Pivot Q3 Quarterly Review and Friend of Pivot, Senator Amy Klobuchar

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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 excited about Halloween.

My favorite holiday is fast approaching because Stephanie Ruhl will remind you 40 times a day on Instagram.

That it's your favorite or her favorite?

Oh, well, I think it's both of our favorite.

I love it.

I get to put on a wig, same costume.

I go as an emotionally stable person, and no one recognizes me.

No one.

That would be be hard to recognize.

I would agree.

That's right.

What do you actually go as?

When I was a kid, every year I went as Snoopy.

I had an obsession with Snoopy.

Put on something, sweat off.

Oh my god, sweat my face off just for a fucking box of raisins.

Now I go every year, every year, the same outfit.

Starship Commander, Jean-Luc Picard.

Huge crowd, please.

I bet you're good for it.

Do you shave off your mustache, et cetera?

I don't have a mustache.

I do.

You have a beard.

I got a little goatee.

It's a very natural beast.

Picard did not have that.

Sexy goatee.

And this year, I might go with something different.

I want you to guess my costume.

I don't know.

An orange jumpsuit.

Yeah.

And a massive amount of sunblock on my face.

Oh, Donald Trump headed to jail.

Mark Zuckerberg.

Oh, nice, nice, nice, nice.

You need more hair.

He has more hair than you.

He's catching up.

He's catching up.

He's got more hair than you.

You know what I'm probably going to go ask?

So the people who I mentioned on this podcast that my kid watches Teletubbies and Sesame Street, and that's all.

And the Teletubbies people sent me a box of Teletubby thing, including a full adult-sized Teletubby outfit.

So that's what I'm doing.

I think that's a conflict for a journalist.

I've been, let's be honest,

I've been watching or observing your coverage of Teletubby, and it's been really,

it just hasn't been unbiased, Carol.

Okay, I love the Teletubby.

I am giving it away.

How is the Golden Child?

How is the Golden Child is great?

And the next Golden Child is progressing nicely.

So everything is going rather well.

So you check in on that?

I don't know how any of that works.

It feels so alien to me.

I'm not going to go into this with you.

No.

It's historic.

And they delivered the baby the last day.

Anyway, this is a special episode, so we have to be feel very smart today because it's our quarterly review.

We'll round up our biggest wins and fails for the third quarter and see how well we did with our predictions.

We'll also hear from some friends at Pivot on what's coming up in Q4 and beyond.

And we'll talk to Senator Amy Klobuchar about Facebook's rough week and what she thinks will happen next.

Gangster, hello.

There's a new sheriff in town, and she's from Minnesota.

Yes, yes.

yes.

It was a big week for Facebook in Congress.

And Senator Klobuchar has been on their ass and she will talk about it with us.

So let's start by talking about some of the biggest topics and issues for Q3 so far and declare some wins and fails.

All right, first off, the past three months have been major for spaceflight.

The newest international astronauts, the crew of New Shepard.

I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all this.

In July, Virgin founder Richard Branson flew more than 50 miles above the New Mexico desert in his Virgin Galactic rocket plane.

Later that month, Jeff Bezos soared nearly 70 miles above the Texas desert in his Blue Origin Shepard launch vehicle that looks like a penis.

Lastly, SpaceX launched the first all-civilian crew into a low-Earth orbit in September.

They were up there for three days.

What are your wins and fails here, Scott?

Well, okay, so in general, we have a tendency to just group space.

Space tourism is, in my opinion, a terrible business that is going to slowly go away.

And the ground zero for that implosion, if you will, is Virgin Galactic, which is a Mach 3 train wreck.

After what was probably the branding event of the year, I mean, the whole world watched that thing.

They built a massive customer list, a waiting list of 600 people.

I mean, and also the stock

continues to decline.

And also any large shareholder that knows the company really well continues to sell stock.

I just don't think it works.

I think it's literally all, you know,

all squeeze, no juice.

Blue Origin.

All squeeze, no juice.

When you squeeze, you get juice.

Help me out here.

I had a few drinks last night.

Just go with that.

You were squeezing something.

Listen to me.

Some lemons with the vodka.

Anyway, go ahead.

I have my makers and ginger deep voice today.

Anyway, so

Blue Origin, fine.

You know, $400,000 T-Top Corvette crashes into a hair plugs clinic.

let Jeff be Jeff.

Fine.

He's a bright guy.

He'll get bright people.

It'll do something.

Hands down, hands down, the winner here is SpaceX.

While everyone's taking their penises 50 miles into space or to the Karman line, he's orbiting the Earth three times.

With civilians, right?

And it was flawless.

It's kind of the difference between over-promising and under-delivering, you know, space, Blue Origin with all this ridiculous, this is amazing.

And Richard Branson saying, imagine what you'll do in the future.

And it's like, no, imagine what we did 50 years ago, boss.

It was much more impressive.

Yes, you're very on this.

I mean,

I talked with Elon about this, and of course I got him to make several penis jokes.

Well, if you are only going to doing suborbital, then your rocket can be sort of

shorter, yes.

My son this morning on the drive to school was like, I can't believe you got him to make all those jokes.

I said, I can't believe you can't believe that I got him to make all those jokes um but um i think you're right i think elon's really head and shoulders above everybody else in this department um what's what's interesting is some of it's nice that wally funk going up she trained to be an astronaut in the 60s that's nice but she should have been on elon's ride essentially and shatner is going up william shatner captain kirk that's it's all very cute but it doesn't make for a business and here's the thing i mean there's a key component of this business or two key components that'll be really successful first is space hauling hauling.

And the key is, again, it's the boring shit that makes all the money.

The key is the cost of getting a kilogram out of orbit, which has been incredibly expensive.

Which Elon talked about, yeah.

And the new SpaceX Falcon booster rocket is bringing the cost down.

And Elon has basically put more satellites into space than anybody else.

So SpaceX is, quite frankly, SpaceX is just

a men among boys who are taking very long showers.

And

anyways, I won't even go there, but this is just

ridiculous.

And then there's a real business.

And the real business here, SpaceX, the other two are just literally just such a fucking midlife crisis kind of weird.

It is weird.

And also,

it reminds you a little bit of

the cities tried to compete with Amazon for the warehouse that were never getting them.

The state of New Mexico has invested a lot in Spaceport America for Branson, but hasn't seen them much in the way of results.

You know, we'll see, Elon's had some back and forth with some of the people in Texas.

It's a business.

Where he's going is the right way to do it.

He talked about a moon base.

He talked about how you get there, reusable everything, bringing down the cost.

That's what you want to hear.

Well, in the business, the winners here from an investor standpoint, one SpaceX.

I believe, and I get shit for this, I believe SpaceX is going to be worth more than Tesla because I think one is going to go up and one is going to come way down.

But also the business or the stocks or the companies we want to look for are the picks and shovels here.

And that is the companies building infrastructure and materials for all these people who are going to spend massive amounts of money to try and do things in space.

And the Tesla competitors are actually doing good things, right?

So it's not like here they're kind of doing stunts and he's continuing to do his great business.

And in cars, you know, they're all investing heavily into the future.

Oh, they're all coming for them.

I mean, we've been predicting that for a long time.

Yeah.

It's like, it's like it's like streamers and Netflix.

That's where it's.

That's exactly the right analogy.

Netflix had it to themselves for eight years and then everyone said, okay, we got to get into this.

I mean, do you guys know that?

And did a good job.

Do you realize the auto market has gone from a kind of low-margin manufacturing-based business worth $100 billion globally to a higher-margin software-driven $800 billion business?

And that's about to, that blood in the water is about to attract one of the biggest sharks in the world, and that's Apple.

I mean, I think Apple's coming for Tesla.

Anyways, got a little bit off script there.

Space is weird.

Space is a weird thing right now.

It is.

All right.

Next up, the China crackdown.

