going to black women.

Okay,

that's a problem.

The issue is how do we come together to solve it?

And I was fascinated by this because I believe capital is free speech.

There's an issue here.

How do you advance the rights of people or advance communities that have not entered a very lucrative sector?

I totally get it.

My first reaction was a gag reflex.

And then I went, I looked at two of the most recent companies that the Fearless Fund gave grants to.

One is called Slutty Vegan, first off-grade name, and the other is Live Tinted.

And I looked at the founders.

And one of the founders was raised by immigrants and her father spent time in prison.

And this is where I'm heading with this.

I think any affirmative action, and I think this is a form of affirmative action that is based on visible characteristics, is a bad idea.

Now, having said that before my inbox gets filled up, I do think it is entirely appropriate and we should promote what the University of California did in 1997, and that is not have race-based affirmative action, and this is a form of affirmative action, but have an adversity index.

Now, the founder of Slutty Vegan, and I won't use their names because I don't want people contacting them, I think she faced tremendous adversity and I like the idea of pools of capital being allocated unfairly, fairly, a bias towards people who have faced headwinds.

I'd like to think that the majority of Republicans feel that way.

And I know all Democrats feel that way.

The other person, the other woman who founded Live Tinted, was raised by

in Houston.

She went to the University of Texas, Austin.

Her parents are married.

I don't want to say she hasn't faced issues, but actually, black women, a greater percentage of black women

now attend college than white men.

And what I would say is, if we want to come together and figure out a way to move forward that doesn't create these problems, I think we need to move to an adversity-based score or recognizing people's background, because I think this creates a lot of hostility and resentment.

Except, Scott, okay, hostility.

Let me just say, what about women who don't necessarily come from adversity?

If you have ever tried to raise money as a woman, it is

only white men are smart.

It really is an astonishing

discrimination?

I don't know what to call it, but it's just like, how can it be, same thing with boards?

How can it be that only white men are good at boards?

How can that be?

That's changed dramatically.

I agree with you, but

for a long, long time.

And when you look at the numbers, something really is happening that is just really out of whack with talent across the country.

They will not look at women.

They will definitely not look at women of color.

You know, in AI AI right now, and actually, this was discussed on the stage.

Someone asked a question, where are the people of color in AI?

And the women were like, they weren't there and they aren't there.

And what is happening here is

men funding each other again, again, and again and again.

And so white men funding each other.

And so what do you do about this group of people who have a stranglehold on the venture money and refuse to look up and not invest in people that look like them, that they are, they think it's a meritocracy, as I've said dozens of times, and it's a meritocracy.

And they're doing it themselves.

So

I agree, this is going to probably lose because this guy has a point of view about affirmative action that many,

you can absolutely see this argument.

The problem is it doesn't address what is a massive issue is these groups will always fail because

they're not giving the chance

to show what they can do.

And then when they fail because they don't get enough funding or backing, see, we told you, now let's give more money to the Marks, the guy who looks like Mark Zuckerberg.

And then let's support him and coddle him and lift him up and put him on third base and then clap when he hits, gets to home.

You know, I just,

it's, it's such a, it's such a fixed game for white men here, as much as many of them are very talented, by the way, but it is, they are so coddled and so supported.

And they think it's because they're so smart.

and it's just simply not the case.

So I don't know what to do here because you're never going to get these people the kind of support and funding they need.

And I don't know how to do it.

Adversity can't be the only thing because what about people who went to college and they're from middle class and they did have some support, but they just can't get the kind of funding and support they need.

Just listening to you now, you are changing my view.

And I want to draw a distinction and I want to use two different environments.

Let's talk about college, which has traditionally been the certification and the experience that is the whitest on-ramp into the middle and the upper class, right?

And in 1960, there were 12 black people at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale combined.

That was a problem.

The academic achievement gap between blacks and whites was double what it was between rich and poor.

It made sense to have

affirmative action based on race.

It made sense.

I believe it no longer does.

51% of Harvard's freshman class is non-white.

What I think your argument is, we're not there yet in venture capital.

We're not at the point.

The numbers are still so skewed in favor of the patriarchy that we still do need race-based affirmative action.

So, I think my go-to is around what I know best, which is higher ed.

But I think the point you're making is that we're still not there yet and we need race-based affirmative action.

The way you would probably get there, I think, is the only way to jump-start this stuff is with when a

black woman-led business goes public and creates billions of dollars of shareholder value.

People get over it.

Now, until then, I think what you could do is have state or federal sponsored legislation that provides what I'll call credits for investing in.

I mean, here's the problem, though.

When I was in Morgan Stanley, the syndicates would be picked for an IPO and there'd be minority.

They'd demand, the state of California would demand minority and women-owned business investment banks in the syndicate.

So we pick one or two.

They did nothing.

And the people who ran the firm went to Harvard and they happened to be women or people of color.

And it was like, okay, all we're doing is reshuffling the elites here.

This money isn't getting to.

I want to acknowledge your point.

