The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack and Tesla breaks up with Bitcoin

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Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.

And Kara, after signing a contract for four years with Vox, I've decided that I'm just not comfortable with the environmental impact that the Vox Media Podcast Network is having.

I'm having second thoughts. Oh, you.
Listen to me. I heard that we have to mine Prip Barrara's insights and that he's consuming more electricity than Argentina.

And after pumping this shit and doing everything I could to garner my own economic gains, I've decided I'm no longer comfortable with the environmental impact of Vox.

What Scott is referring to is Elon, and we will discuss that later, but he's just decided that

they will no longer be accepting Bitcoin after he accepted Bitcoin because of the bank. Oh, wait, and he also just happened to sell a bunch of it right before his earnings call, right? He got woke.

What a coincidence.

All right. We're going to get into your allegations.
But Pri Pahara does consume more energy than the entire country of Argentina. Let's establish that situation.

I wonder if we should do an energy profile on you, Scott Galloway. That would be a lot.
Have you seen me right now? I look like

people don't see it. He was working out before this.
It's Fukushima right now, not in a good way. Yeah, it's hot there in Florida, huh? Sweating.
It's a hot day.

You live in a place that's warm. That's a warm place.
It's a beautiful day here. It's 72 degrees here in Washington, D.C.
Oh, you're having your 11 days of spring before it comes 95. You know what?

It's freezing. It's been freezing this week.
Really? It's been freezing. I've had, you know, I've had Maggie Haberman staying at my house.
We had to turn on the heat. Really?

She's working on a Trump book, but she's...

I've got Maggie Haberman staying in my place. She's my friend.
She's my friend. She is your friend.
And all you people who want to tweet me about her, she's smart. Sucking her.
She is sucking.

That's what I say. She's wonderful.
She's compared to her. She's great.
She's great. She's working on it.
Like a lot of people, she's working on a Trump book.

I think her and Frances McDorman should mate, and then we take their children and invade Australia with a super army of the McDorman Habermans.

Seriously. I'm going to bring that up with her.
That is like bad and ass come together. Oh, my God.
It's fair. It's a fair situation.

So, speaking of which, one of the things I was trying to get information out of her, which she didn't, she's like a clam. She doesn't give information.
She only just reports it.

And I'm like, give me the inside scoop, the skinny.

Republican leaders in Congress have voted to oust Wyoming Republican Representative Liz Cheney for her vote to impeach former President Donald Trump for his involvement in inciting the Capitol insurrection and our continued focus on it.

So, how does I want to talk about branding because this is a bad branding situation? I want to know how you would tell the GOP to rebrand itself here, and how would you advise Liz Cheney to do?

The GOP is a much more difficult one. Let me start with Liz Cheney, Representative Cheney.

We,

when you think about heroes throughout history, whether it's Abraham Lincoln, whether it's Muhammad Gandhi, whether it's, I think one of the greatest American heroes is Muhammad Ali, the thing that makes them heroes

is that they take a stand at extreme cost to their personal well-being, economic livelihood, political futures, at a moment in time when it is really hard to do that.

And then in retrospect, we look back and say, you know what? What Ali refused to do in terms of signing up to be kind of a poster child for the Vietnam War, stripped of his medals.

They impoverished him. He had to borrow money from Joe Frazier.
And then who do we ask just 24 years later to light the flame at the Atlanta Olympics? We asked Muhammad Ali.

So essentially, Liz Cheney's going to be lighting the flame at the Olympics in 2040 or whatever. Look, I believe, and I get politics wrong a lot.
Hold on a second.

I think Liz Cheney is now the front runner for the Republican nomination in 2024. To shake out of you.
Here's the thing. She voted with Trump 99%

of the time. And the person who's releasing her didn't.
And we used to be quite a moderate and now is just mouthing these ridiculous bullshit about the election being stolen.

It's interesting.

Why is she doing this?

I was talking to my mom this morning, of course, because she watches Fox News at home.

she's like she needed to shut up i'm like but she's putting pointing like literally it's like whatever the talking point is of fox news within a week my mother parrots it because it's really fascinating to watch that.

And I was, and she used to be like, not like this. It was, it's really fascinating.
But, you know, it's fascinating that there's a lot of women after Donald Trump.

The women are the ones that are saying, whether it's Liz Cheney or Elizabeth Warren, whether it's Maggie Haberman, who's, you know, gotten a lot of crap from Donald Trump, whether it's Hillary Clinton.

It's really interesting that none of the others will do this. And this is her.

I have to figure out everyone's like, what's her game? And I don't quite understand it. I think part of it is she actually believes what she's saying.

And the other part is she doesn't want the Republican Party to be a Trump party of Trump.

Oh, I don't know. I think it's simpler than that.
I think there's never the wrong time to do the right thing.

She's more powerful than the two centers in Wyoming because there's no one there. There's only one representative.
And the last name is Cheney. And she is being advised.

She is being advised. The person whispering into her ear is arguably the brightest political mind of the last century.

And that is the guy that convinced the New York Times to endorse the geopolitical catastrophic decision of the last 50 years. And that was us going into Iraq under false pretense.

And that man is Dick Cheney.

She is fucking playing chess. And shithead McCarthy and his band of

lame insurrectionists are playing checkers.

