DOGE’s Chaos Strategy, X’s New Valuation, and Guest Co-Host Katie Drummond

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Speaker 17 Keep going for big balls.

Speaker 18 Tesla.sexyllc and big balls, two things I am very sorry that I have to keep saying on TV interviews and podcasts.

Speaker 17 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher. Scott is off today.
Who knows where he is?

Speaker 17 But in his place, we have someone so much better, Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired.

Speaker 17 Wired has always been a powerhouse, but particularly in the era of Trump, Elon, and Doge, which I'm calling Doggy now. And its coverage has become required reading.
Katie, welcome.

Speaker 17 You've had a busy couple of weeks with all these scoops on Doggy, which led to a record-breaking increase in subscriptions. We'll get to that in a second, but welcome.
Thank you for coming.

Speaker 18 Thank you so much for having me. I am also in a mysterious location, but I'm not going to tell you where I am either.
Okay, all right.

Speaker 17 Well, you're here at least as a picture. I'm here to do whatever the hell Scott's doing, taking edibles and not skiing, wherever he is.

Speaker 17 Um, so I want to talk a little bit because you guys have really come on strong here. Now,

Speaker 17 tell me about your approach to covering this administration. Now, you became Global Editorial Director relatively recently, right? Is that correct?

Speaker 18 Uh, yes, time is a funny thing these days, but it was about a year and a half ago, it was September 2023.

Speaker 18 I got the job. I started.
And

Speaker 18 actually the second, my second day on the job, I emailed my boss. My boss is Anna Wintur.

Speaker 17 That must be fun.

Speaker 18 It's actually delightful. She's amazing.

Speaker 18 And I said, I need to hire a politics team. And here's why.
And here's what I want to do. So it was.

Speaker 18 I'm happy to talk more about it, but it was sort of from

Speaker 18 inception.

Speaker 18 I think looking ahead at 2024, which was obviously a critical election year for the United States and for so many other countries around the world, at the time in my head, it was much more about

Speaker 18 generative AI, mis and disinformation,

Speaker 18 you know, hacking and those sort of tech adjacencies to politics.

Speaker 18 I wasn't thinking, well, obviously Elon Musk is going to jump in and end up like sleeping at the White House. Like that wasn't on my radar at the time.

Speaker 18 But certainly our coverage has evolved a great deal since then.

Speaker 17 And why did you have that instinct? Because of AI around the world, regulatory issues. That was the focus was that everybody's going to be focused in on what AI means and the governments included.

Speaker 18 AI was a major catalyst at the time. And I think my feeling was, you know, Wired covers a lot.
I think Wired being described as like a tech outlet is

Speaker 18 incorrect and sort of misses the forest for the trees. But you can't separate technology from politics anymore.

Speaker 18 And so it just felt like we had the tech industry coverage, we had had the consumer tech coverage, we had the science coverage, we had all this other coverage, but we were missing this really important piece over here that

Speaker 18 made everything kind of click together. Like you can't cover artificial intelligence without looking at, well, how is it being used in elections? How is it being regulated?

Speaker 18 How are politicians talking about this technology?

Speaker 18 So it just felt like we needed that political expertise.

Speaker 17 So when did you sort of get the idea that

Speaker 17 you should really look at Doge? Because I think it's really, I mean, I'm feeling like, how did they get into this USAID?

Speaker 17 Where did you get this, you know, all the stuff that you're getting and the identities and information about all these people that were working for it?

Speaker 17 Because that, that's years of beat reporting, essentially. I mean, I was trying to figure it out.
I'm like, wow, they were up to speed rather quickly and rather accurately on what's happening.

Speaker 17 What was the strategy there?

Speaker 18 Yeah, no, I would love to say it was years of beat reporting because that is something that I believe in. And that is something we have implemented at Wired is the notion of each reporter owns a beat.

Speaker 18 We believe in iterative reporting.

Speaker 18 So what that means essentially for someone who doesn't work in journalism is you sort of, you break off pieces of a story, you publish what you're able to confirm at any given time and that reporting builds on itself and builds and builds and builds.

Speaker 18 You don't wait. You know, I think it was over the summer when

Speaker 18 now President Trump was shot in the ear. You remember those the photos, the raising the fist, these sort of iconic images,

Speaker 18 that I said to the staff, there is a very good chance that this person is president again. There's a very good chance that he wins, because that was such a seminal moment in this election.

Speaker 18 And shortly after was when Elon jumped in, endorsed Trump, and really started

Speaker 18 like running into that campaign with, you know, I think something like $280 million ultimately in contributions and obviously a lot of

Speaker 18 contribution via his megaphone on X that he uses.

Speaker 18 So it was at that moment that we knew we had to really focus on Elon Musk and we had to really focus on Trump as probable president-elect.

Speaker 18 And so at that point, you know, we ultimately assigned someone to cover Elon Musk in government, like Elon Musk as political operative. That is your beat.
That is what you own. So that was in July.

Speaker 18 So, you know, we had a lot of lead time to start sourcing up because it was over the summer that we said, everybody here, no matter what you cover, in some way, shape, or form, what you cover will be impacted by a Trump administration.

Speaker 18 So you need to start working on that now. And people did.
I mean, they did. And so

Speaker 18 we were prepared, I think, in large part because of that.

Speaker 18 And then I think in large part because we have journalists on the team, including Zoe Schiffer, who joined us in January, who knows a lot about Elon Musk.

Speaker 18 I mean, she wrote a whole book about him acquiring Twitter. So I think we had the political aspect of it staffed up and running.
We had the tech industry coverage and the sort of expertise on Elon.

Speaker 18 And when you combine all of that together really forcefully, which I think we're very good at being very forceful, we just ran at that story. Like we ran at that story.

Speaker 17 That's interesting that you said we were forceful because I get what you're doing because we've done it. We did it previously at All Things C with Uber or Yahoo, whatever the story was.

Speaker 17 It's nothing like this story. I'll tell you, this is quite, I wouldn't even know what to do with this story, but talk about forcefulness because it's really important to have an editor who is,

Speaker 17 you're a critical part of this, as I know because I've been there, like not on this big a story, but talk about the idea of forcefulness and aggression in doing that and not in a negative way.

Speaker 18 No, I love forcefulness and aggression. I mean, gosh, that's such an interesting question.
I just, I think that I am.

Speaker 18 a forceful and relatively aggressive person.

Speaker 18 And I think that my enthusiasm for news and for scoops comes through very loudly and very clearly to the team.

Speaker 18 And I I think it has since I started the job and made it very clear what we were here to do, which was to interrogate power structures within the tech industry.

