Guest host Stephanie Ruhle on TikTok ban, SpaceX splash down, and Friend of Pivot Rep. David Cicilline on antitrust hearings

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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 Stephanie Ruhl in for Scott Galloway, hopefully here to do my part today.

Oh, my goodness.

You have so much more hair.

That's really what I'm excited about.

That's not saying much.

I know, that's true.

You know, Scott was very upset that he's not here with you.

He said, you can't talk to Stephanie Rule when I'm not there.

But here we are.

Alas.

So obviously, the intelligence level is going to go up rather significantly here.

So we have so many things to talk about.

Joe Biden is expected to pick his running mate this week, Stephanie.

I want to talk about that.

Unemployment insurance, which is an area that you talk about a lot from the original coronavirus stimulus packages, ended.

Where does that leave workers?

Which one of those do you want to talk about?

Because I think unemployment insurance is your biggest question.

It is, but why don't we start with Joe Biden?

Because Joe Biden has said he's most likely going to uh confirm his vp pick this week yeah and there is an enormous amount of pressure on it everybody is talking about it um and i know there's a ton of noise or uh out there you know certain possible picks are getting uh too much criticism and and then there's issue you know would we give this kind of criticism if it was a man to that end I don't know the answer.

But at this point, sort of everybody who's in that lineup could be a great possible running mate for Joe Biden.

And while nobody wants to talk about it, and I really, I know that it's offensive, we do have two people running for president who, by any stretch, are old.

And if we don't consider their health, we have to, right?

The running mate, the VP isn't just, oh, that's that Dan Quayle that's going to sit there quietly and do some stuff.

This is consequential, especially if you factor in that Joe Biden is a more traditional candidate.

And if the Democrats want to win, they have got to energize a whole lot of young voters that before George Floyd's death and the protests weren't that energized.

Study after study shows that the vice presidential pick doesn't matter.

You think it does to voters, that people, I mean, people like to, like you and I like to talk about it and speculate it at dinner parties we're not going to anymore.

But, you know, does it matter to most people?

Are they just focused on Biden and Trump?

Maybe it doesn't matter.

But right now, if you truly want President Trump out of office, every single thing has to matter.

Right?

All day long, we could say, oh, my goodness, look at these polls.

President Trump is doing so badly in the polls.

I don't know that that's actually the case because I think there's a whole heck of a lot of people that are quietly going to vote for him again, but they're not saying it at dinner parties and they're not putting a sign in front of their house.

So if Joe Biden's camp doesn't pay attention to every possible thing, you have no idea what Trump is about to throw at this.

All right.

So in that case, that was a sort of 2016 assessment, right?

You think it's playing out again in the same way.

I do.

Look at the panic in President Trump right now with the mail-in voting.

He's basically saying, if you have the ability to vote, I will lose.

Okay.

When he's that far backed into a corner and that scared, you have to be prepared that he is going to pull out any and all stops.

And so I think Joe Biden's team has to dot every I and cross every single T there is.

So

running mate, if you had to make a choice, if it's coming this week or maybe next week, what do you expect?

My obviously fantasy candidate would be you.

I think someone who would be wildly popular, and we already know she doesn't want to do it, at least not now, is Michelle Obama.

But right now, I mean, honestly, he could go with a Karen Bass, a Val Demings, a Kamala Harris, or a Stacey Abrams, and they're all winning bets.

I didn't say Elizabeth Warren, only because I do kind of think that he has Elizabeth Warren possibly earmarked for a cabinet position.

I've mentioned it to you, potentially Treasury Secretary.

And I don't know that Elizabeth Warren has the ability to get people as enthusiastic as maybe some of the others do.

Yeah, she's a fighter, but you're right.

She's better suited in other areas.

So, you expect it this week?

You don't know.

Nobody knows.

Nobody knows, but we are expecting it.

But I think we'll probably get it this week.

All right.

One of the big issues I think Joe Biden has a winning issue on is these unemployment insurance and the coronavirus economic disaster, along with the coronavirus response itself, which is intimately related.

I don't know if he does.

Yes, the president has had a disastrous coronavirus response.

However, to every Democrat in office right now, where the heck is oversight?

Kara, remember when Occupy Wall Street happened, right?

No one was saying it's Democrat.

Occupy Wall Street and the rage against the financial crisis and the bailouts happened when Obama was in office, right?

Think about the fact that we've given out $2 trillion in stimulus, and yet every single day, thousands of small businesses are closing every day.

The way we're going, unless in the next relief package, there is truly a program for small businesses and for restaurants, a year from now, the only stores you and I will be able to shop in are big box stores, and we're going to be going to Olive Garden, Chili's, and a McDonald's.

And just today, Howard Schultz led 100 CEOs,

wrote a letter to congressional leadership saying, if you don't figure this out, not just for business in general, but for businesses that revenue is down 25% or more, they're gone.

And we talk about it in an abstract way, and it blows my mind that I'm not going to be able to do it.

I know I just was passing four restaurants closed.

They have signs out saying we're now closed.

But it blows my mind that Congress isn't doing anything.

Kara, that small business loan, PPP, do you realize we had to fight tooth and nail to get the name of every of all those businesses?

There's no punishment for those who probably shouldn't have taken the money.

And now, any loan under $150,000 or less, neither Democrats nor Republicans are insisting that it's made public who took the money.

Right.

How could that possibly be?