She is betting, and this is a good bet,

that the guy who lost all three houses of government,

that the guy has every AG after him in the world, that the guy when the next election comes around is going to be an obese 78-year-old man who's going to be utterly distracted with his own legal woes, that his currency is going to go down and into that void will be the people who had sack

and said, I am standing up for the Constitution and Republican values. This is, I mean,

she literally is now jumped out of the middle. She's appealing to the middle now.
She really is appealing to independence. She's appealing.
Although, look at what Lindsey Graham said.

They can't, this is a real branding exercise because Lindsey Graham says they can't win without

it's going to change. It's a bet on the future.
It's a bet on the rising or falling stock of Donald Trump.

And the reality is right now, Liz Cheney is shot out ahead of DeSantis and Nikki Haley is the frontrunner because

you know what? She's right. She's right.
And every day she's going to get more and more right.

And we're going to look back and say, who did the right thing, gave up her gold medals and her economic livelihood to do the right thing? Those are our heroes. She may lose in Wyoming.

I don't think she cares. I think she cares.
And she runs for Brussels. She's going to go to every person in Wyoming and explain her decision to them.
That's powerful, I think.

That'll take three, four days.

Well, there's Bob over here. You know what? She doesn't mind.
This woman doesn't mind throwing down. I got issues with Liz Jane.
Let me just say, I think what she did to her sister was appalling.

But, you know, look, my mother was daring to be a little bit more. Yeah, but it gives her more cred.
She's a true conservative. She really is.
Like, that's like, I'm not, actually, you know what?

I'm not going to give her a hard time because my own mother did that. So, you know, I see it.
I've seen it. You're going to have been a bigot of a family member.

Okay.

No.

But let me just say this is a fascinating moment for branding. And the GOP brand is really,

it'll be interesting to see what happens with this brand. Because they're going all Marjorie Taylor Green and not Liz Janey.

It's really, it's a you know, you know who's who's going to help the GOP out of what seems like an irreparable brand issue?

The Democrats. We're just outstanding at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

We're going to have AOC insult Andrew Yang for doing something that involves Ramadan because he said something supportive of Israel and we're going to create interesting warfare.

I think the Democrats have been doing it. We'll go after each other.
I think they've been pretty good at stepping out of the way.

I know, but

I feel like Biden's been like, I'm just sitting over here doing things. Like, go with that.
He's doing great. He's, it's interesting.

Although my mother said there's a shadow presidency going on in case you're interested. That's what's happening on over at Kamala.
Who's the shadow? Who's the shadow president?

Not Kamala, Susan Ryan. Really? She's not the shade.
She's not the shadow. Whatever.
Anyway, another, another area that's interesting, speaking of controversial statements,

your friend, WeWork CEO, Asandeep Mathrani, said those employees who are uberly engaged in the company want to go to the office two-thirds of the times at least.

Those who are least engaged are very comfortable working from home. This was an interesting statement.
Of course, the guy who ran, he got killed on Twitter.

It was, he kind of opened himself up. This is a Wall Street Journal article that he was in.

What do you think about that? I think he's probably like, there's going to be an interesting. back to work, not to work.
There's all kinds of contraries.

A woman from ran the Washingtonian got everyone pissed saying get back to work or get in line or get out of line. What do we think about this?

I think it's still going to be a hybrid situation, but what do you think, Scott?

So disclosure, I'm not friends with Sandeep, but I have done some work with him, and I think he is one of the brightest minds in real estate. I thought he was a genius choice for WeWork.

I texted Sandeep last night, and I said, you missed this. You got it wrong here, because

what you fail to realize here is that, and what you're going to get attacked for, is conflating engagement with a lack of encumbrance.

And that is a woman at home taking care of a kid because their school is doing remote work, which is Latin for, hey, moms, you're now in charge of educating your kid.

And let's be honest, it's always the mom. It is.

And there are some people who really need that flexibility.

And the reality is the people who want to get back to work are what I found is mostly young people who want to get out of their shitty little apartments, want to meet friends, mentors, you know, want to work hard, want to meet, you know, they want to be part of that social.

But to conflate engagement with your ability to get into work is just a very tone-deaf statement. And the worst thing about that.
Especially when you're selling office space, but go ahead.

Well, and I said said this to Sandeep.

This is a brand issue, and that is you want to ladder the person.

Right now, he wants to be the really sober, thoughtful, mature CEO. He wants to be the immunity to the megalomania bullshit that was Adam Newman.
And here's the thing.

Sandeep has a great story. What is office space going to need to be posted? You're right.
You have said this. This is why I brought this up.
What are you going to need? What do tenants want right now?

They're going to want flexibility. They don't know how much office space they're going to need.
What are they going to want when people do come back into the office?

They're going to want something really nice and communal that facilitates interactions. What else are they going to want? We need a WeWorker.
Short-term flexibility.

Should we get a little tiny WeWork office and just lock ourselves in there? All their competition has been cleared out. People want to focus on their core business, not real estate.

WeWork has a fantastic

thing, he said. He should think hard.
You know what? Sandeep is one of those guys that is like 98% of the time so right that I think he was poorly advised here.

I would go to, I think his head of communications, his head of comms or whoever plays this story should be just taken out to the, you know, taken out to the backyard.

This was a really tone-deaf thing to say from a guy who is literally, he's one of the three, him, Hamid Mogadam, and I'm sure I'll come up with a third, maybe Sam Zell, are the biggest brains in real estate.

