Casey Newton: Lawlessness and Danger in Tech's Brave New World

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Speaker 9 Hey, everybody. Before we get to the guests, I wanted to talk a little bit about what is happening in Chicago.

Speaker 9 I am traveling to DC today

Speaker 9 for our live show, which we've sold more tickets to than any show we've ever done. So I appreciate you all.
Last I heard there were like 50 left.

Speaker 9 So by the time you're hearing this, maybe there are a couple. If you have a hankering here in the DC area, you want to make a last-second trip down to the Lincoln Theater.

Speaker 9 We'd love to see you tonight. And so I pre-taped the podcast yesterday on Tuesday with Casey Newton.

Speaker 9 And it's a show I've been wanting to do for a while, really focusing on this TikTok deal, which I think is really ominous. And the latest around AI and

Speaker 9 interviews I've been watching with Sam Altman and the infiltration of Silicon Valley oligarchs into the Trump administration. I wanted to focus entirely on that topic for one episode.

Speaker 9 And Casey is a great person to do it with. So definitely stick around for that.
But, you know, the news gods obviously had something else in mind, and I wanted to ensure that we addressed it.

Speaker 9 Trump and Greg Abbott sending Texas National Guard troops into Chicago is

Speaker 9 truly an emergency and it's truly a crisis and it is outrageous.

Speaker 9 And every American should be horrified by what is happening, that our entire system of government, our Democratic Republic, our Federalist Democratic Republic is

Speaker 9 in threat right now, right now,

Speaker 9 because

Speaker 9 for the first time since the civil rights era, the President of the United States is sending in troops over the objection. of a local state.

Speaker 9 And the big difference between now and the civil rights era is that the president is doing that based on their desire for power only.

Speaker 9 There is no crisis, there's nobody standing in the schoolhouse door. You know, there's regular law and order business that needs to be taken care of.

Speaker 9 You could imagine the president of the United States deciding that Chicago and other major cities had too much crime and that we should fund more cops on the streets.

Speaker 9 And there are things that could be done, but that's not what's happening. What is happening is there is an army, there are soldiers from another state

Speaker 9 invading Illinois over the objections

Speaker 9 of local Illinois leaders.

Speaker 9 And they are coming into their state against the will of those politicians, against the will of the people of Illinois.

Speaker 9 That is

Speaker 9 an affront to our system of government. It's dangerous and it is.

Speaker 9 not overstated to call it an emergency. And that's why my colleague Jonathan Last wrote wrote an emergency triad last night newsletter that I just want to direct you guys to.

Speaker 9 We'll put a link here in the show notes. It's called The Chicago Rubicon and what comes next.

Speaker 9 And I have to admit, I've been following this stuff as closely as I can, y'all. And I'm doing my best to bring all the relevant news to you guys.

Speaker 9 And I feel like I kind of let you down a little bit on this one because I was reading. JBL's triad and he's just so good every day.

Speaker 9 Every day, if you're not reading the triad, it's the best newsletter in the business.

Speaker 9 and that's not just me gassing up a colleague it's what he does is truly remarkable every day the newsletter goes into like a series of things that had happened in chicago over the last month and i was aware of some of it i just i hadn't put it all together in the way he did and when you see it it's pretty alarming september 12th ice agents shoot and kill chicago resident silverio Viegas Gonzalez in Franklin Park.

Speaker 9 ICE claim that Gonzalez was shot after he, quote, seriously injured an ICE agent, but body cam footage shows the same agent immediately after the encounter describing his injuries as nothing major.

Speaker 9 So again, I mean, you shouldn't assault an ICE agent, but that doesn't mean you get to be summarily murdered. September 30th, 300 federal agents raid an apartment building.

Speaker 9 We have talked about this, but again, like some of the details. Agents repel from a Blackhawk helicopter positioned over the building.

Speaker 9 They detain not only the children and the zip tied children, as we discussed, but several U.S. citizens get detained, including Roderick Johnson.

Speaker 9 They said he heard people dropping off the roof before the FBI agents kicked in his door. He was stuffed inside a van.
They didn't tell me while I was being detained.

Speaker 9 They left people's doors open, firearms, money, whatever, right there out in the open.

Speaker 9 October 4th, CBP agents shoot an unarmed woman, Mary Martinez.

Speaker 9 The body cam footage there shows an agent says, do something, bitch,

Speaker 10 before shooting her.

Speaker 9 October 7th, an agent's caught on camera aiming a weapon at a resident who is probably doing nothing more than documenting the activity. Like, this is a masked agent.
JBL includes the picture here.

Speaker 9 And the story, it is

Speaker 9 alarming.

Speaker 9 There was the physical bullying of the people protesting outside of the ICE building, including former FY pod guest and candidate for Congress, Kat Abu Gazele.

Speaker 9 It It just goes on. Like, I don't know how else to describe this, right? Like you have federal agents shooting and menacing people in a city, and

Speaker 9 you have troops from another state invading the city

Speaker 9 over the objections of the political leaders and the people there.

Speaker 9 That's a crisis. This is an invasion that is happening.
And so, you know, and you don't want to do too much hyperbole. It's not a civil war yet or anything.
It's not, it's not a hot war, but

Speaker 9 it also feels like it's just the beginning. I mean, I mean, you know, we're in this government shutdown right now, but these guys have more and more, more and more funding coming their way.

Speaker 9 And, you know, more and more untrained

Speaker 9 federal agents, mass federal agents, are going to be in these cities.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 9 this is something, obviously, we're going to keep monitoring. We'll be talking about at the live show this evening.

Speaker 9 We will be talking about it on tomorrow's pod, but I wanted to at least address that and point you to JVL's newsletter, which in addition to kind of listing out and putting into context all those actions gives a really sharp and alarming, obviously, as is JVL style overview of where this is headed and of what the broader context is.

Speaker 9 One more thing that's related to all this. I did another commentary for the Borg Takes feed that you can check out if you go over and download the Borg Takes podcast.

Speaker 9 It says, Tim Miller, people will be ashamed for being being involved in this.

Speaker 9 And I wanted to expand on my comments on Nicole Wallace's show on Tuesday, where we spent the whole hour talking about what was happening in Chicago and the response to it, including the response to ICE from Zach Bryan, the country music singer.

Speaker 9 And so if you go over in that feed, you can hear everything I talked about with Nicole, in addition to kind of my expanded thoughts. And I just, I really wanted to dial in on this,

Speaker 9 how important it is to have people like Zach Bryan out there singing and speaking out against what is happening with ICE, and how fucking disgusting and depraved it is that the DHS

Speaker 9 has decided, our DHS, our Department of Homeland Security, has put out this fucking agit prop

Speaker 9 where they show videos of people being chained and deported and bullied and

Speaker 9 forced to submit to the unnamed, faceless

Speaker 9 state, the jackbooted thugs. And they do so, they do this video and they

Speaker 9 pair it with Zach Bryan's, one of Zach Bryan's songs, it was a troll back on him.

Speaker 9 And it's so sick how they do it and how they try to co-opt his message of hope and redemption and use that to advance their message of vengeance and submission and cruelty and hatred.

Speaker 9 And anyway, it moved me quite a bit. So if you want a little bit more on that, I talked about that for quite a while.
So I've gone on too long now. We've got a great podcast ahead.
It's just,

Speaker 9 it's a pretty wearying and depressing state of affairs in Chicago. And

Speaker 9 I think that hopefully it can also be a galvanizing moment. for all of us to say, no, this is not us.
Okay.