This is taxpayer money.

We should be able to see it.

It's politically inconvenient for all these lawmakers to show it.

And I'm telling you, people are going to lose their mind over it.

When they see it, there's a story every day.

There was one just now.

I just popped up.

Someone who had billions of dollars in revenue took loans too.

I mean, it really is.

So, what should happen next?

And then I want to get to the big story.

What should with this package that they keep Mnuchin and Pelosi essentially are negotiating over?

And and the White House keeps dropping in various bombs at various points.

Listen,

you've never heard Steve Mnuchin and Mitch McConnell love to talk about the fact that there are so many unemployed Americans that are making so much money on unemployment, they don't want to go back to work.

I mean, that is such an overplayed narrative for a tiny fraction of people that that might be the case for, when in fact, there's an overwhelming amount of people they don't even have jobs to go back to.

This whole idea, well, the employers are dying to hire people back and they can't.

Kara,

if you were a bartender, if you were a waiter right now, even if your restaurant was reopening, would you go back to work when they're only doing takeout, when the restaurant is at 25% capacity?

And when, by the way, we don't know if schools are open and you have kids to take care of.

They need to figure out what are we really going to do to help America stay afloat.

When people keep pointing at the stock market, we should remind people: it's not even all stocks that are doing well, it's behemoth companies that that have an o that have oversized influence but it's sad to say look at the housing market right look at the housing market in in it's off the charts couldn't be hotter when renters are facing evictions yeah and you know that the rental community is disproportionately minorities versus white america which are far more homeowners because it's been legislated that way in history yeah absolutely it's a it'll it's a developing story and we'll talk about it more on thursday but i'm going to move on to big stories because I think there's a lot of distraction going on, including big tech and business wars with China.

Let's talk about President Trump announcing he would ban TikTok over the weekend.

President Trump said on Friday he would be signing an executive order to ban TikTok.

Now, Microsoft has come out and said they're in talks to purchase the company.

Over the course of the weekend, various administration figures said different things.

Mr.

Trump said that he did not want Microsoft to buy it.

And then Microsoft sent him a very effusive letter saying how smart he was.

It said it would ensure that American TikTok user data is transferred to the U.S.

Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, talked to Mr.

Trump.

And according to Reuters, Trump agreed to give ByteDance 45 days to cut a deal with Microsoft.

I think it's so much noise signifying nothing because this is not where the real China war is happening in the internet.

Okay, what do you think?

Can I ask you the question?

Sure.

How does Satya Nadella assure or guarantee the president that all of this user data will make its way here and then China will erase it?

In my tiny little bilky girl mind, that's never going to happen.

No, that the old data is gone.

That's it.

And by the way, TikTok, there's been no proof that the Chinese government has this stuff.

Just so you realize, I know there may not ever be able to have proof, but it goes through Singapore and then they're a Cayman Islands-held company.

It's very complicated.

But the fact of the matter is, anything going forward is going to be that's, I think it's going forward,

is the idea of it.

But how does it even work?

Okay, so so Microsoft is going to buy TikTok U.S.

What happens to Canada, New Zealand, Australia?

Like they're going to buy some of them.

They're going to buy some.

I think they're going to grab Canada.

I think Australia.

It's still being negotiated and it would be in this country.

And then Microsoft has security tech.

They can put the stuff in a lockbox, clean it up, and then move it along.

I mean, I think that's not the technical issues, I think, are less important than the idea that this is where all the energy of our our legislators is going, which is not really where the game with China is.

The game with China is in AI, it's in military technology, it's in 5G.

And here he is diddling over TikTok, essentially.

Diddling over TikTok because the president didn't like it when all those teen TikTokers,

you know, scammed it with his Tulsa rally and bought up tickets and didn't show up.

But, Cara, at the end of the day,

this is our big story of the morning.

And it wouldn't be if the president didn't create this huge distraction.

We would be talking about people who are living in desperate situations and people who are sick and dying.

So do you actually believe this story is that valid?

I don't think it's valid.

I think he's made it.

I think people are interested in TikTok and I do think they like it.

And so it's sort of the shiny object that he makes a mess of.

I think he did make a mess and I listens to whoever, Peter Navarro, was off on some island that I don't even understand.

But I do think you're right.

I said, I said this on CNBC this morning.

I'm like, okay, we're talking about TikTok.

Why are we talking about this when we have COVID problems, when the GDP problems, when, you know, there's so much other things to talk about.

And also, there is a true threat from China in a lot of areas.

TikTok ain't it, even if it's affiliated with China.

Well, then I guess we have to move on from it because we cannot let the president.

Listen, it's like the president last week saying, oh, am I going to move election day?

His whole goal is to get us to quote unquote blow, you know, to have our heads blow up.

The president forgets we've got time and we have the ability to cover multiple things.

Yes, for a moment we can divert our attention and say, check yourself, listen to the FEC, you don't even have the ability to move the election day, but that's not going to make the likes of you and me forget the major issues that the president isn't addressing.

Right.

And also, it did take, like, I think Steve Mnuchin was involved in this.

He should have been involved only in

dealing with the COVID crisis and the economic fallout, and instead probably had to turn his head over here.

You know, this is the kind of thing that just distracts and

is important in its own small way, but at the same time, it's not.

And by the way, it's a bargain for Microsoft to get this thing.

But also, Steve Mnuchin wants to have this distraction.

