Sam Altman's Return to OpenAI, Meta's Underage Users, and Guest Alan Patricof

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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.

Scott, where are you now?

You're late and you're carrying a horn.

I am at my favorite hotel in Florida, the Faena, where they have six-star prices and three-star service, but I still love it here.

Nice, nice.

And

had sort of a detox weekend.

I mean, literally, Kara, do you know what happens when you don't drink for the entire weekend?

Yes, I do know what happens.

That's every weekend for Kara Swisher, but go ahead.

Stee, you steal my thunder.

You're supposed to say, what happens?

What happens?

I don't know, Kara, because daddy has been dipping into the mini bar.

He's already already.

Are you?

Yeah.

He's alone.

Oh, that's sad and pathetic, but go ahead.

Yeah.

And the mini bar is really reasonable here.

It's like $72 for a mini bottle of Jack Daniels.

It's

very reasonable.

Good, good.

Very reasonable.

And chocolate-covered almonds are a cool $24.

Why are you in Miami?

I'm here for a speaking gig.

I'm with MasterCard, I think, on Wednesday.

So

I'm pulled up at the faina growing my nails long and peeing in jars.

Oh, okay, Howard here.

Good.

It must be lovely there.

How's the weather?

It's been just okay.

Today looks nice, but unfortunately, I have to work today.

No.

Well, it's freezing up here on the northeast.

It's cold.

It's cold.

I had to turn off all my spigots today.

That's my job today.

Spigots?

Well, because they freeze.

If you don't close off your hoses, hose bibs, they'll freeze and burst.

But this is not something you worry about, is it?

Ever?

Nope.

Nope.

Well, that's what I was doing this morning.

I'm going to rent the moon and fill it with rosé.

That's the only thing I'm worried about.

How was your Thanksgiving?

Was it good?

Thanks for asking.

It was very nice.

It was a bunch of in-laws and families.

It was kind of the island of misfit toys.

It was like a group of randos.

But it was very, i love i love thanksgiving i think it's a wonderful holiday you did it down in florida you did it down there did it in florida we were back in back in our old house which is really nice because the renters skipped town which is another story but got to be back in the house so it all worked out great they skipped town meaning they just left yeah as in skip town it was this guy who had a spack

and they rented the house for two years and then

like month 13 came and we didn't get the rent and then we read that they were in Australia.

Oh, wow.

They just

wonderful.

So, but you know what?

I don't even mind because the house is in perfect condition.

So, you know.

All right.

We have the house back.

I'm going to go stay down there then.

Good.

Excellent.

Come on down.

I shall.

Would you like to ask about my Thanksgiving?

No.

Okay.

I would.

I thought.

I'm sorry.

How was your Thanksgiving?

Good.

I was at the, it was at the Katz's.

They have a lot of people.

They have dozens and dozens of people.

But they have like that funk.

I think Amanda told me they all get along pretty well.

They do.

They're like incredibly functional.

It's a crazy group of people who really like each other as a family.

And it was very disturbing to me in so many ways.

That is disturbing.

But it was good.

It was a lot of pies, a lot of things like that.

And then Amanda and I went out to the movies.

We went to see Marvels, the Marvels.

Oh, what did you think of it?

I liked it.

I think it's got badly.

It was very enjoyable.

It was fine.

It was very good.

And Brady Larson's adorable.

And everyone in it's adorable.

And there's some very fun, whoever directed it was very clever.

And I don't know.

I can see why it didn't do well because there was no one in the theater but us and another couple which was kind of nice um but i liked it i liked it i thought it was i i thought it was not it got more attacks than a lot of those like ant-man was terrible just a comment on date night the last time i had a date night the babysitter told me not to rush home and it's been two years i wonder how she enjoys being a mom

anyways that's a dad joke anyway but it was a lovely thanksgiving um and i'm glad to be back home though because traveling with kids on the holiday is not not the most fun thing in the world.

Anyway, today we'll talk about Sam Altman's return to open AI and what's next for him and the company, plus a new complaint revealing what Meta knew about its underage users.

And our friend of Pivot is venture capitalist Alan Patrickoff, who's going to tell us why he's putting his chips into the longevity economy with tech for seniors.

But first, former president of CNN Jeff Zucker is nearing a deal to gain control of British Conservative newspaper, the Daily Telegraph.

Zucker's vision for the Telegraph reportedly includes an expansion into the United States, not unlike the Daily Mail, I think, where he believes there is a market for center-right news.

The former CNN head does not plan to run day-to-day coverage, but he will actually, but rather focus on business strategy and overseas presence.

The Telegraph went up for auction this year after its owners defaulted on a loan.

Zucker's proposal is for about 1.1 billion pounds, supplied by Redbird IMI, the media venture he founded himself, and major Abu Dhabi-based investment fund.

What do you think?

I mean, the Daily Mail's done rather well.

What do you think about this idea?

Look, we said this, that

Jeff was the most talented,

still a ton of tread on his tires executive.

So him doing something big is no surprise.

I think the Telegraph is a great brand, but

the road is littered with people who try to inject new life into these older news brands.

I think it'll be fascinating to see what he does.

As is the case,

the capital for any deal of this size in a quote-unquote speculative venture is coming out of the Gulf.

What I think is,

I'm curious what your thoughts are on the potential business side of this.

The thing that struck me was that if this deal had been done two or three years ago, there would have been a lot more kerfuffle or concern around capital coming out of the Gulf, but capital coming out of the Gulf has now been normalized, whether you think that's good or bad.

If the Gulf tried to buy, and that's essentially what they're doing here with Jeff as the front,

a Western media, an iconic Western media company, there would have been a lot of hand-wringing.

And now the world has just said, look, they have capital.

We have IP and entrepreneurs.

Let's boogie.

Yep.

Yep.

I would agree.

Whether it's in sports or any other area they're moving in.

They're moving into a lot of areas.

Sports is their first center thing, but they're going to move into everything.

You know, I was talking to people over the weekend actually about TikTok.

A lot of people were interested.

And I was like, we don't let foreign companies own media properties, but here we are with the most important media company in the United States, and it's a Chinese-owned company, just FYI.

Just like it's, it's now become normalized that people are used to this.

And they hadn't thought of it that way.

I was like, this is the most important media company right now.

It may not continue.

You know, he's a very talented guy.

I don't think he get his hands on a lot of stuff.

He looked everywhere, from what I understood, like, looked at the information.

He looked at everybody, all the small players, like the information.

And

they're a great brand, but it's small, right?

These are all small companies.

I'm sure he looked at Puck.

I suspect he looked at all of them.

And

he wants a way to get back in.

And he certainly wasn't ever going to get control of CNN.

That was clear.

That was bandied about by people close to him.

But that wasn't going to happen.

It's not for sale right now, at least, even though Zazlov is in a world of trouble around the debt and everything.