Speaker 18 Like that is what I'm interested in doing.

Speaker 18 And so I have been very clear about that from day one.

Speaker 17 And another thing is, people do try to stop you. They say, why are you being so aggressive? And I think people don't understand that.

Speaker 17 When we were very aggressive on Uber and what was happening there with Travis Kalanik, a venture capitalist approached me at a restaurant called Marad and

Speaker 17 they said, when are you going to stop

Speaker 17 being so hard on him? And I said, when he stays down.

Speaker 17 And they were like, well, that's

Speaker 19 rude.

Speaker 17 I'm like, what? Like, I'm sorry.

Speaker 18 He's a terrible CEO.

Speaker 17 He's doing terrible things and he's not staying down. So

Speaker 17 when he stays down, that's probably when we'll stop or even beyond. It was interesting.
It's hard for people to understand. Do you feel pressure yourself? Because this is big stakes.

Speaker 17 I mean, that was just, that was just Uber, like, who cares kind of thing. I don't mean to say who cares, but you know what I mean.
This is, this is the bigs. This is really the bigs.

Speaker 17 Do you personally feel pressure

Speaker 17 when you, or do you feel that you have to pull back anyway? I've noticed a pullback among certain people, for sure.

Speaker 18 No, no, no. And it's not even some grandiose.

Speaker 18 notion that I have.

Speaker 18 I mean, I remember when we published that, one of our first stories naming several of these young engineers, and it was an explosive story.

Speaker 18 We got a lot of criticism.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 it's not that I was surprised by any of it, but I just hadn't like the idea of softening that story had not even entered my mind. And I don't say that to brag.

Speaker 18 I say it because we're just like, this is the job. Like, this is my, this is, I get paid to do this.
Like, this is my job. I take my job very seriously.
I love what I do.

Speaker 18 But I have not thought for a second that we should soften anything that we're doing.

Speaker 18 I think what we owe our audience is very clear, very transparent, like very direct coverage and explanations of exactly what is happening as we are able to learn it and confirm it.

Speaker 18 Like, that's all we're doing.

Speaker 17 That's that's yeah, exactly. One of the things that was the attacks were so disingenuous.
You know, you're saying who they are. You were not saying little pricks or anything else.

Speaker 17 You know, you were, I was saying that. But, but you, you were very clearly just saying, this is who's working on this stuff.
This is the federal government. It It deserves transparency.

Speaker 17 And those attacks were disingenuous. I mean,

Speaker 17 Elon attacked Scott and I for being mean to them or something like that.

Speaker 17 It's part of a narrative they have trying to get on how these poor kids, how dare you attack these poor kids kind of.

Speaker 18 Right. I mean, the notion that there is something illegal about naming individuals working within federal agencies at the behest of Elon Musk is.
nonsense.

Speaker 18 Like, I just, I don't even, I don't even understand what that means.

Speaker 17 Yeah, exactly. And those stories were anything.
So let's go into some of these stories because I think it's really people are sort of, it's a breathtaking level of scoops, I have to say.

Speaker 17 It's really, and I think a lot of people are doing a great job now. I do.
And what's interesting is they've, they've stepped up since you stepped up.

Speaker 17 It actually creates an energy around the coverage itself, which I think is, I've noticed just today, I saw about three stories elsewhere.

Speaker 17 And I was like, this would only be because Wired's been so aggressive.

Speaker 17 I appreciate that.

Speaker 18 But you can feel it.

Speaker 17 You can feel it. But people were slow to the idea of what's happening here.
So it's been a month since Trump took office. There's a lot happening in the land of Doge, Doggy, as I say.
So let's dig in.

Speaker 17 One shocking thing we learned this week, Elon Musk's apparently not in charge of Doggy. The White House said in a court find that Elon Musk is not the U.S.
Doggy Service Administrator.

Speaker 17 I'm sorry to say it that way, but I'm going to keep doing it. He's an employee in the White House office, akin to a senior advisor.
Talk a little bit about this.

Speaker 17 And I'm going to go into some of your stories. too, but talk about what you thought.
Is this the loopiest of loopholes? The White House can stay out of legal trouble.

Speaker 17 Several state's attorney generals argued in a suit last week that Elon is wielding power that can only be held by elected officials and people confirmed by the Senate, but a federal judge ruled there isn't enough evidence for irreparable harm to justify a temporary restraining order.

Speaker 17 That this is a legal nicety.

Speaker 17 The judge also expressed questions about what the White House was doing.

Speaker 18 Yes.

Speaker 18 Questions isn't quite taking it far enough, I don't think, at this point, but I'm not a judge.

Speaker 18 So my understanding of this, I mean, first of all, it is just, it is chaos across the board. It's like, wait, sorry.

Speaker 18 The president of the United States has been saying for months that Elon Musk is in charge of Doge, that he runs Doge. He's in charge of Doge.
Elon's doing this thing. Elon's making these decisions.

Speaker 18 All of a sudden, in a court filing, we now have the White House saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's just like helping out.
He's just helping the president.

Speaker 18 That is just, first of all, total chaos.

Speaker 18 Second of all, my understanding of that sworn statement, just to be clear, it is a sworn statement, is that essentially that allows Elon to continue doing what Elon is doing within these federal agencies and within Doge

Speaker 18 without facing legal ramifications for overstepping in a role that, to what you just said,

Speaker 18 ought to be an elected position. Like he ought to have had to be elected or confirmed in some way, shape, or form.

Speaker 18 Instead, he just walked right in the front door. And I think what they are trying to do is avoid any legal scenario where he needs to stop down what he is working on.

Speaker 17 So Wired published a story this week about a law that could possibly stop some of Doggy's actions. Explain that.
Explain what you're doing because you are building, you're building a case, right?

Speaker 17 In your own way, in a journalistic way.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I think trying to, you know, there have been so many lawsuits at this point filed about what Doge is doing.

Speaker 18 What several of them have in common is that they rely on this Watergate-era law, the Privacy Act,

Speaker 18 that essentially prevents government employees from accessing Americans' data in a variety of different ways.

Speaker 18 So it essentially is designed to safeguard very sensitive information about the American people from

Speaker 18 agents within the U.S. government.

Speaker 18 And so essentially we have lawsuits saying, you know, everything that's happening here, sort of the access that Doge appears to have within these agencies is a violation of this privacy act that was instituted, you know, several decades ago.

Speaker 18 You know, whether that actually succeeds in any or all of these lawsuits is an open question.

Speaker 18 And I think one thing that's interesting to me and I think troubling to me is that, you know, that argument could succeed in one instance, let's say, a lawsuit with regards to access in the Treasury Department, and it could fail in another instance.

