How Big Tech is Responding to Russia, with guest Nicole Perlroth

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Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher. And I have a new boss, Kara.
Who? Oh, Chris Lecht, yes.

Yeah. And you know him.
Can you talk

to Kenny? He came up to me at an event, and I think it was a New York Times event that Andrew Ross Sorkin was doing.

And he said how much he loved Pivot, I recall, and how much he was a big fan and et cetera.

Which is the only reason I like him. But he gave me his card.
And it turned out he was... Colbert's showrunner, obviously.

And I was like, oh, we've always wanted to have Colbert on and went on and on about that. But he's got great reputation.

Obviously, Colbert is a great show and has really done great great through the pandemic and is very smart.

He did Morning Joe. He created that.

So he's a very well-liked. I can tell you that.
Like it's really interesting. Usually you get someone and they're like, oh, that asshole.
But he's very well liked.

People like him and are very happy for his success. I think it was a very canny move by David Zasloff.
He's also very journalistically oriented, which is good for.

you know, for

the CNN, I think.

And I have to say, I think through this Ukraine crisis, they have shown how good they are, right? In terms of

getting into the country, doing reporting. They're really leading.
Instead of like people pontificating, they're actually reporting. And that's, I think, their strongest.

The reporters of CNN

really get the short shrift in terms of the entire network gets attacked because of a lot of the blabbity blab, essentially.

And I think it's really nice to see reporters on the ground doing their job and really being helpful.

And I'm sure their ratings are up. That's not why that's not a good reason to be up, but it's still, I'm really impressed by their coverage.
And I'm totally tuned in to see you and N.N.

and on this whole thing. I don't know what you think.

Yeah, I feel the same way. I've been watching a lot of CNN, and I find, you know, you see a lot of people not only doing good journalism, but you forget it's not a

safe job. You're taking real risks.

And it's,

I remember, it harkens back to, I remember at the Times, the managing editor at the time, and his name was Bill Keller, he had to excuse himself from dinner because he was negotiating for the release of one of his journalists from the Tower.

And

it was just, you think, gosh, that's, I wonder when you go to, when you go to Columbia School of Journalism, are you really signing up for that?

But I've been, and granted, I don't watch a lot of Fox, but I haven't seen as many people with kind of boots on the ground as CNN. So you're right.
I think it's a nice moment.

You know, Fox has a bunch of reporters there.

It's commentators, except for Jennifer Griffin, who's amazing at Fox, who keeps schooling everybody there every time they say something wrong. She's like, and that is inaccurate.

It's pretty, I feel she's doing God's work over at Fox News. But they have some very good reporters on the ground, but CNN is dominating in terms of the visuals.

You know, obviously the New York Times is doing a great job, the Washington Post, as they always do, but it gives you a good idea of why they got so popular during various international crises, and it's very useful.

A lot of reporters you don't see that often,

and they're all great. They're all doing really very moving stuff, they're doing great reports.
You feel like you understand what's happening.

I think they're keeping the politics to a minimum, except when Trump says something idiotic or one of the, you know.

But then again, they also report a lot of Republicans are very supportive of Ukraine. And so it's good.

It's really good. He's really, it's a good sign.
I think it's a good hire. More importantly, how does this affect Scott? Well, I'll tell him you're great.
I don't know. I don't know.
He likes you.

That's not what I was looking for, Auntie Kara. I don't know.
He's a late night guy. That plays well to the show.
He did Morning Joe. He did.

He's good.

He did Colbert, but there's a lot going on on that show that's very pertinent to now and funny, you know, news and funny. So you're in a good moment.
Oh, my God. I've just figured it out.

I'm the new Mika. It was so obvious.
We talked about this. I'm clearly the new Mika.
I'm going to show you to come over. Joe Karis Wisher.

Anyway, just so you know, speaking of video and being the new Mika, you have far less hair than she does. I do have nice legs.
It's a big day for us at Pivot now.

Instead of just listening to us, you can see us as well. What a thrill.
What a thrill. Okay.
All right.

Select portions of each show will be available in video form on Salesforce Plue, as I like to call it. It's Salesforce Plus.
So head to salesforce.com/slash plus and sign up to watch.

It's the best price of all free. That's right.
He really is that ugly. I, of course, have a cold sore

to inaugurate this, and I look really tired. All my children were home last night.
And I'm going to my dermatologist this afternoon and get about eight pounds of flesh cut off of me. What a thrill.

There's a reasonable podcast.

A nice scar, a nice scar. But anyway, we're here on video.
We're happy to be here.

We're excited for you to see us in action and reacting to this long, long podcast love story between us is going to now be in video. It's very exciting.

In touch with your emotions.

No, I'm really not. Okay, we've got a lot to talk about from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, how tech giants are responding, challenges to the financial sector.

And we'll talk with the New York Times Nicole Perlroth about Russian cyber attacks. And also on the home front, we'll talk about a new CDC guidance around masking, even as truckers come into DC soon.

Although I think

that story's moved along as they're trucking along. I think we should send the trucker convoy to Ukraine.
That would be really good.

Anyway, but first, the Senate wants to know if TikTok is contributing to teen eating disorders.

In a letter to TikTok, Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tammy Baldwin asking for details about content that promotes unhealthy eating. There's quite a bit of it on TikTok.

There's also healthy eating stuff there. I've watched a lot of it recently.
TikTok announced in December that it would update its algorithm to combat the issue. They're very quite responsive.

TikTok is much more responsive than the other. They don't want to, they've seen the trouble Instagram and others have gotten into.

So it's interesting. And then there was a really interesting New York Times column this week saying there's no real proof of this yet.
It's just the beginning of research.

So it was sort of on Facebook Facebook's side that nobody knows yet. Didn't say they didn't do it.
They just said the research is still nascent and we shouldn't

make those causal

correlations or whatever you call it. I'm not a social scientist.
Anyway, what do you think about this? TikTok's doing this.

Yeah, I was disappointed. I was disappointed because I like TikTok and I've always thought TikTok was a bit more joyous.

And I like the fact that there's a lot of people who say, I was kicked off at TikTok or banned and I don't know why. I like the fact that they're airing on, well, we don't know.

Let's just kick them off or suspend them for two weeks. I think that we need more of that on social media.

The disappointing thing is, I mean, this jars you because if you, I have a close friend from business school whose daughter suffered from an eating disorder.

And getting

an arm's distance view of that, you just see how terrifying it is.