Steve Mnuchin wants to be able to go on the Sunday shows and talk about this kind of big business thing because that's how he fancies himself.

He does not want to go on the Sunday shows and have to talk about all the American, about Americans who are suffering economically.

Right.

You are correct.

A large TikTok.

Let's do a TikTok on it, Stephanie.

Do you use TikTok?

I watch it.

I think it's entertaining.

It's a very good product.

That's how I would put it.

I think it's an entertainment product and it's a video product and I like it, but it's not where

we should be focused at all.

I don't use it only because I know I would love it.

I mean, Kara, if I use TikTok, I would make dance videos all day long.

I understand.

So I don't use it by design because I have to work in parents.

All right, well, don't.

You can consume it, though.

It's fun to consume.

All right.

Let's go to a quick break and come back and talk about SpaceX coming to Earth and a friend of Pivot Representative David Cicillini on what's next for a big tech breakup.

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Okay, we're back.

Elon Musk is back down on Earth, sort of.

His company, SpaceX, successfully touched back down to Earth after its inaugural space mission that launched that was launched back in May.

SpaceX is the first private company to go into space.

SpaceX is expected to do another space launch as soon as September.

I mean, this was some good when they touched down.

I was like, oh, something worked.

I don't know what else to say.

Splashdown.

As you can see on your screen, we have visual confirmation for Splashdown.

SpaceX copies and concurs.

We see Splashdown and mains cut.

And then I thought that space should not be privatized.

These are two different conflicting feelings.

How do you look at this?

I mean, I can't think of a better time period for Elon Musk than right now.

Right?

I mean, Elon Musk, who blew his nose at an SEC fine a year ago, who has taken all of the Tesla shorts and shoved it right up there, you know what?

And now here he is with SpaceX, which for a long time people were like, what is this guy's wackadoodle pipe dream?

And this thing worked.

I mean, the person who this is a huge loss for has to be Jeff Bezos.

Bezos.

Where we haven't seen really much of anything happen with Blue Origin.

So sort of that mega power feud between the two of them, this has to be killing Bezos.

But for Elon Musk, tremendous win.

So talk about that, that shoving Tesla shorts up his ass kind of thing.

We can say that on this show.

How does Wall Street look at him?

Because he just sort of has a lot of hijinks, and then he does something like this, which is really impressive.

And then, you know, he continues to tweet all kinds of, you know, just six months ago, he was doing hydroxychloroquine tweets or attacking a local official.

How does Wall Street look at him when you're, if you know, you were in Wall Street,

the stock is up to the moon, maybe Mars, and

how do they look at him?

I mean, it's stunning.

You have seen a lot of rational investors over the last few years say this guy is full of it.

This guy with his lunatic tweets,

the way he behaves, the things he has to say.

But at the end of the day, right now, people feel so good about his product, about the kind of tax breaks that he gets that you don't see traditional auto companies get.

He's in a situation where a rational human would say, this guy's hubris is going to be his downfall.

But a lot of people who said it have been made a temporary fool of.

So I think only time will tell.

What do you, what do you, if you were a buyer, what would you do?

I mean, look at the stock is up, I think, four or five times.

I mean, really, by hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

What would you do as an investor?

I think assessing the stock.

I think the number one thing to do as an investor is never make emotional decisions, right?

So I think a lot of people who have jumped on Tesla have jumped on because they're saying, this makes no sense to me, but this guy's going to the moon.

I got to get on board.

If you truly don't believe that fundamentally, it's not something you should necessarily short, but it's okay to say, I'm just not going to play in this one.

Now, you might not make a ton of money because you didn't buy Tesla, but unless you can sit down and make a rational argument to yourself and your investors as to why you feel good about this, then I actually think it's a pass.

It's a pass.

Interesting.

So, would you differentiate between SpaceX and Tesla and the others?

Did you feel that investors do that?

Are you just buying the whole Elon Musk solar tunnel space car package?

Well, I think in Elon Musk's case, it's very hard to separate the two given the huge amount of influence he has, right?

If you're Elon Musk,

if you're looking at a company, Elon Musk, or if you're looking at Mark Zuckerberg, you can't separate things.

They have, they control their companies.

So you have to buy in to them given the undue influence they have if you compared that to Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan.

All right.

So you would do a pass.

That's interesting.

You're like Scott.

Scott felt like that, like that he just can't, you know, and he feels bad because, you know, all the money on the upside.

When you're thinking of privatization of face, I want to finish up with this.

Is it right to be doing, even though it worked and it's faster and these, they have cool suits and this and that, you know, cool design suits.

Is that a good thing, this idea of privatization of this area?

And do you, do you think space is a big investment area?

Do you do you hear a lot of people talking about that?

I don't, especially not yet.

It seems no pun intended out there.

But the privatization of something like this doesn't make you feel very good because you worry about the incentives, right?

There's something to be said about some things being privatized or public-private partnerships, because we know that private industry is run better than government agencies.

But in this one, privatization, especially something as complicated and expensive as this, you don't feel very good about it.

At least I don't.

And

what could be done?

I mean, you had Trump doing Space Force and things like that, but the government is largely pulled out of this area.

So it's up to private companies to move in, correct?

It is, but the government could make their way back.

It just seems that right now, as much as you said in the beginning of this, oh, it's good news to see that it landed yeah it doesn't seem that it's the most pressing thing for our government to be spending trillions of dollars it just doesn't seem like it's a priority back to this to bringing back our country in terms of economically is more important okay stephanie let's go to our friend of pivot

We are so thrilled this week to have Rhode Island Congressman David Cicillini.

