Facebook's monopoly reckoning, the Pfizer vaccine begins, and predictions for Airbnb stock

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

Kara, nothing really in the news.

What are we going to talk about?

Oh, my God.

What are we going to talk about?

That's crazy.

And what happened today?

The thing that Kara has been waiting for for so long?

What's that?

The FTC took action against Facebook finally with a little bit more than just a slap on the wrist.

But we're going to get to that.

And we're going to go

40 states, 20 Democratic, 20 Republican.

This is trouble for Facebook, although I don't feel sorry for Facebook because they're just now hiring every lawyer in the District of Columbia, I suspect.

So we're going to get to that in a minute.

But first, there's so much other stuff going on.

The election is still being disputed, even though Trump has lost 50 cases, I guess, including in the Supreme Court.

How do you feel about that?

I just think it's embarrassing.

And, you know,

I almost feel like we should just ignore it.

It's just gotten so ridiculous.

Yeah.

And then Rudy went in the hospital, obviously.

And so, and then Jenna Ellis got sick.

They all got sick.

They all got COVID.

Yeah.

No, that's.

The whole thing is strange.

I think, yes, you're right.

I think everyone's a little tired of it, of the whole situation, and the losing continues.

You know, it was very exciting today or yesterday, I should say.

What's that?

The first, really, the first citizen that wasn't part of a test trial received the first vaccine in the United Kingdom.

Yes.

It was V-Day, as they say.

Yeah, that's right.

A 90-year-old grandmother.

And it really reflects,

I mean, it's really wonderful when you think about it.

It reflects cooperation.

It reflects humanity.

It reflects science.

It reflects a concern for other people.

And it also reflects what is probably, I think if you got...

a bunch of people together and said, all right, what is the greatest invention, the best product that reflects our humanity, our empathy, and our general awesomeness as a species.

I think most people would zero in on vaccines.

Yeah, they would, except like it would be nice if we could have those qualities getting to the vaccine because it's still, we're still, even though this lovely old woman has now been vaccinated.

And I think the second person in Britain was a guy named Will, William Shakespeare, which was funny.

Nice.

But that's great.

I still think this idea of vaccine is the magical answer to something with all these people dead.

I'm sorry.

We could have been cooperative going through all of it.

It's as if, you know, some, I think that the doctor, we had Dr.

Mean it when he was said, it's like there's been bombing and we're like, the F, you know, the F-22 will be ready soon, like that kind of thing that nobody thought.

Just wait.

Yeah.

Just as soon as we have the nuclear bomb, the war will be over, that kind of thing.

And so I do appreciate that this is here.

And I don't know when I'm going to get the vaccine.

I don't know when you are.

Where do we think we are in line, Scott?

Probably in the back, right?

You know what?

It's kind of old.

Realistically, we're wealthy white Americans, which probably means we're near the front of the line.

Probably, you're right.

I mean, I just be, I think we're actually, unfortunately, I think we're going to get it for a lot of reasons or have access to it, I should say, sooner than most people think.

And the most discouraging reason why we'll probably get it sooner.

Pay.

Well,

not only that.

Because it's not supposed to cost anything, by the way, for anybody.

Not only our quote-unquote white privilege, but also something as disturbing, and that is I think a lot of people are going to opt to either not get it or wait.

I have been shocked

by how many people have said, no, I'm not going to do the first one.

I'm going to wait.

I'm fairly healthy.

You're friends?

Yeah, a lot of people.

Keep in mind, I live in Florida.

That's true.

Right.

That's what you forget.

And

I think, you know what, and usually you and I should do this because, you know, we're influencers.

We should come down to Florida and get a shot.

I think we should start a movement.

I like the notion of first in line.

And what I find discouraging is that people look at their decision of whether or not to take a vaccine through the lens of, is it dangerous or is it a good thing for me?

Right.

And I think that's the wrong way to think about it.

And that is, if you think about what COVID-19 is, it's this net that's constantly sweeping through America.

Sure.

And every person that contracts it becomes another fiber in that net, such that when that net sweeps through America, it's more likely to find the vulnerable and either put them in a hospital, permanently damage them, disable them, or even kill them.

And getting getting COVID-19, even if there's a 99.9% likelihood you will survive, you become another fiber in the net that is grabbing people

and killing them.

We're going to talk more about this and the big stories, especially its impact on business, like how businesses are going to react to this.

There's some very good stories about whether you should force your employees to get vaccinated.

We're going to get to that in a minute.

Also, Google is ending its ban on political ads this week, while YouTube is tightening its rules around videos about election misinformation.

What does that even mean?

What does that even mean?

There's another election every five minutes.

I think they should keep a lot of these things in place.

I don't understand.

I think, again, it's haphazardness around these misinformation and disinformation.

But is that meant to confuse us?

Google is ending a span while YouTube is.

They're different companies, whether you realize.

But by the way, they're under antitrust scrutiny.

I think they're going to spin off from each other at some point.

I think I wouldn't be surprised.

Yeah, I wouldn't either.

There's more action against Google coming, by the way, by the government.