He got this one wrong. But anyways, as you know, I'm bullish when we work.
Listen, people who work from home, so I have worked from home for 20 years, 20 years. I hate the office.

I've always hated the office. I think I'm more productive than most people.
Same for you.

You produce from everybody.

I got this wrong. I used to tell people in my company, you have to come into work.
And occasionally I would let, especially working mothers or people taking care of their parents.

Sure, you can work from home one or two days a week, but I've always been one of those people that we need to bump off of each other. We need to be in the office.

I used to have, talk about unpopular, I used to have 8 a.m. Monday morning

meetings for the entire firm in New York. And New York is not a morning place.
And people hated me for it. And I hired a CEO.
And The first thing he did. Even later.

The first thing the CEO did was cancel those 8 a.m. Monday morning mail.
Oh, it's just ridiculous.

I think that you should be intentionally bringing people together. I think there's some really important things that people should do together as a group.

Walt and I used to throw parties and take people to do cool things. That's what we used to do.

Not just dumb trips, but really we did stuff as a group that was very, not like falling exercises or things like that. But we thought about that a lot in terms of how people came in.

There is a benefit for people going in and people because it engages people with each other and creates relationships. But you could be very, this could be a really good time for companies.

Lastly, Amazon won its appeal in the European Union over a $300 million tax bill from 2017. The court ruled that EU regulators had failed to prove the company got a legal advantage from tax rulings.

Big blow to Marguerite Vestiger, the head of the European Commission on this issue.

She's been trying to use money and taxes to hold these companies accountable, but this is a legal fight, obviously.

Whatever. She's fearless.
She has great hair and she knits. She's a gangster.
She'll be back. Not the last of her.

This is a ground war with these companies. Yeah, this is, like you said, this is literally one battle in a long war.
And the reality is we all focus on the tax rates of corporations.

It has nothing to do with tax rates are almost unimportant. It's all about tax code.
Amazon has registered $10 billion.

No,

$10 billion in profits over the last, I'm sorry, $20 billion in profits over the last 10 years. It's either 20 or 10 10 billion, and their tax rate has been 4.5%.

And I think people are just fed up, and they go, if the most profitable, most successful companies in the world

are paying, and 90 of the 500 SP,

90 of the Fortune 500 paid zero tax, including FedEx and Nike. And it's like, well, if our most successful, profitable companies aren't paying any tax, who is?

And the answer is small and medium-sized businesses that don't have representation in Washington can't afford 400 tax accountants to navigate this tax code. So I think people are really fed up.

Yeah, I think it's a good topic for Democrats and Republicans. Well,

one of the biggest tax cuts we could have in our society or unlocks would just be simplicity. And that is to say, okay, here's the tax rate and everybody pays it.

And it would be a really

complex

for poor people.

Anyway, go ahead. Sorry.
I'm sorry, repeat. It's a little more complex than just that because it has impacts.

I'm not an expert, but I've heard people say this, and then I've heard very good arguments that it has to be a little more complex. But go ahead.
Sorry.

Well, what would be complex about 0% income tax up to $50,000, $50,000 to $520,000, and then anything over 20, 40%, and you're done. No tax.

All tax deductions are just a maze such that only wealthy people can get through it. It's also a pain in the ass for people with money.
And you want to talk about an unlock?

The brightest, not other than you, the brightest person I work with is a woman who works at a law firm who helps with my tax planning. And I'm like, Jesus Christ,

you should be solving world hunger or building the next app. Instead, she's a lot of people.
You guys are such that. Mamie, she's the best.
She's the smartest good.

It's such an incredible waste of human capital.

I shall tell her that.

Well, it's true. We've invented incredible professionals to solve problems of our own making.
And complexity is nothing but a tax on the poor because they don't have...

If you know how to navigate by stars, you want to have boat races at night.

And the rich have figured out a way to have all boat economic races at night where poor people who don't have the GPS to navigate this tax code get screwed. Simplicity of the world.

That was a metaphor I wasn't expecting. There we go.

Yo, ho, yo, ho. That's a very elite argument.
Us with yachts to do the thing in that

those who don't have super yachts.

Super yachts. You would like a super yacht.
We've discussed that. I get seasick.
You're nice. Neither of us are getting a super yacht, no matter how rich we get.
You're not good on boats. All right.

We're going to go to the big story. Speaking of super yachts require a lot of gas.
We're going to the big story.

Let's talk about updates on the colonial pipeline cyber attacks.

A major East Coast pipeline for jet fuel and natural gas is back online after a six-day shutdown caused by a ransomware cyber attack, but it'll still take some time before it's fully operational.

But the shutdown has already sparked panic buying and hoarding that has overwhelmed gas stations in the southeast.

So there's a picture of a woman putting gas in a plastic bag, which was a delightful video to see. Gas prices have soared above $3 because of the shortage.

This attack follows a string of other ransomware attacks, which you and I have talked about, including SolarWinds.

That wasn't ransomware, and Microsoft Exchange Server. These were other attacks, not necessarily ransomware attacks.
But there's a lot of attacks going on, and ransomware is among the many.

Both were tied to nation-state actors. The most recent attack seems to be a criminal group, as Nicole Perlroth said to us.

There's all kinds of reasons for doing it, whether it's to make money, whether it's to create discord, whether it's a nation trying to do other things. So

what do you make of this?