This past quarter saw China tighten regulations on a number of industries, particularly tech.

Beijing announced a blanket prohibition against all cryptocurrency transactions and mining.

The government passed time limits on the amount of time kids can play video games.

China also banned ride-hailing giant Didi from signing up new customers right after the company's IPO.

And even Elon said, where's Jack Ma?

who is of course the most prominent entrepreneur that's come out of China from a global perspective in terms of

excitement and energy and very well known.

I know him very well.

I don't know where he is.

So what are the wins and fails here, Scott?

Well, first off, I just want to acknowledge I predicted that Alibaba was a great buy three months ago, and I think it's off 25 or 30 percent since then.

And I think what's shaping up here, I think this is the most undercovered story in business.

And that is you have these juggernaut companies.

And basically,

I think we should learn from what China has obviously learned from us.

And China looks at our society and says, okay, where has this thing really come off the tracks?

And one of the things they've obviously clearly registered is that big tech has overrun government and subverted national interests to private interests.

So they've gone after one tutoring companies because they found that their equivalent of Harvard, I think it's called Tsinghua,

got a 1% admissions rate.

And increasingly, it was being filled with the children of rich people because

they get to participate in the tutoring industrial complex.

So China comes in and literally kneecapped these companies that have like $100 billion in market cap and said, sorry, you're out of business.

Didi wasn't sharing their data or wasn't, they didn't like what they're doing.

They cut them in half.

They disappeared, Jack Ma.

I mean, Jesus Christ, can you imagine if all of a sudden we woke up one day and like no one could find Jeff Bezos for two weeks?

Yeah.

And so the mother of all macro bets.

So what have you had?

This is sent to chill through the markets.

And you have companies like Alibaba, which quite frankly are kind of Amazon Plus.

They're Amazon, but they're growing faster and even more dominant and arguably even more innovative.

And they're trading at a forward PE of 16 or 17 versus Amazon at 60.

So this is either the mother of all fire sales or the beginning of the end for Chinese tax access to global markets.

I personally believe this is an unbelievable opportunity because is Xinping going to wrap the knuckles or is it going to cut off their hands?

And he still has to bring out 10, 20 million people out of poverty every year.

He's got a revolution.

I don't think he's going to totally cut off the business.

He's got a lot of challenges.

Yeah, this is, it's hard to keep entrepreneurship under wraps, I think, ultimately.

ultimately um

but they're trying

yes yeah yeah because they'll just move or whatever they'll go somewhere else but um and also stopping kids from playing video games creates a lot of unhappiness within the society at the same time they're talking about addiction and a lot of the things the whistleblower was talking about you know that facebook has a problem with crypto regulations had no effect on the price of cryptocurrency it also

interestingly listen to this my brother my family has a coal company you know this right um that's he was saying that I'm just saying,

all right, I have nothing to do with it.

In any case,

he was telling me all these coal companies are doing great now because of cryptocurrency, which I thought was fascinating.

Because they need electricity.

Because energy, electricity generation.

And so that was, I was like, you're kidding?

He goes, no, it's like crazy.

And he's like, you should write about it.

I said, no, I shall not because you are in that business.

But nonetheless, it's really about.

Teletubbies.

Yes, that is my corruption, teletubbies.

So it's a really, it's a fascinating time is that it gives opportunities across the world to other countries that are not going to do this, and it doesn't have any impact on the price of cryptocurrencies.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well,

there's a lot there.

That's the really fascinating thing is that if the second largest economy banned Apple, say, or banned Nike, I think those stocks would be off 30, 50%.

And I'm not sure they'd recover for a long time.

China bans crypto and for a hot minute it goes down and then it comes back.

I mean, crypto is bigger than China, is what you take from this.

Your comments about coal surging in price, fly in the face of the crypto Taliban that likes to say that actually crypto is now the largest consumer of marginal alternative energy.

So it's actually financing hydroelectric plants.

And a lot of people have said, no, it's bad for the environment.

Whenever you have a new idea, I'm sorry, go ahead.

May I interject?

It's actually They're using these clean coal technologies that are really interesting and innovating in them.

I'm sorry.

Does clean clean coal mean just less fucking awful?

No, but there's all these innovations going on.

Listen, we shouldn't be burning coal at all, but as we're doing it, they're doing,

it's prompting, he was telling me innovation, innovations in this area of scrub, all this stuff.

You're officially the Coke family.

No, I'm not.

I'm not.

Defending coal.

Why don't you

do your research?

I'm the American coal industry.

No, I'm not.

But it's interesting that it creates other industries.

And of course, it's not marginal.

And it is, hydroelectric is doing great.

It's just China getting out of it gives opportunities to others to take up the slack.

It's fascinating.

And

typically, a lot of people have pointed this out.

Whenever China bans anything, that's a buy signal.

Whether it was Google, whether it was Reddit, whether it was Twitter, and now crypto, you go look back.

a few years later and you're like, wish we would have bought.

It's usually a buy signal when China decides this technology or this company is a threat to our society.

That's basically saying this shit is gangster and we can't control it, which from a long-term investment standpoint means it has attributes that are attractive.

Yeah.

Anyway, it's interesting.

It's fascinating.

And I don't think I think video gamers are going to do all kinds of cheats.

There's already hackers doing that.

I think it's very difficult to stop people from playing things they like.

And I get the idea of it and it's interesting, but it's just like telling your kid not to smoke pot or something.

You know, it just doesn't, it's just hard.

You know what I i found out we're you know in our house we're very uh as you can imagine we have a lot of conversation about social media my youngest ratted out his older brother and was like alec has a tick tock account and i'm like you're kidding no no so immediately go on and look at it expecting to see i don't know that something terrible and he created these soundtracks these funny soundtracks of monkeys And he's getting 3 million views.

And I'm like, hello, college scholarship.

And I immediately tracked him down.

And I'm like, you have a TikTok account.

And the look of fear over his face.

And I'm like, this is awesome.

This is how we're getting you into college.

And I'm like, all hot and bothered about it.

And he's like, oh, I thought I took a break from it.

I'm like, you are not taking a break from social media.

Get your face back into the phone and start producing more content.

You're like a social media, you know, chain gang there.

I think this is, I literally, it's like finding out your kids an amazing business.

They're not going to do what you want.

FYI.

My kid made a beautiful video, a cooking video on TikTok that was hysterical.

Instagram, one of them.

And it was wonderful.

And I was like, and I sent it to some people.

I'm like, is this any good?

And they're like, this is really good.

And who would know?

And, and he won't do another one.

I was like, you need to.

This is a business for you.

And of course, he's like, we'll have a dance off.

You put up Louie's cooking video.

I'll put up my, my son's monkey video.

Okay.

I'm sure they're both great.

Why can't they both be great?

It's a competition.

No.

Let's just celebrate their talent.

But I'll tell you, he's like, no, I'm not doing it.

Not doing it.

Yeah.

I'm like, finally, we have an edge to get you into college here.

And you don't want to.

And he's like, no, I've enjoyed it, but I want to move on to other things.

Don't be so fucking mature.

Get addicted.

Get addicted.

I was like, it's a business.

Millions to be made and only idiots running this place.

Anyway, let's stick to the last one, Delta variant.

Scott, it was not the hot vac summer everyone was hoping for.

What are the wins and fails here?

Well, I'm a glass half empty kind of guy.

And when you're the second most vaccine-hesitant nation in the world and you're looking literally

one of the biggest blessings, the most important product in history, And we have these geniuses who have leveraged their human capital and the infrastructure that is America and incredible supply chain such that we are the home and the producer of the most important product and the greatest in the greatest volume of any nation.

And we're going to let tens of millions of doses go to waste.

And

talking about these Facebook hearings, and we have Senator Klobuchar coming up.

You know, there's really two things, I mean, two big things plaguing our society.