You You know, watching,

and the way my friend described it is it's, you're watching your daughter slowly kill herself over two years and you can't do anything about it or you feel helpless to do anything about it.

And this, I'm going to be clear, this story ends well. I went on to college.
It's doing, it's doing really well. But

I'd always kind of hoped that TikTok would just be better. And I actually think they're trying to be better.

But when you think of the, the Wall Street Journal did some great reporting here, and it had its bots sort of go deep and start watching diet and content and the algorithms immediately go, oh, they love this and our job is for affirmation.

So we're going to take them further and further into this hermetically sealed bubble and seem make dangerous content seem normal.

And I was trying to think about them when you think about what these bots and these algorithms do.

If I walked into a bar and there was artificial intelligence watching my every mood and it found like when I was taking a sip of a drink and it saw that I ordered

Zacapa and Coke or a Diplomatico on the rocks or whatever it is, and it said, okay, at this moment, he ordered a second, and the second was also Zacapa and Coke.

The algorithm would immediately go, all right, line up six, have them ready.

And when the lights go down and he laughs or he's ready for another drink before he even stops drinking, put another one in front of him. And that's what these algorithms do.
These algorithms take a

social drinking and turn it into alcoholism

just in an artificially driven format. Look, I think you should read this New York Times article because I do think more research is needed.

I think, of course, the teen girls thing got more attention from politicians because it sounds good.

But I do think clear that these companies should make available their research on this and use it as

a way to understand this, how this happens. And so one of the things that's important is we don't quite know what...

is the effect because listen i was in college like half of the girls around me had an eating disorder i remember doing an article on one that was just disturbing and i'm not going to go into it because it was so disturbing interviewing this young woman who had an eating disorder and I did a piece for the student newspaper because it was not a lot of people knew about it back way back in the dark ages when I was in college

but so it's this is not a new thing it's just the ability to to just like you know there's a great story uh by a Megan Tui and um I can't remember who she did it with but it was great about suicide assist people assisting each other to how to commit suicide it's just become it becomes more

it becomes easier to find people online and have you help you and give you these tools. And when you're seeing these things on TikTok, and TikTok is fairly addictive, you start looking at them.

You want to do that. You start watching more.
You start watching more. All I get is air fryers right now, for example.

Like I'm like obsessed with air fryers and therefore I get all kinds of air fryer content. But

it's really interesting where you get served, isn't it? Yeah. Oh, I guess

it's food, food, and that's about it. Food, food.

Which is interesting. Because I've started to look because I like watching people cook and see what they make.

But

reinforcement is not great here. And so I think opening your eyes.
You didn't ask me what I get. What do you get? Don't even ask me.

Because I don't want to know. Tell me.
What do you get? I get dogs,

which makes sense. Yeah.

I get.

chiropractors adjusting people, which I did not know I'm fascinated with. It's very pleasing.
I need to start finding that. Go ahead.
It's fairly relaxing to watch someone get their back adjusted.

And I get people talking about social justice who forgot to put on their bra.

It's the dog, the dog algorithm.

This is what you get on video. You get Kara's head in her hands.
Interesting, interesting.

It's true. I get these ridiculously fucking hot people who forgot to put on their bras talking about really important social issues.
And I'm so there for it. I'm so there for it.
All right. Okay.

In any case, more research, more transparency. Also, Amy Klobuchar has a bill about transparency of this research.
It should be open to researchers so they can understand it. Period.

We love Senator Cash.

We love Senator Cash. Okay, we do.
We don't know why, but we do. All right.
Elon Musk's troubles with the SEC don't seem to be going anywhere.

Again, this week, the agency reportedly investigating Musk and his brother, Kimball, for possible insider trading.

Kimball Musk sold off $100 million of stock one day before Elon's Twitter poll last November. Kimball also sits on Tesla's board of directors.

You know, I think they're testing the SEC and what it can do, enforcement.

He's not the first, remember if Mark Cuban got in that fight with the SEC. So they're truly testing the SEC to see if it has any teeth, which is interesting in some ways.

Again, this is all allegations,

but

the beef between Elon Musk and the SEC is going to be an interesting one to see where it goes.

Yeah, I think.

So I picked a title for my book. It's called Adrift, America and 100 Charts.
And you've obviously been asking me a lot about my book. Not.

But anyways,

when you think about it. Adrift?

Adrift. Well,

we've lost faith in our institutions. We're not having as much social interaction.
We're not having as much sex. Right, I like it.
Adrift.

We don't trust the institutions, whether it's the military or Congress or the church, to help bring us back together again. And so we are, our discourses coarse.

We immediately start with hating 50% of our brothers and sisters. We think a transgender swimmer or a conservative podcaster are the enemy, not 180,000 troops pouring across

the Ukrainian border. I mean, Ukraine,

not the Ukraine, but Ukraine. But you can say the Ukrainian border, you see.
Yes, that's correct. Thank you for that.
No problem. But we're, and a big component of this is that we lack this

preoccupation or this idolization or sycophantry around the individual versus institutions that, oh, if you're willing to stick up your middle finger in the face of our great institutions, including the SEC, which sets us, which creates a set of protocols and standards such that we can have capital formation in the form of the public markets, you know, these are good people trying to do good work.

And if you have information that the public doesn't have and you trade on that, it creates a lack of faith in the markets and no one's going to buy your stock when you try and go public.

So I'm on the side of the SEC.

And when you have the founder's brother selling $100 million in stock the day before he takes a poll that's basically saying, I'm going to sell the stock, you know, that warrants an investigation.

And maybe they're going to find there was nothing there.

Their defense will be, or my defense if I was the SEC lawyer or the lawyer representing Musk, would be he actually filed with the SEC that he was going to sell.

So there isn't an A before the before the poll. So there isn't an asymmetry of information here.
But anyone who has over $10 million in stock and is on a board should do planned sales.

And that is, I'm going to sell this much on this date. Yeah.

Because you just subject yourself to scrutiny and you create the illusion of impropriety, which the firm doesn't need and the markets don't need. But

I have to say, I think the SEC should just do its job. You know what I mean? Like, look, they.
I think that's what they're trying to do.

They're trying, but they're always sort of, you know, it's an interesting,

they haven't been winning here. I'll tell you that.
They don't feel, it doesn't feel like they have him reined in in any way. And so

that's clear. So that's.
I think they feel outgunt. I think every year they get their budgets cut and he hires 100 lawyers.