And it's affected, you know, people just immediately moved into the, I'm going to grab all the toilet paper mode like they did in the pandemic, which of course you didn't need to do and created really problematic situations.

I think this is really one of the existential threats to our Commonwealth. and could pretty easily escalate to something very frightening.

And what struck me was the people responsible for this, they have a name, supposedly they're out of Russia, apologized and said that they're going to pull back.

They didn't realize the ramifications of what they did, and they're trying to act like they're a nation state and they're putting out diplomatic statements.

And, you know, if I were Biden, I would have said, you know what, thanks for that. We're going to drone your ass.
I mean, this has to be.

We have to punch back here. And if in fact our suspicions are correct and that it's nation states using some of these groups to fight a proxy war and create discord, I think we need a Cold War.

And that is we have to hit back pretty hard and come to some sort of détente where when these attacks happen, we're holding you responsible and we're going to do our best to respond thoughtfully, meticulously, and two to five X to damage.

Because at some point, you're going to see a hospital system lose power. Oh, they're doing that.
They're attacking hospital.

This has been, that's what Nicole talked about: hospital systems, all kinds of, there's a lot of very vulnerable high-surface areas that they need to, like, they have held hospitals, has been among the biggest biggest attacks from ransomware uh people who are doing this but this is this is going to be as we talked about last week i think this is going to be the achilles hill or the entry point into where um uh crypto gets regulated uh because this is yep this is this is what people demand but this is really um this is frightening i think all of us know you know i've been hacked a couple times in the email where people do phishing uh co-op someone's email and then send a message to our cfo saying saying pretending to be the CO, say, send $22,000 or are they going to shut our service off?

We're sitting here. A Bank America card.
But the really scary stuff is the state-sponsored stuff where they're just really trying to recapitulate. I mean, there's just not getting around it.

It's a form of terrorism. It is.
And it can be economic. It can be for other reasons.

There were attacks on water systems. See, this combines ransomware with infrastructure attacks.
And I think Nicole was more concerned about that.

And she felt like the Chinese and Russians are very deep within our infrastructure systems. And a lot of them are state and local.

So they're, you know, we have a high surface area of attack in this country in terms of what you could do.

And this is just one example of many, many, many systems that are interconnected and affect lots of people.

And then, of course, people, because they're people, respond in the correct way, start hoarding and doing stuff like that. It does, it wreaks havoc around these things.

Someone, I think it was George Conway, put up a picture of

his,

he was plugging in his electric car. I know you have an electric car too.
And he said, I'm hoarding, he said, I'm hoarding electrons,

which was, I think a lot of people who have electric cars did a little lap around the block about that.

And it gives you things about it. We need to move into something where we're not dependent on pipelines and things like that.
Obviously, that's a bigger issue.

But these systems need to be girded in ways that they have never been, and they're so

vulnerable. But look what we had.
It's sort of the perfect storm of bad things.

One, in America, as citizens, we have failed to acknowledge, we bought into this screed from Reagan, that government is not important and is attacks and is full of bureaucrats and stupid people.

And the reality is no private firm is going to have the incentive to make the requisite investments in protecting our infrastructure unless we think long-term and we stop neutering and diminishing the importance of government.

Two, we've had literally incompetence running the government up until about three months ago. That takes a toll.

And then you have what I'll call a democracy, a democratization of technology where we kind of, we didn't have a monopoly on it, but we had a near monopoly on it for a long time. And now

the Chinese and the Russians and these, these, they have their own tech now. Well, and a lot of it from us.

You know, I mean, that's what Nicole's book was about, was this, these, these marketplaces that now exist, these dark marketplaces where people can do all kinds, all, all method of cyber attack.

They take so many different ways.

And I think it's, it's truly, we are so vulnerable to cyber attack in ways that I think we're not even, we haven't even begun to understand in the way we're, and as we add more things to jack ourselves into the system, it really, one of the things Colonial Pipeline is advertising a manager of cybersecurity.

I can't believe they didn't have one.

Or did they? Or what? It's sort of like, what? Like

you don't have that person working for you. All right.
But that's where I go. The other place I go is, and that is, I get a lot of questions from younger people on

what are the opportunities in terms of sectors and career if i were say 24 years 24 or you know 34 and i didn't have a college degree and i wanted to go for um a certification that would give me a great on-ramp into a good career absolutely cyber security cyber security agreed yeah and it's it's it's exciting for young people because that is the kind of thing where if you get into a decent a decent program and there's a lot of them that aren't that expensive and get some sort of certification over six months 12 months 24 months you can get a really good job.

Like plumbing. Yeah, a lot of people.
But I don't know.

Agree, vocational. It can be.
No,

look, I have nothing. You can't, first off, it's really interesting.

I just built a house, and slowly but surely, no domestic workers will do any job that's outdoors. And the only thing they'll do now is

be an electrician or plumbers. And supposedly, now they can't find plumbers.

So, yeah, I think there needs to be tremendous vocational training. But for people who don't want to work with their hands or don't want to be in what I'll call vocational

work, I think cybersecurity is going to be a fantastic place to develop skills. That's a good idea.
Anyway, this is just very clear. This is going to happen over and over again.

You don't need a college degree necessarily. This is going to happen over and over again.
Let's just be clear. Read Nicole Perlroth's book.
You'll be terrified.