But he's going to make a try for it.

And if he's using someone else's money, other people's money, that's fine.

I don't quite know what his plan is.

You can look at, I would think the Daily Mail is the best proxy for this, except they're, because they're kind of fun to read, right?

They're kind of fun and gossipy.

And you can see why people really, that, that grew really crazy like crazy.

I don't quite know if people will change their media habits, something that's sort of like everything else.

I don't know.

There's a lot out there.

The thing why the timing of this,

from a cyclical point of view, is that coming into the U.S.

elections, I would bet they would have an easier time time launching just because of ad dollars.

I think we're going to have so many dollars chasing a finite number of

media assets.

I guess online, it's technically infinite.

It's just a good time.

I started an ed tech company the first year of COVID, and I thought, wow, I'm a fucking genius because it ends up everyone was really into sitting at home and trying to make use of their time, not recognizing, you know, so I got this natural sugar high right out of the gates.

I would bet that 2024 is going to be

an illusory sugar high for traditional media because I just think the amount of money that's going to go into this election is going to be historic.

Right.

It is.

When I heard about it, I was like, okay.

Like, that's what I thought.

That's exactly what I said to myself, sure, why not?

Like, why not?

Like, it's their, I don't care if he loses their money.

He could, he should try.

I'd love to see what his innovation is that's different than anything else, but it doesn't sound

what's it, what's it like?

What's it?

How is he going to make it?

Again, I don't like to zero him out ever because he's really talented and he's certainly compelling and has a great sense of what people want to watch for sure.

He's not had not everything he's done has been a hit, but okay.

I don't know if okay is really what I'd love to hear from me if I were him, but didn't that how you felt?

Like, sure, why not?

Look, there's a couple things here.

There's, and you know, we always try, I try and relate it back to professional advice.

A lot of people people I know who are masters of the universe who either get fired or leave their job, they end up, they have exactly the wrong amount of money.

What do I mean by that?

They have enough money so they don't need to take any job, but they don't have enough money that they never need to work again.

And that probably wasn't true of Jeff.

He probably had enough money where he never needed to work again.

But what you don't want to do when you're on the bench is let perfect be the enemy of good.

Because I know a lot of people who they think that all of these opportunities are going to come their way and their criteria are really high, are really, really high.

The bar for what they're going to do next is really, really high.

And then time goes a lot faster than you think.

And they end up kind of two or three years later without having really gone on to the next thing.

And their skills and their brand and their presence in the marketplace begin to atrophy.

So there's something to the notion of a guy of that talent and that capital.

I mean, he's been out of sand now, I think, a year.

There's something to the notion of, all right, whatever the next thing is, the key is that it's next and I'm doing it and I'm getting on with it.

And I'm going to find out if it works or it doesn't work.

So I like, I like Jeff.

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

I think he's a player.

I like that he's bringing capital from other countries into a Western brand that he'll then launch in the U.S.

I think it'll be super interesting to see what he does.

So thumbs up.

Yeah, that's what I said.

Yeah, okay, sure.

Yeah.

That's all I thought.

It was like, sounds good.

We'll see what he does.

You're right, but there'll be money.

It'll look good for the first part.

And, you know, we'll see who he attracts.

And I don't know.

He can't quit.

He can't quit.

That's really, I think you're 100% all right.

Next story: big story over the weekend.

Elon Musk's engagement in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories may have cost him up to $75 million.

That's how much X could lose by the end of the year due to advertisers pulling the plug over the state of content on the platform.

According to internal documents viewed by the New York Times, the documents listed over 200 advertisers who had paused or were at risk of pausing spending on the platform, including Amazon, Netflix, Coca-Cola, and more.

X claims that only $11 million is at risk.

Of course, Elon just popped up in Israel because it's about him and not the hostages

in a PR move to try to assuage, I assume that's what he's doing, bear hugging Netanyahu.

I think it's inappropriate myself, but sure, whatever.

I don't know what to say about it.

Anyway, let's talk about the advertising because that's obviously what he's doing.

But what do you think about that?

The number.

It's a lot of money.

I'm heartened.

I'm heartened that NBC Universal, Apple, IBM, Airbnb, I think

they recognize that they play a role.

They're iconic companies.

They have iconic leaders.

And

rather than hand-wringing over what it means to be an anti-Semite and whether you can peer into his ketamine-laced heart, they've just decided when you say anti-Semitic things,

when you promote anti-Semitic

conspiracy theory, when you spread homophobic conspiracy theory, when you say anti-trans things,

we would rather not advertise on your platform.

And I think these companies should be commended for that.

And my post this week was like, where is the line?

And people like to think they have a line.

And it's like, okay, in terms of figuring out where your line is, you first have to decide that you have one.

Yeah, that is a hundred.

You are correct, sir.

And I think these corporations have said, okay,

we're not in the business of trying to understand the true person here.

We're in the business of having certain standards.

And this guy has repeatedly and unapologetically violated those standards that we do hold true.

And so, I find it

very heartening that these firms, and not only that, they're not quietly slithering away and stopping advertising.

They're putting out press releases saying, We're just not going to put up with this shit, we're not going to be a party to this.

He's got some work to do.

I mean, I found, you know, he put out a tweet that actions speaks louder than words about him going to Israel.

And I'm like, you got in your private plane and flew there and they're doing a tour.

He wants to be the unelected president of the world

and have cameras on him.

Just maybe just clean up your platform.

That's, you know, I'm sure people there appreciate it.

And a lot of people who I, they're like, oh, he's here.

It's like, stop it.

Like, you don't, let's focus on the hostages.

Let's focus on their experience and what happened to them versus some guy who likes to fly in and make it make a call attention to himself.

But these add things, I think a lot of people are, you know, he can see, again, as we noted, is he can pay for all these losses.

So it doesn't really matter.

He has the money.

So he can continue to fund this sinkhole if he wants to.

That's all it is.

And I don't think there's any repercussions, correct, Scott?

I mean, he has to pay off the debt, and that's he just not making enough.

His nut isn't big enough to make the costs.

He'll cut costs more.

I don't know.

Most companies, and this goes back to this, this notion we keep talking about, power corrupts.

And when an individual can aggregate this much wealth that they can act this irresponsibly without ramifications, economic or legal, it just it creates a society.

Everybody needs guardrails.

Every successful society has put in place a ton of different guardrails.

You know, we talk about ESG investing.

The most important thing that's happened for ESG investing and protection of consumers is that the DOJ and the SEC are sending Sam Bankman-Freed and most likely the head of finance to jail.

And without guardrails, with individuals who aggregate this kind of wealth,

it's not,

I think it's a real danger to society.

And I don't think we've ever seen an, I'd be curious if we've ever seen an unelected individual who has no boards, no,

can't be kicked out of office.

I wonder if any individual has aggregated this much power without being subject to an election.