Speaker 9 We are not going to sit quietly while these fuckers try to put the boots on the necks of our fellow Americans. And hopefully it can be a galvanizing moment.

Speaker 9 Up next is some other super uplifting material. Me being an AI doomer with Casey Newton of Platformer.
Stick around for that. Enjoy it.
We'll talk to y'all soon. We'll see some of you tonight in DC.

Speaker 9 The rest of you will see you tomorrow.

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Speaker 9 Hello, welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
Delighted to welcome the founder and editor of Platformer. He also co-hosts Hard Fork, a podcast about tech for the New York Times.

Speaker 9 He used to sublet Kara Swisher's apartment. He's a gay about town in San Francisco.
It's Casey Newton. What's up, man?

Speaker 10 Hey, Tim. Glad to be here.
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 9 Thank you for doing this. I've been wanting to do it for a while.
There are two main issues I really want to focus on, which is the TikTok deal and whether society is going to continue to exist. Yep.

Speaker 9 Maybe we'll do the TikTok deal first because it's a little bit easier to get our hands around, and then we'll go into AI and all the ancillary issues, cultural and political, political, related to that.

Speaker 9 You wrote this, and the deal was not quite finalized when you wrote this. So maybe we've learned a little more since then.

Speaker 9 But for platform, which is a great newsletter for folks who are trying to get their tech news, you know, outside the corporate media, you wrote this.

Speaker 9 What we do know about the deal currently taking shape with TikTok is that it is very strange. The deal is very different from many previous cases where the U.S.

Speaker 9 government has forced a Chinese company to divest, such as when they did so with Grindr in 2020, something you're very familiar with.

Speaker 9 There are a lot of ways in which which it's very strange, which you laid out, but I'm wondering if it looks as strange now here, October 7th, as it did September 22nd to you.

Speaker 10 Oh, sure. I mean, we've just never seen anything like this, right?

Speaker 10 You have to remember that Congress passes a law in the Biden administration that says, hey, you know, you got to get rid of this thing.

Speaker 10 And we're sort of in the window for it to be forced to either shut down in the United States or be spun out. And it actually goes dark, right, for like a day.

Speaker 10 And then Trump becomes becomes the president. And on his first day, he says, I'm going to ignore this law that was passed by Congress and uphold by the Supreme Court.

Speaker 10 And I'm just going to issue a series of extra constitutional delays until I get what I want.

Speaker 10 And it was, in my view, sort of like the first sign that this presidency was going to look very different than his first one.

Speaker 9 Extremely lawless. Among the other things that are different, we can kind of go through that are strange.
The main one, the one that

Speaker 9 I was like, I have to get Casey or somebody on to talk about this is just the actual details of the deal itself. So as you wrote in the newsletter, it's a giveaway to allies, Larry Ellison.

Speaker 9 I want to talk more about Andreessen Horowitz. I'm going to talk a little bit more about Mark Andreessen.
The Murdochs are involved. Apparently,

Speaker 9 the valuation of TikTok ended up being $14 billion.

Speaker 9 In that article you wrote, the valuation of Byte Dance, the Chinese parent company, is $400 billion.

Speaker 9 And so it sure seems like Larry Ellison and Mark Andreessen and Laclin Murdoch and whoever else is in on this deal got like the deal of the century here.

Speaker 10 Absolutely. And we should say that detail has still not been confirmed.
We're sort of still waiting for the final details of the deal to be released.

Speaker 10 But certainly, if the sale were to happen at that price, it would be an absolutely ridiculous discount.

Speaker 10 Now, you can imagine Trump on the other end saying, Well, look, if you don't take this deal, I'm just making the app shut down, and then everyone loses all of their money.

Speaker 10 So, you know, Trump here is able to use his authoritarian impulses to get everything he wants, and no one else really has that much leverage over him.

Speaker 9 That's a fake bluff, though. Did Mark was Andesen Horowitz and Larry Allison really worried about that with all the back channels they've got with Duncan?

Speaker 10 Well, I think what I'm saying is I think that it was Byte Dance that could be made to worry. And Trump is sort of saying, look,

Speaker 10 I want this for these people and you're going to give it to them at like a really great price.

Speaker 9 Yeah. I mean, the really great price almost, like, let's just explain to people how much of a really great price it is.
And that's about what the evaluation of Snapchat is, right?

Speaker 9 Like equivalent, essentially.

Speaker 9 And if Byte Dance is worth 400 billion, I mean, in theory, and again, we don't know what all the rules of the deal making are going to be, et cetera, but like in theory, in Reese Horowitz, whatever percentage of that 14 billion they get, they could resell a percentage of that in a year at like

Speaker 9 500%, 600%. I mean, like, it's, it's an unimaginable, it's theft.
I mean, you know, it's just, I mean, it's, it's just cold theft out in the open.

Speaker 10 Absolutely. I mean, I really have very little to add beyond it because it really is just exactly what it looks like.

Speaker 9 You wrote in the piece, what do we think China is getting out of this? Yeah. And that question still kind of remains unclear, right?

Speaker 9 Have we learned anything in the last three weeks about what we think China is? Why

Speaker 10 do we think that?

Speaker 10 The speculation that I hear is that China basically just feels like it has bigger fish to fry, that it wants a comprehensive trade deal, and that ultimately, believe it or not, it doesn't care that much about a social media app where people do funny little dances, which is sort of counterintuitive for some Americans because, of course, in America, what we've been told by Congress is that TikTok is a Chinese super weapon and sort of their most important strategic asset to undermine the United States.

Speaker 10 And so, how could they ever give it away? I think it turns out that China is probably more concerned about maintaining some sort of trade balance and not having massive tariffs on their goods.

Speaker 9 What is the act? Do we know what the actual algorithm

Speaker 9 deal is at this point, like control of the algorithm? And maybe that might inform China's lack of concern somewhat?

Speaker 10 Yes. So the idea is that the recommendation algorithm is essentially going to be kind of cloned and then given to the U.S.-based entity.

Speaker 10 Oracle is going to kind of drive the technical implementation of this. And then we believe that they're essentially going to kind of like start from scratch using Americans data.

Speaker 10 Maybe they have some American data that they can already use in this regard, but we'll sort of create a new super patriotic USA, USA TikTok recommendation algorithm without any corrupting Chinese influence.

Speaker 10 But importantly, the new entity will lease that algorithm from ByteDance. So ByteDance will get ongoing payments.

Speaker 10 What's not clear to me is, are they going to sort of give it regular updates as they find ever more sinister ways to capture all of our time and attention? That part, I don't know.

Speaker 9 Yeah. I mean, like, this is the thing that is a little unsatisfying about all of that, about like the Chinese not feeling like it's a

Speaker 9 weapon that was useful to them. Because we have the Prime Minister of Israel, I'm sure you saw this, Bibi Nutanyahu, the other week.
I want to play this clip.

Speaker 9 This is like one of those, I can't believe you said it out loud things.

Speaker 9 I had to double-check. I was like, this is not an,

Speaker 9 we'll get into AI deep fakes in a second. I was like, this is not a deep fake, right? Like an anti-Semitic deep fake trying to claim that the Jews are behind everything.