And he has the public.

And every elected official wants to seem younger. They want to seem 95, not 98.
So they want to talk about our innovators.

And the SEC is an easy target because it's faceless and it appears to be trying to raise.

It's like the IRS. But I mean, when you have, this is what's dangerous about the markets right now.

The key to functioning markets that gives people confidence is that no one individual based on their id or whatever can move the markets or no one organization has an inside information.

And when you have one guy who goes on SNL and says DojaCoin is a hustle and it collapses or says after selling

his crypto after his company sells their Bitcoin in order to make their note to plug a hole in their earnings estimates and then decides he doesn't like it because it's bad for the environment.

And then his brother is trading $100 million the day before he indicates to the marketplace that he's probably going to sell.

You know, that's the SEC really does need to step in here. And the problem is, to your point, when the SEC did step in and fine if

Elon, he not only ignored those fines and guidelines, he's not supposed to be tweeting without someone reviewing his tweets.

He seems to be waving his middle finger in the face of the SEC saying, I am bigger than you. And wants the money back.
Yeah. He also wants the money back.

There's all kinds of things going on with him. I think he's challenging those rules.

He's saying, this stop sign, I don't agree with, and let me just go through it until you either remove the stop sign or actually stop me.

And so those, I think that's actually, he's in a much, it's sort of like a Trump-like way to behave because, you know, I'm just going to keep blowing stop signs until someone stops me. And guess what?

Nobody's going to, like, I could walk down Fifth Avenue and shoot someone. I'm above the law.
Yeah, I think it's interesting.

Speaking of not above the law, let's get on to our first big story.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is playing out on social media and tech giants are caught in the crossfire.

Facebook says it has been partially restricted in Russia because it continues to fact-check Russian media against that government's wishes. Twitter appears to be restricted in Russia as well.

Meanwhile, Alphabet announced that it would demonetize the accounts of Russian state-funded media on platforms like YouTube.

Meta has made a similar announcement, adding that the Russian state media is also banned from running ads on its platforms.

The moves came one day after Senator Mark Warner called on social media companies to demonetize Russian state-funded media on their platforms. Also,

Ukraine's head is calling for that. Everybody, they're creating all these hacking teams and et cetera, et cetera, to deal with Russia.

So talk about

if this has helped American companies have new legs to stand up to the Russian regime. And when the conflict is over, will Google let Russia's state-sponsored outlets run ads on YouTube again?

I think social media is actually getting it right here. And I think they've done the calculus.

And these aren't big markets, and they've gotten so much warranted shit for their lack of regard for the Commonwealth that I think they're trying to do the right thing here or at least that's my that's my sense but it's exciting that to see that

and there's some social media is often compared to cigarettes and I don't think that's the right analogy I don't think there's any reason to smoke cigarettes I think they're more like opioids and that opiates and that is I actually think opiates and they do opiates play an important role in medicine when used correctly they're very powerful and effective painkillers for for in certain situations unfortunately the people running the company that was distributing, manufacturing, and distributing opiates didn't give a good goddamn about the well-being of people and took it to a very, very ugly place.

And I think that's really where social media is.

But we're seeing the benefits, I think, of social media around this, and that is the Russian population

seems very distressed about this, about this unlawful invasion, and have actually gained the confidence to turn out in numbers and protests. And I think a lot of that is because of social media.

Some of the Russian people, the young people, apparently,

there's a young, old divide here that's rather profound from what I understand from reading all about it. But go ahead.

But it's bigger than I would have expected. I think it's actually quite encouraging.

And

it feels like it's building momentum. I don't know how much of it is controlled or is spun up by our own media and our own desire to make it seem bigger than it is.

But I remember posting on my feed a picture of a lone woman, a journalist,

protesting. And now there are what in St.
Petersburg, it looks like there are very real protests.

And I would imagine that social media is playing a the bottom line is no boomer or none of us can control. I think social media has made communication more porous.

And it has a lot of drawbacks, but I do believe that that's a lot of people. I feel like we've seen this story before and they get and they kill the leader, whatever it's Navalny or

any others, but they had protests around Crimea and

went nowhere. So I get the annexation.
And so I just feel like this happens. They rise up and the police strike them down, really.

We'll see. I mean, I think one of the problems is whether how much information is getting through.
I think I'll tell you what's getting through. You can't get money out of the bank.

That's what's starting to get through. You're not going to be able to, you know, oddly enough,

Russian models on OnlyFans say they can't get paid because of sanction. They can't fly to the U.S.
The oligarchs are getting squeezed. They can hear that.

You know, they don't need social media to hear that. And so whether they're getting good information or not in Russia about what's happening

versus,

you know, most of the world can see what's happening because

there's so much video coming out all over the place. But

it's questionable,

you know, whether it's, you do start to think like, okay, if they're going to restrict Russia, there's all kinds of misinformation on Fox News.

Someone wrote me, well, it's only a hop, skidding, and a jump to Fox. And I was like, no, they shouldn't do that to Fox.
I know, but I was like, but.

There is a lot of misinformation on there or just stupid takes, essentially.

And the only person pushing back on fox is a fox this fox national security correspondent uh jennifer griffin who i mentioned who's doing an astonishing job saying no and i feel like i need to correct some of the things that colonel doug mcgregor just said because and i'm not sure 10 minutes is enough time to do so because there were so many distortions in what he just said it'll be interesting because uh ukraine's vice uh prime minister asked him cook to block the app store for users in the Russian Federation.

It starts to get a little dicey, I think, in some way. Like, why should all of Russia pay for its government?

It's trying to put the squeeze on Russia, obviously, the government, but it starts to get, huh, this is

interesting. I don't know.

I wouldn't want that to happen in this country. So, I'm a little bit torn on both sides of this thing.
What do you think?

I'm all down with putting a lot of pressure, especially on the wealthiest Russians.

And

I think that one of the most likely means that this could come to some sort of a peaceful end would be that the wealthiest people in Russia feel real pain and their businesses and kind of middle class on up.

And to a certain extent,

people do have to take some responsibility for the leaders that are in power.

And I think what's going on here, and I wouldn't call it soft power, I'd call it the power of capitalism, but it creates so many incentives to garner wealth such that to the point when you're in Korshaval, they have Russian menus.

I would like, I think the most effective means of pushing back on

Russia other than German taking what I think is a leadership move around sending Stingers, anti-tank

armaments, is, in fact, going after their pocketbooks because we have become a global world. And when people get wealthy, they don't want to party on the Odessa.
They want to come to St. Bart's.