Anyway, and also DoorDash's market debut.

Oh, my gosh.

Talk to me, Scott.

Tell me.

Okay.

So tomorrow is Airbnb, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And for everyone's benefit, we're recording a day early because Kara was nice enough to accommodate my

weird schedule.

But anyways, Airbnb is.

I like to work all day from 8 to 8 at night.

You'd like to be with the dog day at night.

That's what it is.

Are you available?

I sure am.

No, I have the morning off.

You know who I'm interviewing tomorrow?

Brene Brown.

Oh, yeah.

All right.

Brene Brown.

She's the, you know,

shame therapist, the vulnerability therapist.

Ah, V therapy.

Yeah.

I like it.

That's a lot of fun.

You have a lot of shame, don't you?

Anyway, let's go ahead.

Blockbuster.

I mean, the Blockbuster, not Blockbuster.

They went out of business in 2012.

DoorDash's Blockbuster market debut, not Blockbuster, the video.

Yeah, price at 100, close at 180.

This is a company that has substitutes.

It's losing money.

And what you have here is it's kind of the mother of all

people trying to get through a crowded door.

First off, all other asset classes are not impaired, but bonds yield nothing.

No one wants to be in treasury.

So why not jump in here?

Interest rates are low.

People have a lot of money, so they go into stocks, but they don't want to go into any stocks.

They want to go into tech.

And they don't want to go into any stock or any tech stock.

They want to go into stocks that are tech stocks that are disruptors or have the reputation for being disruptors.

In addition, a lot of these companies, you know, when it says it has a $60 billion market cap, yeah, sort of, but only about $6 billion of the float of the shares was floated.

So what you have is the mother of all crowds trying to get through a crowded door here.

Oh, dear.

This is beginning to feel

a little bit frightening.

$60 billion.

It feels very 2000 to me.

Oh, no, it feels very 1999.

It really does.

And now, as of right now, because that merger came in January, if you remember, that was the high point, the AOL Time Warner merger.

But go ahead, sorry, 1999.

Well, as a multiple of revenues,

standing here today, DoorDash is trading at double the revenues of Uber.

And while they're both menace economy firms using software to circumvent minimum wage laws and steal tips from their drivers,

you got to, Uber has, in my opinion, more moats, a better brand, and probably even a better business model.

Oh my God, you're complimenting Uber.

Yeah, I know.

Isn't that weird?

I love that market.

Where's it going?

Where's it going?

I love that market.

We're going to talk about him right now in the big stories, but where's where's it going?

Where's George going?

Like, you didn't work right about Palantir.

It just stays there, even though here's the body.

Listen, this is the reality in this market.

Every time I say a stock, even if you think it's an idiotic thing, how do you play it?

Well, but we said this.

What did we say on Tuesday?

I said the stock was going to be up 30 to 60%.

I was wrong.

It was up 70%

or 80%.

But basically,

I just have a tough time wrapping my head around this valuation.

It's just $60 billion.

So, look, I don't, I think

what it pretends, quite frankly, I can't even imagine.

And by the time this airs, we'll already know.

I can't even imagine what's going to happen to Airbnb.

Big.

Oh, my gosh.

Everyone's a little relieved.

Like, let's get back to business.

I think they're in that, let's focus on the future.

That's Mike Dogs you're hearing in the background.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So we're going to see.

What do you think the Airbnb?

If Airbnb, if this came to 60, what is Airbnb?

100?

Pick a number, Scott.

I just,

I think Airbnb, well, they've already raised their range, but I think Airbnb tomorrow, let me put it this way.

I think tomorrow Airbnb is bigger than the five next biggest hospitality or travel firms combined.

It's going to be,

I think it's just going to be crazy tomorrow.

I can't imagine how DoorDash gets out and doubles and goes to 60 billion.

Airbnb is supposed to price at 40 billion.

Yeah.

So if you benchmark up of DoorDash, this feels, Airbnb feels to me like 80 to 100 billion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100.

I'd say 100.

I'm going to go with 100.

100?

Okay, that means, that's a lot.

That means the stock would go up 150% on the first day.

I don't know.

That's that's

Brian Chesky, but there you go.

All right.

Okay, big stories.

We're going on to big stories.

After 18 months of investigations, the Federal Trade Commission, as we just noted, and more than 40 states accuse Facebook of being an illegal monopoly.

There's all kinds of nuances here, but the lawsuits allege that Facebook's purchases, especially Instagram and WhatsApp for $19 billion, eliminate any possible external competition.

It's about a pattern of behavior that the FTC is talking about.

And the states have added an extra charge on about other behaviors.

The prosecutors are calling for Facebook to unwind the deals with Instagram and WhatsApp and their new restrictions on future deals.

Facebook tried is announced it was buying something for a billion dollars last week.

I forget.

So it's kind of cheeky.

Yeah, cheeky.

Cheeky they are in the middle because they knew this was coming.

So

thoughts?

I have a lot of thoughts.

I know a lot of stuff.

I think you know more.

This is your ball.

You're on with it.

All right.

I think this is really interesting.

One thing is that the timing of it, I think, is really interesting.