Speaker 9 But no, this is the actual Prime Minister of Israel, and I would like to play it. You can't fight today with swords.
That doesn't work very well. But we have to fight with the weapons that

Speaker 9 apply to the battlefields in which we're engaged. And the most important ones are social media.
And the most important purchase that is going on right now is

Speaker 9 glass swords.

Speaker 9 TikTok.

Speaker 9 TikTok. Number one.
Number one. And I hope it goes through because

Speaker 9 it can be consequential.

Speaker 9 TikTok is going to be the most important weapon. He wants the deal to go through, and he seems to think that if the deal goes through, the people in charge of the algorithm will be favorable to him.

Speaker 9 I mean, I don't know how else to interpret that, right?

Speaker 10 Well, it's important to remember that when Congress passed the law that forced the spin out, a lot of members of Congress were concerned that there was too much pro-Palestinian speech on the app.

Speaker 10 That was one reason that they gave while debating the bill, which was also something that made the First Amendment scholars say, Hey, wait a minute, are we like

Speaker 10 publishing a speech-based restriction?

Speaker 10 But anyway, that turned out not to matter.

Speaker 9 Mitt Romney said that, I remember actually, just out loud. Like, it was one of the things, it was one of his stated reasons.

Speaker 10 But there is a sense, and you know, I mean, I do believe that social media helps to shape perception, and I'm sure there has been a lot of pro-Palestine content on TikTok.

Speaker 10 The idea that it's the most important weapon in a war seems strange to me.

Speaker 9 I mean, it seems strange to me, too, but Benjamin Natal thinks it is. Yeah.

Speaker 9 I mean, that is where like all of the mystery part of the deal just, and I hate, I'm like, I'm like the always sunny in Philadelphia guy right now with my, with, you know, my string and the pictures, but it's like, so these billionaires that are really close to Donald Trump get the deal of a lifetime with the TikTok algorithm.

Speaker 9 Bibi Netanyahu in Israel is extremely excited about that. Trump's donors are extremely excited about it.
They see it as a political, a useful political political weapon.

Speaker 9 And it seems to me they intend to use it as such. Maybe they'll be bad at it, right? Like maybe they won't successfully manipulate the algorithm and it's not as easy as it seems.

Speaker 9 And what I, you know, the world is complicated, but like they think that they are going to use this to manipulate the country.

Speaker 10 Yeah. And I mean, I think you can slot it in to the broader right-wing takeover of big media, right?

Speaker 10 Like I think you can draw a through line here from what's going on with, you know, Jimmy Kimmel and cbs news and everything else the idea is let's put trump allies in charge of all of the big institutions tick tock is a big institution now as it so happens i think it's much easier to manipulate like a broadcast network newsroom where you have to like answer to brendan carr when he you know emails you 10 times a day than it is to change a social media algorithm such that one piece of content gets higher reach than another.

Speaker 10 But it's not impossible and we should absolutely keep an eye on it.

Speaker 9 Yeah. It's kind of interesting.
I was like, What do you mean?

Speaker 9 Have you even been covering Larry Ellison? Like, the Larry Ellison thing is so strange because Oracle was obviously an influential company, and they made a ton of money.

Speaker 9 And influential tech companies, it's kind of like an old tech company, right? And, like, as you and I have been coming up and you've been covering this stuff, it's not like

Speaker 9 you've been on the Oracle beat, really. There's not been a lot of like Oracle news.
And Larry Ellison seemed happy to like sail and be in America's cup.

Speaker 9 And all of a sudden, he's like taking over a broadcast network, taking over the most important

Speaker 9 social media app. Like, what do you think is happening there?

Speaker 10 It's so true. The last time that I was covering Larry Ellison, it was when he cheated to win the Americas Cup race.

Speaker 10 And that sort of like cemented a certain vision of him in my mind of like, you know, but he is kind of.

Speaker 9 I don't remember that story. How did he cheat?

Speaker 10 Oh, there's a whole book about it. You know, I can't remember the exact ways, but it's kind of like cheating in baseball.
You know, you like, you sand down various edges or something.

Speaker 10 And people are always like cheating at these races. And it's like sort of how the billionaires entertain themselves.

Speaker 9 So he was like this Lance Armstrong of sailing.

Speaker 10 Yeah, he was doping. Yeah, he was boat doping.
Okay. But, you know, all along, he has had Oracle, which, as you point out, is this like extremely boring company.

Speaker 10 It's like made him enough money that he was able to buy up like huge parts of Hawaii just to sort of chill at. But then the AI boom comes along.

Speaker 10 And all of a sudden, there's so much value that is inside this, what, what turns out to be AI infrastructure. Right.
And so he now has tens and hundreds of millions of dollars at his disposal.

Speaker 10 And he also happens to be a Trump donor. And so this just puts him in a position of great power.

Speaker 9 So this is just, he's got liquid, basically.

Speaker 10 Yes, he is extremely liquid. Although, as we pointed out, he's not going to need to be that liquid to buy TikTok.

Speaker 9 It feels like they obviously have an ideological agenda. Like, what exactly that is? You know what I mean? Like, I genuinely don't know.

Speaker 9 Like, this is one of those things where I kind of feel myself sounding like Tucker Carlson, just asking questions. Like, I'm not doing that.
Like, I don't know. Is it a pro-Israel agenda?

Speaker 9 Is it pro-AI regulation that they're worried about? Is it just I want to keep the woke libs out of power?

Speaker 9 Is it something else? Do you have any sense for that?

Speaker 10 Well, we know that TikTok has gotten Trump's attention a couple of times.

Speaker 10 One was during the 2020 election when there was something involving reports of a rally of his being poorly attended that seemed to make him really, really mad. And

Speaker 10 I believe there was some speculation at the time. Maybe this is one reason why he wants to yank this app out of China's hands.

Speaker 10 Then when he wins the 2024 election, he sees TikTok as something that was very useful to him.

Speaker 10 And so, I think this makes him interested in, like, okay, like, how can I sort of press my advantage there and ensure that it continues to be really helpful to me in that regard?

Speaker 9 Yeah, but for Ellison, you think it's just, that's just it? It's Trumpy partisan stuff? Well, you know, old man relevant stuff.

Speaker 10 My sense is that late in life, Ellison has seen an opportunity for himself to become a kind of other murdock, right? With his son David Ellison has taken over Paramount, Warner Brothers, right?

Speaker 10 Like vast swaths of the U.S. media and entertainment infrastructure are like consolidating within the Ellison family.

Speaker 10 And I assume that they're doing it for the reasons that everyone else would, which is money and power.

Speaker 9 Okay.

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Speaker 9 Any Andreessen thoughts, deep thoughts? This kind of takes us into the AI topic, because obviously he has strong views on AI deregulation and crypto deregulation.

Speaker 9 But Andreessen also has been on kind of a long strange trip. And he went from being kind of like a Mitt Romney-ish, very kind of a bulrooky type, like center-right, but I voted for them sometimes.

Speaker 9 Mitt Romney donor, you know, free markets and free people type guy, to all of a sudden, like, I mean, he seems to, I don't know, maybe even wants an an authoritarian dictatorship.

Speaker 9 I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
It's hard to like, what do you think? What's happening with that?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I mean, this is like one of my favorite subjects. Could talk about it for a long time.
I think there are several things.

Speaker 10 You know, one is that, and he has said, like, he just didn't get what he wanted out of Democrats.