Her book is called This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends. Okay.
All right, Scott, time for a quick break.

We'll be right back talking about Tesla moving away from Bitcoin and a listener mail question.

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Support for the show comes from Z-Biotics. So I drink a little bit less these days.
I'm trying to tone down my consumption of alcohol as I think is a good idea when you get to my age, 50.

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Okay, Scott, we're back.

Tesla's CEO/slash/SNL host, Elon Musk, announced that his company would no longer be accepting Bitcoin as a payment for vehicles for the time being due to environmental concerns.

It's not clear why he wasn't concerned before when it was very well known.

Following his announcement, as much as $365.85 billion was wiped off the entire cryptocurrency market, although there has been some bounce back already.

In his announcement on Twitter, Musk was citing concerns over Bitcoin mining's environment impact and fossil fuels burned into the mining of cryptocurrency.

He did add the company tends tends to start using Bitcoin for transactions again as soon as mining is made more sustainable, and that he'd be

looking toward other cryptocurrencies. Of course, they announced back in February that it purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin.
Fascinating. Scott, please just go on.

Well, okay.

This is an issue. I've talked about this, by the way, with people and everything else, but go ahead.

So let's acknowledge there are environmental issues, and there's a really interesting discussion, a worthwhile discussion, around the electricity consumption of mining for crypto.

But they didn't seem to want to have that conversation in February. These issues were present in February when they purchased $1.5 billion and then put in his profile the term Bitcoin.

And then before the earnings,

when they were going to miss earnings, decided to sell some of those gains that he had catalyzed by being a big promoter of Bitcoin, beat his earnings, and now all of a sudden, after selling and showing $100 million plus profit, he's decided that he's uncomfortable with the environmental impact of Bitcoin.

And what you have here, I think this is a big deal because

this is an individual who 18 months ago put out a tweet that said, I have funding secured to take the company private at $420 a share and the stock shot up. It ended up, there was no truth to that.

That is. Probably the most textbook case of market manipulation I've ever seen.

And the SEC decided it's important that we have innovators. He's creating a lot of value.
He's doing important work.

Let's slap him on on the wrist with a $10 million fine and hope that it doesn't happen again. Well, guess what? He is now saying to the moon with Dogecoin.

And then on SNL, saying it's a hustle and it loses a third of its value. And then saying, putting Bitcoin in his profile and Bitcoin shoots up.
And then saying, I'm uncomfortable.

And then putting out thoughtful statements after he sells it,

saying, I'm worried about the environment.

You are now talking about thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who are losing sleep at night, wondering, what the fuck is this guy going to tweet in the morning?

Yeah, the thing is, this is interesting. Dieterbone from Verge said, are crypto markets too prone to massive, multi-multi-billion dollar swings in value based on seemingly tiny pressures?

Or is Elon Musk too influential on those markets? Yes. I think that's

another one, someone wrote, good morning to everyone except Elon Musk, which I thought was funny.

But there's all kinds of reaction. It's another person's Elon Musk comment about Bitcoin.
It's like saying a Tesla uses way too much energy rather rather than just ride a donkey instead.

People are losing their 11 minds, but

they hung on his every word on the way up. You know what I mean? Which is, I think, sort of like two bad boys.
You know, you were thrilled when you were like going, go, Elon. And then he does this.

You shouldn't rely on him. And it shouldn't have this much thing because it begins to look like sort of this pump and dump thing, which I think is what you're essentially saying.
But

it's an interesting point. Everyone loves a market manipulator as long as they're manipulating the markets to your advantage.

And market manipulation, according to the SEC, the language is really vague, but in essence, it's when you put out information or take actions that have nothing to do with the fundamentals such that you can either pump and dump or they call it poop and scoop, right?

Talk a stock down so you can swoop in and buy it. Poop and scoop.
Is that a term? Poop and scoop. That's the opposite of pump and dump.
Okay.

And I'll tell you, if it comes out that he has purchased Bitcoin after this thing dropped, I believe at the SEC right now, I think their heads exploded when they saw that statement.

And you you know what this is a failure of? I think when you tell innovators or Jesus Christ, they're inclined to believe you, this is a real failure. This is a real failure of the fiduciaries.

It's an incredible failure of his board of directors. It is clear his board of directors.
Remember, do you remember in like the 70s?

Trust me, I know them. They don't care.

That's my point. But do you remember in the 70s they had like the world's greatest athlete and they used to go, okay, the L.A.

Dodgers versus the New York Yankees, and they'd all do like tug-of-war and sprints. They should have the contest of who are bigger bitches, the directors from Facebook or the directors at Tesla.

They let their CEOs show such a lack of regard for other stakeholders. And literally, Elon Musk is brilliant.
He's putting, he could put someone on Mars.

He could electrify the world and

catalyze a real dent in a climate change

or emissions. And instead, you know what? He might get taken down by this at a minimum.

At a minimum, this is going to be a big distraction because

he keeps going up to the SEC care and waving his middle finger in their face.

So interesting, he put up an

tweet he did was Tesla and Bitcoin. And he goes, Energy usage trend over the past few months is insane.
And then he put another chart in about Bitcoin.

And then he did a poll: Do you want Tesla to accept Doge? 78% said yes,

versus 22% who said no. And they had

4 million responses, which was interesting. I think it's just this idea of relying on a single person is really problematic.
Let's just be clear.