And everyone has a boss. Everyone has a boss.
And I would bet the people that have the most influence over Putin all have one thing in common, and that is they spend July in San Trope.

So I love the Twitter feed. My favorite Twitter feed right now is the Twitter feed highlighting all of the yachts that are owned by Russian oligarchs.

And you're starting to see people say, well, we'd rather not let them dock here.

And you have their crews quitting.

I mean, there's some trim.

He said he regretted nothing in Spain. One of the, he trashed it, or he sunk it.
He have sunk it, I think, or something like that.

And you want to talk about Russia thought, I think they were emboldened by this because they are, you know, they produce, I think it's 10 million barrels a day, so that's with 100 bucks per barrel crew, that's a billion dollars a day, and a lot of it they hold in foreign reserve currencies, so they don't care if the ruble crashes.

Well, if all of a sudden, if we were to do, if Western nations were to do to Russia what we did to Iran when they took the hostages and just say, okay, you can call in your 10 billion euros from HSBC, and we're just going to say no.

Yeah. I mean, capitalism, and I'm skipping to my win here, capitalism is powerful because it creates interconnectedness.
And also, money is a really powerful drug. It is, indeed.
Indeed. So, anyways,

one of the things that I do think they should deal with, social media networks have so many fake and doctored videos. Instagram accounts that present

people as war journalists are actually run by meme posters. There's a video that purports to show the ghost of Kiev.
Fighter Jet is actually from a decade-old video game. So

that they absolutely have to clean up right away, no matter where it goes.

It's interesting. Elon Musk, speaking of Elon Musk, said the Starlink internet system is now active in Ukraine.
This is where they can get.

So Russia can't cut them off quite as easily, which is interesting.

Uber has suspended services in several cities. Google Maps has disabled live traffic feature in Ukraine.
And Airbnb is offering free short-term housing for up to 100,000 refugees

from there, which is you know, a typical, they've done that before and this, they're doing it again. That's a lot of people they're putting up for free.

So it's just, what's interesting is the economic actions like Switzerland, which never sides with anybody, announced sanctions.

It will freeze the assets of sanctioned individuals. Western nations plan to cut some Russian banks from SWIFT, which could have far-reaching economic impacts.
My goodness.

Western leaders are making moves to cut off the Russian central bank, and that'll be a problem. And a task force is forming to go after cars, homes, yachts of the ultra-wealthy.

I do think this is probably,

you know, they're already calling for peace. The billionaires are suddenly peace next, which I think will be interesting.
And, you know, it's all playing out on social media.

Where are you getting most of your information? From Twitter and cable, right? Twitter, essentially. There's some amazing stuff.

Yeah, well, actually, I get a lot of my information from the BBC and CNN, but I think everybody has an obligation and has the opportunity to play a role here.

And it's more than just posting a gift of a Ukrainian flag on Instagram. Yeah.
That's it. And just because

I always like to take the moment to virtue signal over the weekend, I spent time on the phone. I'm on the board of a unicorn sas company and we have um

uh

russian investors

and we effectively kicked the board member off and and we've decided that yeah legally we may lose on this but we need we want to be part of a signal this is a company whose chairman was a navy seal we have two servicemen who are very senior in the company and i called them and said you know you guys have special license and residence here you have fought for your country

And

we came to a pretty crisp decision that we felt it was important that very strong and consistent signals be sent back to wealthy people in Russia, which I believe will

roll up.

That this, when you, you know, the governance of a company and whether we're legally within our bounds of the share purchase agreement to do this sort of pales in comparison to the risks that are that are

the Russian leadership has decided to take with the world here. Yeah, Yeah, yeah.
And I think if you really...

I would worry a little bit.

He seems so unhinged at this point, and he has his finger on the nuclear button no matter how that threat over the weekend was disturbing. Anyone who lives in Washington, D.C., certainly.

Yeah, but here's the thing, that everybody has a boss.

And the 10, the 20, the 50 people who have influence over him

all have one thing in common. And that is they're billionaires.
And they take advantage of that. And the way they take advantage of that, you don't have a summer house in Yakutsk.

You have a summer house in Portofino.

And I think this is the way we get this over with. And that is the most powerful and wealthiest people.
I think it comes down to money because the bottom line is, when Khrushchev went into Cuba,

the people advising him weren't worried about not being able to go to Disneyland.

They didn't give a shit.

Their power was internal. Their accoutrements, their lifestyles were a function of what was happening internally in their borders.
That is no longer true. Yep, that's fair.

You make a fair point. But I think the one person who's taking most advantage of this is the head of Ukraine, Zelensky.

He's playing this beautifully on social media in terms of appearing, looking simple, smart t-shirts. Now I'm wearing this.
He's really,

boy, does he know how to, and I'm not going to use, I don't know, to use social media to his advantage. And I think that's really.
Shecky Green becomes Winston Churchill.

Yeah, that's what John Stewart said. Yeah.
I mean, not just that.

He's just, he understands the visual imagery. Oh, come on.

He's out of central casting. He's got a beautiful family.
He's Jewish. I mean, the guy.

But he's using it. I'm watching everything that he's doing, and it's really

we offer to give him exile. I don't need a ride.
I need ammunition. This is a bit of a Twitter war in a lot of ways, how to do that.

And the Russians just usually have a brutal way to do it, and it's sneaky. And this is right out in the open.
Anyway, we'll see what happens.

He's still in a lot of danger. Let's be clear.
Real danger, not digital danger.

Speaking of which, by the way, the Russians have huge amounts of troops let's talk about reality is brute force often wins in these things um anyway scott let's go on a quick break when we come back the latest recommendations masking from cdc we'll speak with friend of pivot nicole poroth about what the war in ukraine means for cyber security of course we've had her on before and she's an expert on the area and she's quite worried so when we get back

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Scott, we're back. The CDC says that most of the country can now go maskless under new guidance.
The agency says that nearly 70% of the country lives in areas where the COVID risk is low or medium.

They can remove their masks. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has clearly clearly listened.
On Saturday, she ended the state's mask mandates for schools.

And President Biden will make a push to get federal workers back to the office, an announcement that could come as early as tonight in his State of the Union address, by the way.

That's going to be something. We'll see what he says there.
Meanwhile, Washington is preparing another big capital event.