He is chairman of the House Antitrust Subcommittee and oversaw last week's historic hearings with the CEOs of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google.

Representative Cicillini, welcome to Pivot.

Thank you.

It's great to be with you.

So I have to say, I did not expect much out of those hearings, and I think I got a lot out of them.

It was really a surprise that you managed to wrangle all those people in a remote setting.

So I compliments on that and kudos.

But I'd love to get from you what you think was the most important thing to come out of it, because sometimes these hearings can be show hearings and they seem to slip away in some manner.

Well, I think most importantly that the hearing presented the members of the subcommittee with an opportunity to question the decision makers of the four large technology platforms as part of a more than year-long investigation into the digital marketplace.

And frankly, it was an opportunity to really confront them about what we have uncovered during the course of the investigation about their

monopoly power, about their dominance in the marketplace and the use of that market power to bully competitors, to favor their own products and services, to weaponize data, and the incentives that the business models of each of these companies presents to maintain that monopoly power.

And so

it was really an opportunity to ask the decision makers in these companies to explain their conduct and to compare it to the information we collected during the course of the investigation.

And I think it was clear from the hearing that the members of the subcommittee studied these issues carefully, were well prepared, had real questions.

And frankly, what we learned from these companies was that they really didn't didn't have any defense to the activities that they were engaged in, the business models that they had adopted, that again, are really exercising monopoly power.

And that's not good for our economy.

It's not good for consumers.

It's not good for workers.

It's not good for innovation.

And so now we're charged with the responsibility of developing a report and a set of recommendations to present to our colleagues so that we can get competition back into the digital.

I'm going to do a quick follow-up and then Stephanie can go.

But there was a real dichotomy between the Republicans and Democrats.

And I think Robin Givon wrote about it, this idea that you all were focused on the power and the antitrust issue.

And Scott talked about it.

You looked at the sign as you came in the door.

And then Representative Jordan and others sort of went off on the conservative bias thing, which I had begged them not to do, but there they did.

Well, you know, what was disappointing was that actually the members of the subcommittee, both Mr.

Sensenbrenner, Mr.

Armstrong, Mr.

Buck,

Mr.

Gates, they've been very involved in the investigation and I think really understand the importance of taking on the power of these big monopoly companies.

Jim Jordan became the ranking member of the flu committee when Doug Collins, who was also very serious about this investigation, took over.

And I just thought he sort of parachuted in and he hasn't really been involved for the last year in the investigation.

And I think he was sort of doing the president's bidding about, you know, conservative bias.

Mr.

Raskin made the point: if these technology companies are showing bias against conservative voices, they're not doing a very good job because the biggest hits for the last months have been Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox News.

So there's just no evidence that there's any conservative bias.

But I think despite the behavior of Mr.

Jordan, that most of the subcommittee, Republicans and Democrats, really tried to focus on the competition problems and the power of these big.

So then let's get real.

Is anything actually going to come of it?

Absolutely.

The purpose of this investigation was to study the digital marketplace and to thoughtfully develop a set of solutions, both legislation and proposals for regulation, that will bring competition back into this space.

We will go through the month of August, taking all of the information we learned both at the hearing and through the collection of documents and testimony of experts and field hearings we've held, and develop a set of recommendations.

And then we will introduce legislation.

We will propose some regulations.

And I think there will be bipartisan support to do that.

We're fighting against enormous power here.

With big economic power comes tremendous political power.

So this is not going to be an easy fight, but I think part of our responsibility is to make it clear to the American people why this matters, why the market dominance by these platforms undermines our democracy and the spread of misinformation, crushes small businesses and innovators who can't survive, bullies people into buying their or preferencing their own products and services.

So it has real consequences for our economy.

We've had a lifelong battle between democracy and monopoly in this country because monopolies monopolies are inconsistent with democracy.

We know that.

And so, part of the report is going to make the case about why this matters and then propose some real solutions about how we can fix it.

Things like, you know, there's a lot of things.

Should, for example, we consider proposals that would prevent you from being both a marketplace and a producer of goods and services, almost like a glass stable of the internet.

That's right.

Some could be, yeah,

some could be, should we, you know, will portability, data portability and interoperability be useful?

Can we explicitly prohibit certain kinds of conduct?

So there's a lot we can do, and we're going to give a menu of options to our colleagues about how we take on these monopoly options.

Can I just say one more thing?

Do you actually believe there'll be the political will to do that?

Because the irony of these hearings taking place on Thursday and watching your conservative colleagues talk about why can't my mom and dad get my campaign emails?

And I couldn't seem to find gateway pundit on Google the next day those four companies blew it out in terms of earnings the same day that we know the CARES Act expanded unemployment benefits were running out yeah look there's no question that even in the midst of a global health pandemic these platforms because of their market dominance because of their monopoly power have made enormous profits so those earning reports were no surprise to anyone it just further underscores the urgency of getting competition back into the digital marketplace and taking and really putting into place ways to really regulate properly these large data companies.

They are engaged in the collection of data at a scale I think most people don't understand.

And part of our responsibility is to make that case to the American people.

And there has to be the will.

I think, you know, we talk a lot about why the economy doesn't work for folks, for small businesses, for working people.