And the first is polarization, and that gets a lot of attention, that it ends up that the Zuck and Cheryl have their soft, delicate hands on a dial to turn up and down rage.

And they've learned that the more they turn the dial up, the more profitable they are.

And that's the problem.

And then the second thing that we don't talk a lot about is that the algorithms do something very dangerous.

And that is they go crazy with our confirmation bias.

And that is, if we go on Facebook and say, I'm worried about the vaccine, it immediately serves you content to convince you that the vaccine is dangerous, hasn't been tested, is a conspiracy.

And all of a sudden, we have lost the connective tissue of truth.

And without truth, you can't have a productive society.

And as a result, we are blessed with incredible innovation.

But at the same time,

we shouldn't be, we don't have to be here, Kara.

I mean, that's the bottom line.

I agree.

But I think these, these anti-vax people have exhausted us all.

You know what I mean?

We just have to explain it.

Facebook and the media gave them the tools to exhaust us before.

There used to be a truth.

there used to be a truth there used to be in the 60s oh this vaccine for measles rubella it works and we've done peer-reviewed research and you can trust it and we trusted the truth in science and now we trust facebook and facebook is sending us facebook can't be trusted it's been it's so damaging well one thing is business travel hasn't rebounded surge in case with kids um hospitals overwhelmed uh uh uh people aren't uh you know people just aren't still not quite out there although in little ways, there.

I've done a couple business trips now.

Very few, but a couple, but not as many as I used to, for sure.

On the other hand, these vaccine mandates by companies, now almost all the airlines have them,

people are getting vaccinated.

There's a little less, it's now sort of more closed down to the crazy crew, you know, at the end that used to hate gay marriage, that kind of stuff.

And instead of the people who are like, well,

cases are dropping everywhere, which everybody expected.

They don't know what's going to happen in the winter.

They're They're probably expecting another surge if we don't get more vaccines.

Some states like Tennessee have very low vaccination rates, and high ones are doing better.

They're just doing better.

You can just look at the economic changes where people feel more confident.

Like, this is an inflammatory statement.

I think, in retrospect, when we do the data and do the attribution, I think it'll be very difficult to find a trifecta that has resulted in more death, disease, and disability than Trump, Fox, and Facebook.

Whether it's DeSantis trying to mimic Trump and his incredible success among the far right and making really dangerous mandates and creating tons of misinformation across the great state of Florida and

creating higher infection rates than many NATO countries, whether it was pretending to give a good goddamn about the health crisis and continuing to spread misinformation, both from Fox and then Facebook takes it and turns a dumpster fire into a mushroom cloud.

If you look at the map of infections and deaths, it literally looks like a Fox viewership or a Trump voting map.

I mean, it's just, it's not hard to connect the dots here.

And it's just, there has to be a truth.

And I.

Now, now, cases in Florida are going down.

Well, they're going down now.

It's true.

It's just the cost.

It's just the cost that it took to be this stubborn is really what it's about.

I believe we don't need to be here.

We had the assets, the innovation, the blessing, the science, the distribution to

not eliminate this, but dramatically reduce this.

And it got politicized.

Misinformation ran amok.

In the U.S., we become fat and lazy and selfish and we conflated liberty with selfishness.

This is just so incredibly discouraging.

This is kind of how Marx and the GRU predicted the end of American capitalism, that we would start eating our young and going after each other, and that we would be subject to misinformation.

And it's just, you know, there's some very hopeful things,

incredible new business starts, innovation.

I think healthcare is going to come out of this more robust.

The spending plan, if it goes through, could reduce child poverty by 60%.

I think a lot of people are waking up to the notion that if we're going to be the wealthiest country in the world, we should start acting like it.

There's just no getting around it.

We come out of this.

America comes out of this deeply scarred scarred and looking terrible.

We don't kind of, we don't deserve to be global leaders at this point.

Yeah, it's interesting.

Florida has a vaccination rate.

I'm just looking up of 50, almost 58% of the state's population.

Seniors who don't have a lot of people.

Seniors have been, and DeSantis deserves credit for getting a lot of seniors vaccinated very early.

And the seniors in Florida are typically oftentimes seniors who have relocated from the Northeast, who are educated, have decent incomes.

And guess what?

They're smart and they're like, give me the goddamn vaccine.

And it's worked for them.

And then you have the rest of, you know, these parts of Florida that have bought into this notion where I don't want my nine-year-old to wear a mask in school.

I mean,

and then the punishments, the punishments the state is meting down for people.

If they, they're talking about do what they want, like, of course, it only has to do with themselves.

It's kind of ridiculous that they're trying to punish

parts of the state that want to do mandates.

Anyway,

hopefully it will rebound.

Everybody, things will go down.

There's a lot of unnecessary deaths in places where they're promoting vaccine hesitancy.

But hopefully, we won't have a resurgence in the winter, although many expect it.

We'll see.

We'll see where this is going.

Anyway, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll do our self-evaluations with a look about how well our predictions held up in Q3.

Let's look in the mirror.

Let's look in the mirror.

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And we're back.

Scott, let's take a look at some of the predictions we made this past quarter and see how we did.

I think I'm going to start with one that you made a few weeks ago.

You said.

My prediction is around Facebook.

I think that there are building,

mounting

political motivation

to criminalize or start criminal investigations.

Obviously, we're going to ask Senator Klobuchar about that, but I still don't think that's going to be the case.

I want you to continue to make your case.

Nothing's happened, obviously.

There's SEC cases happening.

I don't know if the SEC has a set enough to do it.

What is your thought on this?

So almost everyone who I've talked to, I have a lot of respect for including you disagrees that and I talked to I asked you to

point blank to Preet who's a great legal mine and he said it would be really difficult and most of the people he's talked to said a criminal action would be difficult my my thesis is that there are so many politicians who will now feel that there's cloud cover to file criminal action against

a company or someone at one of these firms that it's just going to be too irresistible.

And when I think about, or just, and we should ask Klobuchar this, you know, if Michael Milken was the head of a fintech company today that did what he did, I just don't think he'd be sentenced to prison for 10 years.

And I also think that they've kind of crossed a line, and I've been wrong about this before, but anyone who's experienced the slow-moving terror of a child with an eating disorder, to know that this company knew that that was happening and was suggesting additional content that made things worse, I just think there's going to be mounting pressure and air cover for a criminal action.

And it could come from a broader...

You did ask Preet.

Explain what Preet said.

We were backstage.

I have a lovely picture of the two of you, by the way.

Yeah, he basically, he essentially said, you know, the problem is they've been very savvy about they really haven't committed a crime because of 230.

It's like you can't go after them for defamation.

They're technically not liable for the content.

So it's probably just as they went after Al Capoma going after his lawyer and getting his account and getting him a flip.

What do you have here?

I think you could federalize the antitrust case.

I'm sorry, the cartel pricing case in Texas, because the remedies for cartel pricing are criminal.

I also believe, and I want to ask Senator Klobuchar this, I think that there's now evidence that they lied before Congress.

I also think there's evidence that there's certain disclosures they should have made to the SEC.

When Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of Congress that I've seen the research, and while it's not conclusive, it shows that spending time on social media is positive.

That was a lie.

That was a lie.

Well, okay.

All right.

Okay.

I think that's a

really down for that.

Look at the Trump administration right now.

The people that used to be there are like resisting resisting congressional subpoenas.

It's hardly a hair hand slot.

It's time for our government to start pretending that they're supposed to be there to protect the long-term interests of the American public and prevent a tragedy that comments.

And you know what just goes, just drives me fucking ape shit?

And of course, I was on Anderson Cooper last night and I expressed this view.

I see that.

You're always with him.

You're cheating on me.

We keep talking about what will Facebook do next.

That's not the question.

The question is, what the fuck are we going to do next?

We are.

What are we going to do next?