Speaker 18 So, let's say access to IRS data, right? So, you have this sort of like band-aid slapdash approach to trying to just like

Speaker 18 stop Doge from accessing as much data as possible. But, how do you, how do you stop them from accessing data wholesale on sort of like a holistic level? Um, I don't think we have an answer to that.

Speaker 18 Do you have a legal reporter?

Speaker 18 How do you, how do you, because I think the lawsuits will reveal a lot, but it's the slowest way of dealing with a very difficult situation it's it's the slowest way and certainly it opens up questions about whether or not the administration decides to abide by the rulings of the courts right I mean I think that's an existential question for the country

Speaker 18 you know we don't have a legal reporter We just have really, really smart security and politics reporters and

Speaker 18 a team of managers on top of them who are the smartest journalists I've ever worked with. And we make a lot of phone calls.

Speaker 18 So we talk to a lot of experts who know this stuff inside and out and can essentially help us translate all of that information for the audience to make it as easy as possible for people to understand, you know, what is happening and what potential safeguards exist to prevent it from happening.

Speaker 17 So you use the word chaos a lot.

Speaker 17 It's important.

Speaker 17 This is one of Elon's favorite signature moves, chaos, to create chaos or create trouble and then make accusations.

Speaker 17 He's got six or seven moves, including attacking you for revealing the names, for example.

Speaker 17 But chaos is the point here, I think, in many ways, so that everyone has to run around and do these band-aid approaches.

Speaker 18 Yeah, it's interesting, too, because chaos is also a signature move of President Trump.

Speaker 18 And so we're sort of seeing chaos in a big picture way across the entire federal government, the entire federal apparatus, doge being one pocket of chaos that like sits within the larger chaos umbrella.

Speaker 18 So it's just like chaos everywhere you look.

Speaker 18 And I actually think my sort of theory is that at least some of the chaos being created by the Trump administration in a big picture way is distracting people from like the nitty-gritty doge chaos that's happening inside of all of these agencies in this sort of simultaneous and concurrent way.

Speaker 18 So I actually think like a lot of the, you know, it's like the Gulf of America, all of the craziness of distraction, yeah. Yeah, the DEI stuff,

Speaker 18 as awful as it is, I think these are, you know, Canada is the 51st state.

Speaker 18 Like these are distractions while 25-year-old engineers who interned at SpaceX are trying to obtain administrative access to very sensitive systems that contain data about millions of Americans.

Speaker 17 Could you give people a sense of why they want that?

Speaker 17 I have a theory, but what is your, what is their need for getting that to get to the data?

Speaker 18 That's a really good question. If I had an answer to that question, I would be publishing a story.

Speaker 18 I mean, if you say that they want to train AI on American Stata, I will

Speaker 18 smile and laugh and freak out.

Speaker 18 Although I certainly wouldn't put it past them. I mean, I just, I think that Elon Musk wants complete and total control of the entire federal infrastructure and apparatus.

Speaker 18 I think that's sort of that's what the driving force is here. I don't think he's in it for for his contracts.
I don't think he's in it to like make Tesla a more successful company.

Speaker 18 I think he's in it to run the thing the way he runs every other company in his portfolio.

Speaker 18 Whether or not he wants that data to train an AI,

Speaker 18 I think is an open question, but I'm curious to hear what you think.

Speaker 17 It does vaunt. Grok ahead, which is not ahead.
Grok is not ahead, but it vaunts, it puts him in a poll position because,

Speaker 17 as you know, many AI researchers think we're running out of data right there that's but that that's been the big discussion recently well there you go and you're right he does but what but for what purpose does he want to run it that's the that's the part that's going to be very difficult to report um when you're thinking about it in that long term and and you have a better sense of his psychology than i do um but there certainly seems to be something very very deeply buried inside of him that just wants to run everything.

Speaker 18 I mean, it just feels like pure ego.

Speaker 17 Or he wants to go to Mars and he he needs the government to do so. There's all kinds of theories on that.
So let's talk about the relationship you mentioned between Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Speaker 17 They sat down for a joint interview with Sean Hannity, the House,

Speaker 17 the House reporter there at the White House. And I mean that in a negative way.

Speaker 17 Hannity

Speaker 17 said he felt like he was interviewing two brothers. Hannity, it was the biggest wet kiss.
He looked them up and down the entire time. Elon shared how much money he's trying to cut from the deficit.

Speaker 17 Let's listen.

Speaker 18 Well,

Speaker 22 the overall goal is to try to get a trillion dollars out of the deficit. And if the deficit is not brought under control, America will go bankrupt.

Speaker 22 This is a very important thing for people to understand.

Speaker 22 A country is no different from an individual in that if an individual overspends, an individual can go bankrupt. And so can a country.

Speaker 17 God, that's the idiot's guide to how countries are run. But

Speaker 17 that's not correct. That's not correct.
But well, Doge says it saved $55 billion in federal spending. So far, the actual data shows it's much less.

Speaker 17 One major error found on the Dogie website, it mislabeled a contract as $8 billion when it was actually $8 million.

Speaker 17 You all have been doing a lot of reporting around this, this idea of what the cuts that are being made. And the NPR just did one showing the same thing, that this is not $55 billion.

Speaker 17 And of course, now they're also talking about sending people dividend checks, which is trying to make people happy with them and allowing them to keep doing what they're doing.

Speaker 17 It's come rather early. The payoff has come rather early.
But talk a little bit about this and

Speaker 17 what these young people are trying to do. And are there more of them moving into the space now that it's gotten momentum?

Speaker 18 Yeah, from everything we can tell,

Speaker 18 you know, Doge is expanding.

Speaker 18 I mean, the budget for Doge, I think last week expanded to the tune of several million dollars, which strongly suggests that they are onboarding more personnel, that they're bringing more people in,

Speaker 18 not exactly a model of efficiency themselves if they continue at this rate.

Speaker 18 But essentially, what we have been able to establish, like there's a pattern to what they are doing, right? So

Speaker 18 they gain access to an agency. They gain access to, in particular, I think systems that contain personnel files, personnel data about

Speaker 18 who is a probationary employee, for example, right? So that's someone, as the Trump administration recently changed the rules around this, someone who is,

Speaker 18 I think, like in a, they made the probationary period one year instead of two years, I think, which basically allowed them to fire more people.

Speaker 18 So they're going into these agencies, obtaining data about personnel and salaries, and then they are just, you know, pushing through like sweeping layoffs of hundreds or thousands of federal workers across.

Speaker 18 you know, every agency that you can possibly imagine and sort of a new one every day, right?