Speaker 10 Like, he wanted this to be a transactional relationship where he would make donations, they would do what he wanted, and that he would say thank you, and they would move on.

Speaker 10 But that's not what happened. Even though they continued to donate to Democrats throughout the Biden presidency, Biden continued to hate big tech.

Speaker 10 In particular, particular, he hated crypto, where Andreessen had made billions and billions of dollars worth of investments.

Speaker 9 I mean, Joe Biden didn't know what crypto was. His administration did.
His administration had a couple people. And don't tell him.

Speaker 10 He's been through enough. Yeah, he's been through enough.

Speaker 9 Gensler hated crypto. There's one person that hated crypto in the administration, basically.

Speaker 10 But it had a huge effect, right? Which is that all of these crypto startups can't get off the ground. So now, you know, Mark is on the hook for billions of dollars.

Speaker 10 And he did a podcast with Ben Horowitz, his partner, where he said that, you know, basically their feeling was like Biden has suspended the rule of law when it comes to crypto.

Speaker 10 And so in order to like defend American values, like we have to elect this Republican. So that I think that is like kind of the bulk of it.

Speaker 10 I also think he emerged like very different from the pandemic. Like he seemed quite unhinged after the pandemic.
I think that also radicalized him. But yeah, those are some of the factors.

Speaker 9 Do we know what he wants now? I guess it's just kind of an important question what these people want now. I mean, Larry Ellison, Mark Andreessen, the Murdoch.

Speaker 9 And I think the Murdoch's rational, the Murdoch, it's a little bit more straight and clear because we have 30 years of evidence about what the Murdochs are interested in.

Speaker 9 But if these guys are going to control TikTok, I don't know. What do we think Andreessen Horowitz?

Speaker 9 Maybe it's just money for them. Like, honestly, it's just a good deal.

Speaker 10 I don't know. I think crony capitalism is very appealing to them.
These are rich people who are used to just paying for what they want.

Speaker 10 And if Donald Trump says, pay this price and you can get this thing, that's the kind of person they want to deal with.

Speaker 9 So I take it to actual policy. One thing it seems like they want policy-wise is essentially complete deregulation of crypto and AI.

Speaker 9 I don't know if you would agree with that, but AI is, I want to talk about AI more broadly, but what, like from just a regulatory policy structure, they basically just want to let the animal spirits of the of the

Speaker 9 free market become unleashed and they want the government off their back. Maybe they want to fund some energy resources for them that they can use, right?

Speaker 10 Yeah. Yeah.
Andreessen has written this essay where he writes about what he calls the enemy of progress.

Speaker 10 And it includes basically anyone who has ever advocated for like content moderation, trust and safety, just being careful in general.

Speaker 10 He views all of this as a sort of like NAMBY, Pamby, like bedwetter way to run the government. And what we actually need to do is to build, build, build and let the chips fall where they may.

Speaker 9 I have a question to those guys. Like, do you think,

Speaker 9 like, if you had a panel of them, you talked to all of them more than me. If you had a panel of them and you were just like, okay, here we are in 2025.

Speaker 9 Like, do you think we did a good job with social media regulation? What do you think they would say?

Speaker 9 Do you think they would say the government was too involved or not involved enough?

Speaker 9 I mean, the thing is, there has not been that much social media regulation.

Speaker 10 Like there was some jawboning, which made some conservatives really, really upset. And in some cases, for justified reasons.

Speaker 10 But it wasn't as if there was this, you know, huge, like sweeping set of regulations that all the social media companies now have to pay attention to.

Speaker 10 And I think that thrilled, for example, Mark Andreessen, who sits on the board of Meta, and which profited handsomely from the fact that there was no real regulation.

Speaker 9 I mean, social media has been, I guess this is my point. I think it seems, I feel like these are objective sentences.

Speaker 9 they're opinions but they're objective social media has been completely and shittified over the last 20 years it did not achieve the stated goals that the founders of these companies said i achieved some of them but like but it did not achieve the cultural goals that they set out there was no meaningful regulation of them

Speaker 9 and so maybe we should look back at that and and do things differently next time but that that doesn't seem to be a

Speaker 9 well they don't i guess they don't think that or do they i don't know um are they happy as Mark are they happy with the meta product suite right now?

Speaker 9 I think they're killing it with the Facebook feed right now.

Speaker 10 I don't know. I mean, I don't see Mark Andreessen posting a lot on Facebook or Instagram.
Um, those maybe that's just sort of not his medium. He's like more of a YouTube guy, I guess.
Um,

Speaker 10 but you know, I don't know how happy they are.

Speaker 10 I mean, to me, it seems very clear that the right in particular has benefited massively from social media because it took a lot of what used to be fringe views and just allowed them to accelerate into the mainstream and to make some of the people who held those extreme views some of the biggest stars of the party and sort of, you know, reorient everything around them.

Speaker 10 So to that extent, it's been a huge success. But of course, they've spent the entire time complaining that they're being censored and, you know, no one is being given them a fair shake.

Speaker 9 So that's a frustration.

Speaker 9 I think that it's important to update your priors, you know, when you see things that happen.

Speaker 9 And so this is why I kind of like asked this same question to all the tech people that come on because it's like, it just seems so obvious to me. I was very tech optimist.

Speaker 9 like i was southwest southwest tech nerd moved to the bay like it was not like you and part of being a product junkie but like i liked getting my new toys and trying them out and

Speaker 9 was early adopter of all the social medias and like i just think that objectively like we fucked it up yeah and now i i look to this ai situation where all these new products are coming i listen to the same altman interviews and i just i feel like a person taking crazy pills i'm just like we've learned nothing like we've learned not like we've learned we fucked all these apps up and we're starting this new thing.

Speaker 9 And people are like, let's just do the same, let's just do the same thing again, basically, but with even more powerful tools.

Speaker 9 Is that wrong to you?

Speaker 10 I share that concern. I suspect these things will play out somewhat differently.

Speaker 10 In my view, the trouble with social media is that recommendation algorithms tend to push people toward the most divisive or sort of like borderline, inoffensive or wrong stuff imaginable or that can be permitted on the platform, because that is what is going to get get you to keep coming back and looking at more.

Speaker 10 The platforms deny this, by the way, but like open up an app, you're going to see stuff that feels pretty weird and sort of unlike the border of propriety, right?

Speaker 10 AI isn't really going to work like that. Like ChatGPT isn't going to try to titillate you every time you go to the home page.

Speaker 10 What AI can do, though, is to get to know you really, really well and to create a sort of ever more personalized feed for you.

Speaker 10 And the whole way it is going to tell you a genius almost no matter what you tell it, right? And these are some of the factors that really worry me about AI.

Speaker 10 I think it has a sort of similarly worrisome effect on our collective mental health, but I do think it's going to be different than the sort of like rage-bait social media phenomenon.

Speaker 9 I'm glad you mentioned that. Something I saw this week that I want to pull up.
There's the new,

Speaker 9 again, talking about my change in behavior. 20-year-old Tim, 25-year-old Tim would have been like really excited to try out all the new AI wearables.
Oh, yeah. I'm now seeing the AI wearables and

Speaker 9 they make me deeply fearful for the future of the human race. I want to play this.
This is a guy. I think he's 22.
He's created a wearable. It's like a medallion you wear around your neck.

Speaker 9 And it's your AI friend. I think it's called friend.
And here he is explaining it.