We are letting,

we keep hoping and begging that their better angels are going to show up or that we're going to shame them into something.

We need Senator, i.e.

Sheriff Klobuchar to come in.

And if the laws can't put them in prison, we need to change the laws.

We put so many people in prison over the last 30 years for so much less than what these executives have done to America.

It is just...

So while I agree.

We are an unfair society.

I don't, I may, I don't have the legal background to say whether or any of these criminal actions will result in prison time for anything, but I'm telling you, Kara, someone is going to go some AG somewhere.

So one hacker way and arresting you people.

He's going to make a citizen's arrest.

Someone, some AG is going to wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and go, hello, Madam Governor, and file a criminal action against one of our companies.

That's crime.

It is over.

You should do it.

I think you should show up at one hacker way with some handcuffs.

Yeah, right.

You had a prediction about public and private markets.

Let's play the tape.

And I think that in the latter half of this year, despite an increase in GDP, despite incredible new business formation, I think you're going to see the private markets do well.

I think the public markets are going to incur incredible volatility, and we're going to see some of the most

step change downs in the market.

I think we're going to have some of those volatile days in the market in the next six months.

All right, Scott, what do you say now?

Because the markets are doing okay still.

There's so far hasn't been an October surprise.

We're not that deep into October.

And there's been some public offerings here and there.

Actually, and this is by, I like to think I hold myself pretty accountable.

I think we actually got this.

We're sort of on the right side of this.

If you look at September, it was the worst month for the market since early 2020, and it was the worst quarter for the market since early 2020.

The SPAC market has all but kind of gone away.

There were only two offerings in July.

So I do think that, I mean, there was, obviously, wasn't a crash, and the market is still, you know, near record high.

You've said volatility.

You didn't say crash, but go ahead.

But there's absolutely what feels like been sort of a dethrottling or a checkback, and there's much more insecurity in the market.

So I would call this like met okay.

I think most people would say, I mean, September was the worst month for the market since early 2020.

Yeah.

I think a lot of people, not just you, are predicting a real crash very soon.

But, you know, the month isn't over.

And

people are still waiting on this infrastructure bill, I think, and

everything else, and whether the debt ceiling.

And so I don't think you're going to see anything until that stuff sorts itself out.

Everybody's sort of focusing on that.

And the money running out.

You know, we'll see.

I think we will see.

I think it's going to be exactly.

It always comes when you don't expect it and from a place you don't expect it.

And there's some weird.

I have Bill Silver on Prop T, and he's right.

Whenever we're worried.

Can you explain who Bill Silver is?

I'm sorry.

He's kind of a legendary finance professor at NYU, and he just retired.

Actually, a real professional role model, just like such deep domain expertise.

Right.

Taught for 40 years.

And anyway, so he always says the markets climb a wall of worry.

And whenever we're really worried about the markets, they seem to creep up.

It's when you think, oh, everything's great.

It's a new economic model.

I mean, I don't, some of the articles were in the late 99 that we've moved to

a new model of productivity and the markets could go to, and then all of a sudden, wham.

And it started actually

with bad bad numbers out of Japan that infected the B2C internet market and then it leaked to the B2B and then everything just collapsed.

And

the fear I have is that we haven't let the markets fall to their natural level, that we bailed out everything and everybody.

And there's a decent, there's a decent

ecological metaphor in that is if you don't have regular controlled burns and the dry brush just continues to accumulate, when you do have that lightning strike, I mean, wow, it just feels like we're setting ourselves up for a pretty serious superfire in the markets.

Interesting.

You're using the wildfire metaphor.

Interesting.

There you go.

You know, I had a relative who wasn't interested in stocks.

And when I was young, I said, well, what do you think about the stock market?

What advice can you give me?

He was a businessman.

He goes, it'll either go up or it'll go down.

And I was like, okay.

Thank you for that.

And actually, that was an entirely good piece of advice.

Anyway, we'll see.

I think this is a wait and see.

I don't think there's an answer yet.

I don't think there's an answer yet.

Well, nobody knows.

That's the gorgeous thing about the markets is nobody knows it's yeah but i mean this year i think if it doesn't happen in this year you're wrong how's that if it doesn't happen this year you're wrong oh yeah

but one i mean think about this it there's just a weird complexion or viewpoint forming and that is Now the majority of people working at Goldman and Alternative Investments have never experienced a down market throughout economic history.

They do that story all the time.

Yeah.

So they don't know what it's like to get their hand cut off.

Since the beginning of the Dow, one out of every five years, it checks back 20% or more.

A 20%

drop right now would be about 7,000 points.

That happens every five years.

And the market has not been down in 13 years.

So, and how does the market even respond if the market checks back 7,000 points?

I mean, how does our society respond?

How do all these Robinhood traders who come to believe that they just lever up on margin with money they don't have, and all of a sudden they wake up and they're like, okay, I'm down 80%?

Like, what, what happens?

I think it's going to be very interesting.

Yeah.

You know what I do?

You know what mine is?

My thing is?

Ignore it.

I just ignore it.

I totally ignore it.

And by the way, that's one of the reasons you're wealthy.

A great strategy is to buy good companies and never think about them again.

I never do.

I never look at it.

In fact, the woman who does my, I have an all-lady team, a lawyer, accountant, et cetera, finance.

And I literally, they cannot get a meeting with me.

That's sexist.

I'm triggered.

That's sexist.

I know it is, but somehow.

Speaking of adding a woman to this situation, here is, I did a prediction.

Yeah, go ahead.

It's about the infrastructure bill.

Listen, I think he's right.

At the same time,

I don't think the child care policy is going to pass.

What do you think?

You don't think it's going to pass in the infrastructure?

You don't think it's going to be included in the infrastructure bill?

Right now, it's one of the items on the shopping block.

And guess who's the holdout?

Mansion and cinema.

Well, if someone had come to,

you just think, if the government came to, if the government was a person and came to every one of us and said, I'm not going to tell you how,

but it's going to be expensive, but it won't bankrupt us and we'll spend a lot more money on other things.

But we have a means of taking child poverty down 62%.

I mean, how can you say no?

I'm not sure.

And

Senator Bennett

summarized it perfectly for me.

He said, one of the terrible things about our country is that kids can't vote.

And so we spend trillions of dollars upgrading NANA from Carnival to Crystal Cruises with all sorts of benefits for seniors.

And I think Social Security has been a successful program, but we ignore the people who don't vote in the Iowa caucus.

That's children.

And so, for God's sakes, there's a lot of things you could strip out of that bill.

But we're not going to reduce childhood poverty.

I mean, Christ, again, we're the wealthiest nation in the world.

We need to start fucking acting like it.

This is so discouraging.

Yep.

They don't vote.

That's exactly.

That's all she wrote.

That's all she wrote.

They don't vote.

And Senator Manchin and Senator Shibi, ashamed of themselves on this one, ashamed of themselves.

I used to be from the camp that, you know, they're doing their job.

They're moderates.

They're trying to negotiate.

Now I just think they're just jonesing for the camera and they're drunk with their power of being holdouts because some of the stuff they're claiming that they're not for, I just don't.

How can you not be forced?

You know, public support is high for this.

Child care substitutes, universal pre-K.

It's like 70%, isn't it?

A two-year of a free universal community college, an extension of current expanded child.

Oh, there you go.

It's the same thing with gun violence, gun control.

Most Americans want some sort of gun control on some level.

Not taking away your guns, just if anyone wants to write in, but actually having background checks and things like that.

Go get them, Senator Klobuchar.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

Let's bring in our friend of Pivot, Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is present for the Facebook whistleblower hearing with Frances Haugen.

I think the time has come for action, and I think you are the catalyst for that action.

You have said privacy legislation is not enough.

I completely agree with you.

Welcome, Senator Klobuchar.

Well, thank you so much, Kara.

Hi, Scott.