Probably one of those financiers many years ago, you know, back in the day.

I think like Milan, J.P.

Morgan.

No, like J.P.

Morgan.

Carnegie or something.

Maybe J.P.

Morgan are one of those.

Yeah, you might be right.

You might be right.

Yeah, they changed, like they ran the government.

They said, we're going to finance this or that.

Or Henry Ford, who Hitler had a picture of in his office.

Maybe.

I think it was more the financiers that really had the big impact on things.

I don't know.

Yeah, that's a fair point.

Anyway, whatever.

Let's get to our first big story.

Sam Altman is back as the CEO of Open AI following that whirlwind of chaos last week, which I think we did a very good job covering it.

Open AI's board is getting a major re-haul with nearly all of its members replaced.

Not all of them, though.

The initial board includes Brett Taylor, as chairman, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, where'd he come from?

And Adam D'Angelo, the only current board member remaining.

I understand he was quite stubborn about that.

Sam appears to be ready to head back to work, posting on X with the new board.

And with Satcha's support, I'm looking forward to returning to OpenAI and building on our strong partnership with Microsoft.

It was interesting.

That was his first tweet.

Looking back.

at it who's the winners losers etc i hate to use that reductive a term but it really there really a lot was happening here so give me your overall.

Just so people know, neither Sam nor Greg Brockman, the former chair on the board, there will still be an internal investigation on what exactly happened with his firing on both sides, by the way.

And this board structure obviously has to change.

The last thing is, of course, that we have three white guys.

It won't stay that way.

So any thoughts on

all these different things?

I think in the fullness of time, the thing that happened here, or what I've been thinking a lot about, is that if you think about the initial mission of OpenAI, I don't even think it was supposed to be a company.

I think they initially saw it as a research institute or a think tank that would help, that would study and analyze and make recommendations around the possibilities and more importantly, the dangers of AI.

And then they discovered we're really good at this.

And then all of a sudden it was a company that became worth $90 billion.

So if you look at the shareholder side of this and the products and the value, the economic value they create, call that capital.

And then you look at the structure and a big component of the structure, a big part of their mission, was to think about humanity or AI in the context of humanity.

So at a very reductive analysis, you have capital versus humanity.

And I would argue that capital

literally smothered humanity in its sleep.

Whether you think it was a good decision or a bad decision, but when there was $90 billion in an amazing product and the leader in the most exciting new technology emerged, all that fun, nice stuff, important stuff about humanity and the fears of AI.

Yeah.

That shit got smothered in its sleep.

I'm not sure it got smothered, Scott.

I think it got

this over.

I get it.

I get it.

I get it.

Let's put this over here on the shelf.

That's all fun.

That's adorable.

Yeah.

But

we were about to do a buyback,

a share buyback in a secondary, and Sequoia and Andreessen are in here and Microsoft put $12 billion to work and they didn't do it because they're worried about AI and they want to protect humanity from AI.

They put $12 or $13 billion into this thing because they think it's going to make a $3 trillion company worth $5 trillion.

That is correct.

And it'll just be very interesting to see how this moment ages because

if,

and it all comes back to the same thing for me, and that is for-profit companies are so amazing at generating profits, they shouldn't be trusted to anything else.

They shouldn't be trusted to do anything else.

And these ridiculous corporate,

what are they called?

Social purpose companies.

No, private benefit, social benefit companies.

ESG investing.

I think it's the ultimate Cheryl Sandbergian move where we're going to pretend that capitalism and the market can work things out on their own.

That when people buy Patagonia or they buy dolphin-friendly tuna or they learn about transparency or some fake organization organization says that Southwest Airlines is an ESG investment, it dilutes the need for democratic institutions to regulate these organizations.

You picked one company that I do think really does walk that walk the walk.

Patagonist.

Agreed.

They walk the walk.

And I think that people who buy there buy there because of that.

I think

successful version of that.

Go ahead.

Agreed.

And I would argue that constitutes less than 0.1% of the market.

Yes, I would agree.

The majority of research shows around ESG or social-minded companies, they're tiebreakers.

The consumers aren't willing to pay for them, but they will, if they're the exact same product at the exact same price, they'll go with the one that's more, that doesn't, you know, that lets dolphins out of its nets or whatever.

But this is,

and I think it's time we come to grips with the fact that a lot of this,

you know, social benefit organization or ESG jazz hands is just that.

Ah, thanks, Vivek Ramaswamy.

Is that Ramaswamy's?

Yeah, he does.

It's one of his books.

Anyway, it's it's a version of that.

That works.

I know.

I'm sorry, but that's what he wrote a whole book about.

But go ahead.

But to that point, there should be an FDA that says when your mom rewrites an opinion on a failed drug and then takes it public with a SPAC and you sell all of your shit

to get a billion dollars, maybe there should be more government oversight.

I worry that...

I worry that at the end of the day, we need to, democratic institutions need to regulate these companies and all these Byzantine structures and virtue signaling are nothing but a Sandbergian move to serve as

a weapon of mass distraction from the fact that for-profit companies are this amazing part of capitalism.

They grow, they innovate, they're full.

So let's get the government in there, in other words.

Let's tax them at a fair rate and not let them take their IP offshore so they can avoid taxes.

And then let's use those taxes to hire outstanding people who try to prevent a tragedy to the commons and regulate these companies.

Yep, I agree.

By the way, Vivek's book is called Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam.

It's all about ESG.

Anyway, let me ask you a different question, though, is board structure.

Obviously, Microsoft is getting a board seat.

Satch Nadella posted about board changes, noting we believe this is the first essential step, the path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance.

He kind of, that was the shot across the bow for him.

And like, we're going to be watching.

Like, we, we get it.

I think a lot of people were surprised they didn't have a seat at all or have even an observer status.

I think that was, he really

pulled the iron out of the fire, as they say here, for of his investment in terms of getting this back in Sam's hands.

But he definitely, if that had not turned out that way, it would have been very bad for Microsoft, as you saw on Friday after he was fired, that they did not have their hands around this in the way they needed to.

You know, it'll be interesting to see if they get a board seat.

The other women that were floated at one point was Lorraine Powell Jobs, Marissa Mayer, Condoleezza Rice.

All these, some of these were rejected because they were too close to Sam.

It'll be interesting to see who they bring to the board.

I sent, I put a list up to

many, many people.

You know, I put Fei Fei Lee on the board.

Why not?

Like, she's neither a doomer nor a, nor a techno-optimist, you know, someone like that who has sort of a middle ground, sort of like the Supreme Court.

You want something that's a little more.

I don't know.

Who is anyone you would think should be on the board?

Larry Summers, I don't know where he popped out of, but sure.

Look,

okay, Microsoft, when I was, let's bring this back to Scott.

In the early 70s, when my mom and dad were still married, there was like a year of happiness.

And my dad was doing well at work.