But one thing, the unity between the states and the FTC was important because the FTC is outgunned.

And so the use, they can do things together.

They can

they can have they can share things.

They're going to do the

legal stuff themselves, I understand, not bringing an outside person, but they will share economists and things like that.

So, that I think is really important.

The unity and the fact that the states are, I think it's 2020, Republican Democrats.

So, that's important.

The voting on this thing is interesting, from what I understand.

The chairman voted for it, the two Democrats voted for it, and the two Republicans didn't.

So, the timing of this was if this chairman is allegedly leaving the FTC, that's been reported by a bunch of people.

He hasn't announced that yet, but

then it would leave it a 2-2, a 2-2 commission.

And Mitch McConnell, of course, if he won the, everything swings on these Georgia seats that are up for grabs.

And, you know, Mitch McConnell is pro-business, and probably this probably wouldn't necessarily get through, or there would be a face-off.

So, this is one of the other reasons.

And I think this commissioner, Republican commissioner, is sort of a down-the-line centrist person and wanted it to get out there.

And he was the one that started a lot of the technology offices around this issue at the FTC.

So, it's just it shows you when there's not a sort of there's there's a reasonable reasonable people talking with each other things can happen and bipartisanship can happen a couple things

that it matters who the judge is in the district.

They're worried I think I suspect if you have something like Richard Leone who handled the ATT time warner murder which did not that that that the government was not able to win that's a problem if there's another judge named Tim Kelly and I think it depends on who gets it who is a trumpet pointee another worry quite pro-business

and then of course there's the money Facebook has to spend on this I think they're going to buy out every lawyer in the world to take on this

case.

And then, lastly, the arguments that Facebook are already making are very victim-y, as usual.

This is in keeping with their ways.

They're talking about it like it's a do-over, that you can't do a do-over.

It's been eight years since the thing when the FDC proved it.

Let me be clear: the FDC never approved this.

They just didn't decline to prosecute.

So, this whole do-over argument that Facebook is using is specious, specious, specious, they are, and their supporters, specious.

Interesting, Josh Hawley was pro it.

I haven't seen Elizabeth Warren Street, but I'm guessing she's doing jumping jacks right now.

But this is something that

a lot of people on both sides of the aisle support.

Not the Trump administration, which is friends of Facebook, FOF,

friends of Mark, Foms.

So that's where we are.

So that's where I think.

I think Facebook is probably nervous, but they are going to go to the mats, go to the mattresses with this one.

Yeah, yeah.

This is the beginning of the end of big tech as we know it.

And your point is.

Because the Google thing, too, is happening over at the Justice Department.

Well, the DOJ going after Google is one point.

But

the DOJ going after Google, the FTC going after Facebook, and the shortcomings.

Plus 46 AGs.

That's three points.

40.

Was it 40?

That's three points on a line.

This is the equivalent of this is, and again, I apologize for all the war metaphors.

This is the Russians, the British, and the Americans.

They've got AGs.

They've got states to deal with.

They've got

this is

momentum.

This is okay.

Everyone is lining up at the border against us.

And this is a trend now.

This isn't singling out Google and Google trying to, this is, this is all, as, as is typically the case here.

The most interesting thing will be the second order effects.

And that when they announced this today, the stock was only up 2%.

And I actually think the stock's going to go up because, one, when people, people are going to realize,

well, Facebook has it.

Facebook's performed well, but not as well as the other guys because the market hates uncertainty.

Yeah.

And people are going to get their pencils out and realize that a unique Instagram would trade for a lot.

Oh, yeah.

And not only that,

what people fail to realize with antitrust is you don't know, consumers don't know what they're missing.

So, for example, query me this.

Query me this.

WhatsApp.

Did you just say query this?

Or query or answer me this?

I like query me this.

I am William Shakespeare.

I just received a vaccine.

Anyways, I'm COVID-free and erodic.

Methinks the Scott doth protest too much.

There you go.

All right.

Indubitably.

So, okay, so let's talk about WhatsApp.

Imagine WhatsApp hadn't been acquired by Facebook.

Yes.

That means at some point it would have had to have found a business model or revenue.

Yes.

Do you think it's maybe likely or there's a non-zero probability that WhatsApp would have said, I don't know, let's get into workplace collaboration or I don't know, let's get into video.

Yeah.

I do think that when you're cooperating and coordinating, there's a certain lack of innovation.

And I think we're going to find that WhatsApp, which is arguably the biggest telco in the world, is we're going to unleash tremendous innovation and product development as an independent WhatsApp.

Agreed.

One of the things that they have to argue, though, is that without Facebook,

they would have gotten killed.

They would have gotten killed.

So they had to get bought.

That kind of thing.

That's one of the things they have to show is that

they have, that there was no, that they killed innovation, that they killed the ability for people to innovate.

So it's a pattern of quashing competition.

It's not so much, you can either buy your rivals, it's through buying them that you do it, not from quashing them.

So it's an interesting and different, slightly legal argument here.

There's also a way to do it by, you know, getting in, paying them not to do it, quashing them, or buying them.