It's great to be on again.

Great.

Hi, Senator.

So let's get right into it.

The Facebook misbehaviors back in the spotlight, something we seem to always be discussing.

So what are the next steps here?

And I'd love your overview of the hearings and what you think the impact was.

It was a bombshell.

After working in this area for years and years, taking on everything from political ads to Russian interference in the election to app stores, you name it.

This broke through and Francis Haugen, I believe, will be a catalyst to action.

Maybe it's because finally with my colleagues who have talked a lot but then never seem to be willing to push these bills through, you know, maybe when you find out that content is being pushed out to teenage girls to glorify eating disorders with accounts like Eternally Starving and I Need to Be Perfect, maybe that's kind of the

jumping the shark, so to say, and that that's it.

And that's what I'm hoping happened.

She was so calm.

She was so methodical in in going through what happened, and she also had some solutions and opened people's minds in a way that I hadn't seen before.

I think you know, there's been bipartisan support for moving forward in this area that actually is not new, but it's galvanizing people for action instead of just hearing after hearing after hearing.

Yeah, what does that mean, galvanizing?

So, what are the next steps?

That means actually moving on.

In, I put it in

a few major areas.

The first is privacy.

We can talk about that as you know gigantic industry of tech comes in lot good lot bad whatever no changes to federal privacy law that has to happen states having to fill the gap but a patchwork of action and there should be changes to federal privacy law there should be some updates to the children's online privacy protection act something my colleague senator marky has been pushing

There should be antitrust overhauls.

I think we all know that this consolidation has led to a lot of these problems.

That is not as intuitive, but I do think the senators get this.

When you limit innovation, when you allow a bully on the block to make all the decisions, this happens.

So finally, algorithms and

how you handle that with liability and the like.

Those are the four areas, all of them mentioned at the hearing.

People starting to be aware that maybe the children's online bill is different than privacy.

There's new information in people's heads now, and I think they're starting to sort it out.

And again, we already had movement, you know, Carol.

We passed more money for the agencies out of the U.S.

Senate, the Senator Grassley and I, the merger update fees.

We got a venue bill that allowed the state AGs to take on tech as they want to through the committee.

We have got the App Store bill introduced.

We are, Senator Grassley and I are very close to a bill that we've been working on for months now.

So there is a lot of things happening.

Pharma bills starting to go through, big ag bills gaining support that we've never seen this momentum.

And then finally, this Francis Haugen comes forward and says, why are you waiting?

Scott?

Senator,

so the regulation and antitrust, all super important.

You've been a leader around those issues, but they tend to...

be a pretty slow process and Facebook with all their lobbyists and their capital are pretty good at typically or historically slowing it down and watering it down.

I'll put forward a thesis and I want you to agree or disagree.

I don't believe any of this really stops until there's a perp walk.

One, do you agree with that?

And two, do you think this new information that comes to light will inspire any sort of criminal actions at a state or federal level?

Okay.

Well, as a former prosecutor, I'm cautious about throwing around the words about criminal actions because I think you have to the evidence.

I've always been like this.

And then you go forward and you allow people to look at that.

So that I will leave for the state prosecutors or the Justice Department.

But when you talk about a perp walk, I was thinking of those words.

You know, there's many ways to do that.

Some is a hearing, right?

That's been happening before.

Sometimes I feel it's just like people throwing popcorn at the screen.

But then there is also

major accountability from the public.

And by the way, the images of Mark Zuckerberg sailing while this was going on and the anger that people felt about that, You can have all kinds of versions of perp walks and what I want to see is action, not just anger.

I want this anger translated into action might be a better way of putting it.

And there are some really straightforward things we can do here.

Senator Markey's work to make the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act apply to older children.

The work that we can do when it comes to privacy.

And we know from what happened with Apple Apple when they gave their customers the option to opt in, 75% did not opt in.

Well, what if you did that with the other platforms?

You require that.

These are some of the things that Senator Cantwell and I and others are working on with a privacy bill.

And I think they'll finally be.

You are correct.

Every corner you walk around, there's another lobbyist.

They have stopped this stuff from going forward.

And I've already talked to our leaders about this in the Senate.

I've talked to multiple Republicans in the last few days.

I've seen increased interest in the actual bills.

I'm saying things like,

so we just had this hearing and then we're going to do nothing.

Come on here, look at this.

This is months of work we've done on various bills that we've been that have been in the works.

On antitrust, I think the committee, when you look at the bills we have taken on, an inordinate number of them have involved competition policy so far, not just in tech, in pharma.

An ordinate number number of hearings that were just as bipartisan as the hearing I took part in that Senator Blumenthal and Blackburn headed up.

So I just see the time on multiple fronts.

You cannot just say one front, right?

You can't just say this is all about

children and Facebook.

It's also going to be antitrust because it's got to apply to other platforms.

It also, the algorithm piece of it, I think is the most interesting because how do you do that while still protecting speech?

You could look at what has been suggested.

Do you remove the immunity when there's amplification and they're making profits off the amplification?

You know, answer is, well, what happens to your the recipes that we want to amplify in the cookbook?

Oh, guess what?

You're not going to be sued for that.

So those kinds of things have to be part of the discussion.

I've already put forward a bill to allow for the lifting of the immunity when it comes to vaccine misinformation when it is in the middle of a public health crisis.

Right, right.

Senator Warner, Norono, and I did one about discriminatory conduct.

So that is another way.

And finally, letting the researchers in, we can easily do that.

Yeah.

And allowing for more transparency and algorithms.

So one of the things that Facebook did this time was, and I wrote a column about it, is they became very aggressive.

They attacked her as a nobody, no-nothing.

She wasn't in the room.

And my response was, if you work in a sausage factory and anyone knows the sausage is bad who works there and understands what happened, you don't have to to be in the C-suite making bad decisions about sausage.

So

what did you think of the reaction?

Because it was quite aggressive at her.

And, you know, I just saw Monica Bickert, who I thought was really quite sly, but terrible.

She's the head of whatever she's the head of there.

And it's been a very aggressive

movement.

I was sort of surprised.

What did you think of that?

I was actually surprised, but I guess when you track back and that's come out publicly I mean he made it very clear no apologies right they're not going to apologize and that's the that's what you saw in action you saw the tweets from people that work there the kind of things they're saying and I actually asked Frances Haugen I said you

they attacked the research when she noted that Facebook was known as putting together they boasted about it right

this huge research team and anyone that's read the ugly truth knows that you know the story of how they put together these research teams and what happened.

And then

they undermine them and they basically throw them under the bus while we know at the same time they were cutting out the access for NYU and some of the other places.

So I thought that was aggressive.

I think it's always, you know, I've been through this common attack on

from tech is, oh, you don't know anything about it.

You're mistaken.

You don't have the kind of knowledge we do.

You know, they do it to anyone that takes them on.

But I was kind of surprised they did it to her.

Yeah.

And what did you, what was the reaction from Capitol Hill with that?

I think anyone could listen to her for a few hours.

She had this amazing ability to

teach subjects and explain them, which actually takes more smart sometimes than just knowing the complex subjects.

And I think that no one believed that.

Her calm manner, her actual,

her actual embracing, you know, she liked the people that worked.

She liked some things about the company.

She wasn't all just thought, you know, the company should be destroyed and demolished.

That wasn't her tone.

Her tone was, I want to make this better, which is what everyone should believe, whether they're in the company or leading the company.

And that's what I thought was so appealing about her as a witness.

She also wasn't partisan.

She was respectful.

And I think it made, I just think we've been waiting for this moment.

And I've loved our hearings we've had on big data and on home devices and all this.

They've been really good.

And they've been important because we collect the actual information and the senators involved.

But this thing broke through not just to the senators working on tech.

It broke through to everyone in Congress and to the public.

Well, in the 80s, one out of two fatalities on the road involving youth involved alcohol.