I have this reflex, gag reflex or this reflex memory around what's happened in education.

And I think your point is we still have a long way to go before we can get.

I don't even know if this is the answer, Scott.

I don't honestly know.

I just know that these white guys get to fail all the fucking time.

And the women do not get to fail.

There's no failure for them.

And these men come up with, like, look at Shane Smith.

Look, he's back.

Give me a fucking break.

He lost so much money for everyone but himself, but he gets to come back.

Like, are you kidding me?

Like, that's what it, that's what it looks like.

If you are a black woman and you fail at a company, that's the end of your entire process.

That's it.

That's all you get.

And I think that's what it is.

But, you know, Shane Smith, oh, he's so good at what he does.

Come on.

Adam Newman.

Come on, Adam.

How many batteries can you voice upon the world and benefit from them?

I just,

I just,

I don't know the answer, Scott.

I don't know the answer.

I want to acknowledge your point and agree with you that I don't know the answer.

We don't know the answer, Tamara.

So sorry.

I think this group is going to lose.

I think they are.

I think this guy is very tanny.

What about Melinda Gates

focusing all this money on women businesses?

Do you think they'll go after her?

But she can do what she wants, right?

Or can't she?

Right.

It's an interesting thing.

That's an interesting question.

But

what she also did, she also gave $20 million to the American Institute for Boys and Men.

Yeah.

And it strikes me it's going to be difficult to tell people

what they can do or not do with philanthropy.

I don't know.

Some of it's investigating.

That's a really fair point.

But

I think she inoculates herself by saying it's not a condition that she's going to focus on a community, but it's not a condition of

her philanthropy because she needs to be.

Maybe it's how you talk about it.

It's the language.

I don't know.

But I mean, the argument here, the logic is really sound that he's making.

And that is we need to move to a post-racial society.

And at some point, we need to acknowledge that when you're advantaging, I mean, here's where we are with universities.

And this is why I think DEI should be disassembled in universities.

People of color have.

And by the way, it's a huge apparatus with a lot of overpaid people that, in my opinion, hold on to their jobs and have absolutely no accountability to anybody.

Anyways, and are protected because you're called names if you ever question their departments.

Because there's no old white men doing that.

But go ahead.

keep going.

How big do you think the Harvard, how much money do you think Harvard spends on DEI?

My question would be,

what if they expanded their freshman seats to let in more black kids?

Wouldn't that be more DEI?

There's so many shitty old white man professors that where I went to school, but go ahead.

Go ahead.

Okay, but that was back in the Middle Ages.

So all right, sure.

Anyways, what you're saying, and I agree with you, is we don't have that issue yet in venture capital.

I do think we have that issue on campus.

I think I did that podcast with those two very impressive women from Harvard, and they were talking about how wonderful the DEI department is.

I'm like, take all of that money, expand your freshman class, and let in more trans kids.

Let in more black kids.

That's DEI, not reshuffling the elites.

Well, that's a good point.

We have to get out of this.

A very interesting question.

Thank you so much.

It'll be interesting to see where this goes, but we both probably think they'll lose.

If you've got a question of your own you'd like answered, send it our way.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for this show or call 855-51-PIT.

All right, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be be back for predictions.

You better have a good one.

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Hello Daisy speaking.

Hello Daisy, this is Phoebe Judge from the IRS.

Oh bless, that does sound serious.

I wouldn't want to end up in any sort of trouble.

This September on Criminal, we've been thinking a lot about scams.

Over the next couple of weeks, we're releasing episodes episodes about a surprising way to stop scammers.

The people you didn't know were on the other end of the line.

And we have a special bonus episode on Criminal Plus with tips to protect yourself.

Listen to Criminal wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for Criminal Plus at thisiscriminal.com slash plus.

I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, and on my podcast, we've been talking about the future of AI and media for what seems like forever.

But what if I told you that the future is already here?

So, at what point, if any, does a human get involved before it gets sent to my inbox?

Not at all.

That's Warren St.

John, the CEO of Patch, the local news network, telling me how he's producing thousands of newsletters every day just using AI.

You can hear our entire conversation on channels wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Okay, Scott, let's hear your fantastic prediction.

Just put a lot of pressure on me.

I don't like this.

Okay, so my prediction, in one word, is Chicago exclamation point.

The Democratic Convention at Chicago, I think, is going to make a lot of news.

I think one of several things might happen.

One, I think the GRU and the CCP both want to sow incredible division in our society and have the ultimate propaganda tool, at least the CCP does with TikTok.

I think Russia has become exceptionally good, especially the GRU at weaponizing troll farms in an amoral, porous social media environment.

I think there's going to be all kinds of misinformation and noise around the Chicago Convention.

In addition, some of the protests we've seen, some of them have legitimate concerns.

Some of it is being funded, in my opinion, by outside entities.

In addition, If President Biden, Biden, let me just say the quiet part out loud, gets a cold and for whatever reason can't be on stage one night, there's going to be all sorts of speculation.