So let me just finish.

And the first line of my book about AOL was Bill Gates talking to Steve Case when he was thinking about buying it.

He'd say, we'll either buy you,

build it, or put you out of business.

Like, you know, like we have these choices and stuff.

So it's sort of classic.

Well, the New York AG, Letitia James, has said her key to her complaint is this join or die narrative is anti-competitive and you're not allowed to do that.

Right.

But the other thing that I think this pretends that I think Amazon will spin AWS or another business.

Yeah, they got to move.

Amazon, by the way, Amazon, in case you're interested, you're next.

You know that.

Oh, 100%.

And then

what did Tim Cook do within hours or minutes?

He's not next.

Amazon is next.

Well, Google might be next, and then Amazon is so next.

He had a very staged press release, though, or comments, and he basically, Tim Cook is trying to disarticulate himself from the rest of big tech.

And he said,

basically said, you're awful.

You deserve this.

So, one, Facebook stock goes up once people realize that an independent WhatsApp and an independent, that the whole is less than the sum of its parts here.

Two, Amazon prophylactically decides they do not want bureaucrats deciding their futures.

So they're going to do a kind of behind-the-scenes deal and say, okay, what if we did this?

What if we spun fulfillment or what if we spun AWS?

And I think arguably one of the most valuable companies in the world in the next year is going to be an independent WhatsApp once they decide to go after zoom yeah uh or once they decide to go after slack or whatsapp is a sleeping giant and it it it was basically being used as a feeder to provide data into the advertising conglomerate of data you know data or propaganda for so this is this is the best case for facebook is breaking up best case what should what do you think they will do not what's their best case what are they what will they do what's going on with cheryl and mark right now are they eating dinner because it's what time?

Early.

It's 4.22 p.m.

in

Palo Alto or Mount Menlo Park.

I don't know.

What are they doing?

They're going for a little kombucha walk.

No, they're not at the office.

They're at their own mansions and stuff.

What are they doing?

You know, I was almost his neighbor.

I'd be able to say, hey, what's going on?

I am his neighbor in San Francisco in his other house.

He has a house near me in San Francisco.

Anyways, we all have proximity to Mark.

I have no idea.

I do think, though.

I want want you to imagine.

I want you to use your fetid imagination.

I imagine he's spreading La Roche Posse off over the small of his back and looking at himself in a mirror and doing dress-up.

I don't know.

I have no idea what he's doing.

No, I mean, what's going on?

That's what I would do if I was Mark Zuckerberg.

So it's going to be run by this Jennifer person who's their general counsel, but they'll bring in every lawyer in the country.

But what is he thinking?

I want you to try.

Bathing in a tub of Zacapa.

That's the shit I would do.

Literally.

And I'd have all sorts i'd have like basically a near-dead prostitute with a condom hanging out of his ass and a half drink bottle of jack next to a velvet couch that's what i would be doing if i was mark zuckerberg all right oh my god

the canceling is coming i did the canceling is coming you've already been canceled you're not you're uncancelable unfortunately sadly for me as well that is true of nobody that is true of nobody listen listen listen to me okay i need you to answer me what is he thinking what is his strategery

uh i think mark zuckerberg uh personally i think that it i want a business one i don't want anything to do with condoms prostitutes or drinking okay simply put he'll they'll they will absolutely come out full force against this they'll try and hire the biggest angriest people in the world and then if he listens to anybody which i'm not sure he does because his board is basically sycophants and yeah weirdos

he would go to them and say okay what if i do x y and z because i still have a lot of faith in the government michael milken was one one of the wealthiest men in the world, one of the smartest men in the world.

And when the DOJ showed up and the SEC didn't really get him, he then had a big conference and then he's getting pardoned or whatever.

He went to prison.

He did.

He did, but I'm just saying he's living.

He went to prison.

We're not talking about prison.

Yeah, no, no, no.

I mean, that's the thing.

Mark Zuckerberg, they're acting.

Everyone's acting like this is such a crisis of humanity for Facebook.

No, it's not, if you're at Facebook right now, guess what?

Regardless of what Zuckerberg tells you and how he has to try to rally you as a troop, you will be wealthier and happier when this company is broken up.

Yeah, you will.

You don't have to go to Congress.

You don't have to go be bothered by.

Senator Prashai strikes me as a guy who likes products and likes business.

He's got to be sick of this shit.

He's probably like, thank God, just get it over with.

He's definitely not an angry man.

He's definitely not an angry one.

Let's see.

Let's see.

I don't see Elizabeth Warren commenting on this.

Let's see, Elizabeth.

Oh, the FTC and 48 states now recognize what I've been arguing for.

You're right, it's 48 states for a long time.

Facebook's power snuffs out the competition and Instagram and WhatsApp purchase should be unwound.

There's more work to do, but this is a big step in the fight to break up tech.

Oh,

that wasn't as angry as I expected.

You know, as you know,

Mark called Elizabeth Warren his existential threat, you know?

Well, that's, I don't know.

His existential threat is Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Yeah, that's what he said.

Well, then he's focused on the wrong things.

His existential threat.