And I distinctly remember this one night where my dad was winning a golf tournament at Crono Delmar.

And I've never seen my dad that happy.

He was just so cheery.

And he said, do you want to go to the beach?

And he said, let's all go to the beach.

And we got in his Grand Torino.

Oh, my.

And I said.

I think it's going to end badly.

Go ahead.

And he said, do you want to drive?

And I'm like, eight years old.

I'm like, yeah.

And he's like, well, you can sit on my lap and put your hands on the wheel.

Oh, my God.

So I'm driving a grand trainer sitting on my dad's lap.

He's laughing.

I was so happy.

And I'll bring this back.

Okay.

Sam Altman is sitting on Satya Nadella's lap.

But be clear, Satya Nadella owns the car

and is in charge here.

Microsoft is in charge.

And granted.

And granted, Sam has his hands on the wheel, but Microsoft will, if not control this board, have huge influence over it.

Yeah.

And they are going to, you know, this will be a profit-minded board.

They'll add two or three diversity hires that, you know,

which they'll need.

So who would you bring on the board?

Give me some names.

I've given you many.

God, I haven't thought about it.

There's a lot of talented people.

I would want to bring, I would absolutely want to bring someone who

really understands AI and disinformation.

I think those are the biggest threats.

Also, Kara,

you've said this.

You said something that always really

resonated with me.

And that is the people that design these technologies don't put in place the protections because they've never been victims themselves.

And again, we're setting up another technology that's being designed by rich white guys who don't understand what it's like to be the subject of revenge porn or to have your family attacked or feel

physically threatened.

The thing that people,

I mean, as I was thinking through, just going back to Microsoft, the concept of all of these employees going to Microsoft was never a viable, tenable solution, because this is what would have happened.

There were some employees, a lot of employees, because there's a war on talent at Open AI that were making, supposedly senior engineers making $5 million a year.

Because Sam's like, I can raise billions.

This is a race.

So what happens when they show up on the AI team in Microsoft and there's a senior engineer and she's making half a million?

Yeah.

And Bob from AI is making 5 million.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was a problem.

Yeah.

I think it's interesting.

I think that they, you know, someone they should have on the board?

A media person.

You know, like I, Barry Diller is too old, but the lawsuits around copyright, they need a media.

They need a media.

Barry Diller would be great on the board.

Yeah.

I'd love to see a, you know, I'd love to see a guy like Jonathan Haidt on the board.

I think he just has such a clear blue flame.

They need tech people, though, too.

They need people who understand the technology.

They can't just have, like,

I thought Lisa Sue, but she's obviously competitor in terms of the chips and stuff like that.

But there's a, there, you know, there's a bunch of, I had a list of them.

Anyway, they have to be creative here and come up with names we have not heard of.

And I would say young and old, too, right?

Anyway, one of the things that's very clear is the effective altruism movement, something that the former Open AA board members were vocal about.

A loser here, they've been attacking me all weekend, all the effective altruists.

They're not very nice people, these altruists.

Really?

What have they been saying?

Oh, just like, you don't understand.

I'm like,

I am so not a techno-optimist.

It's like,

are you literally know who you're talking to?

They think, obviously, AI could destroy mankind.

They favor safety over speed.

Obviously, we favor safety.

It doesn't mean you have to be slow, but we do favor safety.

As I wrote, one of the former board members, Tasha Macaulay, was particularly apocalyptic about AI.

I had heard that from many people.

By the way, Sam Bankman-Fried was also one of the big believers and backers of effective altruism.

Someone wants to call it ineffective altruism.

It's really gotten a black eye.

A lot of people have written about that.

I mean, isn't it, again, it goes back to the, it's, it's, it's reheated ESG, isn't it?

I guess.

I don't, no, I think it's a little more complex, but it's another one of those things that pops out of Silicon Valley and you're like, oh, just go take psychedelics.

Yeah, that we don't need to be regulated, that we have moved to a different era of philosophical grandeur where we can all still get rich and the government shouldn't get in the way.

Or am I being too reduction?

It's that we know what's best.

It's a small group of people who knows what's best for the rest of humanity.

That's when I, whenever I'm with any of them, I'm like, so you're the one that's going to decide this.

I feel like I'd rather have the dirty mass do it, right?

Like the mass, the mob.

I prefer the mob over this group any day of the week, right?

And I don't like the mob that much.

Well, okay.

Here's who's had the most consequential impact in the last 90 days, who is ring-fence the war in the Middle East from becoming a regional in a World War III.

And it's the most noble organization in the world.

And it's us.

And us is the U.S.

government.

And there will always be people who want to build islands offshore or believe that, you know, different movements, that they should co-opt the government after they've made their money or cosplay the government.

But

I'm going with the most innovative payment platform in history called the U.S.

dollar.

And I'm going with the organization that gets it least wrong over the long term.

And that's the U.S.

government.

Yeah.

I don't know.

One of these things pops up in Silicon Valley all the time.

I find, you know, some of the ideas are good, but making it into a movement in a cult feels really weird.

Anyway, we'll see what happens.

We'll see.

Maybe you'll get on the board of, or I'll get on the board of unlikely, Kara.

I would be the GOP candidate.

Someone was like, Kara should be on the board.

I'm like, I would be the GOP candidate before I would get on the board of Open AI.

I don't know.

You check a lot of boxes, Kara.

I do.

I would do it.

You check a lot of boxes.

I do.

I'd be irritating to them.

They don't know what I'm going to do.

That's the issue.

I'm not controlling them.

What do you mean to them?

Yeah,

let's get on a quick break when we come back.

The new filing shedding light on Meta's underage users right up Scott's Alley.

We'll be speaking with a friend of pivot, Alan Patrickoff, who will explain why he's making a big investment in aging tech.

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Scott, we're back.

Millions of underage users on Instagram were in open secret at Meta.

You're kidding me.

According to a newly unsealed legal complaint filed against the company by 33 states, the complaint shows that Meta received more than 1.1 million reports of Instagram users under the age of 13 since early 2019, but disabled only a fraction of those accounts.

Meta was also allegedly collecting children's personal information without parental permission, violating federal children's privacy law.

This is all part of a multi-state lawsuit we discussed a few weeks back, but this new complaint is unredacted, so we're learning more than ever.

The complaint includes portions of internal emails, employee chats, and company presentations.

Meta put out a statement saying the complaint mischaracterizes our work using selective quotes and cherry-picked documents.

The statement also notes Instagram's terms of use prohibit users under age of 13 in the U.S.

and has measures in place to remove those accounts when we identify them.

I'm not sure it's a smoking gun, but it reveals that the profit Meta earned per 13-year-old users, internally characterized as lifetime value, was quantified in 2018 as roughly $270 per child.

There's also an internal company chart showing how Meta tracked the percentage of 11 and 12-year-olds who used Instagram daily.

I mean, I'm like, really?