Speaker 18 I think that has become like the repeat sort of Mad Libs version of these stories is Doge Doge is now inside X agency doing Y layoffs. Like that's that is the story.

Speaker 18 The reality, though, is first of all, to indiscriminately fire thousands of civil servants without really having an in-depth understanding of what each of what they do, what it even means to be in a probationary period, because that also applies to someone who was recently promoted.

Speaker 18 So you have people who have been 10, 20, 30 year government workers who were just just lumped into this probationary worker category and fired, first of all.

Speaker 18 So there's that whole hot mess express over there.

Speaker 18 But when the rubber hits the road, like when you look at the math, like when you do the numbers, firing a bunch of civil servants isn't going to get you a trillion dollars.

Speaker 18 Like that's not where the money is. And so you have these sort of these big promises, these sweeping claims about savings from like, we cut this contract.
We don't subscribe to Politico Pro anymore.

Speaker 18 Look at us go. look at all the people that we're firing, that doesn't actually add up to that much money.

Speaker 18 And so I think the question is like, well, where are you planning on finding the other like $92 billion that you need to find to get to a trillion dollars?

Speaker 17 When you were looking at who is doing this, it's indiscriminate because they're also inexperienced.

Speaker 17 The vetting of these people who are doing this is also,

Speaker 17 you're doing the vetting. Wired is doing the vetting.

Speaker 17 And a lot of them have sort of what I'm I'm not surprised by, but typical obnoxious tech bro behaviors, you know, in terms of being on certain sites, doing certain things.

Speaker 18 Yeah, Wired is doing the vetting to the credit of so many other journalists, too. I mean, other

Speaker 18 news organizations,

Speaker 18 you know, Wall Street Journal, very notably Bloomberg, have been breaking some really important stories about some of these individuals as well. I think...

Speaker 18 One thing that's important to note is sort of how this recruiting appears to have happened in the first place. So we published a story, I think, 10 10 days ago about,

Speaker 18 you know, essentially like former interns at

Speaker 18 companies like SpaceX or Palantir going to online forums for alumni of those internship programs or of those companies and basically doing like a spray and pray.

Speaker 18 Like, hey guys, does anyone want to save the federal government? Like DM me and we'll get you like onboarded with Doge.

Speaker 18 So that appears to have been, you know, the very sort of elite hand-picked recruiting process was actually just, you know, posting in message boards.

Speaker 18 From there, it's relatively unclear what kind of vetting actually happened or whether there was an interview process, whether there were background checks, security clearances.

Speaker 18 I mean, we published a story about one of these guys who goes by big balls. We've all heard about big balls.

Speaker 18 Everyone has talked a lot about big balls, but you know, we talked to several, I think, three or four different experts who said it is very unlikely that this guy would ever pass a security clearance to walk into a federal agency.

Speaker 18 Like it would not happen. This guy has been involved in not criminal enterprises, but at the very least, like criminally adjacent enterprises.

Speaker 18 He has, you know, he's running, you know, web domains out of Russia. Like he is doing all sorts of really bizarre,

Speaker 18 sketchy stuff that would raise serious red flags with someone doing just a background check before allowing a new federal agency.

Speaker 18 Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's, it's this sort of like reckless disregard for any standards in terms of who you're bringing in.

Speaker 17 And explain why he wants those young people to do it. I, I know why, because the older people wouldn't.

Speaker 18 Older people wouldn't. I think, look, there is this, as you know very well, the cult of Elon, right?

Speaker 18 And I think for a lot of young men in the technology space, what he is doing and everything that he does and the way he lives his life, the way he communicates online. He's, he's an icon.

Speaker 18 He's an idol. I mean, they look up to him and they are very malleable and pliable.
And they will go into these agencies and do as told because they are doing it for Elon.

Speaker 18 They are doing it for this larger cause, this notion of saving the United States.

Speaker 18 I would imagine for a 19-year-old who, you know, runs a company called Tesla.sexy LLC, probably thinks this is a pretty exciting adventure to be on with Elon Musk. It is.

Speaker 17 It is. It is.
And yeah, older people just wouldn't do it. They do have older people, as you've noted, and others have reported, very sophisticated lawyers and everything else.

Speaker 17 Someone who's not hiding his disgust for elon uh is steve bannon which is interesting bannon called elon i think uh in this week a parasitic illegal immigrant though he did compliment doge um and he said elon wants to play act as god he does seem to be a fan as i said of doge's work he told cnn let's listen

Speaker 23 elon's doing some great work you know i'm a huge supporter of uh the deconstruction administrative state and what elon's doing in um in doge i'm a big supporter of that i hope and my prayer is is that these cuts are real.

Speaker 17 So Bannon later called out Elon, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos as oligarchs who don't support the MAGA movement.

Speaker 17 What is going on here? I think he would turn and be pals with Elon in five seconds, no question, with this guy.

Speaker 18 I mean, my best guess here is that Steve Bannon is outside of the inner circle and wishes he was. inside of the inner circle, right? And has sort of been supplanted by Elon Musk.

Speaker 18 I mean, I think it's interesting to compare that Time magazine cover with Bannon from the first Trump administration to now Elon, you know, in that very iconic time cover from a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 17 He's sitting in front of the Resolute Desk.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I think that Steve Bannon is sort of on the outside looking in,

Speaker 18 probably wishing that he was part of the club. That's my best friend.
Right.

Speaker 17 Right. And try, that's what those compliments are for.

Speaker 17 When you think about those who are pushing back, there, are there really true people pushing back and what can be done?

Speaker 17 Obviously, Scott makes fun of the people, the Democrats standing in front of agencies and yelling.

Speaker 17 But, you know, there is something to protest, obviously.

Speaker 17 Is there real pushback

Speaker 17 within the government and within technology circles? They just seem to be quitting. A lot of the techies who are in there are leaving, are going.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 18 I wish I could say that we were seeing signs of some really

Speaker 18 coherent strategic effort on the part of the Democrats, on the part of leaders within these agencies to push back on what was happening or prevent it from happening. That's not what I'm seeing.

Speaker 18 I don't think that's what our reporting indicates. I don't think that we're seeing that play out.

Speaker 18 I think what we're seeing, to your point, are, you know, politicians standing up outside of offices in DC and making a fuss and making noise, which is fine.

Speaker 18 I mean, even just the visibility of that, I think having those clips on social media, there's value there.

Speaker 18 Obviously, we're seeing people take to the streets and protest in, I think, relatively small numbers at this point, if I'm being totally honest.

Speaker 18 And I also don't think the Trump administration gives two shits whether people are taking taking to the streets and protesting in relatively small numbers.