I mean, first off, you know what you're going to see in every word, whatever their official response is, their next press release,

every other word is going to be tick, and the other word is going to be talk.

All they're going to say that it's going to be a

China.

Yeah, it's going to be a thinly veiled, racist trope that those Chinese, those communists, those dirty, virus-caring communists are coming.

He started that one out for me.

He started out with me.

And it's a sheer meeting.

We're the warriors.

And if he listens to anybody, they'll say, boss, get back to innovating.

WhatsApp's going to be amazing on its own.

You're still going to be the largest shareholder.

You're still going to be wealthier.

You know, you can't stop the hair loss.

You can't stop the weirdness.

But you can get on with life.

Get on with life, my brother.

And by the way, Facebook employees, this is going to be great for you.

It's going to be great.

All right.

Okay.

Last question.

Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York, has been at Powerhouse along with Elizabeth Warren.

Agreed.

Along with Josh Hawley.

There's a lot of interest in me who has been in powerhouse in holding Facebook accountable.

What do you see for her future?

Letitia?

Yeah.

Or Attorney General James?

I don't know, but I've got one of the biggest compliments of my life was her office called me and asked me for a quote for the press release.

I don't know if it made it in

because I know I'm a hater.

But look, she brought together a bunch of people.

I think

she's clearly someone to keep your eye on.

My sense is

you have more, you have a better eye for this than I do.

But my sense is that she has ambitions.

I think she's going to run for governor, is my sense.

And this is kind of her coming out party for, I don't know if that's considered a hate crime now to say that, but I think she's basically, this is her stage left high.

You know,

I'm leading this bottom.

She's also going after Ivanka Trump.

Ivanka Trump attacked her.

So that's a good thing.

I love this woman.

I love this woman.

I don't care what she's running for.

She's got my vote.

Anyway,

make her go after her hard.

Let me say her general power.

She's quite a lot of scary enemies.

In any case, just so you know, I just got some one of my sources said that Airbnb is priced at $68 a share.

It's pricing at $68?

Yeah, for $47 billion valuation.

They keep raising it.

That means basically...

The last private was $18 billion.

Yeah, it went down from $30.

It went to $18 in the depths of the pandemic.

That means basically...

Those people who are in on the...

the pandemic part look good.

Yeah, so

basically in the last 12 hours, it's gone up $15 billion because of the success of DoorDash.

All the existing shareholders are like, fuck that.

We don't want to give a bunch of unearned gains to the clients of Goldman and Morgan.

It's still, so it's unlikely to double then, but I think you're probably looking at over triple digits tomorrow on the first trade.

Yeah.

So that would be if it got to 80 or 80, this doesn't take much to get to get some 90, say, right?

It's $125 a share.

It's almost $60, something like that.

Absolutely crazy.

Anyways, what do you think?

$136 though back to attorney general james what do you think

uh i think that she's wonderful i think she's really interesting i think they're gonna come after her with everything she's if she has any messy bits she better clean them up i don't know i just think they're gonna they're coming at her i think it's very

she they they you know the trumps and facebooks of the world are gonna come at her Oh, I think she's absolutely

wonderful to hear.

She's picking.

Yeah, I know she is.

Facebook and Ivanka Trump.

That's literally,

if I end up in a room with them, I'm like, oh, wait, I'm in hell.

All that shit has finally come back to roost, and I'm in hell.

Yeah.

Well, Ivanka.

Try something new.

That's my favorite.

That's my favorite.

Her advice to people in the pandemic.

Her tweets lately are flat out insane.

She is.

Have you heard the rumor?

The rumor is she's floated this.

Clearly, someone in our office has floated this.

She's thinking about running for Florida governor.

Oh, Ron DeSantis.

That would be the nice shiv to Ron DeSantis, who's been such a suck-up to them.

That would be awesome.

He's been like suck-up number one.

Although their suck-ups aren't as sucky as they were.

Only the Texas people and the Florida people are sucking up.

The Georgia people and the Arizona people, no.

Do see and campuard suck ups are not as sucky up.

They'll be back to suck up as they need to be.

But I have to say, it's been a pleasure to watch their suck ups turn on them.

Anyway, all right, we're going to go to a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about COVID vaccine being distributed in the UK and a listener mail question.

We're going to talk about the implications on business.

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Okay, Scott, we're back.

Obviously, the beginning of the end of the pandemic with this vaccine.

Hopefully, if people have an uptake of 60 to 70%, this is what the two creators of this Pfizer vaccine told me in an interview recently.

Thousands of people in Britain are getting it.

There's not enough.

Meanwhile, there's been a massive surge of COVID-19 cases in the U.S.

Southwest, and data shows that the U.S.

is nearing capacity for ICU bets.

On Tuesday, Dr.

Fauci said the United States could get a coronavirus pandemic under control by the back half of 2021 if enough people are vaccinated, which is what we've been talking about.

And Canada just approved the Pfizer vaccine, and the FDA could grant emergency approval within days.

It It looks like it's headed that way.

Trump had a little party saying he's the reason it happened.

It is not even slightly the case.