A trucker convoy is making its way from California to the Beltway in a copycat protest of Canada's Freedom Convoy. And so we'll see what they do.

But this time, the National Guard is deployed and ready for them as opposed to what happened at the Capitol on January 6th. So I think they'll see a little bit more pushback.

And I don't know if people are going to be, once this is off, it's like, what are you doing?

Anyway, the CDC had made a similar announcement last May and then had to reverse itself after Delta swept the nation. So we'll see.
We'll see. We'll see.
What do you think?

Yeah, I think, I mean, we're all hopeful, right? Especially with kids.

And the sad part is that we go into this, whatever you want to call it, steady state or, you know, treating the viruses endemic at 68% vaccination versus 95%.

for other countries, despite the fact that we own the supply chain, that we spend more money, that we goddamn invented these incredible gifts, vaccines.

And we have, as a result, we have the highest per capita morbidity. So So it's a moment.
I hope, hopefully it's a moment.

I don't want to call it celebration, but relief, but it's also a moment for reflection of we go into this. There's just not, there's just no getting around it, Kara.

A lot of people are still going to die here. Yeah.
2,000 people lives lost Friday, according to the CDC. And there were more than 70,000 new cases last Friday.
So just to be clear, it's still here.

Yeah, and it's like, okay, maybe endemic is a term that you decide you're going to live with it. And it's just a shame that we are going to be living with more death than we needed to.
And

so I find it kind of, I don't want to call it bittersweet.

I'm terrible with, you know, I try to be thoughtful about masking, but I think at this point, unless there's a very serious variant, I get the sense people aren't going back. Yeah, I would agree.

I would agree. I think

it's coming off.

You know, I think people are looser and feeling better, but we'll, you know, just be aware. This is, this is a long, this is like any, it's a long slog.
And I know everybody's tired.

And the people who have tried their best, you know, and not

been a jerk about it, right? Like, people have been very worried, and maybe some people have been too worried, and that's okay. So we'll see.
Well, you mentioned Governor Hokol.

She signed a statement, and it might seem very symbolic, my grandstanding, that the state of New York's not going to work with Russian companies. Yeah, I think that's

a lot of states. Pennsylvania isn't going to buy Russian, some Russian goods in its liquor stores.

You realize the only thing you really buy from, what are you going to do about vodka there, Scott? This is actually a category I have some domain expertise in. Stolichinaya is produced in Finland.

Smirnoff is produced, I think, in Illinois.

What I would argue is you would be shocked how many different ways you may have not have thought of that you are linked to Russia and you can have an impact.

Pouring out your Smirnoff, your Stoly is not one of them. Ignore vodka.
This has nothing to do with vodka.

It's about are you involved with companies?

Can you put pressure on consumer companies? Can you put pressure on your state government, whatever it is, to hurt Russia in terms of their pockets?

I don't think we probably use a lot of

people just think vodka naturally, I guess. Vodka doesn't, I mean, Russia doesn't really export anything but oil.
Yeah. Yeah.

That's 40% of their economy. The biggest move I think that people aren't talking about, everyone's obsessed with the Swift network.

The EU has said that Russian planes are no longer welcome in their airspace.

That is a big deal. Right.
I mean, one of the wonderful things that's happened, I would bet when, again, I'm going back to Khrushchev when you're talking about the market,

but let's go

to CDC. But go ahead.
Go ahead. Okay, I'm sorry.
Let's talk about masks. All right, so masks.

I am so Mika. I know.
You really are. Mika, you're off.
You wandered. Mika wanders.
You wandered. You wandered.
So, Mika, what is. What are you still Mika like? I'm sorry.
You are.

I'm going to introduce you to Mika. Hardy.
Mika. I would adopt you.
I would die. Would you? It's easy.
We'll have a little lunch with her. You know, you always say that.
No, we will. We will.

She keeps saying, let's have a chance. John Siller texted me.
He and I are going to roll. Oh, no.

I'm too nervous to do it.

I think i just like the idea of us being friends you can see his fabulous head up here but let's the masks we'll see where people are i do think i see lots of people who used to be

aka amanda a lot more worried or not uh are not as worried remember when we went to dinner in palm beach oh no you went to i took you to this fabulous place bagatelle and everyone's partying and having a good time and the two of you are sitting there with your masks on at dinner seated At dinner, seated.

You had your masks on. You know what? To each his own.
That's what I say.

Come on that was a little too premature a little too premature you know it was seated at a dinner table with open windows i understand

the people of florida were like coughing on us come on we don't trust the florida people and are correct not to do so in many ways so um anyway i think people are ready to move on they still please be careful please get vaccinated as jared paulus and others have said just get vaccinated and you're way way ahead of the curve if you do that if you do that and you're ready to go and you you know be very careful.

I have to say, I will keep wearing masks during the winter in lots of ways because I didn't get a cold this winter. Again, I have had like very few.

I get cold after cold after cold, and I have not gotten any. And I, I, it's the only thing that's changed, really.
I don't, I don't even, I can't even.

There are cultures that wear masks when they travel as a curse. I'm going to wear them

around. I don't want people breathing all over me.
Anyway, um, I, it's made me aware of that, and I'm going to continue to do so. I don't care what people say.

Anyway, now let's bring on our friend of Pivot.

Nicole Perlroth covers cybersecurity and digital espionage and serves as an advisor for CISA, the U.S. government's cybersecurity agency.

She's the author of This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, which covers the history of her field from World War II to today. And she's amazing.
All right. Welcome, Nicole.
How are you doing?

I'm not very good. I know.
Okay. Tell me why, because you've been quite, you've been reporting of the rise in ransomware attacks since the pandemic began.

The American government had blamed Russian hackers for some of the most notable ones, the colonial pipeline, JBS, SolarWinds. So tell me why not very good because your tweets are freaking me out.

I got to tell you, freaking me out.

Well, I think... From what I've covered over the last 10 years, you know, the potential for a cyber escalation here is very high.

I don't think Americans realize how vulnerable we are, how vulnerable our critical infrastructure is.

You just mentioned colonial pipeline. All it took to neutralize the biggest conduit for gas and jet fuel and diesel on the eastern seaboard was a lack of two-factor authentication.

You know, don't let a good crisis go to waste. People are waking up to the cyber threat.

Boards are asking important questions about cyber defense and basic cyber hygiene, but we're we're still nowhere

compared to where we need to be to withstand a serious escalation. It's interesting that we haven't actually seen much on the cyber war front yet.