Speaker 11 I think the closest relationship that I would describe talking to an AI like this to is honestly... like God in a way.

Speaker 11 Like I'm not particularly religious, but I think it is similarly an omnipresent entity that you talk to with no judgment.

Speaker 11 That's this like super intelligent being that's always there with you, yada, yada, yada, right?

Speaker 11 And like, that's, I think, the most impactful thing of talking to these AIs is that you don't have these feelings of judgment.

Speaker 11 Like even if you have a therapist, you talk to them, you still, you still hold your words back a little bit.

Speaker 9 You just do.

Speaker 9 So you're going to have a wearable God that knows everything about you and doesn't judge you that you're going to get to keep with you at all times. That seems like

Speaker 9 that might create some pitfalls for me. I don't know.

Speaker 10 It does. I'm glad you played that clip, though, because I do think it is fair to characterize the AI building labs of Silicon Valley as religious movements.

Speaker 10 Like they really do think that they are building something akin to a machine god. And they're doing it kind of because they want to just sort of see what happens after, right?

Speaker 10 They'll tell you, we think this is going to be massively beneficial to people.

Speaker 10 I still hold out the possibility that it can, but it also just seems obvious it's going to accelerate a lot of harms, such as, you know, by driving people into delusions and other terrible outcomes.

Speaker 9 And removing them from society, why be in society? If you have an AI godfriend like medallion, you know, it increases isolation. Also, do you want somebody to know every single thing about you?

Speaker 9 I don't know if we want to have the microphone on at all times. I think having some private thoughts are okay, actually.
Your point on the religious thing with, I want to talk about Sam Altman a bit.

Speaker 9 I've been consuming an unhealthy amount of Sam Altman interviews. He's doing a lot of it.
Why is he doing so many interviews, do you think?

Speaker 10 It's a good question. I think he sees himself right now as AI's diplomat in chief, and that serves him in a number of ways.

Speaker 10 Among other things, it's helping him build up this massive supply chain of data centers and energy that he needs to realize all of his visions.

Speaker 10 So he's sort of on this globe trotting tour to gin up support for his project.

Speaker 9 It's going to sound really rude, and I know that you need to have sources at OpenAI, so feel free to object to this.

Speaker 9 But like, if a person believes that they are the Messiah or that they are ushering a God into

Speaker 9 existence, something that will save humanity or advance humanity to its next stage, then like you don't really need to question the intermediate steps that you're making to get there, right?

Speaker 9 Like you don't, you don't need to reflect on like whether it's a good thing or a bad thing that like, you know, there's some people out there that are, you know, made suicidal by open AI or that there's some, you know, that there are, you know, this problem or that problem, because like the greater good, the resurrection is coming in the future.

Speaker 9 When I listened to all these interviews, that's kind of what I sense that that is his view. Maybe he wouldn't put it that way, but what do you think about that?

Speaker 10 He wouldn't put it that way. I think his approach has been to sort of put some tool out there, see what the reaction is, and then like calibrate accordingly.

Speaker 10 So it's kind of this like ready, fire, aim approach.

Speaker 10 So, for example, with Sora, their new AI video generating app, people download it, they realize, wow, there's a lot of copyright violations in this thing. I can put Tim and SpongeBob.

Speaker 10 That's hilarious. And, you know, after a bunch of people are like, hey, what about copyright?

Speaker 10 Sam puts up a blog post that's like, after hearing from our valued users, we have decided to implement controls.

Speaker 9 Right. So, okay, so that's better than doing nothing, I guess.

Speaker 10 It's better than doing nothing. And for now, it's fine.

Speaker 10 The question becomes, well, if AI systems become really powerful, do we still want to use this like ready-fire aim approach to releasing them into the world?

Speaker 9 Here's a more specific example of

Speaker 9 why I'm getting the Messiah concerns. He was talking to Tucker.
I would never recommend a Tucker interview just because you hate to give him the clicks, but like

Speaker 9 it's a truly fascinating interview. I mean, at least among them because Tucker accused him of murder halfway through and they do like 20 minutes on that.

Speaker 9 I don't want to get into all that, but the end, the very end, which I haven't actually seen clip that much, is the thing that gave me the most alarm.

Speaker 9 And I want to play, it's a little bit long, but it's worth listening to all of it.

Speaker 9 Tucker asking Altman about the protections that people are going to have to put in place about not knowing what's real and fake.

Speaker 9 Let me ask you one last question, and maybe you can allay this fear that the power of the technology will make it difficult, impossible for anyone to discern the difference between reality and fantasy.

Speaker 9 This is a famous concern.

Speaker 12 A few thoughts there. One, I think we are rapidly heading to a world where people understand

Speaker 9 that

Speaker 12 if you get a phone call from someone that sounds like your kid or your parent, or if you see an image that looks real, you have to really have have some way to verify that you're not being scammed.

Speaker 12 And this is not like, this is no longer theoretical concern. You know, you hear all these reports.

Speaker 12 People are smart. Society is resilient.
I think people are quickly understanding that this is now a thing that bad actors are using.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 12 people are understanding that you got to verify in different ways. I suspect that in addition to things like family members having code words they use in crisis situations,

Speaker 12 we'll see things like when a president of a country has to issue an urgent message, they cryptographically sign it or otherwise somehow guarantee its authenticity.

Speaker 9 Families are going to need a code word?

Speaker 9 People are smart. Societies are resilient.
Again, it's like, has he lived in our society for the last 20 years? Like,

Speaker 9 I look on Twitter and like the worst AI slop imaginable has like 20,000 retweets and people replying to it, mad about it or saying how cool it is.

Speaker 9 It's like the idea that people are just going to adapt to this like this, and your 80-year-old great aunt is going to have a code word that she knows that you say, you know, it's like dingo, you know, before you call her to ask for a check.

Speaker 9 Like, that's fucking insane. Like, that is an insane thing to believe that, like, Trump would put a watermark, a cryptographic watermark on his proclamations.

Speaker 9 Like, are you watching what he's doing now?

Speaker 9 Did you not listen to that and think this sounds like an insane person?

Speaker 10 I mean, I think he's right.

Speaker 9 Like,

Speaker 9 i i do i think do you think families are gonna have a code word so that when somebody calls their phone and and gives them the nigerian prince thing they're gonna know it's they're gonna know it's it's it's not real i think i think it's a good practice like i think that and this is you know long who's gonna actually be like the top 10 of society is capable of doing this like this was my fight with mark cuban over ai where he was talking about like oh it's gonna be so cool people can be entrepreneurial on their own i was like yeah the top 10 of most capable people in society will use this for really cool things.

Speaker 9 But like average people, you know, like my neighbor, Miss Shirley, she's a 90-year-old woman. She's lived here since the 1940s.

Speaker 9 You're telling me that she's going to be able to know the difference between a phone call, whether it's really her son or not? There's no way.

Speaker 10 What I am saying is that the risks created by products made by people, including Sam, require this sort of response.

Speaker 10 And to your point, yes, many people are not going to do this and they're going to fall prey to scams. And I think that is really bad.
But do I think it's silly to have a code word at your house? No.

Speaker 9 I also don't think it's silly. I think it's silly for the creator of the product to be like, my product is going to create all these problems.

Speaker 9 As a result of my product, you are going to get scammed. People are going to steal your money.
They're going to steal your identity. You're not going to know what's true and what is fiction.