You're kidding?

They knew, they knew?

Wow, what a shocker.

I think in terms of institutionalizing

real harm to children,

Meta may have taken the lead from the Catholic Church.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

You're going there.

Okay.

And, well, okay.

And the problem is we've normalized the following.

Mark Zuckerberg, Shell Samberg, and the board of Meta

knew their product was harming children.

There has been research all over the place from different nations showing that suicidal ideation increases is correlated to usage by teenage girls, specifically on Instagram.

They claimed they weren't allowing anyone under the age of 13.

That was their policy.

And while claiming that policy publicly, They had 1.1 million complaints of people under the age of 13, and every person at Meta knew that they were allowing 10, 11, and 12-year-olds on the platform to the extent that per your comments, they actually took the time to put an economic lifetime value on those children that they claim were not being allowed on the platform.

So this is what we have.

We have individuals who knowingly harm our children and continue to harm our children while lying about harming our children.

Let me ask you this.

Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman Freed, one lied to her investors and lost a billion dollars.

There was never a medical test that gave false information.

She lied to her investors.

One individual lied about commingling funds and put allowed funds to go to the investment arm, lost billions.

Most of those investors, it looks like, are going to get all of their money back.

One is in jail for 10 years.

One is probably going to jail for 40 years.

Who has done more harm to the world and to our youth?

Who has done more harm?

Sam Bankman-Freed, Elizabeth Holmes, or Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg?

Well,

what's your answer, Scott?

Let me guess.

Well, it's a rhetorical question, but I'll just put it out there.

Yeah,

I think they knew.

They knew.

Come on.

You had to know.

It's like cigarette.

It reminds me, I'm not going to use the Catholic Church because that was sexual abuse.

Okay.

So I'm going to move away from that one.

I would do it more towards cigarettes.

The cigarette,

but they were promoting cigarette usage by young people by the cartoons, et cetera, et cetera.

And they knew people were using, young kids were using cigarettes and they did nothing to stop it.

Right.

That's remarkable.

I think Mark Benioff, when he called them a cigarette company to me, which he got in trouble for when he did that interview, is exactly on point.

It's a cigarette company and it's addictive.

It's

attractive to kids.

It's also a place kids should not be without parental permission.

I just, I think you and I both agree on this.

I try to keep my kids off of these things.

They get on them, right?

There's a point where

I don't think my kids use them.

I was luckily.

I don't think they use Snapchat a little too early, I think.

But I wasn't as worried about that platform, so I didn't put my foot down.

But they certainly, people in their class were on these platforms and everybody knew it.

And by the way, the parents have a role in this too.

I'm not going to abrogate parental responsibility here, but they knew this was the case.

I don't think it should come as any shock.

The question is, if they're going to pay for it, it's not a good look for them.

What would you do if you were them?

We did it.

We're sorry.

If I were Meta?

Yeah.

I just can't.

I would, if, if the board had any,

had any concern.

The board's not going to do it.

Again, money and capital wins.

As you say.

But in this case, it matters, right?

It matters a little more.

The government, the FCC, the DOJ

need to punish this company.

And when I say punish it, either a fine that actually gives them pause before they continue to monetize kids who supposedly they're not allowing on the platform.

I just think Meta has brought a new term.

I think the cigarette companies were less evil, Kara.

I don't think cigarette companies were trying to sell cigarettes to 11-year-olds.

Well, yes, they were with the ads.

Remember those ads?

I think that was...

Do you think they really thought they were going as low as 11?

Yes.

I think they knew just who they were aiming at when they did those ads.

And they also hid all kinds of studies about the dangers of these things.

That's fair.

I think it's a moot point to talk about what they should do.

We always digress.

We always keep hoping that the better angels of these board members and these CEOs are going to show up.

They don't.

The profit motive is so powerful.

that they should, again, these companies should be trusted to do nothing else because they're really good at it.

It's a failure of us.

It's a failure of us to elect people

who are smart enough to say, all right, if you're going to elevate content, if you're going to depress our teens, you have to be legally liable for this.

And not only fines, but at the end of the day, and I've said this before, none of this ends until there's a perp walk.

None of this ends.

Who would you put in jail?

I don't have the skills or the license or the command, the position to start making statements like that.

Well, they will make the excuse that they had measures in place to remove these accounts.

That's what they'll say.

Look, we had a system.

It just, people got through.

People got kids lied.

What do we do?

Oh, well, that kind of stuff.

That's what they're going to do.

My kid can't get a driver's license before the age of 16.

And I would argue that there's probably some that do.

There's some kids who drink before the age of 21.

Didn't you just tell us you drove as an eight-year-old?

But go ahead, keep going.

I drove on my dad's lap.

But these companies, as inefficient as the government is, as stupid as those government idiots are, without the use of technology and these geniuses, they figure out a way to age gate driver's licenses and alcohol, but they can't.

But Instagram can't keep an 11-year-old off their platform.

Yep.

Yep.

I mean,

we're not talking about the realm of the possible.

We're talking about the realm of the profitable.

And they have decided that we just can't figure 1.1 million complaints.

They knew, they knew, they knew, they knew, they knew, they knew.

They knew what they've been doing about it.

They did as little as possible about it.

Let's just say.

We're going to put a lifetime value on the people that we don't think are getting on the platform.

The government needs more to really embarrass them, but they don't seem to be easily embarrassed.

Anyway, we'll see.

Let's bring in our friend friend of Pivot.

Alan Patrickoff is the co-founder and chairperson of Primetime Partners, a VC fund that invests in people and companies focusing on older adults.

He's also a longtime investor who's been described as the pioneering venture capitalist by the Wall Street Journal.

I've known him forever.

Welcome, Alan.

It's great to be here.

Yeah, you've had quite a career in venture capital.

I'm going to ask you about that in the end, but I want to talk about what you're doing now.

You started this fund in 2020 at age 85, calling it your third professional act.

Why did you focus on this?

Why do you think it's important to invest in the longevity economy, I guess, and age tech?

I don't know what you call it, but talk about what moved you there.

Actually, what happened was my wife had had Alzheimer's for probably 10 to 12 years, and I had gone through this whole process.

And in the process of doing that, I found what it takes to keep someone alive and also

what the challenges are as people are aging.

And I started reading and I started reading what was happening at Stanford and what was happening at Harvard and almost every university was starting to deal with the problem of longevity and the challenges that people had.

And I also was shocked to find out that the fastest growing part of

the society is really people over 60.

By 2030, there are going to be more people over 60 or 65 than there are going to be under 18.

So we're really,

it's the fast-growing

part of the economy.

Everyone's

focused on millennials and services for millennials.

And I happened to find out that Abby Levy,

who had been the president of Thrive Global, Ariana Huffin's company,

was interested in exactly the same subject.

I was found out through my son, who had been our classmate.

And we got together and we were both thinking exactly the same way and saying, this is a great opportunity.