I thought Putin was going to take the power out before he invaded Ukraine. He didn't do that.
And there's various theories why.

But so far, it's been sort of this lower level tit-for-tat, you know, this new Ukraine IT army that's recruiting people into these kind of low-level denial of service attacks.

It's been Russia launching wiper attacks that wipe data at the Ukraine, various Ukrainian government ministries. But I'm just watching to see, you know, where will the inflection point be?

Where will things escalate? When you think about this, what attacks should we see? What are you so you said? This is going to be bad, but precisely what do you, what is your worst case scenario and

how vulnerable are we in that regard?

So I I think the main thing is, you know, prepare, don't panic.

There's a lot that companies and organizations can do right now to avoid a world of hurt.

But I worry that this is going to be the moment that

our lack of attention on cyber defense and cyber hygiene comes to bite us.

So, what do I mean by that? I mean,

we are asking the government to defend the country from national security threats and cybersecurity threats, but

80% of our critical infrastructure is in private sector hands.

Those companies have zero mandate in terms of needing to use two-factor authentication or strong password requirements or even to look and see if there's any suspicious activity on their networks.

They don't have to tell the government if they've been breached. They don't have to tell the government if they've paid out a ransomware group.

And what that means is that there are vulnerabilities everywhere.

In some cases, Russian ransomware groups and maybe nation state groups already have the access they would need to pull off an act of cyber sabotage.

So that's the bad news, and that's where I fear escalation could go.

I think that said,

this has been a big learning learning moment. This last year of ransomware attacks has been a big learning moment for a lot of organizations.
And so I've never seen better collaboration with CISA,

government agency.

There's a lot of discussions happening in real time, a lot of threat sharing happening in real time. But again, we're just nowhere close to where we need to be to withstand some attack.

And what I've been saying is, like, the next major geopolitical conflict will involve cyber attacks.

And the country that can survive that conflict will look like a digital Israel, you know, a country that can basically withstand attacks from hostile nations all around it.

And right now, the United States is not that country. Not that country.
Okay.

Let me ask, Scott, go ahead, because Scott is on the boards of a lot of companies. He's certainly mentioned that he just hands over whatever money any the CTO asks for on things like this.

But go ahead, Scott.

Well,

so America has purposely said from the get-go, we're going to show restraint in an effort to avoid any sort of escalation with traditional military hardware. Troops are off the table.

Whether you think that was a good or a bad idea, America said we're not doing it. It sounds like what you're saying is Russia has not gone full gangster with their capabilities around cyber attack.

In your mind, is that, I'm just thinking about the large large implications here, does it show that maybe Putin

isn't as crazy as we're worried about? Because you haven't heard about hospital systems incurring what might be an attack or any sort of reprisals. And then that leads into my second question.

I always thought, and this may be arrogance, that we're the biggest kid on the block in terms of our ability to wreak havoc in terms of cyber.

And

the body language I'm getting from you is that that is not the case. So one,

what does it say that they haven't ramped up their attacks to the extent we were fearful of? And

don't we have the biggest stick in the fight?

So, I think

those two questions are connected. And I actually do think the United States is still the top dog on offense.

Nobody has pulled off anything close to the attack the United States and Israel pulled off together on Iran's nuclear facility. Are you going to say that? Stuxnet, but they've gotten very close.

And the actor that has gotten the closest is Russia.

I can just talk about what I reported in the Times. We've caught them probing our grid.

There was a screenshot a couple of years ago that showed Russian hackers with their hands on the switches of the controls. They actually pulled back, right? Didn't they?

I think your reporting said they actually decided, okay, we didn't expect to get this far. We're going to pull back.
Yeah, they've never had,

they've had the access.

They've had the capabilities. We saw them turn off the lights in Ukraine twice.
But what they never had until now was the geopolitical impetus to pull the trigger.

And that comes back to your first question. You know, why haven't they pulled the trigger yet? Maybe

they are more fearful of a cyber escalation with the United States than I've given them credit for.

You know, a couple years ago, David Sanger and I reported in the Times that Cyber Command had been hacking the Russian grid and making a loud show of it.

And when we went to the National Security Council, this was 2018 and said, we're about to report out this story that you've been hacking the Russian grid. What say you?

They basically said, we have no problems with you publishing this story.

In other words, we want Russia to know that we can do the same to them as they've done to Ukraine and that they better think twice before they try and pull some of that here.

And so maybe there is some of this mutually assured digital destruction playing out right now. We don't know.
We'll see. Why isn't there a worldwide?

You know, we have nuclear proliferation talks we have all kinds we have uh about chemicals not that they're not always perfect but they're there right why hasn't there been uh that happening worldwide is just that that they can hide this versus missiles they can't really hide missiles you can sort of see chemical attacks torture everything else is

why hasn't there been an international consortium of this happening

well there's there have been people pushing for what they call a digital geneva convention brad smith at microsoft is really leading the charge on that.

Unfortunately, the problem is Vladimir Putin. You know, Putin uses proxies

to do a lot of these attacks, as does China.

A lot of the really sophisticated attacks we see from China come in the form of this sort of loose satellite network of private contractors that does its dirty work.

You know, we've seen Russia basically tap cyber criminals to hack Yahoo a couple of years ago.

So when when you're dealing with an actor like Putin who said a couple years ago, hey, hackers are like artists that wake up in the morning in a good mood and start painting.

You know, I have no say over what they do or don't do. How do you establish norms with someone like that? And you're right.
The attribution is tricky and it's a low barrier to entry.

This is where nuclear analogies really fall. fall apart in cyber.
You don't need fistle material. Right.

And so there you don't see anything like that ever happening, that it's impossible to police, in other words.

Well, I think, you know, just on its face, it sounds like a no-brainer. We should all agree not to hack each other's elections, not to hack each other's hospitals, not to hack each other's grids.

Electrical dress. Right.
Right. The problem is, what do you do with Vladimir Putin, who you can't trust? You know, that he's not going to just do that.
Then you're essentially handcuffing yourself.

And like we just said, the United States is probably still the top dog when it comes to offensive cyber capabilities. So why would we have...
Defense is a real problem.

But defense is a real problem. I mean, you look at a count of which country in the world has been hit with

the most high-profile cyber attacks over the last five years, it's the United States. We are now among the most frequently targeted country by cyber attacks.
And we'll see.

Yeah, we're nowhere where we need to be. What would be your one or two piece of advice to the administration and also to the CEOs of companies as it relates to some of the risks you've outlined?