You're exactly right. But one of the fundamental components of healthy markets is no one individual or organization has too much influence.

You know, the markets are meant to be a thousand points of light that spit back an amalgam of all of our emotions.

And anyone who tries to control the market to gain their own power usually gets hurt, whether it's the Hunt Brothers and Steel, or I'm sorry, in the silver market.

And we have an individual now basically moving markets by 10 or 20 billion dollars in directions that tend to benefit him.

This is, I'm telling you, the SEC right now, there are a bunch of SEC officials and lawyers in a room right now going, okay, we probably have to do something here. Yep.
Yeah. It's interesting.

It's an interesting situation because they really haven't been

regulating this in any way. It'll be, it'll be fascinating.
I think what's good about it, here's what's good about it. People are talking about this energy thing.

Now, of course, there's all these people arguing that there is no energy problem here. There is an energy problem.

And now they're like screaming at each other on Twitter over what the problem is and that it's a fake story and on and on and on.

I think it's complicated. And, you know, guess what? Cryptocurrency, welcome to the real world.
And this is how it works. And so the influence of Elon on this stuff is far too vast.

When you saw that number dip, like it was even when he said the hustle thing with Dogecoin, it was,

I just feel like they love him on the way up, they hate him on the way down. and something one, it means that one person, it's just like the decision of getting Trump off of these platforms.

As much as I like the decision, two people decided, right? In the whole planet of Earth, like who's where the president's going to be able to say something?

It was the right decision, but just two people were involved. And in this case, one person involved.
You're exactly right. This is where we are.

We have someone manipulating financial markets who happens to be the CEO of Tesla, an innovator. You know who's saving us from arguably the biggest menace in the world right now, Mark Zuckerberg?

Not our legislators, not attorney generals. The person saving us is Tim Cook.
And by the way, I mean,

I cannot tell you how happy I am around that one piece of data that came out two days ago.

That when consumers are presented with the choice to opt in

to Facebook's apps,

which includes tracking, Facebook having the ability to track them on other apps,

a whopping 6% are opting in. And Facebook, who's 900-person comms person, the way they respond is to tell Zuckerberg to go on and say, you know, this is awful.

People don't want to pay $1,200 for a phone, and it's very cynical. But here's the thing: when I walk into an Apple store, they give me the choice to spend $1,200 on a phone.

And like most legislative action, whether it's the DOJ, it's not the actual action, it's the scrutiny.

And I think the majority of America didn't realize that when they're on the Facebook app, when they leave the app, they're still being tracked tracked by surveillance capitalists called Facebook.

And 94% of iOS users with this new update are saying, you know what? I am not down with that.

This is so wonderful. You know what they are? They're fucked.

The people who decided, hold on, hold on. Give me some running room here.
Is that a terrible thing? Hold on here. The people who decided, you know what?

The key steps to tyranny are to weaponize the media, then the economy, and then the military. We've weaponized media.
Let's go after the economy with Diem and Libra. Guess what, guys? You're fucked.

The individual who, in a meeting, told Mark Zuckerberg that Instagram for kids was a good idea, you're fucked.

The photo journalist that will accompany Cheryl Sandberg in her domain ought meets World Economic Forum trips and photo diary, all of it. Guess what? You're fucked.

I mean, this company finally, I have been waiting for this.

I am woman. Hear me, Robert.

Always expect. By the way, Apple made a really stupid move this week.
They hired an ex-Facebook executive named Antonio Garcia Martinez, who is

a lot.

He wrote a book called Chaos Monkeys, and I've had him on my shows a couple of times. I had him, I did when he changed it.
He's a great book. I like that book.

Well, except for some of it had some really awful comments in it. And so Apple hired him and then just now apparently

is not hiring

him. He's quite, I was surprised that they apparently didn't know what was in

what was in the book. And, you know, know, look, if you like the book, you like the book, but Apple should have read it before they hired him, just so they could deal with it.

I remember reading the book and thinking it was.

Let me read you a selection. Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, costetid and naive, despite their claims of worldliness and generally full of shit.

They have their own. Sorry, said that about most women in the Bay Area.
Yeah, this is this is Antonio.

This is Antonio. Let me just say, go listen to my podcast with him.
This is Antonio. If he had just taken the word women out, he would have been right.
Right, okay.

They get their self-regarding title and feminism and ceaselessly vaunted their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they become precisely the sort of useless baggage you'd trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel.

Jesus Christ.

He's a lot. Wait, is this the one where

he says, enter into the chaos monkey cage of entrepreneurship? Is that the one? I don't remember. Anyway,

Apple said, Apple, we've always strived to create an inclusive, welcoming workplace where everyone is respected and accepted.

Behavior that demeans or discriminates against people, who they are, is no place here. I just am like, did you not read? I literally had him on the podcast.
People have written about this.

Look, he's an interesting character. He also has written appalling and horrible things, and they should be doing an Apple.

He was going to work in the App Store and App News advertising team. And have they already backtracked and not rescinded the offer?

According to 9 to 5 Mac, yes.

They heard it on Monday. But to be clear, I think there's a lot of very talented people at Facebook that should go on to have outstanding careers at other firms.
Yeah. Yeah.
I just,

I think this is an Apple Folly. It isn't.
Look,

he is what he is, and they shouldn't have done that like this. He'll, of course, become a cancel culture warrior now, an anti-cancel culture, but he already was.