And then mothers bound together

put tremendous pressure on Washington to pass laws that resulted in a raising of the age to drink alcohol.

This does feel different because it feels like parents are really incensed around this.

One, does it feel different

for you because you hear from your constituents?

It does feel like this has taken it to a new level of,

I don't know, mistrust,

malevolence, mendaciousness, whatever you want to call it.

Why wouldn't we just consider age gating?

We age gate alcohol, alcohol, tobacco, pornographic content.

Why wouldn't we just age gate algorithmically driven content, especially across some of these platforms?

And does it feel different this time?

Yes, that is one approach that I think is worth looking at.

And it's certainly supposed to be happening.

And they're not, they're allowing younger kids, of course, on Instagram.

We now know something like 40% of these.

kids are on it.

So that is that is a piece of it, even though they're not supposed to.

And you look at the wealth of these companies and they should find a way to do this but beyond that i think your bigger question which i loved is given that you know i keep i wrote in my book about how in the old days it was you know farmers with their pitchforks and union organizers that really got this thing going to a pitch scream so that washington finally acted and some of it was states acting in their own ways and that pushed the action in washington by the way you already seen this privacy the moms and dads, they have been through hell with this pandemic already, right?

So everyone's much more aware.

They've been hanging out with their kids at home, balancing their toddlers on their knees and their laptops on their desks, teaching their first graders how to use the mute button.

And guess what?

They've realized how their kids are looking at these devices all the time, the kind of sites they're looking at.

And I think what Francis Huggins stirred up, it wasn't all as much as the eating disorders for me as someone who's led a bill, passed a bill in this area, and how knowing it's the number one mortality rate for people with mental illness, how viscerally bad that was.

I think a lot of parents heard all this and they thought, wait a minute, yeah, I'm so mad that these things are targeting my kids and these ads of whatever kind it is.

And I think that today, parents trying to raise their kids in a really hard world and realizing they're up against this big Facebook and all these platforms that are making it harder for them.

I think that's going to be the demand for action.

By the way, I saw that happen with EpiPen.

I took that on.

And that was,

we were not making much progress on some of these issues.

And the moms basically all taking it on made a difference to force some rebates and other things that brought the price down.

And that was my own experience.

My daughter has an EpiPen.

So I was able to see that and was in the...

front line of getting that done.

But I think certain things involving parents are about as personal as it gets.

And in a moment where you don't have as much connected groups working on things and it's much harder to do it, especially in the pandemic, you have to rely on this kind of

broader anger.

And I think that's tapped in with parents.

It's interesting.

My dentist was mad at Facebook, and he never has spoken of it.

He's like, those assholes.

Did he get so mad?

Did that affect him?

No, he was good.

The crown is excellent.

But I've never heard him say anything.

He definitely had opinions, which was fascinating.

now last thing

haugen is not on board for breaking up facebook although she did suggest some sort of ministry or data privacy agency yeah makes me nervous i have to say that one made me nervous i'm like no the government should not be in the business of content whatsoever

yeah i don't go ahead let me just ask the question so one is what do you think about that solution she had and then the one she didn't watch which was and this is your area of expertise antitrust a lot of the courts are overturning things because of current antitrust law they have to even It's not that they're conservative, it's just that's the law is written.

So, and that's how Facebook is getting out of certain things and making it difficult.

Do you think there needs to be a change in the antitrust?

You said this, but breaking up Facebook, this is not probably going to happen.

So, I'd love to get your thought on those two things.

Yeah, I'm so glad you're clarifying this because I did note some of my Republican colleagues go to the nth degree.

And by the way, that's probably not about Facebook, it's about them, certain people, yeah, um, with other interests, uh, with businesses.

The answer,

how I handled it after she'd said that, is I actually asked her about a bunch of the stuff we're working on in the antitrust base.

She literally gave a thumbs up from the witness stand,

which is about discriminatory conduct, self-preferencing, exclusionary conduct, where because you're the big guy on the block, you're the big platform, you make it harder for others to compete because you own all the data, because you put your search

preferences for your own products up at the top and you know all of this conduct going on so she was way into doing something on that I think she and I'm going to talk to her in the near future here I think she gets that that actually limits innovation when you have that ability that is all antitrust it doesn't sound like antitrust but that is the area of competitive policy so you know she what she's basically saying is I don't want to demolish the company it's how I read it.

I don't want to get rid of it.

But part of what you do with antitrust, as you know, Kara, is when a merger comes before you, they look to see, does this hurt competition in some way?

Existing laws have allowed the DOJ and the FTC, they're using them right now to go after those cases against Google and Facebook.

And it's not easy.

It has allowed them to take on some major mergers, even as we know now, either before or after.

But I think we need to upgrade the laws to make it easier.

My guess, given how she answered the questions when I asked about some of that stuff, she would agree with this.

It's just when people just say, Should we break up all these big companies?

You know, people are going to go, well, no, that's not quite the answer.

I get that.

But it doesn't mean that you don't, when you start going under the hood, this is about stopping mergers that are anti-competitive.

This is about possibly divesting some assets, but not destroying a company.

This is about consent orders where you tell two merged companies.

The Justice Department says you can do this, but you're not going to be able to do that because then there'll be no competition in an area.

And it's about updating our laws so they're as sophisticated as the companies that are participating in our economy when we have done nothing because everyone's listening to all these people that have been paid by the tech companies literally millions of dollars, throwing them around at fundraisers, throwing them around everywhere.

And that's what I said at the hearing.

Let's be honest.

That's who you're listening to when you go around the corner.

And you better be listening to Frances Haugen.

All right.

Senator Klobuchar, good luck.

I can't wait to see all of these bills.

As you can see, I'm energized.

I finally got this on the front page.

We've got it in the

people are actually, we have to galvanize on this moment or there's going to be the next thing.

And then everyone tried.

That's what the tech companies will want.

They want it to go away.

They do.

Keep fighting.

They're good fighting.

Keep fighting.

We appreciate it.

Thanks for coming on.

All right, Scott.

That was fantastic.

We love Senator Klobuchar, don't we?

We really are fans.

We're fans of hers.

We think

she's rocking.

She should be president.

Smart, hardworking, no nonsense, very honest, high integrity.

I'm behind her for president.

Yeah.

What do you think?

I'm on Team Klobuchar.

I agree with you.

I think she's fantastic.

I told you my encounter with her about it.

I called, I said, hello, Madam President.

And she goes, oh, Kara.

And I go, I'm not talking to you.

I'm talking about the golden child.

I like her a lot.

She got into a, I thought she was getting into a big, one of those big, you know, black limo things at a party we were at.

And she got into like a, like a, I don't know, it was like a Toyota Corolla.

Like, and someone else got into the big car.

Anyway, Siri, Minnesota.

We'll be back for more Friends at Pivot and their predictions for Q4 and Beyond, as well as some of our own.

Hello, Daisy speaking.

Hello, Daisy.

This is Phoebe Judge from the IRS.

Oh, bless, that does sound serious.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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All right, back with predictions.

Segment for our quarterly review, looking into Q4 and Beyond with our friends of Pivot.

Let's start with one on supply chain by Kevin O'Mara.

Hey, Cara.

Hey, Scott.

Kevin O'Mara here, co-founder of Zero 100.

Here's a supply chain prediction for 2022 that I'd love to see happen.

It's about Apple's next big platform, cars, and the bet that Tim Cook will end up doing for the American economy, what Henry Ford did in 1914 when he blew people's minds by doubling wages in his auto plants to $5 per day and helped give rise to the middle class.

My bet is that next year we'll see the first serious steps toward ramping up a U.S.-based production of cars, batteries, charging infrastructure, and most important, a service and content ecosystem like Apple stores, but for cars.

And, with all of this, the creation of tens of thousands of high-paying middle-class, friendly careers.