Part of that is because of the concentration of market power of huge corporations like the four CEOs that were before our committee.

So I think there will be tremendous will to get this done in a bipartisan way, and it won't be easy work, but it has to be.

What about the differences between these companies?

Because each of them poses a different issue.

You have Apple is largely the app store, and that could be fixed by regulation or something else.

We have Amazon with a number of things, including marketplace power and Google with search domination and also possible marketplace power.

And then there's YouTube.

And then over at Facebook, there's a whole thing around hate speech, around dominance and social media.

I mean, can you not,

they're not the same.

I mean, the idea that big tech is monolithic is problematic, even though they're the most profitable companies right now on the planet.

That's absolutely right.

And we have approached this with a deep understanding that each of these companies is different.

And if we're going to think about kind of

market-wide solutions, we have to be conscious of the different business practices.

But each of the platforms is a significant bottleneck for a key channel of distribution.

Each platform uses its control over digital infrastructure to surveil other companies and competitors.

And each of these platforms use their current market dominance to both extend their power and maintain it.

So there are differences in their behaviors, and we're going to have to develop a set of solutions that respond to each of the behaviors of the companies.

But there's a lot of overlap.

And again, the result, the consequences are that they are enjoying a growing market dominance.

It's making it very difficult, if not impossible, for competitors to enter the market.

So some of the other things we have to look at are what are the ways we can lower barriers to entry to try to create more opportunities for competition?

How do you make certain that there is some effort to prevent the wide-scale distribution of false information that is undermining our democracy and destroying local journalism?

So you're right, they're all different.

And And we'll have a menu of options that will respond to different companies in different ways, but to the marketplace.

This is going to sound disrespectful.

So I just, I ask forgiveness.

Forgiveness is going ahead of time.

Given the companies that we're talking about, their dominance and their expertise, do we really think even with the prop, even with the most well-intentioned recommendations and maybe even subsequent regulation, we're going to be able, government will be able to catch this beast.

Big tech has always been extraordinarily powerful, but now it's more powerful than ever.

You know, I would liken it to, you know, before 2008, you would look at financial regulation of Wall Street, right?

And you would have regulators who are making 1 20th.

of what they're of what you would see you know derivatives traders structurers making would walk into banks in a brown polyester suit and a clipboard and say we're here to regulate you and and with the best of intentions as banks would horse laugh all the way home.

So do you actually think given the brainpower and the money that these companies have, government will even know how to smart regulate them?

Absolutely.

Look, we know how to regulate them and we know the kind of legislation that should have been introduced.

It just didn't happen.

This is the first major antitrust investigation done in 50 years in the Congress.

Our antitrust enforcement agencies have not done a good job.

This wasn't that they tried really hard.

They just didn't figure it out.

They didn't even try.

They basically said, these are great American companies.

they're creating lots of jobs, just leave them alone and let them grow without fully appreciating the kind of consequences of the dominance or the monopoly power that they have.

You know, they said the same things about the railroad and oil monopolies, they're so big, they're so powerful, I'll never be able to regulate them.

It's just not true.

You have to have the will to do it, you have to be thoughtful about it, you have to understand the marketplace, which is why we embarked on this very serious bipartisan investigation.

So, we'd come up with good solutions during the course of it.

We've heard from 35 renowned experts on the digital marketplace that will help inform our recommendations.

But look, this will not be easy work, but we certainly have the intellectual capacity and we certainly have the responsibility to this because if we don't, these large technology platforms will control our economy and in significant ways make it more and more difficult to make room for the next great innovation in social media, the next great platform.

And that's one of the other things.

The reason you want to get these marketplace working properly is you want want competition because we know competition brings better choices, more innovation, more options for consumers.

And so, when you have no competition, when you have a monopoly, that stifles innovation.

And so, we want the next Amazon or Facebook or Google to have room to grow and succeed and compete.

So, given that, besides the accusations of anti-Americanism against the only person of color on that panel, which was unusual, the idea

that they should be the defenders against China, and of course, this week with the news that

you know, this TikTok back and forth,

which might be going to Microsoft, can you talk a little bit about how you look at that?

Because, you know, that is sort of a little bit of a shiny sidelight to what's going on, but how did you look at their defense that we need to be big in order to fight sort of the she or Mia defense, essentially?

Yeah, I mean, it's not a new argument.

You know, you hear it from Monopolis all the time.

We have to be big to compete with the other big,

you know, the other big company.

And so that's not a new argument you know that we have to be bigger to compete with the other large competitor in this space we hear that a lot but the reality is the responsibility for the kind of national security of our country rests with the government doesn't rest with private industry

and but you know we need more competition in the the marketplace and I think you have to look at this conversation about TikTok in a really important way by saying number one, we cannot politicize antitrust in this country.

And so, those decisions, that transaction, if there is to be one, should be reviewed by antitrust enforces on its merits.

It should not be politicized in any way.

And sadly, we've seen a president, an administration that has abused the power of his office in so many ways, injecting himself into a private transaction or into an antitrust matter is a terrible mistake.

And so, I think everyone should, you know, really allow the antitrust enforces to do their work, hold them to account, to do a thorough review of the transaction.

But it's dangerous when we politicize antitrust.

Then take us inside Congress, because from where Cara and I sit and the rest of the country, it seems that every single issue is hyper-politicized.

Do you have reason to believe why antitrust wouldn't be?

Yes.