But here we are. Scott's doing that statement.
That's pretty rough.

It's not really rough. It's pretty stupid.
The book is full of it. Full of it.
He and I had this most testy of interviews, although he's quite brilliant in many ways. I'm turning you in for shells.

All right. Shotgun shells.

I would sell you you for a jerry can of diesel, my friend. I'm sorry if I had to.

I would take down Scott. God Galloway for

a Snickers bar. If we were in a situation and I needed a Snickers bar, you would do it.
It is a great thing.

Ladies, here he is. He's yours.
Or men or whatever. I would sell you to anybody for a Snickers bar.
That's what would happen. So just so you know.

Anyway, Twitter, just so we're clear, Twitter knows you love the dog. Twitter knows you love the dog.

Whenever you say that, everyone's like, that's just not true. I wouldn't sell you for a payday, but I'd sell you for a Snickers bar.
Anyway, okay, Scott, let's move on to listener mail. Roll the tape.

You've got, you've got. I can't believe I'm going to be your mailman.
You've got mail.

Hey, Karin, Scott. It's Matthew here from Melbourne.
The question I have is around the humanitarian crisis, which is unfolding in India right now.

Right now, I haven't seen that much commentary around the impact that it's going to have on India's ICT industry, given that it actually runs the back office for a lot of large organisations in the world, such as Goldman Sachs and Standard Chartered.

I was wondering what your thoughts would be. Cheers.
Bye. Cheers.
I love Melbourne. It's one of my favorites.
Melbourne. Melbourne, the tagline.
San Francisco, but less shitty.

Yes, it's such a great city.

It is. It looks like San Francisco.
It feels very San Francisco. It is.
It's a lovely city. I've had such a nice time there with my sons.
So this is interesting. This is an important thing.

India is a critical part of the technology stack of our world and everything else. And not just back office.
They do a lot of innovations.

India is not just the back office of the rest of technology, although there's a lot of that, but it does do that.

And so it's a real,

it is interesting to wonder what is going to be the effect. I haven't seen much coverage of this.
The same thing with Tel Aviv and tech as the war escalates in Palestine and Israel.

These are major tech centers for

lots for a global, you know,

global system, India particularly.

So, you know, it'll be, it'll be interesting to see what happens. It happened when China, the the beginning of the pandemic, we are so globally interconnected from a tech point of view.

It's a good question. Scott?

I think there's just an enormous opportunity.

I think one of the most visionary moves of the 20th century, and we don't recognize or acknowledge how much peace and prosperity it has kept and catalyzed, was that we made this visionary, generous, bold investment in our enemies, and that is we borrowed money and rebuilt Japan and Germany.

And I think there's a geopolitical move here

Unprecedented opportunity. India is about to become the swing vote for the world economically, politically.
It's an incredible nation, more PhDs than any other nation in the world, English speaking.

It is a democracy.

I love the way you put it. That's an important part of the tech stack.
I'm going to use that. I think that's a brilliant way to summarize how important India has become.

I think we are now starting to play offense.

We had the lowest infection rates in the last year yesterday, which is absolutely just wonderful food, wonderful news.

I think an incredible opportunity for us, we have been playing defense for the last four years because of all these self-inflicted wounds, would be for us to say,

we are going to go on the offense here and we're going to use our incredible supply chain, our innovation, and our generosity, and we are going to storm the shores of India with Americans and a vaccine.

And then if they want it, we're going to do the same thing in Brazil. These are the two nations that right now are incurring the most death, disease, and disabilities.

They think there's literally probably millions of infections every day, and they think at some point there might be 100,000-plus deaths a day in India.

And this would be an opportunity for us to do the right thing, marshal our resources, marshales, everyone's affected there, the entire society. And then it has iterations all around the world.

It's in our self-interest to do so.

100%.

But it's an opportunity. Modi, boy, is he, he was so powerful.
He looks like this is

a terrible task. He's hiding.

It's really, we're trying to figure out how to do something here. But, you know, the guy who does the vaccine, I think it's called the Serum Institute there, is sort of escaped to India,

excuse me, to London.

The CEO and is saying, oh, I'm coming back. But, you know, he's under a lot of pressure.
He was supposed to be rolling out this vaccine. But

they were just woefully underprepared here in terms of things. And even in this country, even though we still have issues, it's getting better and better and better in lots of states.

And

it's really,

it an opportunity for us. It's an opportunity, especially India, which is a critical

country to the world economics, and especially in tech. There's four countries that are the sort of the linchpins of this.
And it's the U.S., obviously, China, India, and

Israel. And so we have to think really hard about this.

I'm not even going to start going down the Israel-Palestine road. That's a very different situation.
But here we can actually affect change in a really meaningful way. I think you're right.

I think you're right. Look, we saved we showed tremendous courage and bravery and resources and

just brilliant logistical brilliance when we stormed the shores of Normandy.

We should storm the shores of India and Brazil right now with vaccine and volunteers and health care professionals and capital and create and really strengthen and cement those alliances in Latin America and in the Near East.

This is a huge opportunity opportunity for us to do the right thing, but also to do the smart thing in terms of

cementing alliances. I think it's a huge opportunity for us.

We're in a position now to start getting, we're really in a position now, and this is incredibly exciting news, to get off our heels and onto our toes and join hands with other people across the world and do what we do because we are Americans.