And the two heads of Pfizer and

Moderna, I think, declined to go to his vaccine summit because they don't want to listen to him, I guess.

So

talk about the impact if it's going to be the back half of 2021.

Companies are still in this sort of crouch position.

Yeah, but I think that we're going to be shocked at how getting back to normal,

there there is no normal anymore.

There's a new normal.

I think we're going to be struck by how structural and not cyclical some of these changes are.

I think people have gotten used to the,

I think of it as the great dispersion.

And I think the dispersion of headquarters to people's homes is a structural shift.

I think the dispersion of media to our homes is a structural shift.

The dispersion of retail.

I mean, these things just aren't going to change.

I think we're going to be struck.

I think so many of these companies are in denial, waiting for people to get back to the office or back to movie theaters.

No.

And

it's just not going to happen.

And if you think about it,

I mean, I'm definitely a glass half-empty kind of guy.

And

I've been thinking about, and it's scary here,

the dispersion of our the greatest, the greatest wealth creating trends of the last 30 years have been globalization and loosely speaking, which you'd call digitization.

And where we got it wrong there, where we really fucked up, was we let all the spoils go to quote-unquote information age workers, and we didn't invest anything in the people that got left behind, whether it was worker retraining or empathy or recognizing that whole swaths of the American economy got left behind.

Right.

And this dispersion of trillions of dollars of commercial real estate to residential, but not only that, but productivity.

I mean, I don't know about you, but if you really look at your calendar, you are a juggernaut of content right now.

I am.

I don't know what's going on.

There's no commuting.

Think about this.

Think about this.

I've worked like this my whole life.

I have.

It's just more noticeable.

I've not been to the office.

I don't go to the office very often.

Okay, but in the last, literally in the last six hours, I've taught 280 kids from NYU Stern over Zoom.

I've done two podcasts, an interview

on CBS this morning.

I mean,

you can do so much now.

It's just

crazy.

Yes, you can.

With the tech and a bunch of Zoom meetings.

And we talk about bringing down of the quality.

Like, you do a lot of TV now.

You don't need all these studios.

You used to have to go to and get the makeup on.

That was an hour and a half or whatever.

That's right.

Getting there, getting back, waiting around for a six-minute hit.

A six-minute hit on MSNBC used to be two and a half hours.

Now it's 10 minutes.

Yeah, I'm not going to get, I'm not taking a limousine to their whatever I'm doing.

I'm still put on makeup, though.

But that's for me.

That's me time care.

So let me ask you a question.

So, businesses, how do we get people, but you're still going to go into this vaccinated situation with this happening?

So, you're one of your favorite people, Daniel Schreiber from

Lemonade, who you lick up and down constantly at his company.

He wrote a piece called Why Every Company Should Ask Every Employee to Get Vaccinated with Pandemic Raging

Vaccine Hesitancy Must Be Overcome.

And he said, that's where corporate responsibility comes in.

A corporate directive coupled with educational sessions can inject the urgency and reassurance needed to move the needle.

Thanks, Daniel.

With COVID-19 killing at a rate of 500 people per hour, a sense of urgency is just what the doctor ordered.

Oh my God, someone's got to help him right.

Anyway, but he was saying this is what has to happen is corporations

have to take this.

And Hannah, a lot of people are nervous to tell their employees what to do.

And he said,

while our employees, families, communities, and shareholders will surely benefit from this policy, the blowback from zealots is equally assured.

But their tantrum about the purported outrage on personal liberty is an old song.

We mustn't prolong the pandemic in order to escape their indignant tweets.

And actually, he was showing a lot of stuff around for people during the polio.

This is anti-vaccine from 1885.

This is, I don't know which one this was, but forced to be vaccinated, this idea.

So he thinks it's critically important that companies do this.

What do you think about this?

I think this is what leadership looks like.

And when people say that forcing them to wear a mask is tyranny, I can't even imagine what they're going to label any sort of encouragement to get a vaccination.

And here's the bottom line.

If you're in Taiwan right now,

your kids can see their grandparents.

You can meet someone and take them on a date.

You can hug people.

You can go to school.

You can go to a concert.

Why?

Because

Taiwan, by most people's standards on the right, instituted tyranny for weeks at a time such that they could get back to loving each other, making money, and get back to their normal lives.

In the 1940s or 1941, when there was Pearl Harbor and we instituted instituted the draft, a lot of people rightfully, understandably, said, you know what?

Just 25 years ago,

my dad, my older brother came home maimed from a continent.

We have got nothing for that sacrifice.

And you want me to go back there?

Well, fuck you.

That's tyranny.

And you know what we did then?

We didn't say, oh, let's put them on Fox and let's understand them.

And it is tyranny.

And we split up.

We put 5,000 men in prison

who avoided the draft.

And we need more leadership around this.

Vaccines, vaccines are, in my view, are a no-brainer.

Yes, there's risk.

There's risk when you leave your house to drive to the airport, but we decide to drive.

We decide to take planes.

And guess what?

The odds here are so overwhelming.

It is amazing the kind of hysteria that gets together with vaccines.