There are lots of investment opportunities.

There have got to be lots of investment opportunities.

The market's growing.

Let's start a fund and let's do something that's in a realistic size, but that

has, you know, just explores the different places to put money.

And we've been in business now

just about three years.

And we've seen, honestly, it sounds so overwhelming.

We've seen over 1,500 possible investments.

You know, some, and that doesn't include the ones, of course, that you just don't answer the phone or you just throw away.

These are serious people.

And we've learned that most of them are startups.

There aren't very many later stage companies.

They've mostly been done by younger people.

They've mostly been done by people who have in some way been exposed to the problem of caregiving, that someone in their family had a hearing problem, someone had a problem of breathing, someone had cancer, someone was bedridden, someone was lonely, someone was at assisted living or at senior facility.

And they all, you know, they created companies.

Exactly.

So

talk about some of the products that you, how much money do you have to put to bear?

And then what are some of the things you've invested in?

Give me like two or three examples.

Sure.

We've raised $50 million and we did it to be modest.

We weren't trying to, you know.

That's small for you.

Yeah.

That's small.

Yeah.

But you want to be realistic.

I'm not one who likes to sit with a lot of unused capital.

We've now been three years, we've invested, done 32 investments, and we invested about 40 million of the money we had.

So, you know, we're, you know, three years in.

And I always say the half-life of the investments, and you remember they're startups because most of them started up the year before we invested or at the time or during our time.

So their half-life is probably a year and a half old.

And we've made.

32 plus investments.

And to give you an idea of some of the companies,

one of the early ones we made was a company called CareWell.

There are 65 million people taking care of people today.

And they don't know the first thing about what do you need, you know, starting with diapers, starting with bed pads, starting with equipment to help them, starting with services.

And so we invested in a company called CareWell, which has taken off like a rocket ship, frankly,

and has been proactive in trying to help and educate people who need help in caring for people.

All of us, and I know, Kara, I think you faced it at some point.

We have right now.

I'm in meetings and every time I say, how many of you are caring for somebody?

And almost all the audience, and if they're not doing it now, they're going to care for it.

One of my favorites is a company called Cenogenics, which is basically a personalized hybrid performance health age management solution.

That's a long way of saying you go to them to find,

to extend your life cycle.

It's a longevity chain of clinics.

They have 20 around the country and they do all your biomarkers and they take your blood tests and they take your DEXA scan and they do your DNA and they do everything to try to determine.

What are the things you need, whether it's nutraceuticals or whether it's hormones or whether you need to go

obviously, you know, an exercise program,

thinking about nutrition.

And the average age they have is about 54 years old.

And the average length of time people are with them, which is, to me, really is what impressed me, is this is a company I've been around a while before we started.

It's the only company we had that had been around a little while before.

The average age is probably 58.

And people stick with them five or six years.

So this does not go in and out.

Good to see you, Alan.

So if you think demographics are destiny,

there's just a tidal wave of people,

capital.

I mean, this all makes sense.

It's not, to be blunt, it's not an original idea.

I remember Ken Dykewald's book back in the 90s.

I think it was called Age Wave.

And I remember meeting with another woman who'd started a fund.

There's been quite a few funds with this strategy.

You just put up the slides and it just makes a lot of sense.

But my sense is these funds haven't offered the same returns as kind of the traditional venture or technology-focused venture capital funds.

Why to date has this not been a great investment strategy, despite the fact that demographics are just overwhelmingly on your side here?

Well, Scott, let me take exceptionally one case.

When we started, we were virtually the first dedicated fund, as far as we knew.

There may have been one or two others, one out in the West Coast and one in Chicago, that were focused in this area.

Since we started, there are a whole bunch of other people.

Yes, you're right.

Every major fund, whether it was NEA, not necessarily Great Profit, every

Great Prof too, had some investment that related to this area.

That's true.

But we were dedicated.

When we started, we said we're going to become not only investors in this area, but we're going to become the thought leaders.

It's too early.

We have not seen the application of AI.

It's starting.

It's starting.

But this is not

a

we have we have a couple of software companies, but this is an area that is

dedicated to do services.

And

I would say we haven't yet seen the impact of how well these companies are going to do.

It is not, I say it's not a new AI fund, although all these services ultimately will

benefit from the, you know, all new technologies, but they are,

it's a category that is, I think, open-ended category and with lots of interest.

And yet, yes, I don't think it's had an opportunity to prove itself.

I mean, I just said the year, our investments are the half-life is a year and a half old.

I mean, you know that for a startup fund, you can't prove too much overnight.

I mean, Rome wasn't built in a day and either was a fund.

So there's, let me ask you, there's a lot of talk about age these days.

And as Scott says, it is a bigger topic than people realize, and yet it hasn't been focused on.

I'd love you to talk a little bit about why you think it hasn't been focused on.

And also, what do people get wrong about discussions about age in the workplace?

In a column for Fortune last year, you wrote about how there had been efforts to tackle racism, sexism, and LGBTQ discrimination in the workplace, but not ageism.

Talk a little bit about both those things.

Well, you're asking me all the great questions.

I've been a big proponent for, you know, ageism is something we just gotta, we gotta gotta conquer as much as all the other isms.

And

it's interesting you're talking about the workplace because we've been working on a deal right now, which is focused on dealing with corporations, not the government specifically, but with corporations who have got to think about what's going to, what are they doing about their workforce that's aging out?

What are they doing to retain it?

What are they doing to retain that knowledge?

Also, what are they doing to prepare these people for another career?

And if you've you've read my book, No Red Lights, I can't forgive me for just mentioning the day,

but it's, I say I'm going to live to 114.

Now, if you, you know me pretty well, but I tell you, there are not many people who don't buy my

age expression.

If I don't make the 114 come at my funeral and laugh at me, but I really.

I will not do that.

I live.

My mindset is to live that long.

That means I'm 89.

I'm going to be 90 this year.

You know, I've got 25 years left.

And what do people do besides, you know, if they're being put into forced retirement, what are the other things they could do with their second career?

What,

and I mean a career, you know, should they become a poet or should they start the same business all over again?

Should IBM find a way for retaining the thousands of people who are going to be retiring out

in terms of either helping them retire out or finding a way to keep them and transfer that knowledge?

So

workforce training and retraining, I'll tell you an interesting thing.

An issue we were working on just on Friday,

I think you must be aware of the 529s.

529s are what we all use for our children, our grandchildren to prepare for college.

But there is some slight provision.

that that 529 can be used also for retraining.

So we're trying to really determine it would make a hell of a lot of sense to have someone who's set up 529s for all their children who are not using it, by the way, because

compounding works if you start something at age one.

And why not retrain a lot of older people with some of these 529s?

So it's just an interesting idea.

But we have to think about what to do besides.

With the workplace, because we're not going to have enough workers.