Speaker 18 And then we are seeing, you know, career civil servants, people in very senior positions within these agencies walk. We're seeing them walk publicly, right?

Speaker 18 They're not being shy about why they're leaving.

Speaker 18 And I completely understand that for someone who has been in a position like that and who can no longer, I think with integrity, hold the office that they hold, that the only choice they feel they have is to leave.

Speaker 18 On the flip side, though, what that means is it just became that much easier for Elon Musk and President Trump and all of these leaders within these federal agencies to

Speaker 18 put someone else in these big jobs who will be malleable, who will be pliant and who will execute according to Musk and Trump's demands. So that's essentially what that means.

Speaker 18 They just opened up the headcount. And that's a good thing.

Speaker 17 Yeah. Among the biggest people is the cyber people.
They're terribly worried. That's the ones who are sort of sounding the alarms in terms of the porousness of what's happening here.

Speaker 19 Yeah. All right.

Speaker 17 We're going to a quick break. We come back.
More about Doge Central and Wired's amazing reporting.

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Speaker 17 Katie, we're back. There's obviously been a lot of questions.
You mentioned about conflicts of interest since Elon came to Washington. I agree.

Speaker 17 I don't think his big thing is to make money, although he doesn't mind doing it. And he's supported, like, he's using threats to push X.
He's using threats to this and that.

Speaker 17 He's doing the typical shakedown kind of

Speaker 19 thing that can happen.

Speaker 17 Wired has done some new reporting on SpaceX engineers in the FAA. They're also putting his people within the FAA.

Speaker 17 And also apparently President Trump's trying to get him to figure out why he doesn't have his jet. Like he's putting him on that too.
Right.

Speaker 17 Talk about that. I'll note SpaceX launches are regulated by the FAA and the agency has alleged that SpaceX violated safety rules in the past many times.
Talk a little bit about the story today.

Speaker 18 Yeah. So oh, I mean, and as someone who travels by airplane frequently and takes a lot of Xanax to do it, I have to say this line of reporting has been particularly stressful for me as a human being.

Speaker 18 You know, so we've identified several

Speaker 18 SpaceX engineers who were onboarded into the FAA this week, even as, you know, the Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, I think on Monday said, we've got some engineers from SpaceX.

Speaker 18 They're taking a tour of some facilities, sort of like nothing to see here.

Speaker 18 Meanwhile, they were actually being onboarded as employees of the FAA. And so these are engineers.

Speaker 18 I think it's important to be very clear that these are people with legitimate qualifications, right? I'm not talking about 19-year-olds who have decided to put up a rocket. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 18 These are people who work at SpaceX. Like they make rockets go into the sky and then come down.

Speaker 18 But there are obviously several concerns or issues with regards to the FAA right now.

Speaker 18 One is that Doge just fired, I think, several hundred FAA workers in a moment where it's very clear that the FAA has been understaffed and spread way too thin for far too long, right?

Speaker 18 There have been alarm bells sounded about that for a very long time. So the notion that we would be reducing staff within that agency is stressful to begin with.

Speaker 18 There's also just the reality, as you just pointed out, that the FAA oversees SpaceX and has fined SpaceX several times for safety violations.

Speaker 18 So the idea that you would have engineers from a company that is regulated by the agency that they now work for going in to try to, quote, fix that agency is one enormous and very stressful conflict of interest.

Speaker 18 I just find the idea of

Speaker 18 someone with experience relevant to SpaceX going in to fix

Speaker 18 the agency that also oversees and governs, you know, commercial aviation.

Speaker 18 That's genuinely a very scary prospect.

Speaker 17 Yeah, and it's happening all over the government. Obviously, you guys have been reporting on that.
And again,

Speaker 17 who's running SpaceX and Twitter and all these other, obviously Steve Davis, who's been a very active Musk minion.

Speaker 17 What is the point here of putting them there just for eyes? I assume eyes and ears.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I think eyes and ears and marching orders, right? I mean, they're there to carry out

Speaker 18 Elon's asks, even though he is ostensibly, apparently not in charge of Doge. I think we all know that that's, you know, that's a lie.

Speaker 18 It's an interesting characterization that doesn't seem reflected in what's actually going on. I mean, look, I think they're the adults in the room.

Speaker 18 I think they're there to act as the authority within a handful of different agencies and get these young operatives where they need to be. What's the impact on the companies?

Speaker 17 Because by the way, Tesla's not doing great, by the way. They're not, you know.

Speaker 17 But what is, what is the, what is happening at the companies when they pull these people out?

Speaker 18 I mean, as of now, I think it's fair to say Tesla's not doing great, but we also have situations like X being shopped around at a valuation that matches what Elon paid for it a few years ago.

Speaker 18 So I think it's hard to say what's happening at the companies, especially because so many of these people appear to be pulling double duty, right? I think we had an example a week ago.

Speaker 18 I believe it was a Doge operative within the technology transformation services who had kept his job at an external company while fulfilling this role for

Speaker 18 federal agencies. So it would not be surprising if a lot of these people pull the Elon playbook and work several jobs at the same time.

Speaker 17 Could he put, he could put them in every agency, his own employees, correct?

Speaker 17 That are beholden to him and nobody else.

Speaker 18 He could. And that's what has been going on.
I mean, we've also seen Doge operatives. I call them operatives because that feels like the most accurate way to describe them.

Speaker 18 Like they have multiple email addresses.

Speaker 18 So you have people working within two, three, four agencies at any given time, multiple email addresses, apparently sort of acting out the asks of Musk and sort of Doge leadership across the federal government at once, which is a terrifying proposition, honestly.

Speaker 15 And who is coordinating all that?

Speaker 17 Elon Kent is not doing this alone. Who do you think is the most critical person helping him coordinate this?

Speaker 18 I think in particular at the Office of Personnel Management, which is, I think shorthand for that would be like, it's like HR for the federal government.

Speaker 18 There's a woman named Amanda Scales who has worked for Musk before, most recently at XAI, and she's there as chief of staff. So she's really sort of like

Speaker 18 running point, you know, what a chief of staff does. I mean, they sort of like keep all the trains moving.
It's like the managing editor is the way I think of it of the federal government.

Speaker 18 So I think that she is like a very critical linchpin in this.

Speaker 18 Then you also have the GSA, which is the General Services Administration, and sort of the leaders that he has installed across those two agencies, because they oversee so many different branches of the federal government.

Speaker 18 I mean, I think that those are sort of the critical,

Speaker 18 the critical adults in the room who are working across all of these different agencies from where they are stationed.