Look, I've worked really hard

to make this investigation bipartisan.

Nothing made me happier than to have a Republican on the committee, Congressman Buck, who said to the press, this is the most bipartisan effort of anything I've done in my five and and a half years in Congress.

And so I think

this, because the work is so serious and because people really do understand on the subcommittee, that it's hurting small businesses in their own communities.

It's crushing competitors that they represent in Congress.

They've heard stories about the bullying and abuse of Amazon from their own constituents.

So I think because people understand the dangers of this kind of monopoly power, it has been a very bipartisan investigation.

And I think the reflection of my Republican colleagues on the committee that this is a bipartisan effort is real.

Now, that doesn't mean we're going to agree on every single recommendation the report contains, but it means that there's a good faith effort to reach some common ground on the best way to respond to this.

There may be some proposals that my Republican colleagues don't embrace, and there may be some ideas they have that I don't embrace.

But I think there has been a real understanding that this is serious.

This is a real problem.

It presents real danger to our economy and to small business and to innovation and to privacy.

And we have the responsibility to come up with solutions.

And, you know, judge us on the quality of what we produce and the ability we have to get it done.

And I can tell you right now, this will be an issue in the next campaign because I think the more people understand what's going on in this digital marketplace, the more they are going to demand that Congress take action.

And to the extent that people refuse to do that, they're going to be held accountable.

Well, one thing I want to, this is my last question.

You know, you have Lena Kahn working there on the subcommittee who has been talking about changing the nature of antitrust.

Now, people like Amazon.

They like Google.

They like Facebook.

these are services that are positive for them in many ways, at the same time, very damaging in ways you were talking about.

Does the idea of antitrust have to change completely?

You know, first of all, it's possible to like these companies and still recognize they're engaged in behavior, which is very anti-competitive and which demonstrates that they have monopoly power.

So,

you know, people can still like them and still want us to correct the marketplace and make sure that there's real competition and not engaging in anti-competitive behavior.

But I think one of the things that we are intending to look at and have been looking at is, you know, do our antitrust statutes as they are currently configured respond adequately to the 21st century?

You know, those antitrust statutes were written, as you know, during the Teddy Ray Road and oil monopoly,

right?

So, you know, this is a different economy.

So it is an opportunity to say, do the antitrust statutes as currently written and applied respond to the competition problems that

present themselves in the digital marketplace in the 21st century.

So I imagine that we are very likely to include some recommendations about modernizing and updating the antitrust statutes, two, to make sure antitrust enforcers have the resources they need to vigorously enforce antitrust and that they're staffed by people who are sufficiently creative and enthusiastic to actually do the work.

And then, you know, some regulations and statutes that might specifically prohibit additional behaviors that we've identified during the course of the investigation.

But, you know, part of this investigation was launched to not only understand the marketplace, but also to make the case to the American people of why this matters.

Because, Kara, as you said, these are popular companies, but more and more as people learn the behavior they're engaged in, that they are

taking data from third-party sellers and then creating their own product line to compete with people who are on their platform and then putting them in their own products in the buy box and putting that person on the third page and disadvantaging and putting out a business.

Like, they're a real example of what they're doing.

We don't like neutralize and land land grab as words that are what you should use.

What do you think Teddy Roosevelt would say besides bully?

I think they're bullies, but what do you think?

They're bullies.

No, they're exploiting their market power.

They're favoring their own products and services.

They're unfairly crushing competitors.

They're doing things which harm consumer privacy.

They're surveilling.

data and using it in ways that we can't even imagine without the knowledge of consumers.

And really, I think that kind of weaponizing of data is the thing that is very alarming.

Here's the thing: those CEOs who testified, they're down with that.

They don't mind being called bullies because technically they haven't broken the rules, right?

So it's a hate the game, not the player.

From their perspective, I'm not sure they haven't broken the rules.

Then punish them broken.

Again, this takes you.

But here's an example.

But here's an example.

You have Mark Zuckerberg, who acknowledged that his acquisition of Instagram was because it was a good thing.

That was damn it.

There's lots more, I'm sure, where that came.

I mean that's that's a behavior of a monopolist it's what you what you cannot do now the fact that the FTC didn't do it

doesn't change but it doesn't change the consequences they still have the ability to unravel

and my 14 year old son definitely lied to me last night stayed up too late and you know left ice cream out on the coffee table but unless I punish him today who gives a hoot if he did anything wrong there's no consequences so Mark Zuckerberg

shouldn't have done that no no no no.

But

Stephanie, I'm not going to comment on your parents.

Mark Zuckerberg left that case.

You know what?

Mark Zuckerberg left that ice cream there.

Stephanie.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But look, that's one of the things we have to do.

That's part of our responsibility is to make sure that the statutes are updated so they work, to make sure that the antitrust agencies are doing their job and to make it more difficult for them when they don't do their job.

We're not in enforcement action.

We don't have the ability to,

we're not enforcers.

We have to look at the marketplace broadly, at antitrust laws broadly.

It's ultimately up to us to elect people and to be sure they appoint people in those positions who are serious about this work.

And by the way, it was both Republican and Democrat.

This is enforcement that didn't happen under many administrations.

Does it change under, if there's a Biden administration, if he wins in November?

I guess January takes a little change.

Yeah, I hope so.

I mean, the vice president has spoken about this issue a number of times.