Just people understand how active you are.

You ran the New York City Marathon last year and you also attended Burning Man, neither of which I could imagine doing in one year.

So you're a very unusual cat, I think.

But I'm trying to inspire other people to think that way, including the two of you.

Yeah, well, we're trying.

Scott is turning 29 next year, Scott.

Next question.

So asking for a friend, what advice,

what behaviors, as you look.

look over the course of your life and your nutrition and your exercise or your approach to relationships.

Give us the hacks here.

I'll tell you what I do.

First of all, I'm happy to tell you I'm getting married in 10 days.

Wow.

And to an age-appropriate woman in her 70s who wouldn't hide it.

That's the first thing.

But I can't recommend that for everybody, but who knows?

That opportunity is there.

And one of the things that aren't getting married is it's inspired so many of our friends to say, God, you can have a second

or third love in your life.

You don't have to say,

it's all over for me.

But what do I do?

I walk every place, every place I can.

I walk to work today.

I have an office still at Greycroft.

I'm Chairman Emeritus.

I walk there.

I walk back to primetime.

I walk to the doctor's office.

I walk to the theater district.

I walk home.

Walking is fabulous.

I walk.

my partner, future bride, in the park every morning at 6.30 and put it

or four miles and more on the weekends.

So walking is one thing.

Secondly, I have an exercise therapist.

I do training.

I'm fortunate, I can afford it two times a week.

I also

do eat relatively normal, except I have learned a very interesting trick.

I weigh myself twice a day.

early in the morning and at night.

And if I gain by more than two pounds, I know I'm a little nuts.

I skip one meal the next day, usually breakfast or lunch.

I also have learned another thing, which is, I know people will laugh at it, but my future wife and I, I used to go to dinner with her and she pecked at her plate and never eat anything.

And I said, this is crazy.

Why am I ordering two dinners for someone who doesn't eat them?

And I pay for it.

Let's split dinners because when you go out to dinner, the courtions are so enormous these days.

And so we have been sharing meals for the last couple of years.

And I assure you, none of us, neither of us have lost out by that.

But that has been a very helpful discipline of, you know, eating and not overeating.

And so if you take those,

I do take some vitamins.

And that's really,

you know, what I'm saying.

I live a very active life.

I'll tell you the most important thing, Scott.

And you two have it.

I have a very positive attitude towards life.

I really believe I'm going to to live longer.

I really act like someone.

I only know the word yes.

Let me ask you a question.

The longtime investor,

you mentioned Greycroft, which you ran for many years.

You made some good bets and not-so-good bets.

And sorry not to make you not positive, but I'd like to know what you thought.

It's true.

It's true.

One is what you thought was one of your best bets, one of your least good bets, and how you look at venture.

Oh, my, you know, if you ask, it's a tough one.

My best bet, I would say, you're now pushing me to, you know, what I always try to avoid.

I guess I would say when I went into the cellular communication business

in the 1980s, cellular did not exist.

At that time, ATT and Motorola, who had

two-way talk radios

in whatever cars they were, predicted that the market for cellular or for voice would be 2% of the population.

And I backed a team of guys to make the first application for a cellular franchise, which turned out to be obviously today, I think cellular

penetration is probably 80, 90,

maybe 100%, because a lot of people have two phones.

I'll throw in Audible.

When I went into Audible in the 1990s,

it was

no one, there was no iPhone.

So we had to come up with our own device to translate

books.

Yeah.

And now, you know, I'm i'm guessing it's well over a billion dollars a year and there are tens of millions of people who use audible uh to to bring it more currently you know i've been a big fan of the media my whole career uh i did uh uh well you know starting with new york magazine and and uh huffing and post and and uh i i was one of the people invested in the original axios which we've now sold to cox communication one bad one give me one that you're like oh

oh god i I mean, there's so many bad ones.

Let's just say the bad ones have been because

I make the criteria that management, product development, marketing,

and the economics should all be present when you make an investment.

And

it's a very helpful discipline in doing follow-on investments, even more so than initial investments.

And I think that, you know, I make a mistake on

the people,

how long it takes to get a product into market is a big problem.

The size of the market,

I don't think I've made too many mistakes.

And I think the economics may be the biggest thing that is a setback because people don't, when they all get excited about a business,

I have found almost consistently, they don't stop and say, well, how do I make money in this business?

Have I realistically made the assumptions of what the gross margin is and what I'm going to have to spend to sell it?

I mean, one of our biggest concerns in our area of primetime, taking it back to that, is what does it cost to get to attract this market that we're trying to attract?

And we're very focused on cost of customer acquisition.

And I think that's the biggest obstacle we face is how to reach them.

You know, I had a meeting yesterday with two women who came out of MBC who want to start a streaming service for older people to you know entertain them of all kinds of ideas they're really good but I say to them how are you going to get the audience how do you you know how do you find that audience there's not you don't just turn on a button and it

right good point good point I would imagine that the amount of capital that's flown uh flowed into the asset class of venture capital since you started in this game Alan is a

somewhere between 50 and 500 fold.

I mean, my guess is when you started, it wasn't wasn't a niche asset class, but it was a small group of people on one road in the Bay Area.

And now it is a global institutional asset class.

All those hundreds of billions of dollars that have flown in or flowed into the asset class, do you think that's been a good or a bad thing?

That's a fair question.

I don't know.

I think that there are a lot of people who've probably gotten into this business and who've not had the discipline of investing.

and i think that's the biggest problem and that really shown itself in 20 and 21.

i don't know whether it was related to the pandemic or not but uh

we saw a lot of excesses i i think you know it goes back the last time was like that was at 2000 which really really

set me back mentally when every single week there was a company that couldn't meet its payroll.

We are not seeing that now.

I have to tell you, the companies are well enough funded.

I don't think I've had one company that, even in my early startup group, that says, I'm sorry, we're going to close down if we can't meet payroll on Friday.

I think that there have been a lot of overvaluation, Scott.

And, you know, it's not fair for me to criticize my compatriots.

And I'm probably guilty of some of it.

I tell you, with Crime Time, we worked so hard to discipline ourselves, but we were facing in many cases what you said, people getting interested in this area who didn't have the discipline, who really later stage investors and just wanted to have a piece of the action and were pricing us out of deals or forced us into things that we just knew weren't right.

So we're in pretty good shape.

No one's in perfect shape.

But I would say to you that there's been too much undisciplined large amounts of money.

you know, whether the hedge funds or the growth funds or funds that have just been able to raise astronomical amounts of money.

And if you've got the money, what are you going to do with it?

You have to spend it.

I don't know of anybody or not very many who say, I'm sending you back your money.

Yeah.

Anyway, Alan, I'm hoping to laugh at your 113th birthday, not your funeral.

I think that's an incredible goal.

I don't know if Scott and I will be around for that, but we would like to be.

We really appreciate it.