Speaker 18 But I think Amanda Scales is an important person to be paying attention to, just in the sense that she is really the operational leader working within that agency.

Speaker 17 And he always has those. He has those all the time that are loyal to him.
What people have to understand, they're loyal to Elon Musk, not Donald Trump. These are not Trump.

Speaker 17 These were not Trump supporters, and neither was Elon for a long time. So I want to ask you about the President Humphrey because what is his role in here?

Speaker 17 And last week, he's channeled Napoleon posting he who saves his country does not violate the law. He was trolling people with that.

Speaker 17 He also called himself king on Wednesday as he tried to kill congestion pricing in New York. He's busy.
That interview was really something. It doesn't seem like he knows what Elon is doing.

Speaker 18 That's my impression.

Speaker 18 Everything that we have heard from inside the administration and around the administration is that

Speaker 18 Even people very close to President Trump don't know what Doge is doing. They don't know how often to be communicating with Doge.
They don't know what that process is supposed to look like.

Speaker 18 It's sort of, it really feels like Doge is always two or three steps ahead. And the actual White House, the actual administration is behind.
They are catching up with what Doge is doing.

Speaker 18 Honestly, it seems like as the presses, as journalists are publishing stories, it sort of feels like the administration is finding out. what Elon has been up to, despite

Speaker 18 any assurances or anything that the president is saying publicly, because he has has been very publicly supportive of Musk and Doge.

Speaker 18 It really doesn't seem like he has any idea what's going on. And frankly, it doesn't really seem like he cares.

Speaker 17 And why do you think he's allowing this to happen?

Speaker 18 Wow. That's a great question.
I mean, I think that he likes, I think that he likes the story that he's able to tell. He's telling, you know,

Speaker 18 U.S. citizens, people who voted for him, that he's cutting cost.

Speaker 18 He's telling them that he is very close to tech and to sort of tech leadership and to the visionary Elon Musk. I think he likes the story.
I think he loves the chaos.

Speaker 18 I think he loves the fact that Doge is in the headlines 24-7. I think it keeps his administration top of mind for people because it's inescapable.

Speaker 17 So, yeah, it's a great narrative.

Speaker 18 It's a great narrative.

Speaker 18 I think he likes the story. I don't think he actually cares what's happening in the details.
I don't think he's getting into the fine print on this.

Speaker 17 Nothing at all. All right, Katie, let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, we'll talk about X's new valuation.

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Speaker 17 Katie, we're back. Let's get to a couple more headlines.
Elon Musk acts as in talks to raise money from investors at a valuation of $44 billion.

Speaker 17 If that number sounds familiar, it's because it's the same price Musk bought the platform back in 2022. In December, Fideli Investments marked down its stake in the company by 70%.

Speaker 17 This follows a trend of Musk company valuation soaring since he's taken a significant role in the Trump administration, even if the companies are suffering, such as Tesla.

Speaker 17 The numbers are down and the price was up. X is not in the same place it was pre-Elon.

Speaker 17 It's smaller.

Speaker 17 Today, the Wall Street Journal published a very good story about X people pressuring advertisers to get back on, or else maybe they'll face an investigation or they'd be added to a lawsuit that they're doing.

Speaker 17 They're using a lot of legal means to try to force advertisers onto what is clearly a less good platform.

Speaker 17 Talk about this. Although, again, it's not for him to make money is not maybe his guiding role.
He certainly is doing it. And here's a perfect example of it.

Speaker 18 Here's a perfect example. I mean, this is a platform that to say that it has seen better days would be a massive understatement.

Speaker 18 I mean, it is, for all intents and purposes, a right-wing echo chamber. It's a mess.
It's a terrible user experience. None of the ideas that they have advanced around X sound any good at all.

Speaker 18 You know,

Speaker 18 you could pay people on X. They're going to introduce audio and video.

Speaker 18 They're going to integrate it with Grok AI. Sounds like a complete train wreck.
I mean, none of these are particularly promising ideas for the platform or the business.

Speaker 18 However, Elon Musk is very close to the president. I mean, he has that adjacency that for investors, I would imagine, is very appealing.
And for investors and advertisers, you know,

Speaker 18 the sort of the implicit or direct threats that are, you know, reportedly being made.

Speaker 18 So it's not just that it's exciting or enticing to think that they might be able to sort of get closer to the administration and curry favor with Musk and Trump.

Speaker 18 It's that in some instances, at least with advertisers, it seems like they're not really being given much of a choice.

Speaker 17 Right. They are going to either

Speaker 17 pay or not, but you're going to be in trouble in some way.

Speaker 17 Let me read you someone. I asked them about this today.

Speaker 17 I think this dynamic is playing out that every advertiser who knows what they're doing, no media buyer, indeed no marketer, once their CEO gets a call from Elon Musk berating them for not advertising on X,

Speaker 17 it sounds judgment to avoid by throwing some money to the company. Everything about this I loathe.
It creates a bad precedent. It puts money in Elon's pocket.
It undermines the advertising business.

Speaker 17 You know, I think it's just prudent business. I have heard stories that the team is making veiled threats, perhaps not so veiled threats, and I think it will ultimately bite them someday.

Speaker 17 But this is a a classic story of corruption. That, you know, it's just a kind of thing like that.
You cannot build businesses on threats. I mean, you can't, but you can actually.

Speaker 18 I mean, I think what is disturbing to imagine is what's playing out with X right now in terms of the conflict of interest, the corruption, advertisers bending a knee.

Speaker 18 investors bending a knee, everybody sort of getting in line to go along with what's happening here. To be clear, what's happening here is not okay by any measure.

Speaker 18 If you extrapolate that and sort of think about it across many, many companies across the entire country, like across the United States of America, like that, this is what is happening to our country.

Speaker 18 X is a microcosm of that, right? But you have a lot of really wealthy, really powerful people, institutions, corporations bending a knee and saying, like,

Speaker 18 oh, oligarchy? Like, okay, let's like, let's, sure. I guess

Speaker 18 we don't have a choice. So hands up, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to go along with it.

Speaker 17 They are saying, I've heard them say it to me. We don't have a choice.
We can't do it right now. We can't do anything about it.
Is there anyone else trying to take advantage?

Speaker 17 Obviously, all the tech leaders showed up at inauguration in that shameless display of fealty.

Speaker 18 I mean, I think that all of the pictures I saw of Tim Cook

Speaker 18 from inauguration, like he looked physically ill

Speaker 18 and like somewhat more.

Speaker 18 But he was there. And let history show, let the photos remind everyone in four years when knock on wood, we have another election and the tables turn, knock on wood.
He was there. They were all there.