Speaker 9 And my suggestion to you is that you have a family code word, dingo, that you use every time you answer the phone. No.
And it's, it's kind of like, what? That is your suggestion.

Speaker 9 Like, you don't, shouldn't you, shouldn't your fucking supercomputer come up with a solution that's better than this?

Speaker 10 It's not like an adequate response to the magnitude of harm.

Speaker 9 I'm alarmed. I'm alarmed.
I don't, like, do you think that people are going to be able to tell what's real and what's not

Speaker 10 in the news? I think that we're in for a messy period where we have to figure that out.

Speaker 10 I'll tell you what an optimist would say is like, Photoshop exists, bro, you know, and we had a moment where we were like, is that real or fake?

Speaker 10 And like, we we mostly figured out the cases in which it was really important to know what was real or fake.

Speaker 10 And it turns out, in the vast majority of cases, it doesn't matter if someone used Photoshop. Now, maybe the advent of AI-generated video will just sort of make all the problems exponentially worse.

Speaker 10 And I think we should be on guard for that. But like, we do have previous instances of society adapting to a new technology.

Speaker 9 I hear that. And I've heard that argument.
Let me give you the pessimist pushback. And again, this is you're just representing the optimist view.

Speaker 9 I know you're just following this stuff closer than me. So I'm hoping for you to allay some of my concerns.

Speaker 9 My pessimist view is that at the same time, these people, Sam and all these others, are saying that this supercomputer is going to

Speaker 9 end disease. It's going to solve all these problems.

Speaker 9 It's going to become so smart that you're going to be able to ask it for advice and it will give you advice and you should listen to it, even if it doesn't seem logical, because it's going to be able to see around corners that you can't see.

Speaker 9 So simultaneously, the supercomputer is that smart and that good. Okay.

Speaker 9 Also,

Speaker 9 this is really just the same as when the printing press was invented.

Speaker 9 And people back then thought that, you know, that it was going to be bad, that they were going to read fake stories and not know whether they were true or false.

Speaker 9 And I'm just like, it can't be both of them. Like, it can't be the same as these other societal advancements, you know, and so easily, easy for humans to

Speaker 9 process and adjust to over a period of time. And also,

Speaker 9 a brilliant supercomputer that can solve the mysteries of the universe that

Speaker 9 no human's ever been able to solve before, right? Like, isn't there a tension there?

Speaker 10 You don't think both things can be true.

Speaker 9 I do not.

Speaker 9 I don't think that the supercomputer can be so smart and brilliant that it's going to solve diseases and be able to give you advice and look around corners and know things that humans can't know.

Speaker 9 And also, the human ability for adaptability is going to be so strong that we're not going to be tricked by it.

Speaker 9 It It seems like we're going to be tricked by it. It seems like pretty much everybody's going to, except for maybe Sam Haltman and

Speaker 9 a few people at the very high end of the Stanford graduating class are going to be tricked by this really smart computer.

Speaker 9 To me, is that wrong?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 10 that's one way of looking at it that could totally be true.

Speaker 10 You know, I feel like what you're describing, though, is a dynamic that you often just see in cybersecurity, where like everything is a cat and mouse game and defenders build walls and attackers build ladders and then defenders build higher walls.

Speaker 10 And the cycle just kind of goes on forever.

Speaker 9 Who are the defenders, though, of the truth? I guess us.

Speaker 10 It's literally you and me. And that's the scary thing.

Speaker 9 We went to a lunch. It is scary.
I always had a lunch with you. Probably, I think the last time I saw you, it was like one of these media literacy things in San Francisco.

Speaker 9 And I just kind of like think back on that. I don't know, it's maybe three years ago.
And it feels like it could have been 100.

Speaker 9 You know, like the types of concerns that we were talking about. It was in the lead up to the 24 election, I think, and like how media companies can combat fake news and misinformation.

Speaker 9 And I don't remember exactly what suggestions we had,

Speaker 9 you and I and our brilliance had for the assembled at that lunch, but I know that they are not nearly up for the task of like what's happening right now. And that's, and it's changing really fast.

Speaker 9 Yeah. Right? Yeah.
I mean, I don't, like, don't, doesn't that work? Like, to me, that's the thing that worries me.

Speaker 9 I'm open to the fact that AI is going to be really great for the sciences and for all these other areas that I don't know much about.

Speaker 9 But in my area that I know a lot about, I'm looking at this and I'm like, I think it's going to be a catastrophe of unimagined proportions.

Speaker 9 I don't think that anyone's going to know what's real anymore.

Speaker 10 This is the risk and it is a real risk.

Speaker 10 I mean, I'm glad you're talking about it in those terms because I think there is a strain of skepticism out there, which hates AI for a different reason, which is that it thinks it's all just a bunch of stupid hype and it's fake and none of it works and it hallucinates.

Speaker 9 What do you think about that?

Speaker 10 I think it's desperate cope from people who don't want to reckon with the fact that we might actually be heading into catastrophe.

Speaker 9 You do think it's cope. Because I don't know.
There's like a 10% of me that like, I've read the who's who's the guy? Gary is the guy.

Speaker 9 Yeah, Gary's the point man for

Speaker 9 if Sam is the diplomat for AI, Gary's the arguer for the fact that this is all fake and these guys are false snake oil salesmen and it's barely anything. I'm open to that, I guess.
I don't know.

Speaker 9 I think that seems less likely than my catastrophizing it's too good situation. But what do you think? Is that possible? Do you think it's like, does he have any merit to his points, do you think?

Speaker 10 I mean, what Gary will point out is that the technology that is used to build current AI systems, large language models, have limitations that would have to be overcomed for people like Sam Altman to achieve their dreams.

Speaker 10 And Gary points out that so far they have not managed to overcome these limitations.

Speaker 10 Now, this is a case, though, where Gary has had to move the goalpost over time because the truth is that models have become much more powerful from GPT-2 to GPT-5 today.

Speaker 10 And so among the sort of AI accelerationist circles, Gary has become a kind of joke because no matter how impressive anything an AI system can do, Gary is on X saying, aha, but I found it make one mistake.

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Speaker 9 What do the smarties think about like the economic side of this? I'm going to stop catastrophizing for a minute.

Speaker 9 Or like, this is kind of a different type of catastrophizing, but like, are we in a, are we in the 90s again? Are we in in a, are we on a bubble trajectory?

Speaker 9 Like, what, what is every, I mean, it's, it's powering a lot of the kind of a weak economy otherwise right now, really.

Speaker 10 Yeah. I mean, Sam Altman says we're in a bubble.
You know, Jeff Bezos says we're in a bubble. So it's like, it's agreed upon by the people who are constructing the bubble that we're in a bubble.

Speaker 10 Of course, in each of those cases, those people think they're on the right side of the bubble and they're creating the true value.

Speaker 10 And it's the sort of other companies that are going to get caught with their, you know, pants down once the tide rolls out to mix Meta Force. So that's what they think.

Speaker 9 When I listen to Sam, it seems to me like if you asked him, I can't imagine that he says this to investors or what I don't just even need investors tell they're rich guys, maybe he does, but like when I listen to him, it's kind of like when the answer is, How are you going to monetize this?

Speaker 9 The answer is kind of like the AI will figure it out. No, no, no, that's not

Speaker 9 right. No, that's wrong.

Speaker 10 No, how it's going to monetize is if you're a person and your job is computer, uh, pretty soon computer will be able to do your job.