Tim Cook is the most supply chain-savvy CEO in the world.

I bet he'd love to have this be his legacy.

So basically, a renaissance in American manufacturing that we're going to start reshoring or onshoring more manufacturing.

I think that's interesting.

By the way, let me just correct Kevin.

Elon Musk is Henry Ford here, has been doing all the pushing.

Do you think I don't know if he can do it like okay

or at least whatever?

He's the one that started this, started the fire here in this area.

That said,

he's comparing him to Henry Ford because Henry henry ford is the one that had the supply chain essentially the you know the

yeah well the assembly line you figure so what do you think about this uh there's no doubt about it i'm on uh i was on the board of a consumer products company and we were reshoring because we're using automation and um

what what covet has done is realize that a lack of diversity in your supply chain specifically if you're If you're a company that gets the majority of your shoes out of Vietnam, for example,

it creates tremendous vulnerability.

If you get 90% of your tops and your especially retailer out of China, it just creates real vulnerability.

So a lot of companies have decided that in addition to the interesting technology, the proximity, and also a reduced risk in supply chain interruption, you're seeing a lot of onshoring, a lot of more kind of high-value.

What's the downside?

Americans cost too much and don't work hard enough.

What's the, you know, that's.

Well, no, the downside, the downside is that we have a tax policy that makes it much cheaper to hire a robot than an individual.

And that is if you hire an individual, you have to pay payroll taxes.

Whereas

if you hire a robot or put a robot in place, you get to amortize it.

You get tax deductions.

You don't have to pay payroll taxes.

So I think we have to figure out a way that we reinvest in people such that they have the skills to program, maintain this automation because it's coming.

But people, or I think Andrew Yang summarized it perfectly, people demonize immigrants.

If you're looking for a culprit of manufacturing job loss, you know, you should stop robots at the border.

Robots.

That's death.

Bill Gates talks about that.

Tax robots.

So on the whole, I think it's a really good thing onshoring.

But we just have to be thoughtful about the jobs that displaces and how we reinvest some of those proceeds from that productivity back into retraining and apprenticeships.

We can't do what we did with globalization, and that is

it translated to enormous prosperity, but no progress.

We didn't retrain or invest in the people that left.

Very good point.

Excellent thing.

That could be interesting.

Apple definitely is going to move, as you've talked about, into this space rather significantly.

I agree with you.

They have to.

And they're good at it.

Let me ask you this.

Would you get on that waiting list?

I would get on the waiting list for an Apple.

I would.

I would.

I would.

Yeah.

Although, the reason I don't get a Tesla because it seems it's too expensive for, I don't want to pay that, but it's got to be a pretty cheap price, I have to say, for a car.

I don't love cars that much that I need to.

It won't.

Apple won't be cheap.

Apple's a luxury brand.

It'll be a cheap cheap cheap channel.

like i'm not paying that much for a car i'm just if it's over twenty five thousand dollars i won't pay for it and even then i'm like no so that's why i have a key anyway um all right next a prediction on antitrust actions from scott's best friendemy preete barara hi karen scott an update to my predictions for antitrust actions in the coming months the senate judiciary committee at long last is about to hold a confirmation hearing for jonathan canter biden's nominee to head the department of justice's antitrust division He's a vocal critic of big tech, and he enters the scene as the DOJ mulls a lawsuit against Google's dominance of online advertising.

Google also continues to have trouble in Europe, where the company is currently appealing $5 billion in antitrust penalties over the Android operating system, which is a potential sign of things to come in the U.S.

And Apple may see further litigation related to its App Store after a federal antitrust suit filed by Fortnite creator Epic resulted in a split decision.

Preet.

Antitrust.

That's what we just talked about with Senator Klobuchar.

So what think you of Preet's feelings on this issue?

I think he's right.

I think it's Jonathan Cantor's really interesting.

I like him.

I got to be honest.

I wasn't even listening.

All I could think about was at Code,

we had that party on that roof deck, and I saw this semicircle of people just enraptured.

And I walked over to see what was going on.

I'm like, is there free cocaine over here?

What's going on here?

And it was preet with a like a whiskey a glass of wine talking about something and literally it was like that did you ever see the movie tootsie and bill murray is at a party just talking about pop philosophy and everyone's just just entranced literally preet is the most interesting man in the world and i just couldn't stomach it everyone's like laughing and like oh preet

oh preet

oh my god anyways i wasn't even oh my god he said antitrust

with jonathan canter

google's dominance Europe, Fortnite, etc.

What do you think?

Well, we know it's coming.

We just don't know if it's a year or 10 years.

I'm an investor in Epic and Fortnite.

I think it's a monster company.

I think everyone talks about the metaverse.

I think Fortnite is the leader, if there is a leader in the metaverse.

But

look,

you've been passing out those mugs of Cantor, Woo, and Conno,

whatever it is.

I'm just sort of sick of talking about it.

I'm ready.

You're just talking about everything.

You just want things to happen.

That's what you want, right?

Well, the problem is, you know,

they wait us out, right?

They wait till there's another tragedy.

They wait till there's another thing that distracts us, but they keep pounding away on the front lines with their lobbyists and their money.

And

then the fires subside.

No, no.

May I make another point?

Yes, go ahead, Carol.

Sooner or later, a fox runs out of tricks

and gets caught.

Don't sell peanuts to feed the monkey.

Don't sell peanuts.

Don't sell your soul to feed peanuts to the monkeys.

No, there you go.

There you go.

This will happen.

I think this will happen.

I think everyone's ready.

And this is what happened with Microsoft.

It went on for years and years.

It seemed endless that Bill Gates would run us all.

And then he didn't.

So I'm just saying, things happen.

Things have their time.

We're not China.

This is how it works.

Something's coming.

I don't know what it is, but it is going to be antitrust.

All right.

That's my song from West.

What is going on?

First call, now you're singing show tunes?

Jesus.

What is going on here?

Who are you?

And what have you done with Kara Swisher?

My voice is back.

That's why it's almost back.

Yeah, there you go.

The next prediction comes from Abdul El-Sayed.

Hey, Karen Scott, this is Dr.

Abdul El-Sayed, physician, epidemiologist, former Detroit Health Commissioner, and host of Crooked Media's Health and Society podcast, America Dissected.

I predict that by the end of this quarter, we'll have seen a massive reduction in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, and that the Delta wave will largely be behind us.

Let me explain why.

Even though there's a safe and effective vaccine out there, nearly 30% of eligible people have chosen not to take it.

Instead, a substantial proportion are picking up some immunity.

They're just doing it the hard way, by way of infection.

Every time someone's infected and recovers, they pick up some natural immunity.

Don't get me wrong, that immunity is much more specific to a given strain and less durable.

But it still protects that individual for a short period of time, inching us all closer to that herd immunity that is so critical to keeping COVID at bay.

You know what really make my prediction come true, though?

If people quit messing around and got their vaccine.

Either way, let's hope I'm right about this so we can all have a happy holiday.

A lot of people don't think.

I just read an article about herd immunity, we're never going to reach it.

But I see that.

I mean, you know, you can beat this thing one way or another.

Tons of needless deaths and hospitalizations and strain on the healthcare system that shuts other people who have other illnesses out.

Or you can just get the fucking vaccine and stop it.

Like, what is the, what is the, people don't mind the cost either to them or other people.

That really, that really chaps my ass.

I'll tell you that.

But to his prediction, and you're scared to say this out loud.

And that's where I think the veracity of this prediction comes in.

And that is not.

And I had, it's a Dr.

Saeed.

I had him on the Prop 2 show.

He's a very impressive guy and a comer.

A lot of people, really thoughtful people say the same thing, that this is we're beginning, if you will, to see the burnout of the virus.

And

Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner, I think the CEO of Pfizer, and these are responsible people who don't make those types of statements without real data.