Speaker 18 Sam Altman was there. Sam Altman, obviously an incredibly opportunistic tech executive,

Speaker 18 was there and then subsequently, you know.

Speaker 18 polished the president's shoes while telling him how amazing his leadership was going to be for AI in this country and the world.

Speaker 18 You know, Mark Zuckerberg obviously is the most, I think, brazen and craven example of this. And

Speaker 18 I'm speechless at that one because I think it is so,

Speaker 18 it's nauseating. It's nauseating.

Speaker 18 And again, I think really importantly with all of these tech executives, what's very important for the media and for press and for everybody to remember as the years go by and more and there's more and more chaos and we're doing more and more, when the dust settles, Don't forget that they were all there.

Speaker 18 Don't forget what Mark Zuckerberg did to his company to appease the president of the United States, the influence that Meta's platforms have on millions, if not billions of people.

Speaker 18 Don't forget what he did to appease the administration. I think that that's really important because so much is happening every day.
It's been a month. It's been a month.

Speaker 17 Is there any resistance in tech at all? Besides Reid Hoffman and maybe Mark Cuban?

Speaker 18 None that I have been able to discern. You know, I've talked to a lot of tech leaders and tech CEOs, even just off the record or talking to their

Speaker 18 comms people.

Speaker 18 And the message to me has been very clear. When we go on the record, don't ask us about politics.
They don't want to talk about it. They're not talking about it.

Speaker 18 And I think it feels so markedly different to 2016 when a lot of them were talking about it.

Speaker 18 I think Airbnb, I remember, was a really notable example then of a company that came out swinging with regards to the Trump administration, with regards to the president's comments on immigrants, people from garbage countries, whatever you need to shithole countries.

Speaker 18 You know, it's radio silence, which I think is really telling, really disturbing, and

Speaker 18 will unleash any number of crises over the next four years. I really believe that.
So last question here.

Speaker 17 The Democrats, I don't think, were as close to tech as people thought it was. I thought Obama was, you know, in that regard with Eric Schmidt and others.
Do you think it's a wholesale change?

Speaker 17 I think it's an opportunistic change. And The joke I make is that if Kamala Harris won, Mark Zuckerberg would be asking us to calling him they them.

Speaker 17 Yes. You know, I don't think it's anything other than that because I don't think they're committed in any way.
And I think Steve Bannon's right. They're not MAGA friends.
They just are opportunistic.

Speaker 17 In that regard, is there an opportunity for Democrats in that way besides giving these toddlers what they want?

Speaker 18 You mean to get closer to the technical?

Speaker 17 Back to closest. Or do you think it's an overall shift that's permanent?

Speaker 18 I don't think it's an overall shift. I I think you're right that this is like company before country, right? This is opportunistic.

Speaker 18 What's best for Meta in this specific moment in the context of the numbers, right? It's about the bottom line. It's not even about the staff and whether or not they're having a good time.

Speaker 18 It is absolutely opportunistic.

Speaker 18 But I think to be able, for the Democrats to be able to create an opportunity here would require them to first get their shit together and figure out what their strategy actually is over the next four years.

Speaker 18 And so it's a really hard question to answer when

Speaker 18 beyond some like sternly worded statements and speeches and a couple of people hanging out in DC outside of these federal agencies being noisy, I don't really see a coherent strategy taking shape at all.

Speaker 18 I would be very interested to see what they think they could do to collaborate more closely with the tech industry to sort of create a productive working relationship with some of these leaders so that hopefully in three and a half years, we're in a very different position ahead of the next U.S.

Speaker 18 election. But it's very hard to see that happening right now because I don't see much happening at all.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I would agree with you.

Speaker 18 I would agree.

Speaker 17 Okay, Katie, it's time for this week's threads poll result. Last week, we asked you all what you wish Democrats were doing in response to Trump administration.
That's why I was asking about that.

Speaker 17 Here are a few responses. Carrie said, replace Schumer's entire Comstash with Pete Buttigieg.
From Marina, primary, retire all those old white men and support young, ferocious, fearless candidates.

Speaker 17 And Nick said, talk like human beings, stop fundraising texts, demonstrate understanding of urgency. We know the house is on fire.
We want to see firefighters, nurses, cops.

Speaker 18 Good answers, kind of what people are saying.

Speaker 17 I mean, I think this is right. It's the elderliness of it,

Speaker 17 the tone definite, the lack of social media. I think the Republicans are excellent on social media

Speaker 17 and comparatively,

Speaker 17 and that the Democrats certainly aren't as much. Some are, certainly are.
Do you see anybody being very promising?

Speaker 17 I mean, Pritzker has suddenly has sort of developed developed a backbone and is using social media a lot. Obviously, AOC

Speaker 17 uses it. Is there anybody? And how important is that going forward?

Speaker 18 I've always been a big Pete Budigej fan. I think

Speaker 18 he knows how to create a viral moment. He's very well spoken.
He's very forceful. I think that he continues to be a really promising voice in that party.
Obviously, I think that AOC is tremendous.

Speaker 18 I mean, I think she is articulate. She is forceful.
She is accessible. I think think what she does on vertical video, on social platforms, in terms of communicating with her audience is phenomenal.

Speaker 18 I wish that we saw more politicians do that kind of, I want to call it grassroots outreach. It's grassroots digital outreach, right?

Speaker 18 It's meeting your constituents where they are on the platforms where they spend time, talking to them in a way that feels authentic, helping them navigate what is happening right now, and sort of really genuinely acting as a voice for the people and someone for the the people to look to as a leader.

Speaker 18 I think the Democrats need more, to the point of one of the commenters, really sort of, you know, high-energy, high-velocity, forceful political leaders instead of

Speaker 18 candidly, you know, the geriatrics who are just kind of sitting on their hands right now.

Speaker 17 And waving, like Scott says, waving their canes at people. I would agree.

Speaker 17 I actually see Chris Murphy doing some interesting things. There's a bunch of them.

Speaker 17 There's a bunch of them, but it has to be coordinated in a way that, you know, and you still have the power of the Rogans, although he's slipping a little bit.

Speaker 17 You're starting to see slippage with him.

Speaker 17 I think the audience is up for grabs, that's for sure,

Speaker 17 if they want to have the right questions. All right.
Now for this week's questions for our audience. Do you think China will agree to the sale of TikTok under the Trump administration?

Speaker 17 Katie, I want your response very quickly on this one.

Speaker 18 No.

Speaker 17 And so what happens?

Speaker 18 What happens? I mean, first of all, I think everything happening right now is very dubious in its legality.