Speaker 10 And instead of paying you 100K, 120K, whatever it is, they're going to pay Sam Altman 20K and they're going to, you know, pass along the savings to shareholders. So that's where the value is.

Speaker 9 Is that, I mean, what's the level of panic out there in the bay about just like programmer displacement, salaries, job loss?

Speaker 10 When you look at the data, there is some evidence that junior programmers are having a harder time getting hired than they used to because AI is better at coding tasks than it is basically anything else.

Speaker 10 There are other people who will say, no, no, no, there are too many confounding variables. Like we don't know that that is true just yet.

Speaker 10 But I talk to a lot of software engineers, and what they will say is that it used to be that we would write code, and then it moved to, we write half the code, and then it gets auto-completed.

Speaker 10 And now we just sort of supervise the code and we type in the box what kind of code we want the machine to write. And now it does that.

Speaker 10 So there are a lot of caveats and asterisks along the way, but like that is the trajectory. And I can't imagine it coming to other professions.

Speaker 9 That doesn't sound like a fake innovation to me, if that's like really already happening to people in real life.

Speaker 10 Look at the revenue growth of these companies. I mean, this is like my other answer to the people.

Speaker 10 It's like, in order for all of this stuff to truly be fake in the way that some people think that it is, then there are a lot of companies that are having to be paying tens of billions of dollars to these labs in exchange for literally nothing.

Speaker 10 Like, I don't think that's happening.

Speaker 9 All right. I want to try to be positive for a second before I thank God.

Speaker 10 Jesus Christ.

Speaker 9 Oh, no, I don't have a question. I don't have anything.
So I'm hoping you do. You're out there, you're seeing the cool stuff.

Speaker 9 Like, what is some cool shit you're seeing that isn't getting the attention? Like, oh man, this is going to be neat.

Speaker 10 I mean, let's see.

Speaker 10 Here, like, so I keep a note of what I call capabilities, which is just sort of evidence of mostly AI tech that is helping to advance the scientific frontier in some way that is going to be positive.

Speaker 10 So, I just pulled it up.

Speaker 10 And over the past few weeks, like researchers at Microsoft and IBM are using AI to speed up the search for new materials and chemicals for batteries, which could lead to longer-lasting batteries.

Speaker 10 The UK Cabinet Office recovered 480 million pounds that were lost to fraud using AI risk detection software. People are using AI to identify risks of cargo fires.

Speaker 10 Some of this stuff sounds like super niche and boring. I mean, maybe all of it did, but

Speaker 10 people are figuring out ways to try to do positive things with this stuff.

Speaker 9 Good things can happen. Yeah.
It's hard for me to

Speaker 9 interpret. the arguments around the environmental impact.
And obviously something like this has environmental impact, right?

Speaker 9 But like, there are, you know, people on the deep climate concern side that like make claims that are apocalyptic about it.

Speaker 9 And then you see kind of free market people being like, well, one search on your chat GPT is equivalent to like, you know, not even turning on a light bulb. You know what I mean? It's like nothing.

Speaker 9 And so

Speaker 9 have you tried to navigate that dispute at all?

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 10 Here's the sort of like middle path that I have arrived at. I think that for most people, moderate use of chatbots, you should not

Speaker 10 sort of feel bad about it any more than you would feel bad like taking a flight across the country or like binging eight hours of Netflix. Like all that stuff has an environmental cost.

Speaker 10 You're using chat GPT is not going to be much worse than that.

Speaker 10 Now, where I do think that there is room for concern is in the construction of the massive data centers all around the country, that has a legitimate environmental impact.

Speaker 10 And this is where I think that the AI companies are really going to piss off every American, is it seems like it is going to raise energy costs.

Speaker 10 Like at some point, either now, like between now and the near future, Americans' electricity bills are going to go up. And AI is already deeply unpopular, by the way.

Speaker 10 Like I'm out here like trying to tell people this is like stuff is very dangerous. And I still somehow like get grouped in like the hype wing of the party.

Speaker 10 But like, but people truly hate this stuff.

Speaker 10 And like, if you think they hate it now, like, wait till their electricity bill goes up 20 bucks a month because then they're going to be in a lot more trouble.

Speaker 9 Yeah, that's a good point. The other thing about the data centers, and I don't know, I was listening to one of the Derek Thompson's podcasts with somebody who's an expert on this.

Speaker 9 And I can't even begin to try to translate this, but like the data centers don't even have as long of a shelf life as the other ones used to, right?

Speaker 9 Like because the technology is changing so fast that you have to update the capabilities so often. And so like they're expressing potentially some other concerns about that.

Speaker 9 Like even if you're like, even if you're excited about the jobs that are coming to the community at the data center, like in two to three years, it might be like, oh, whoops, no. Sorry.

Speaker 9 This one is, this is the old kind. This is the coal.

Speaker 10 I mean, I want to dig in on that more. Like, my understanding is like once you build one of these things, you like can swap components in and out.
Like, yeah,

Speaker 9 that they're saying,

Speaker 10 but we'll see, I guess.

Speaker 9 Anyway, I don't know. It's a brave new world out there.

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Speaker 1 CBS Thursdays. Don't miss the new season of the CBS original Matlock.

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Speaker 1 madlock cbs thursdays at 9-8 central and streaming on paramount plus

Speaker 9 can we do a couple personality questions before we leave can you explain to me i want you to do a personality chart for tim cook i don't understand i i truly like why would he

Speaker 9 get rid of the ice block apps off of the iphone

Speaker 9 why is he bringing donald trump trophies i i mean has there ever ever been a company in the history of the world that was more liquid, that it was more able to withstand like a little bit of heat?

Speaker 9 Like, it feels like it's over the top. I'm not asking him to be on the Bullwork podcast talking about how Trump has small fingers or whatever, but like it doesn't, it feels like he's going overboard.

Speaker 10 It's so depressing. It's like the only instinct this company has is to make money and create shareholder value.

Speaker 10 Now, it is true that Apple is uniquely vulnerable to Chinese tariffs. And so in a way, I'm not surprised that they're bending over backwards to please the Trump administration.

Speaker 10 But like, go listen to Jim Jordan's committee about censorship and the jawboning that they're so pissed off that happened under Biden.

Speaker 10 And now they're like nervous because the attorney general is like, I don't like that app. I don't want to see it in the store.
Like, obviously, there's just a huge amount of hypocrisy here.

Speaker 9 It is true. And again, I guess this is probably too much to ask.
It's just worth saying, though. Like, yeah, they're, they're vulnerable to the Chinese Chinese tariffs.

Speaker 9 Also, Trump is vulnerable to them. Like, a lot of times in these conversations, it's sort of at the TikTok deal at the top we were talking about, right?

Speaker 9 We're like, people talk about how Trump has power, you know, and Trump bullies people and uses his power to get what he wants. And that happens.
It is true. Like, he can threaten people.

Speaker 9 But, like, Apple has power over Trump. Do you think that, do you think that if they decided, if they just said, they could have gone the other way, which said, okay, great.
I agree.

Speaker 9 The tariff's a great idea. The iPhone costs $2,000 now.
$2,000 for a new iPhone this year. People are fucking pissed about that.
App store prices are going up.

Speaker 9 You know, there's a lot of non-political people out there that aren't involved in all of this stuff. Like, you know what I mean? Like me, that would be like, whoa, I'm pissed at Trump now.