Yeah, I agree. I agree.
I think it's really important.

Okay, one more quick break and we'll be back for predictions. I want a good prediction, Scott.
I really want a good prediction from you.

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Okay, we're back for predictions, the weekend of the pawn is prediction for the days and weeks ahead.

Can I, before you start, I would like to offer our condolences to Senator Amy Klobuchar, who's recently on the show. Her father died yesterday, and she had a great statement about him.

He was actually a journalist

and

he had Alzheimer's. It was after a long struggle with Alzheimer's that he died.

And she said, even to the end, as he lived the final chapter of his life with Alzheimer's, he was still singing songs and telling incredible stories to my sister, Megan, and me.

Klobuchar said, he loved our state. He loved journalism.
He loved sports and adventure, and we loved him. I thought that was lovely.
Lovely. I didn't know that.

You know, the first thing that pops into mind is it must have been a source of just tremendous comfort for him to have such an impressive daughter. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

She was a columnist. I think she's,

I have, I'm having increasing amounts of respect for this senator, I have to say.

I think she handles herself rather well and has really, as we've gotten to know her, has been a really interesting political figure.

It's interesting to think of her and Liz Cheney as sort of running against each other in some fashion, presenting different visions of our country, but at the same time, really interesting.

Anyway, your prediction. I predict she's going to run for president again and possibly have

a lot of success. All right.

So in the next, I always get the timing wrong. I was going to say the next seven days, so I'll broaden it to the next 30 days.

The SEC, our regulatory agency, is going to initiate action or announce scrutiny around market manipulation as it relates to cryptocurrencies.

And they may not even use Elon Musk's name, but it'll be clear who they're talking about. This is unhealthy.
It's created

insecurity in the markets. And the SEC is sort of, I think, at this point, been like, okay, you know, at some point, at some point, when someone

keeps mocking us and keeps waving their middle finger in our face, we've got to do something. We're going to see action.
What we're also could see, what we also could see,

because this individual is fearless and has shown an ability to create markets in crypto. We may see a Tesla coin or a Musk coin or a Musk-backed or endorsed coin.

Because

Elon Musk, like all these innovators, is very good at keeping score. They all wake up in the morning and they say, hello, wealthiest man in the history of the universe.

And I think he sees an opportunity, and this is unfortunate. But I think Elon Musk could probably increase his wealth $10 to $50 billion in six months by launching.

I kept thinking an Amazon coin was coming out. Well, supposedly, they're experimenting with that in Mexico.
But there is crypto, market manipulation, SEC

is about to become much more prevalent in the news in the next 30 days. He's good at outrunning them, though.
I'll tell you that.

He's real good at them. That's a fair point.
We'll see. It's a fair point.
I don't know. We'll see.
He's a very compelling public figure in negative and positive ways. Anyway,

that's a good one. Okay.

I'm going to write that one down. I'll put that on my little book of Scott Predictions.

There you go.

And if you become more valuable than a Snickers bar, I'll let you know. Okay.
Jerry can of diesel. Jerry can of diesel.
I trade you in for a Snickers. For a Snickers.

You know, he was probably kidding, but

what an asshole to do that. I mean, whatever, whatever.
You know, what he wrote. He wrote it.

Our producer, our producer bought some Dogecoin, and now she's like,

her emotions. Yeah.
Rebecca, how do you feel?

How do you feel, Rebecca? How do you feel about that? How do you feel about your Doge? Oh,

miserable. Miserable.
Miserable. We told you not to.
I know. I know.
I mean, like, look, I didn't put that much into it, but

it's still money. And like, I can't believe, you know, on the show, we've talked a lot about, and Scott talks a lot about Robinhood's effect on, you know, young men's emotions.

And suddenly I'm looking at the Robinhood app, like, buy, sell, trade. Yeah.
Why, you know, like, it's, it is, I get it. Stay away from this.

Well, the thing is, Rebecca, you can take some consolation in knowing that the people who own and run and benefit from your usage of Robinhood are mendacious fucks.

Love to hear that. So you got that going for you.
You listen to

me. Log off of Robin Hood.
Log off of Robin Hood.

Log on to public, no margin, no options, 40% women investing, not trading. 80 to 95% of the people who are menu.
You guys own a bigger trade. They trade and lose money.

You can listen to a podcast I did with the CEO this week. How'd that go? Well, why don't you listen to it? Why don't you invest in our relationship? Jesus Christ, because

you listen to anything I do?

Literally anything I do? No, I don't, but that's besides the point.

By the way, did you see my No Mercy No Malice blog last week was literally on how Elon Musk has too much influence specifically over crypto? Wait, and here it happened. You've been saying that.

I said if he pushed, I did some analysis. Do you realize if Elon Musk's activities have pushed Bitcoin up over $4,500, that probably wipes out all the energy savings of every Tesla on the road?

What do you just say? He's like a successful Trump in many ways. Anyway, all right.

Don't forget if you have a story in the news and you want to hear our opinion or submit your questions at nymag.com/slash pivot. Scott, read us out.
Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis.

Ernie Intertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs.
Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or if you're an Android user.

Check us out on Spotify or frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you liked our show, please recommend to a friend.
Thanks for listening to Pivot from Box Media.

We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Your mom and dad will not be around forever.
Leave nothing unsaid. Leave nothing unsaid.

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