Speaker 18 And I'm not quite sure how TikTok is still in the app stores that the Supreme Court said it shouldn't be in. I think that Trump brokers some kind of deal to keep TikTok in the United States.

Speaker 18 I think it's very clear that he has no intention of letting this thing shut down.

Speaker 18 So I think he brokers some sort of deal.

Speaker 18 What's in it for Beijing, though,

Speaker 18 is the big question mark I have because they have no interest in allowing that platform to operate in this country without their oversight and without their control of that algorithm.

Speaker 18 So how he actually solves for that, I do not know. And we at Wired, I will say, we do not know.

Speaker 17 And do you see any person besides Larry Ellison rising to the front? I said Musk, obviously, because he's acceptable to China.

Speaker 18 I think Elon Musk. I think Larry Ellison.

Speaker 18 I do not think, as much as I really like Frank McCourt and I think that he is a very articulate and intelligent person, I don't see that sort of taking shape in any meaningful way.

Speaker 17 Yeah, no, I think it's probably going to be the Elon thing once again. He's going to fix everything.
And it's good for Twitter.

Speaker 17 It would be good for Twitter because that's an actually good product as opposed to Twitter. Visit us on threads at Pivot Podcast Official to answer.

Speaker 17 So we'll hear, we'll hear the answers we get from listeners. If you've got a question of your own or you'd like answered, send it our way.

Speaker 17 Go to nymag.com/slash pivot, submit a question for the show or call 85551-Pivot. All right, Katie, one more quick break.
We'll be back for your prediction.

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Speaker 17 Okay, Katie, let's hear a prediction. You are Scott Galloway today.

Speaker 18 Okay, I'm going to offer a completely insane, please, improbable prediction, but I feel like I have talked so much about so many things that are very stressful and real bummers for everybody.

Speaker 18 And I'm sorry about that. So here's my prediction.
One thing that we know about Elon Musk is that he latches on to an idea or an ideology and he sticks with it and he goes really, really hard at it.

Speaker 18 And then he changes his mind. It has happened before.

Speaker 18 My prediction, and you'll have me back on in six months or a year and make fun of me for how wrong I was.

Speaker 18 Something will happen, whether it has to do with his companies, whether it has to do with a divide in MAGA world within sort of the Trump orbit, something will happen and he will pivot back to a more progressive,

Speaker 18 more left-leaning, Dem-centric ideology and he will do away with this sort of like hardline, extremist, far-right approach. This is, I am giving you a very optimistic, a very optimistic prediction.

Speaker 17 And it's just your wish, your wish that

Speaker 18 he will do this? I think there is a 1% chance that it will happen. And so I'm using it as my prediction.

Speaker 17 He used to support, I just was looking at text he sent me about the climate change thing. He was always

Speaker 17 exactly. He was so upset in the text, like what Trump was doing.
Same thing, oddly enough, with gay and lesbian stuff.

Speaker 18 I think it's important for people to remember that he was not always this way. It was not always like this.

Speaker 17 Well, he was a little bit this way.

Speaker 18 He was a little, but he was not out there avidly cheering on Donald Trump in 2016. So I am saying there is a 1% chance that he moves in the other direction.

Speaker 17 Well, we'll see. I don't know what could happen getting off the evening activities.

Speaker 18 I don't know what could happen. I don't know.
You never know.

Speaker 17 His daughter is nice to him, who can't stand him.

Speaker 17 Exactly.

Speaker 18 You never know.

Speaker 19 You never know.

Speaker 18 If Elon Musk and Donald Trump in the last six months have shown us anything, it's that you never know. I did not know.

Speaker 17 He's consistent. Donald Trump is consistent.
He has not changed one bit, except he's got a rich friend that he uses as a cudgel on everybody else. But we'll see.
That's a really good one.

Speaker 17 Katie, I like it.

Speaker 18 Thank you. Thank you.
I like it. Excellent.
I like it. We'll see.

Speaker 17 I will have you back in six months if that happens

Speaker 17 all right um i just want to say uh absolutely stellar coverage you are you guys are not just a scoop machine but the context and you're sticking to it let me ask you a personal question are you worried in any way for yourself with all these threats as people ask me that a lot because when he recently threatened scott and i and i was like oh diddy like okay like but it's not something that's not in my mind legal action or um you know uh pressure from people i have seen it i'm seeing it happen i was supposed to appear with someone they pulled out.

Speaker 17 They're like, oh, you're too hot. Like, and I was like, I don't think you mean that in a nice way, like kind of thing.

Speaker 17 I, and I, and, and to, is, do you feel pressure not to keep doing what you're doing?

Speaker 18 I don't feel pressure to stop doing what we're doing. I think what I feel is concerned

Speaker 18 for the the legal and digital and physical safety of my staff. Um, I, I worry, like I'm, I'm a mom.
I have, I have a family and I, I bring my mom energy to work.

Speaker 18 And I care about them. I worry about them.

Speaker 18 I worry about myself and my family to a degree. And of course, I worry about it.
But the thing is,

Speaker 18 there's nothing inaccurate about the journalism. Like

Speaker 18 there is no,

Speaker 18 you know, everything, as I have said before, I mean, and this is such a cliche thing for an editor-in-chief to say, but we stand by the reporting. It is rock solid.

Speaker 18 There is not a strand that you could pull pull on that would unravel in some detrimental way.

Speaker 18 And so I have to just stick with that and keep going. And I think that's for the entire newsroom.
Yep.

Speaker 17 I used to tell that to our reporters, you just have to get it right.

Speaker 18 It has to be right. Yeah, it has to be right.

Speaker 17 You cannot make a mistake with these people because the minute you make even just the slightest one. you know, you have an Achilles heel showing them they will come for you.

Speaker 17 And that's what they'll do. But still, there are issues.
I think you're right to be concerned about digital issues, about hacking, about legal attacks and stuff like that.

Speaker 17 And so that's why it's all the more courageous for what you and others are doing in terms of, and I, and keep going, keep going for big balls.

Speaker 17 I don't, you know, and the fact that you couldn't, I'm sorry, it was so good. We shouldn't laugh at this, but come on.
How good is that?

Speaker 18 Tesla.sexyllc

Speaker 18 big balls. Two things I am very sorry that I have to keep saying on TV interviews and podcasts.

Speaker 18 You like it a little bit. You like it.
Oh, I love it.

Speaker 17 You love doing it. Okay.
That's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot.
I will read us out.

Speaker 17 Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Enderdutt engineered this episode.

Speaker 15 Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

Speaker 17 Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.
You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/slash pod.

Speaker 17 We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Thank you, Katie.

Speaker 18 Thank you.

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