I would never presume to speak for him, but I hope he will appoint someone if he's successful, as I hope he will be, to take on this work in a very serious way and will embrace some of the legislation and regulations that we've made.

That would work, Attorney General Elizabeth Warren.

That would scare them.

Correct?

Sure would.

That would get that ice cream back in the freezer.

It certainly would.

But I actually think there is a universe of men and women, more men in New York who are petrified of the idea of Treasury Secretary Elizabeth Warren.

Oh, yeah, that's true.

Any Elizabeth Warren, these powerful men will be in it.

Anyway, Representative Cicillini, thank you so much.

And we look forward to the report.

When is it coming out?

My hope is we'll spend the month of August writing it and then hopefully done in September.

So we'll have time to introduce some legislation in this Congress.

All right.

Thank you so much for coming on.

My pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

All right, Stephanie, one more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and sales.

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Okay, Stephanie, wins and fails.

You understand the rules of this game.

You can pick a win and a fail.

I'm going to go with Kodak, and it makes absolutely no sense.

Ezma Kodak.

Isma Kodak has won the week.

Isma Kodak, a basically defunct company in Rochester, New York.

I've been there.

I visited.

There you go.

They end up with a government contract, okay, where they're getting a loan for over $700 million to now get in the pharmaceutical game.

None of this makes sense.

Absolutely none of it makes sense.

There are all sorts of drug companies, pharmaceutical companies that could be doing this, but alas, hmm.

The administration shows up and forks forks over $700 million.

And Peter Navarro was on TV the other day saying, oh, it's a collateralized loan.

It's a great deal for the government.

Baloney, collateralized with what?

Abandoned photo mats in Kmart parking lots.

This is a ridiculous win for Kodak shareholders, for Kodak executives, for Kodak board, for a company like Blackstone, okay?

One of the smartest investors out there to sell out of their position, okay?

And the next thing you know, a government deal happens and the stock shoots up to 60.

At this very moment, they won beyond winning.

And that, to me, directly links to the loser of the week.

And the loser of the week is Congress and the SEC.

How do you let a deal like this happen and neither says anything?

I don't, why?

Tell me, Stephanie.

You're not saying, my friend.

I don't know.

You say, you say.

This makes absolutely no sense.

And I get it.

Congress has a lot of work to do, blah, blah, blah.

This makes no sense.

The amount of money that has been been made in the last week with a company like kodak getting this kind of deal to make a product they have no expertise in doesn't make sense and it's a humiliation for the sec and and for members of congress to not make a bigger deal it's the times of your life stephanie do you remember yeah

that makes me cry to this day to this day i visited kodak when they had the last ceo i'm blanking on his name um and uh it was a disaster i wrote a big story for the i think for the wall street journal about the disaster that had become Kodak and how it, how it missed.

It was in meetings about printers and it wasn't, it didn't decided not to do them.

It was in a lot of stuff.

They happened, weirdly enough, to be a sponsor during their last gasp, essentially, of trying to show that they had some photo, digital photo expertise, which they did in many ways.

But they missed every turn.

Talk about a company that really missed the turns.

I can't believe they're doing this.

This is nuts.

Yes, it's nuts.

What's your win?

My win.

I think

that they

win.

I don't think there's a lot of wins wins this week, Stephanie.

I got to say, if I had to look at it, I would say that Deborah Burks finally found her voice for four seconds and then was slapped down by Trump.

That she actually said, you know, she wasn't being the accommodating Dr.

Burks that she always is, sitting there silently while he says appalling things.

And so I was sort of a minute there, was hopeful that there was some action.

I still don't understand how these scientists can sit by as this is happening and continue,

you know, and continuing.

And I think what can they listen Deborah Burke's 100% she lost her voice for a very long time here but Anthony Fauci hasn't so I kind of think Anthony Fauci has held the line and if he loses favor with Trump or he loses his position I think he'll be okay with that yeah and then the win even though it's a fail for parents is is the schools pushing back against the Trump administration and not opening for safeties you know DC just announced that they would do distance learning through October at least and they'd reconsider it

you know all the jurisdictions where I'm around is doing that.

I'm suspecting my kids' schools are going to go back.

And at the same time, it's, of course, the continuing healthcare crisis around this, that you cannot keep being online in this manner for much longer.

I think it's going to have some real impact.

What do you think you want to do for your own kids?

I think the online stuff is, I don't know, make them learn plumbing.

I don't know, you know, at this point,

you know, online, you know, online education is terrible, and we're in a good position to do it.

We can provide internet access, but it's so

unappealing on so many levels.

So there's a lost year here or more, maybe more than a lost year among all kinds of kids.

And then the kids who are at risk, it's even worse, you know what I mean, who were at risk before in the shitty education systems.

And so I would like to see some innovation in online education in ways that it hasn't been.

It's really quite, I don't know if you've watched your kids.

How old are your kids?

Yeah, listen.

It's just to me, it's devastating.

My kids have every resource at their disposal.

And I watched last semester as they sort of sank into slugs eating processed snacks all day.

And that's with separate rooms, with computers, and parents hounding them.

I think it's horrible what's happened.

But unless you really, really fund schools to solve for this, how can you expect public schools in America where you already had teachers paying out of their pocket for staplers and tape and paper.

How do you expect them to be in a position to pivot?

And I agree with you that online education is so important.

But then my worry is that we're going to say, oh, let's just go to online programs that are already, you know, private programs that are set up.