It's crazy.

You know, and also, but the whole COVID thing has been one big crazy town.

I'm sorry.

Like the kind of stuff, I'm not going to say which relative, but someone who birthed me, I can't have them come to my birthday.

My birthday's this week and went out and did, I said, please do this, this, this, in order to come down here and did none of it.

And then was like, I'm coming down.

I'm like, no, you're not.

Like, I just, I, I, I can't, I don't understand.

Like, I literally was like, that's enough.

You're crazy and I'm not letting this happen.

And so, and the explanation was like, oh, it's not as bad as you think.

I'm like, no, it is as bad as I think.

Like, you don't, you don't listen to things.

And so it's a problematic situation because I think these anti-vaxxers just, there's no,

there's no common good in them and there's no stopping the lunacy.

There's no ability to stop lunacy because average people are lunatics also.

Well, there's also a free riding effect and that is

what well I'm going to wait to take a vaccine and no, no, but you go ahead.

I understand that the world will be safer.

But if there's a small amount of risk and I've decided that I'm healthy and I'm young and I'd rather just not get it, I'm going to free ride off of your citizenship.

You know what there should be?

Just as we we had posters that said loose lips sink ships and we made it heroic and patriotic.

You know what?

We need we need a first in line movement.

So you were talking about that, this idea of being first in line.

And it's not about you.

It's about citizenship.

We got to stop the spread.

We got to stop.

We got to reduce.

We got to make sure the net that sweeps up our old and our vulnerable gets more and more porous and eventually frays and goes away.

And the way you do that is you are first in line.

And also get your head out of your ass and do simple Get your head out of your ass.

That is our message to you.

Roll up your sleeve, get your head out of your ass.

Yeah, because your head in your ass is not good when you're getting a vaccine.

But do you know how many tens of millions of people vaccines have saved?

It's just striking.

I don't even, I can't have this discussion anymore.

So it is.

First in line, you and I are first and second.

We will do a whole media campaign that nobody cares about.

Anyway, social media platforms have got to regulate information about vaccine.

By the way, you think I'm mad at Facebook and I've been pushing for this and look what happened ftc if you don't deal with election misinformation and vaccine misinformation i'm coming for you i'm coming for you hard thank you that's what i say all right all right okay now we have a listener mail uh presented by yappa you got you got i can't believe i'm gonna be a mailman you you got mail

hi karen scott i am living a privileged life sitting at the mountain waiting for the ski lifts to open in the dark in my car.

Apologies for any bad audio.

I'm going to follow that up with an even more privileged question, which is, what do you think the effects of the M1 chip and Apple creating their own silicone for their Mac computers is going to have on the industry at large?

The benchmarks so far have been way better than everybody expected.

I'm wondering your thoughts.

Thanks.

Chips.

Chips, I think it's a big deal.

I think it's an enormous deal.

And I think not just them, but others, many others, Amazon and others are working on their own.

And so obviously it's the end of the Intel empire.

And these and companies that make these ARM chips, ARM including, are going to be very powerful.

And I just taught an interview with Paul Jacobs of Qualcomm, who used to run Qualcomm, used to be the chairman.

His father founded it and he ran it.

And now he has his own company based around 5G.

And I think everybody feels that this is going to be critically important for these

moving to these more robust systems than ever before.

And so to wait for an Intel or something else is that's over pretty much.

Scott?

Yeah, we talked about this: that Intel and AMD have to build chips that can scale such that they go across different platforms and different hardware.

And the bottom line is if you have the capital and the wherewithal.

And my understanding is that this isn't truly vertical integration or manufacturing that they're building their chips on top of as an ARM or ARM technology, which is is a Taiwanese firm.

But both Neil Ferguson and Mark Cuban, who we've had on our respective podcasts, have both said that chip manufacturing and IP is really of national security.

That if you think about where China has not been able to catch us, they've been able to catch us around operations fulfillment, to a lesser extent, and software, but where the West or democracies still have real advantages around chips.

And we do not want to lose that advantage.

So, look, I think Apple is going vertical.

I think the more interesting one.

Not just them, but Amazon too.

But the verticalization of these companies when they get this big creates more optimized.

When you have when

Apple has its own search engine, it can optimize the search engine for its own business model.

So I think this verticalization is going to continue to happen across the biggest companies, and it creates a bigger moat.

And basically, a chip design for Apple optimizes for iOS and for their hardware.

So I I think it's powerful.

I'm more interested in kind of the national security implications.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think it's a very, it's important.

And I think you'll see companies like Amazon and Apple take their own destiny on these things.

There's always been this push-pull with Intel and others, but it's real, it's critically important, this technology being designed within these companies for especially as you move to 5G and other things.

They want to have control of these services.

There's going to be all kinds of at-home things.

You know, I know you don't think of it right now, but you're going to have, you know, right now we're talking to each other on a thing called Squadcast.

There's Zoom and stuff like that.

You're going to have presence, like real presence of people within all kinds of things that are going to happen or require them to be designed completely together.

And so like, I'm going to be able to have Scott sitting here in this room, which I'm going to be disturbed by.