I just think we are setting ourselves up in Chicago in terms of scenario planning.

Scenario planning is you look at what are a reasonable number of outcomes and then what prediction or what scenario likely foots across all of them.

My prediction is the following.

The Chicago Democratic Convention makes a lot of news.

Okay.

I'm going to take the opposite side.

I think it's going to be one of these things where it's going to like be, oh, no, oh no, oh no, and then nothing's going to happen.

That might, fair enough.

That's where I feel like it because they're oh knowing it quite a bit.

Everyone's worried.

You know, I think it's going to be one of these things where everyone's going to be like, it's sort of like the debate.

Everyone's going to be like, hold on to your seat.

Like, right?

You're waiting for one of them to do something crazy on that debate stage.

I don't think anyone feels comfortable because who knows what Trump's going to do, right?

Can he be disciplined?

Probably not.

He'll probably say something nutty, like, I'm going to jail you with Joe Biden.

And Joe Biden's like going to go, come on, man.

Like, that's probably where it's going.

So nobody knows where this debate's going.

So everyone's going to be.

That's not the fear.

i may not i may not watch it because i i don't know which one is going to have a problem like you know what i mean that's not that's not the fear if trump does something really stupid or irrational no nobody cares hurt him as much as i the fear kara is that biden has a mcconnell moment and that's the fear But if he doesn't and Trump doesn't, they'll be like, yeah, well, whatever.

The bar is so low right now for Biden.

So in that way, Trump, seeing Trump like unfettered is going to to be, people are, you know, are going to be like, oh, God, look at that guy.

So we'll see.

We'll see how that goes.

But nonetheless, I think I'm going to take the opposite.

I think nothing's going to happen at this thing.

I think they will have the security.

I think there'll be rings of security around the entire thing.

And the governor will, who is a Democrat, will keep it.

Keep it tight.

He's a keep-it-tight kind of governor.

There's a 2% or 3% chance he comes out of the convention as the nominee, Kara.

That

could potentially go down here.

So look,

what you're talking about.

Life is so boring compared to what you think.

But go on.

What you're talking about is a distinct phenomenon, and that is anxiety.

A lot of us have

the first 40 years of my life, I didn't have enough anxiety.

I was literally sleepwalking through life.

I almost got kicked out of UCLA three times, didn't care, almost got fired from Morgan Stanley, didn't care.

I just didn't, you know,

took to Sunset Boulevard, fucked up in high school, didn't care.

And then from 40 to 50, I had the perfect amount of anxiety.

And now from 50 on, I fucking worry about everything.

And anxiety,

anxiety is a survival mechanism because you are supposed to be worried that when you see the reeds flowing in the wind, that it's not the wind, it's a lion that could eat you behind.

Because occasionally it is a lion.

And that when you go to a watering hole, you are supposed to be anxious because it might be one of those TikTok crocodiles about to jump out.

But here's the thing.

Anxiety.

is a form of survival because the shit you are most worried about, if you're worried about every computer and every elevator and every air traffic control guidance system shutting down

at midnight on January 1st, 2000, you start to prepare for it.

And by preparing for it and being anxious about it, you reduce the likelihood it's going to happen.

The things, and this is a lesson, the things you are most anxious about are the things that are least likely to hurt or kill you.

It's the shit you're not expecting.

I am exactly opposite to you.

I used to be a lot more anxious and now I'm like, eh, whatever.

Who cares?

I literally have shifted.

That means you're maturing.

from getting immature.

And actually, you know, I had someone who, I would say, is on their way to not being my friend anymore.

And they're always like, yeah,

on all the political stuff.

And I used to rise to the occasion.

And now I'm like, yeah, okay.

Like, I don't even listen.

I don't even respond.

It's just literally, I've become the opposite of you.

I'm like, all right, whatever.

Yeah.

I'm worried about everything.

I think it's kids.

I don't know.

I'm not worried about everything except my kids, like my safety, my kids.

That's it.

Anyway,

we're very different.

I have shifted.

I was much more anxious earlier.

And Scott, that's the show.

Just a reminder, I will be at the Trebeka Film Festival next week, June 11th at 5.30.

I'm taping a slate podcast, Death, Sex, and Money, which are Scott's main focuses in his life with Anna Sale.

You can get tickets at Trebekafilm.com/slash death, sex, money.

And also, listen to my AOC interview.

It is quite a thing.

She said quite a lot of things in it,

among which she thinks Donald Trump will probably try to have her arrested.

She talked a lot about progressives and the need to calm the fuck down, essentially.

She talked a lot about that whole fight with Marjorie Taylor Greene.

In any case, she's a very talented politician.

Very talented.

Really, really great interview.

Anyway, we'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot.

Scott, read us out.

Today's show was produced by Larry Naman, Silly Marcus, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Nertod engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Jibro's Miss Averio.

Mashaq Caroa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

You can subscribe to the magazine at edwinemag.com slash pod.

We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things

pivot.