What happens to the lion's share of education in this country?

Right, right.

And I think the question is, teachers have really pushed back and said, this is not.

We're not doing this.

We're not putting ourselves at risk.

What'll be interesting is, you know, Scott talks a lot about colleges and what's going to happen.

And my son's going to NYU.

They have it open.

I'm waiting for them to say they're not opening it in a second, you know, or when the first virus breaks out, just like they did with professional sports or something like that.

And so they're going to try to do it.

I suspect the teachers aren't going to be there, but the students are.

And in college, you certainly can do it in a way that works because these kids don't need as much

monitoring, essentially, because they're older.

Wait, you're saying college you can do online?

You can do, no, no, you can do more in person with the professors remote.

I mean, you don't, they don't, but you can't can't have schools where students go there because for the social part, and then

have the kids run around school.

You need teachers there, and teachers don't want to go.

I think that's and shouldn't have to go, shouldn't be forced to go.

Yeah, but you know, I've talked about this with Scott, and I struggle with, you know, he's been much more hard-lined about how colleges shouldn't go back on campus, and I get that, but we can't forget how culturally important it is.

And I'm not saying we need to be right now, to be on that college campus.

Yeah.

Right.

If I hadn't gone away to college, the limited exposure I had from being a public school girl in New Jersey, right?

You need to go to college to understand different people.

And

that's the first time I saw rich people, and I said, I really wanted to be one, right?

What did you think?

Yeah, how do I get on that team?

And so I just think what kids are missing out on, you know, I recently talked to the former Secretary of Education, John King, who kind of got me excited and and said, with all of these kids either graduating from high school or college

with no jobs or potentially not wanting to go to campus,

we could see a bigger push for a year of national service.

Yeah.

And in turn, you know, national service that's focused on lower school education.

Imagine if we had thousands of these

young college grads who don't have their traditional careers to pursue, if they actually spent a year doing national service.

I think now,

more than any other time that I've thought about this, it actually makes a lot of sense.

It's sort of like what happened after the Great Depression.

These cores, these cores.

I think it's a great idea.

I've always thought national service was critically important.

And it would be an interesting thing for the Biden.

people to talk about this idea of we're gonna we're gonna make take these kids and do something good with them the issue is of course the virus is that is getting people out i mean it would be nice to have infrastructure week finally um but which is never gonna happen um all right stephanie

i really appreciate it thank you for this lovely discussion.

We're going to have predictions on Thursday.

So I want you to come up with a really hot prediction because Scott will make fun of you if you don't.

Scott, you know, Scott is listening to wherever he is because he's excessively insecure and, of course, obsessed with you in many ways.

What should we say to him?

Listen,

the only thing you need to know about Scott Galloway is that he gave himself a nickname.

Okay.

No one gives themself a nickname.

A nickname is what somebody, oh, Jesus, you, oh, I'm going to give you a nickname and then it sticks.

He gave himself the nickname dog, spelled D-A-W-G.

If that doesn't make you want to pour out a 40 and say a prayer for poor Scott, I don't know what does.

What is your nickname?

What's your nickname?

Not which would you would give to you.

What is your nickname?

What was yours in school?

For a long time, like maybe when I was.

Poor New Jersey girl.

People used to call me Ja as in Ja Rule, like the hip-hop artist, but more something that bums me out.

People always just call me by my last name.

And I don't think they do that to girls that often.

So it makes me wonder, am I missing that feminine swerve?

I don't know a lot of Jennifers and Tiffany's that get called by their last names.

So that's a rule.

The only way people call me rule makes me think I need to amp up my bubblegum game.

Oh, okay.

What about you?

Swish.

Oh, that's a good one.

Swish.

You know what I mean?

It wasn't so good for my brothers because it used to be much, life used to be much more anti-gay back when I I was, when we were kids, so it was meant in a negative way.

Although now, today, with basketball and other things,

anything.

And also, hey, drag queens are wonderful.

So, you know, back then it was not the case, unfortunately.

Anyway, Stephanie, what kind of question are you looking for from a listener this week?

What topic are you interested in?

We will get it for you.

What type of question?

Like, yeah, what would you like to hear?

What would the what area would you like to hear about?

Tech, media, business, anywhere?

I want to understand what ails people the most right now.

I want to know what has people the most panicked, the most stressed, the most worried, right?

Because that will help us understand,

are they more panicked over a health crisis or an economic crisis or a leadership crisis, right?

What are you most panicked about?

Leadership, a loss of leadership, right?

A crisis, Kara, should bring people together.

And all it's done is divided us more.

And what I'd like to understand is: what do people think a leader is today?

That is an excellent question.

All right.

Send in your questions.

Email us at pivot at boxmedia.com to be featured on the show.

Also, don't forget, if you can't get enough pivot, we're doing a live stream event for the month of August.

It's called Pivot Schooled from New York Magazine and Vox Media Podcast Network.

You can get tickets to pivotschooled at pivotschooled.com.

There's also a link in our show notes.

And our first guest is actually the U.S.

head of TikTok this week.

It was booked a long time ago and now here we are.

Anyway, today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanez.

Fernando Spinette engineered this episode.

Eric Anderson is Pivot's executive producer.

Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

Or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify.

or wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you like the show, please recommend it to a friend.

Stephanie, thank you for coming on this week and being a guest host.

Thank you for having me.

Really appreciate it.

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

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