But what they're saying is, I mean, the problem is we're getting there the most painful way possible.

But they think that there's a lot of smart people saying they think this is the last kind of wave, if you will, and then it's going to start.

I mean, eventually these viruses do burn out, at least in history.

It's just, it's just a pain we're going to incur to get there.

I think that's absolutely right.

Of course they do.

We're still not having the 1918 Spanish flu.

But it's how we do it, right?

There are thousands of people, thousands and tens of thousands of people that didn't need to die, many more than that.

And the hospitalizations,

if I read another story about some guy that had a heart attack or a minor thing, a relatively easy to treat thing and couldn't get in the hospital because at that particular moment, that particular state

was full of people who hadn't been vaccinated.

And it'll pass.

Of course, those people will get out of the hospital.

But what was that cost?

Why did that guy have to die?

It's like, it's,

it's, what's it called?

Collateral damage.

Like, why?

Like, that's the part.

We're so easy to push that away.

I was thinking about solutions for the next

enormous tragedy of the commons.

And one of the great prophylactics against these tragedies is film and camera.

And that is a big component that ended the Vietnam War was that journalists were allowed to go into cameras and film the horror that is war.

And then the American government said, you know what?

That's a bad rap.

Get rid of the cameras.

And then when we go into Iraq and hundreds of thousands of people die going to Afghanistan, they don't allow cameras.

And we don't see up close the horror.

And I think that there, I think something could have really could have had a material impact is if we'd figured out a way to blur out the faces and had sites that showed what was going on in ICUs around the nation.

Well, they had a few of those, right?

And they were incredibly depressing.

Well, they should be.

They should be horrifying.

And it's like Upton Sinclair.

It's like Upton Sinclair.

It's like, you know, people, you know, Jacob Reese with children working way back with photographs.

You know, this is what it look at it and see one of the things that's driving me crazy is like a lot of these sort of vcs that are what i consider anti-vax um they're like oh florida's going up i'm like yes but the cost they don't care about the cost right they don't care who died or who got affected they're like well it turned out of course it's going to turn out everyone knows that it's what it costs to get there

And finally, Shira Frankl, co-author of An Ugly Truth Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination on Facebook.

Hey, Cara Ann Scott, Shira Frankl.

My prediction is the next year is likely going to mean a lot of time spent in Washington for Mark Zuckerberg, who, as we know from people close to him, has always joked that he is allergic to the nation's capital, to Washington, D.C.

But lawmakers seem incredibly energized by the recent reports from the Wall Street Journal regarding the harm that Facebook causes to teens.

And while antitrust regulation and,

you know, the looming question of whether Facebook is a monopoly are something that could could take years for them to sort out.

Lawmakers can act very quickly when they want to on issues like, are young people, especially teens and preteens, safe online?

So I imagine that the next year is going to be a difficult one for Facebook and that Mark might want to reconsider his feelings on Washington.

I think that he's going to have to spend most of his time.

He doesn't like spending his time on this stuff.

And he's going to spend most of his time on this.

This is the era that Bill Gates moved into and stayed stayed for a very long time.

And I agree.

Historically, this is where we are much faster for Mark Zuckerberg than Bill Gates, but this is where he's going to spend his time.

And that means the already not, he says so many compares to Bill Gates, by the way, you know, in terms of a product that many people didn't consider innovative, et cetera, et cetera.

The obstreperousness, Bill Gates was quite obstreperous.

And so that's what she's talking about is that he's moved into this era.

I think that's 100% right.

What do you think?

Well, it's interesting.

What Senator Klobuchar was really interesting, and she said there's different forms of

that when DeZuck

is sitting before a group of people who are elevated.

I mean, any room he walks into, him or Sheryl Sandberg walks into, and this is what happens, and this is the arrogance of CEOs and how they become vulnerable.

And we as people, when we recognize success, become vulnerable.

And that is we ultimately

accidentally and unintentionally surround ourselves with people who just want to figure out what we think and get get there first.

And you end up surrounding yourself with a bunch of people who agree with you.

So you're not used to standing in front, sitting in front of people who can interrupt you, who are there to make you look stupid, who are there to call you a liar because you are a liar.

So that's got to be a really uncomfortable experience.

And he's got to spend at least five days with these basically getting just like.

gangbanged by all these communications consultants.

Say, when they ask this, slow down, look thoughtful, repeat the question, say, senator, this is an important question, and try and run run out the clock.

And then when you get really panicked, say, I need to get back to you.

I mean, he's got so much.

It can't be fun.

There's no upside to this for him.

But quite frankly, I'm beginning to believe

testimony of Francis Haugen is worthwhile.

More testimony from Jack or Cheryl or Mark, quite frankly, it's just a cheap thrill.

It's empty calories.

We know they're lying.

We know they don't have our best interests at heart.

It's time.

It's time for senators to do press releases saying we have just passed this bill.

I think you're right.

I think it's kind of enough already.

The theater is great.

The theater is great.

Enough.

Let's move to it.

Well, she said that.

She said that.

She did say that.

I agree.

I think it's a really interesting time.

I think he might get tired of it.

This is when Bill Gates left Microsoft, you know, despite his incredible power over it, was after this when he realized he wasn't, you know, and he could go off and make things.

You know, I know Mark Mark has an idea that he's a little more innovative than he is rather than a borrower, which I think he does well.

And so I think that the driver of the car is someone I was texting with someone pretty prominent in that, in that, from that company or former person.

And they were like, I finally realized the driver of the car is the problem.

We need a new driver of that car.

And I would agree.

I would agree.

I think you're right to talk about that.

I don't agree there's going to be a perp walk that you talked about.

I think it's more that Senator Klobuchar talked about.

You know what I think?

I actually think there is going to be a perp walk.

I am not sure it's going going to be one of the the big names though that's the thing i think they'll i think they're going to i mean when they go after them they try and find someone mid-level usually to get them to flip to put pressure on them right

it's going to be very interesting but i also want to acknowledge the majority of people i've spoken to agree with you

i don't but by the way they also are going to they're going to dig their heels in i have gotten i may we may just publish some i have asked every major facebook executive for an interview all declines i'm just going to publish all the emails to show you like why don't you talk talk to them kara i go oh we ask um so it's really quite astonishing um that none of them will will talk to me and and they give the bullshit reason that i'm mean to them like too bad they can deal with a mean lady oh you know what you you nailed your prediction literally on queue you said they're going to start needling and trying to undermine her credibility and literally on queue the next day i forget his name andy stone the latest person that basically arbitrage his reputation for millions of dollars is saying just to be clear the documents stolen first off these documents aren't stolen when the SEC grants you whistleblower status, that means you didn't steal anything.

That means you're trying to help the world or help the government or comply with laws.

And as a result of that, you decided to turn over evidence of the wrongdoing.

These documents are not stolen.

Oh, I know what they're doing.

You exactly were, you're exactly right.

The Trump thing, like, oh, she was never really in a decision-making.

Yeah, decision-level.

It was literally on queue the next day they said they did, they did exactly what you said they were going to do.

I hate being right about these assholes.

When they constantly say their go-to is,

what this shows is we desperately need regulation.

Talk to any elected representative about how Facebook is actually embracing regulation in Washington.

They're like, they talk a big game and they want to shape it to their advantage, which I, quite frankly, I think they did in Europe.

I think this regulation has ended up helping them in Europe.

But the notion that they want a warm embrace of regulation, like help us.

We know.

Throw me in that dryer patch.

Throw me in that dryer patch.

Anyway, Senator Klobuchar is on to you.

Anyway, that's the show.

We'll be back on Tuesday for more.

Scott, read us out.

Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Andretat engineered this episode.

Thanks to also to Drew Burrows.

Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or if you're on Android.

User, check us out on Spotify or frankly, 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.

Mothers against Mark and Cheryl.

MAMS.