Speaker 9 I was, I thought I was for Trump. Why is Trump doing this? Why is my, I want my new iPhone.
It costs $1,000 more. It's Trump's fault.
They can put a little, this is Trump's fault tag on it.

Speaker 9 Like, I don't know.

Speaker 9 That option was available to them. Like, they have power too, you know?

Speaker 10 Absolutely. And like you, I am desperate to see more people call his bluff because in many cases, this is a bluff.

Speaker 9 Yeah, he might just talk about something else. Like, he Trump tries this on the like, look, are we invading Greenland still? You know what I mean?

Speaker 9 Like, a lot, like, Trump, like Sam Altman, I'm sure Sam Altman will love this comparison, does the ready-fire aim.

Speaker 9 Like, he throws out shit, and then if it doesn't work, he like moves on to something else. Yeah.
Right. And like, that could happen with some of these tech guys.
You know, they're not like his

Speaker 9 great enemies that he's worried about. They're not like the Jim Comey or, you know, whatever.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 9 Like, if they called his bluff, he might very well just move on to some to pick an easier fight.

Speaker 10 It's true, but in order for that to happen, they would have to have some motive other than revenue maximizing. And they just, they just simply do not.

Speaker 9 Okay. Well, I like revenue, but you know, you can balance in all things.
Yeah. Do you know why Elon is back with Trump? Do you have any insight into that? What happens?

Speaker 10 I mean, when you say back with Trump, you just sort of mean like tweeting nice things about him again? Yeah.

Speaker 9 I mean, they're hanging out.

Speaker 10 Here's what I would say, Tim. Here's what I would say.
Ketamine is a powerful drug, best used in moderate quantities under the care of a doctor. That would be my comment on that.

Speaker 9 Oh, okay. Yeah.
What about light to moderate qualities at the club?

Speaker 10 I mean, look, is it your 40th birthday? Are you in a Viva? Like, it kind of depends on the details.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 9 All right. So you just think he's like, it's just like total.
Like, it's not anything to do with like.

Speaker 10 Elon Musk is like a random number generator for opinions, you know? Like just depending on the day, you're going to get 46 and then next, you know, the next day it's 71.

Speaker 10 And like asking me to try to like chart the evolution is like, you know, asking me to guess the position of an atom.

Speaker 9 I think that's totally fair. Yeah.
All right. Last thing I just, sure out there, there.

Speaker 9 Now all of a sudden the Silicon Valley kind of tech bro world is being analyzed like, you know, anthropologically, like what happened to them?

Speaker 9 You know, like I asked my colleague, I saw you were coming on, asked him for any thoughts on what I should ask you. And like one of his questions was,

Speaker 9 why did the old valley like gates

Speaker 9 stay pretty liberal and the new valley like get red-pilled, like the younger internet valley? And

Speaker 9 I think then there's also kind of a sub-question to that, which is like, did the new valley get red-pilled? Or is it just like 12 really loud, influential people who are red-pilled?

Speaker 10 That's my view.

Speaker 9 Okay, yeah. So give us a little assessment of what's happening out there, a little anthropology of tech bro world.

Speaker 10 So I understand the perception that Silicon Valley just like swung massively to the right, but like to me, this is an artifact of the information environment created by social media algorithms that are constantly showing you the loudest, angriest, crankiest people, right?

Speaker 10 And our entire politics have reoriented around these cranks. And there are 12 of them in Silicon Valley who are really good at getting attention by saying kind of outrageous things all of the time.

Speaker 10 So like the rank and file workers at these companies, like check the donation, they're still donating to Democrats. Like these people are not thrilled.

Speaker 10 that Trump is in power, but there is a tiny elite subclass that has realized they can get a lot more out of Trump than they got from Biden because unlike Biden, Trump could be bought off.

Speaker 10 And it really is that simple.

Speaker 9 Yeah. Have people of the COVID red-pilled people moved back? You got a new mayor now, Keith Rebois.
Is he back there? Like, you know, people got in condos again. What's happening?

Speaker 10 I mean, I think

Speaker 10 it's hard for me to say how much San Francisco has changed. I'm such a like true believer in San Francisco.
I didn't care when everyone left. I sort of don't care if they came back.

Speaker 10 It's always the same great city like to me that it's always been. So, you know, I don't know.
That's a bad answer to your question, but like that is a bad answer.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Let me see if I could take it again.

Speaker 9 Yeah. Let's see.
You're a professional podcaster. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Here's the answer to your question.

Speaker 10 If you look at the rents in San Francisco, they're skyrocketing again. This is where the AI boom is happening.

Speaker 10 And yes, it's a bubble and it's going to pop and some people are going to get left high and dry. But in the meantime, the rents are popping.
The crazy parties are happening.

Speaker 10 And, you know, San Francisco is having a great time. But we always have a great time in San Francisco.

Speaker 9 What is in at the crazy parties now? What's the new, is there, there's always some hot new trend that's starting out there that other, the rest of us haven't heard of yet.

Speaker 9 What's coming to New Orleans in five years?

Speaker 9 Designer drugs or different familial relationships or

Speaker 9 the new terms.

Speaker 10 The best one I heard of recently was a peptide party where, you know, you're familiar with, you know, sort of the GLP3s and the Ozempics and the Manjaros, but there are these sort of next generation peptides that you can buy off of like, you know, shady websites.

Speaker 10 And so some people now throw parties where you can sort of go and like sample them and, you know, sort of body hack yourself into transcendence. So that's, that's our latest one out here, Tim.

Speaker 9 All right. It's so nice to be here in Louisiana.
We've got fat people, you know, it's just whiskey and beer. It's beautiful.
But every once in a while, I'll come back. I'd like to see a peptide party.

Speaker 9 Invite me.

Speaker 9 I'll come back and see my old friends. Casey Newton, man, I appreciate you very much.
For folks who want to nerd out on this more, Platformer is

Speaker 9 the newsletter. Hard fork is the podcast.
We'll be talking to you soon, brother.

Speaker 10 Thank you, Tim. Have fun.

Speaker 9 All right, guys. That was Casey Newton.
The singularity couldn't come soon enough, I guess. We'll be doing that

Speaker 9 every six weeks or so,

Speaker 9 keeping our eye on the trajectory of our society and the tech oligarchs that are trying to influence it. Back to politics tomorrow.
Hope you enjoyed it, and hope we'll see you all then. Peace.

Speaker 9 she has to discipline her body

Speaker 9 because she knows that

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Speaker 9 to defeat those

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Speaker 9 I know she can beat them.

Speaker 9 Oh, Yoshima,

Speaker 9 they don't believe me.

Speaker 9 But you won't let those

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Speaker 9 They don't believe it

Speaker 9 But you won't let those

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Speaker 9 Those evil nature robots

Speaker 9 are definitely

Speaker 9 They're programmed to destroy us

Speaker 9 She's gotta be strong to fight them.

Speaker 9 So she's taking lots of vitamin moves.

Speaker 9 Cause she knows that

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Speaker 9 if those evil

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Speaker 9 I know she can be them.

Speaker 9 Oh, Yoshima.

Speaker 9 They don't believe me.

Speaker 9 But you won't let those

Speaker 9 robots defeat me, Yoshimi.

Speaker 9 They don't believe me.

Speaker 9 But you won't let those

Speaker 9 robots see me, Yoshimi.

Speaker 9 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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