But you're going to see lots and lots of that where you can actually see people's facial expressions in more significant ways.

And, you know, or sports games that you're going to be down on the floor.

There's going to be so much that's going to be necessary for development of it.

And this is, these companies have the vested interest in doing so because they'll be rolling out these services too.

Anyway, a reminder for the month of December, we're partnering with Yappa to get more listener mail questions.

That was a good wonky one.

Go to newyorkmag.com slash pivot to submit your questions for the pivot podcast.

Okay, Scott, one more quick break, and we'll be back for your prediction when we get back.

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Okay, Scott, give us a good prediction.

Give us a prediction.

We already sort of talked about Airbnb stock, but we now know that it's already high already.

It's already much higher than 42 billion.

It's at 47 billion.

Yeah, I think first trade tomorrow, it's triple digits.

And it's always dangerous to make those predictions, but I think Airbnb stock comes out at first trade, is at triple digits.

I also think that

when people listen to this, they'll know.

They'll know if you're right or not.

And 2021, Amazon tries to get out.

They don't want to be the third dot on this line.

I think

they prophylactically do a spin.

And also, the other prediction is that while Facebook stock was off 2% and everybody, including Mark Zuckerberg, wants to think that this is a bad thing.

No, it's not.

This will unlock shareholder value and

their stock goes up from here.

It might dip in the short term, but their stock goes up.

Stock goes up.

So he's a richer person.

Oh, yeah.

100%.

Yeah.

100%.

He's not going to like this, though.

I can tell you.

I'm sure he's really pissed today.

He likes, he wants, you know, who his hero was?

Mussolini?

I keep telling you this.

Satan?

Keep guessing.

I want a few more guesses.

Who is he?

The person he looks up to?

Ayn Rand.

No.

I have no Stephen Miller.

Stephen Miller.

No.

There was a Stephen Miller was on.

Newman from Seinfeld.

No, no,

Augustus Caesar.

Okay.

Think about that.

I don't know enough about history.

Give me the implications.

Augustus Caesar was after Caesar.

He's the one that killed, sort of killed off Mark Antony and Cleopatra, if you saw the Elizabeth Taylor version, but really, in fact, he was the greatest.

Even though Julius Caesar gets all the attention, Augustus Caesar was the one that unified the empire and

was the most powerful emperor of Rome.

And he did all kinds of things, had a very controversial, but considered a really great emperor of all he surveyed, brought things together.

This guy brought light, brought things together.

This guy's the white walker of big tech.

Winter is coming for this guy.

No, it's not.

He's going to be richer.

He can go.

He can winter anywhere he wants.

I agreed.

You know,

he's going to be wanting.

I think it'll be interesting.

We'll see.

You know what?

Let me just say, I'm going to make a different prediction.

They are going to, the government has has bit off a lot here, and they're going to have to chew a lot because

it's not going to be easy.

It's not going to be easy.

And these people, every single person I talk to in government is, I've never, these are government people, like Justice Department people, FTC people.

They're like,

they're really.

Where in the world is

Waldo specifically?

Anyone heard from Cheryl Samberg?

She's kept a pretty low profile around all this.

No.

Not a word.

There's a book coming out by Shira Franklin and Cecilia Kang.

It's called The Ugly Truth.

It's coming out in June.

It's all about Facebook.

It's about what happened here and everything.

And I think it's called One Ugly Truth or The Ugly Truth.

No, One Ugly Truth.

I just want to say, I wrote them.

I said, There's, I'd like a lot more ugly truths.

You know, four ugly truths and a funeral of democracy.

That's what I said the name book should be.

In any case, there's a lot coming out about them.

And I think it's really, I think this case, one of the things that will be the most interesting is discovery.

That's what I, that's really, but I think it's not going to, this is my prediction.

Facebook is going to fight this hard.

They are, they are elbow poking, biting kind of people, and they're going to not go down easy.

And the people on the border do not go down easy either.

The Peter Thiels, the Mark Andreessens.

Yeah, I don't, I think, I think if they were,

I don't, I think this is really, I think this is getting a lot of momentum.

I think a lot of very powerful people on

both sides of the aisle are going to jump on this.

The other thing is other tech companies hate them, the big ones too.

That's the thing.

There's not a person you even Google.

Tim Cook is already out saying you deserve it.

Of course he has to say that.

He did say it to me, as you know.

As you know, he said it to me.

I was shocked when he did that, but I loved it.

But I think the Google people,

even the Google people find them distasteful and think they've wrecked it for everybody.

So we will see.

There's not a company in Silicon Valley that doesn't have something bad to say about Facebook for sure.

Okay, that's the show.

As a reminder, we love the listener mail questions and we're trying something new.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your questions for the podcast.

The link is also in the show notes.

Scott, read us out.

Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis.

Ernie and Drott had engineered this episode.

Erica Anderson is Pivot's executive producer.

Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and 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.

Our generation has had really so few opportunities to truly express our citizenship.

Let's be first in line.

Vaccines are a gift of humanity.

They bring together our empathy, our science, our cooperation.

Let's all be first in line.