Alan, you're a legendary venture capitalist.

It's great to meet you, Alan.

We spend a lot of time on the show talking about big issues because we're committed to leaving Alan Patrick off a better world.

Yes, we are.

We are indeed.

Anyway, thank you so much.

We appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

All right.

Goodbye.

Scott, that guy is going to outlive us, isn't he?

Oh, my God.

I love Alan Patrickoff.

He's one of my favorites.

Inspiration.

He's always had a good attitude.

He has a good attitude.

He's curious.

He was, he comes to DLD, and I remember him coming up to me and saying, he had a pen out.

And he's like, what is your trick?

What is your trick for remembering all that data?

And I looked at him and I said, drugs.

He's like, he's like, well, I've done that.

What else?

Yeah, he's really.

He's really.

I have had ups and downs with venture capitalists.

I've always, he was very involved in a lot of media investing.

And I asked him a lot of questions when I was doing some of my stuff too.

And I always

felt like I got a straight answer from him compared to a lot of people.

Anyway, pretty cool.

He's absolutely right about this.

Someone's got to unlock this market.

And he's right about that.

In any case, one more quick break.

We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and sales.

Well, the win, the ceasefire is continuing.

It looks like it's going to hold even longer.

They're talking about an extension of it.

I think that's always, once you start doing that, it's a good thing, right?

You've got, once you start stopping, it's a good thing.

It doesn't mean it's going to solve everything, but it certainly is a good thing.

I just don't know how else you can put it.

I think President Biden's done a great job here and that

and that he's altered with the hostages coming home.

It adds to that.

It means we're...

in the more hopeful mood of a terrible, tragic situation.

So that would be my win.

My fail, I think this Facebook thing was disappointing to see, not a surprise.

I think that would be it.

Oh, the fail was these shootings that are happening all over.

There's this one shooting up in Vermont at Burlington of these kids.

Yeah, Palestinian kids.

I just, we got to, everyone's got to get a hold of themselves.

If they can do it in Israel right now, we can do it here.

That was just a real disappointment.

I don't care what side you're on.

You don't shoot.

This is just not the American way.

It's just not.

It's not.

It's not.

So that would be my fail.

Yeah, agreed.

So I'm starting with my fail.

So four-year-old Hasaj abigail idon was um i won't say freed that you can't i don't think you can actually free a hostage was released uh and she witnessed the slaughter of her parents before she was taken hostage and it's just

okay it's one thing obviously we live in a world where that can even happen as a fail i'm disappointed that more people in

Hollywood who were quick to hold up signs, bring home our girls when there was an awful kidnapping of girls

a decade ago.

It strikes me that

there's a lot of virtue signaling before people finally get to what I think would be the most obvious one, and that is,

in my opinion, you just lose all moral authority when you continue to hold on to hostages.

And

I'm happy that these folks have been released.

I'm a little bit more cynical about the ceasefire.

I consider myself an amateur student of war history, and I believe Hamas needs to be destroyed.

I think there's only one retirement plan befitting of Hamas.

And in war, you find, you fix their target, you follow, and you finish them.

And typically, ceasefires are used to reorganize.

I think the IDF will pay the price for the ceasefire.

I hope that the ceasefire

It calls on people's better angels.

I do think that the Egyptians, Qataris, and the Americans

and folks from both sides deserve a lot of credit for, I can't imagine the complexity of trying to to negotiate something like this.

But the fact that we have just a concept that a four-year-old is released as a hostage is just,

I don't know, it just seems unthinkable.

And I, you know, show me another picture of Salma Hayek or Julia Roberts on the red carpet saying, bring our girls home from 10 years ago.

And it strikes me that Hollywood has been

uncomfortably quiet, except for a few people who immediately invoke the wrath of Twitter or TikTok.

And I realize there's a lot of emotion on the side.

14,000 Palestinians have been killed, including 40% children.

But

the fact that we live in a society where we have to celebrate this is just

something.

I do believe America needs to be more involved.

I think our disengagement from the Middle East has created a vacuum that has been bad for everybody.

Well, we're engaged now.

And my win is:

I think that the $4.3 billion plea deal with Binance for money laundering and up to 18 months in prison for their CEO,

I think you need an algebra of deterrence.

I think when individuals turn a blind eye to trafficking, to financing terrorism, to money laundering, I think the government plays a role here.

And I think the incentives are in place.

And that is an innovator who attracts capital, who's a visionary and great with technology, can aggregate so much wealth in America.

I think what is missing is the incentives or the disincentives to not engage in harm.

See above meta

when you know you're engaging in harm, but when it's raising so much money, you believe that you can weaponize government, that you can co-opt government officials, and that you can get away with criminal activity.

And so, and again, the unsung heroes of our democracy, which billionaires want to shitpost all the time, is the good men and women in our security apparatus, working for the government, working for our justice system, who spend night and day building these cases saying these people are engaging in activity that is bad for the Commonwealth.

And that when people lose all of their money or when someone is trafficked or a terrorist organization has access to funds when they otherwise wouldn't if these people were following the law, we are going to find you and we're going to put your ass in jail.

That is an important part of the system.

And that half of the system has not been in full force over the last decade when it comes to tech.

So I just want to, my win is our great men and women in government who work tirelessly to build these cases and send a signal to young people that regardless of how smart you are, regardless of how many quarterbacks or models want to hang out with you or former presidents because of the wealth you're aggregating, if you are breaking the law, and let's be honest, you know you are breaking the law.

the government's going to come for you.

I think that is an important part of the system.

And we spend too much time honoring

and fallating the incentives and not recognizing the good people who put in place the disincentives.

Yep.

Excellent.

Excellent.

We love our civil society.

I sound so indignant today.

I am so indignant today.

Anyway,

you need to get some help from Alan Patrickoff because he's

on the New York marathon with him.

What Alan highlights, and I'm obsessed with these two doctors, Peter Attia and Andrew Humerman, is that in Alan speaks of it, everyone's obsessed with longevity.

And what they are not obsessed with enough is the quality of your life.

And if you look at that guy, it's not about living to 110.

It's about being 89 and being that fucking sharp and good looking and mentally astute.

Yeah, he is.

And also his wife, who had Alzheimer's, was elegant and wonderful, by the way.

They had a wonderful life.

As I recall, my mom ran into them in Italy once and they were living it up.

That's how it's going to be for us, Scott.

You and me.

Anyway, we want to hear from you.

Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

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

Okay, Scott, that's the show.

We're counting down to the end of 2023 soon.

So we'll have a lot of shows coming up.

And here we'll be back on Friday with more.

Scott, read us out.

Today's show is produced by Larry Names, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Intertot engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Mia Silverio, and Gaddy McBain.

Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

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

We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care.

Have a great rest of the week.

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Why do we want that so badly?

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That's this month on Explain It to Me, presented by Pureleaf.

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