One, report incidents. Have a low barrier for what you're reporting.
If you notice any suspicious activity on your network, report that to CISA. There's a lot they can do with that information.

Two, empower your chief information security officer. Give them whatever they need to do.

Give them the tools that they need to hunt their networks for suspicious activity, to do inventory of their systems, to close down any port or server that is non-critical right now.

Do whatever they say. And then most importantly, turn on multi-factor authentication.
I sound like a broken record. You do.

80% of the ransomware attacks we see in the United States could have been prevented with multi-factor authentication. It's so easy.

It's so basic. And it's ridiculous that we don't just mandate it.

But those are the three things. Reporting.
I think also the public.

We should mandate reporting of incidents.

So that there's a fine if you don't do so, if we find anything.

Guess who we have to blame for that, Kara? Let me see. Senator Rick Scott.

Okay, good.

There was an attempt to push mandatory reporting for cyber incidents and ransom payouts in the last defense authorization bill. And guess who killed it? Rick Scott.
Because

he said it was going to be too burdensome for small businesses.

So if something should happen, you know, we can all thank Rick Scott. It's interesting you say that.

I live in Florida and I can think of two or three friends who are small and medium-sized business people who have had a cyber attack and they do about 24 hours of navel gazing and then they send 50 or 60 thousand dollars in Bitcoin.

I mean, these criminals are very smart. They figure out what is the fulcrum between, oh, just pay them and nobody ever knows about it.
It's happening everywhere. Right.

And, you know, businesses and their cyber insurance policyholders, they basically have made this calculation that it's cheaper to just pay the ransom than the full cost of remediation.

The problem is when you're just paying your extortionists, you don't know how they got in. You know, they could still have access.

So all those companies that paid those ransoms are potentially in position. These hackers are already already in position to do something more like cyber sabotage.

That's why it's really important to report these incidents and actually hunt down how they got in so you can make sure that you can keep them out.

Okay, so let me ask two more questions. How do you assess how our

tech companies, they've been doing a wide range of things, they've also been blocked in Russia. How important are they to doing this? Not just cleaning up misinformation, but actually blocking.

There's a difference between blocking Russian media or not letting them monetize themselves, which is more punitive, and actually making certain that good information gets through and bad information is sieved out, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, to me, it's the bare minimum. You know, is RT's ultimate priority advertising revenue? No.
You know, their ultimate priority is propaganda.

Do we want to know what they're saying to their own population and everyone else? Yeah, sure. You know, I don't think we should block them.

but I think there's a lot more that tech companies should be doing on misinformation. Now, that said,

wow, Russia is losing the information war, you know, after years of BS

of them basically

throwing fuel on every American culture war on this, you know, BS of

Zelensky, you know, being a Nazi. I mean, they are failing, failing, failing at every turn.

I think we will be studying the American declassification strategy on this war for years to come because it is brilliant at preempting anything Putin was going to do in terms of driving some pretext for war.

That was, that was, where did that come from? Where was the, it was Biden, the Biden administration, but who?

Right. I mean, I want to know everything.
I want to know who was. I want a case study tomorrow.
All right. I think it was the Biden administration.
I think they had this intelligence for a long time.

I think it was probably

Ann Neuberger, Chris English, Jen Easterly. I mean, we have the A-team in place on cyber right now.
And I think they got this intelligence early, and I think they did the right thing by sharing it.

And I think it completely threw Putin off balance. Yes.
Because we completely lost.

Lost that. And then lastly, and then Scott may have a last question.
Speculation that cryptocurrencies could be used to evade sanctions.

Now, there's not much evidence of this, and people are using crypto to donate millions to

the Ukrainian government. So

do you think this is as big a thing, or does it just feel crypto feels so hidden, but maybe not as hidden as we think?

So it's not as hidden as we think. I think the blockchain has been a powerful tool for law enforcement and government agencies to track the flow of

these funds.

TRM Labs, which does blockchain intelligence, said that basically you need to watch out for the off-ramps, the crypto exchanges.

So there's a couple crypto exchanges out there that have been sanctioned. That might likely be a place where Russians are going to try and move their money.

But for everyone else, this is going to be an opportunity to create pressure on these crypto exchanges to actually enforce compliance and know your customer rules.

And so hopefully, hopefully, this will be a net positive.

Do you think Web3 or specifically crypto presents opportunities for additional security and protocols, or is a threat to national security as it relates to cyber? So I think it's both.

So I used to have a pretty two-dimensional

thinking on cryptocurrency because I was just covering ransomware attack after ransomware attack. And there was no question that crypto has enabled ransomware, right?

Five years ago, they were hacking your PC for $200 and saying, go to the pharmacy, get an e-gift card, and give me the the pin. Now it's $50 million in Monero cryptocurrency.

So no doubt it's been an enabler. What I learned from Colonial Pipeline, because remember, the FBI was able to claw back some of the ransom that Colonial paid,

was

actually

Web3, the blockchain, is a blessing for law enforcement because for the first time, they can track the flow

of a ledger, so to speak, right?

And what these guys at TRM Labs said to me, who all used to work at the Treasury and now are in blockchain intelligence, they said, listen, it would have taken us more than two years to find that front company and the Seychelles where they were holding that ransom payout if this was in fiat currency.

And with crypto, we were able to track the flow of these funds in real time and get it back within weeks. So

it is also a blessing. And the key here is to mitigate

the enablers, you know, the cryptocurrency exchanges that aren't enforcing know-your-customer laws. Right.
Okay. Nicole, this is so fascinating.

Again, you're freaking me out with your thing, but that's good. I have two-factor authentication on everything.

So I will, but the average consumer, that's what they should be doing. Two-factor authentication, changing passwords.
Yep. Yep.
Don't click on phishing links. Turn on two-factor authentication.

Use a password manager. Don't use one, two, three, four, five, and you'll be better off than 80%.

Scott, do you hear that? Scott says,

it has to change. You're my second factor.

Everything I do has to get by my judgment and then yours. Thank God.
Anyway, Nicole, amazing reporting.

Again, Nicole's book is frightening but fantastic book called This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends. Nicole, the world, I hope, is not ending.

But it's a really great history to understand this right now because it will be escalating over time. But in this case, we'll see how effective.

By the way, for someone someone who claims to be as worried as you are, you look awfully relaxed. You're tanned and I heard birds chirping.

You seem pretty zen about all this. I'm in Hawaii.
I'm having the worst Hawaii vacation ever. I'm just on Twitter.
You know what? Get outside. Get outside.
They can't hack the sunshine.

Yeah, I'm going. I'm going right now.
Yeah, good problem, Nicole. No one feeling sorry for you, Nicole.
Right now. Anyway, Nicole, thank you so much.
Thanks, Nicole. Thanks for coming.
Bye guys.

You too. Bye.
All right, Scott. She's so smart.
I like Nicole. She is a friend of Pivot.
Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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okay scott wins and fails what what would you say what would you say is your do you have i do the win s n l had the fisher price podcast set for white guys sketch it was cut from the broad for time for the podcast but landed on youtube on sunday introducing the new fisher price podcast set for white guys now you can shout every crazy thought in your head without ruining your life.

It doesn't record anything at all. We're white guys.
We need to be able to say every dumb thing into a microphone and not get in trouble. Get yours wherever tactical gear is sold.
Ages 34 and up.

It's really, it made me laugh. It made me laugh.
It was really good. I thought the host was great.
I really like that guy's backstory. John, whatever.
He's my kid's favorite comic. Mulaney.

John Mulaney. That's correct.
My kids love, love, love him.

Fail,

well, apparently Rick Scott for not making people report cyber attacks. But,

you know, I think continues to be some of these people in the Republican Party.

I think Marjorie Taylor Greene, once again, she seems to win the prize every time by appearing at a white supremacist event

full of, oh, just the worst stuff.

I love that Mitt Romney called her a moron. I love that

quoted Butch Cassidy in the Sundance kit. It's been a good week for Mitt Romney.
He was the one that said Russia. All right, well make him your win.

He was the one that said four years ago and got laughed at that or six years ago that Russia was the biggest threat to the U.S. And everyone said, oh, what a boomer, stupid thing to say.
Okay, so

my win, and it sounds passe, I talked about it earlier in the show, is capitalism. On the right,

they have decided to ignore true capitalism. The basic notion of capitalism has to involve churn and true winning and losing.

And what they've done is said, okay, because the existing winners are the ones that give us money through tax policy and bailouts of rich people, we're going to let the incumbents become dynastic, which is not capitalism, it's cronyism.

And then on the left,

there's this suspicion and disparagement of people who make money, that we assume that they're bad people if they become billionaires.

And the reality is, and I know a lot of very wealthy people, they're generally good people because you have to be to get that many people rooting for you.

Capitalism has been weaponized on the far left. It's been weaponized on the far right.
But capitalism is this incredible mix of of cooperation that rewards grit and talent and risk-taking.

And the wonderful thing about capitalism, one of the many wonderful things, is it creates this incredible prosperity and economic power such that you can do wonderful things.

And those wonderful things create connective tissue. Whether it's buying real estate in London, whether it is sending your kids to a boarding school in Switzerland, whether it is partying in St.

Bart's. And that connective tissue brings us together and makes the exit costs and the downside of this type of unilateral action that has taken place, this criminal action in Ukraine, creates real

costs, real downsides because of the accoutrements and upside and because so many Russians now have so much to lose because of capitalism. So I think.
Yeah, it's not just the rich ones, by the way.

The focus is on the oligarchs, but average people standing in line in St. Petersburg probably don't deserve what's happening to them in lots of ways.
And

it's because

they need to protest, I guess, or do something else. It's very difficult in that country to protest.

They don't just protest. They go, they are in big trouble when they protest.

I believe the greatest deterrent to a shooting match over Taiwan right now is the iPhone.

And that is there's just too many people in China and in Silicon Valley and investors all over the world that need iPhones to continue shipping.

And so everyone's going to think twice before they decide to go into Taiwan. I think capitalism has extraordinary benefits.
It can. It certainly has downsides, as you know.

We are very good about talking about the downsides. We do that a lot.
Yes, that's true. That's true.
All right. So what's your fail?

My fail is that anyone had to lose at the FA Cup final between Chelsea and Liverpool. I watched this thing on Sunday with my boys.
I know you're not into sports. Soccer, Kirk.

This is soccer or football

if you're from anywhere outside of the U.S.

But this was the FA Cup. And

one of my sons likes Chelsea. One of them likes Liverpool.
And you may not be familiar with soccer, but it's probably the best 0-0 game ever played because they have to go to what's called a shootout.

And they keep going until someone misses after five. And so that meant all 11 players, including the goalies, had to take penalty shots.
And Mosala for Liverpool was brilliant for Mina.

Lukaku on Chelsea. Edward Mende, the goalies.
No idea. These are incredible.

Probably the best U.S. player in the world right there, Pulisich on Chelsea.
Mounds, who's just an absolute delight to watch. And didn't, speaking of Ukraine, didn't the owner of one of the people.

I've even been thinking about that.

He's moved himself out of, remember? He put it into someone else's hands for a little while. And he's actually involved in the talks between Ukraine and

Russia right now in Belt. That's a connection point.
And also, didn't the soccer group say we're not, they did something to Russia that wasn't. You're making my point.

Capitalism creates billionaire soccer owners who think twice and want to to be part of the solution. And when you're vacationing and living in, you know, just outside of St.

Peter, you have less to lose.

So

it is great because the connective tissue is everywhere here. But anyways, but let's just keep in mind the individual people in Ukraine are incredibly brave.

And as we sit around and complain about the stupid shit we can, over the past two years, our country has, it's really amazing.

I worry for them because an overwhelming force will always eventually win this. You're right.
Brute force almost wins almost every war.

That's how they just don't mind all those people dying. This might be the first conflict, I think, that, well, we'll see.
But anyways,

going back to my loss here, I just hated to see either team win a brilliant play by both Liverpool and Chelsea clubs. Who won?

Liverpool did.

Because

the goalie missed the penalty kick, which you never see goalie.

Poor guy.

Poor guy. But anyways, it was just a wonderful.

I'm not into sports. All right.
But so my loss is that anyone had to lose the FA Cup final. Congratulations to both Liverpool and Kelsey.
You played great games. You want them both to win.

They both won in a way. Sounds old.

Like my mother. It's a shame anyone has to lose.

Okay, Scott. That is the show.
It was so action-packed today. We'll be back on Friday for more.
All right, that's my cue. Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Angle, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Andretat engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mil Severo.
Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thank you 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.

Support for this show comes from S. Steve Johnson.
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