Biden Wins the Debt Deal, and AI Extinction

Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott Galloway: So once every couple of months, I like to have sex. So I'm having sex. Kid walks in on us. Son walks in on us. I'm like, get out of here. And then a few minutes later, I walk down the hallway and I hear a bunch of noises coming from his room. I walk in and he's having sex with his grandmother. And I'm like, what are you doing? And he looks at me and says, not so funny when it's your mother.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. Really? Oh, that's good.

Scott Galloway: That's Bill Einstein from Larry Funkhauser or the guy who plays Funkhauser from The Larry David Show. I just wanted to ease back into the whole podcast, given that we've been off.

Kara Swisher: Oh, Scott. Can't you take that joke over to your other podcasts?

Scott Galloway: Oh, it's worse on the other pod. This is PG-13 compared to the other pod.

Kara Swisher: Oh, that was not PG-13. That was tasteless. That was utterly tasteless.

Scott Galloway: That's why the other pod is growing so fast.

Kara Swisher: Well, they're equally tasteless, I feel. Actually, I was at a Lady Fest yesterday and last night in Silicon Valley. And they asked about your proclivity to talk about penis jokes and tell penis and sex jokes.

Scott Galloway: Well, notice how they were talking about it. I'm just saying.

Kara Swisher: Just saying. I wouldn't say it was positive.

Scott Galloway: No. I thought you were supposed to invite me to that. I was going to be the surprise guest with outdoor plumbing. And introducing outdoor plumbing.

Kara Swisher: No, actually. It's this party run for many years, first by Aileen Lee, who's a venture capitalist here, and then Jackie Reese's joined her. It's quite a big event. They used to start like 20 people in Costco food, essentially, and margaritas. And now it's 300 people of women. And the men are either the company founders or their husbands serve the food. So men are just waiters at the thing.

Scott Galloway: God, that sounds just so stupid.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it was lovely. We loved it. It was great. It was really nice. Have men serve. Men serve, yes.

Scott Galloway: That'll show them.

Kara Swisher: It was nice. Now it was sweet.

Scott Galloway: That'll fix things. You know, other people have normal sweet lives where everything isn't loaded with these kind of things. That'll fix things.

Kara Swisher: It didn't fix things. But actually, it was nice to see so many young women entrepreneurs. There was a cannabis entrepreneur there handing out samples.

Scott Galloway: So in addition to gender diversity, the problem with venture capital is there's no background. 40% of all venture capitalists, and I bet it's 80% of venture capital allocated, are from people who went to one or two schools.

Kara Swisher: Oh.

Scott Galloway: So while everyone's focused on gender, because it's an easy thing to distinguish, the real problem is that everybody, the capital that gets allocated basically gets allocated around things that one type of person, specifically a person who's a rich kid or freakishly remarkable at 17 would do, in my view.

Kara Swisher: All right. Okay. I'm glad you changed a women's topic to schools, but that's fine. Anyway, it was lovely. Femtech is underinvested. I'll give you that.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, okay. Usually underinvested.

Kara Swisher: By the way, menopause is having a moment. There's a bunch of funding and information around, or a bunch of attention around menopause.

Scott Galloway: All right. Okay.

Kara Swisher: The party was fun. The party was fun. It was good to see a lot of really amazing people. I can't believe I wasn't asked to serve.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you weren't asked to serve. It was people's husbands, and I guess I could have next year. How about next year? I am the closest thing you have to a husband.

Kara Swisher: That is true.

Scott Galloway: And almost divorced husband, as it turns out, after today.

Kara Swisher: As I said last time, you're on thin ice on that issue. But anyway, it was fun. It was fun. And then we had a ladies party afterwards at a very good restaurant called Bird Dog. And it was a very Palo Alto, Silicon Valley evening. And so all the ladies then had dinner. And it was full of food. I had Ryan Holiday, the Daily Stoic guy on my other podcast, the NC17 podcast. And he said that the key to marriage is not breaking up. So I just want to throw that out there, Kara.

Scott Galloway: Okay.

Kara Swisher: But it kind of made sense, right?

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Yeah, I guess.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's true. When you think about the value out of marriage, it's that you think twice before dissolving the relationship in an era where it's the bigger, better deal always comes from along.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I think a lot of people do think twice and three times, actually, in a lot of ways.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, 100%. Let me ask a question. They asked at the dinner party, which was a small group of women last night, they were asking two questions. What is your secret indulgence, essentially, and what is your greatest challenge right now? I'd like you to answer that question.

Scott Galloway: I really like, my indulgence is late night. I stay up till 3 a.m. and it's just peaceful for me. And sometimes I do an edible, other times I don't. But I just enjoy that time at night. That's an indulgence because if I had a real job, I wouldn't be able to stay up till 3 in the morning on weeknights.

Kara Swisher: That's true.

Scott Galloway: So that's a real indulgence.

Kara Swisher: And challenge. What's your greatest challenge? This got very serious very fast. I'll go, but then I want to hear yours.

Scott Galloway: My greatest challenge, Kara, is being present. I struggle with a little bit with anger and depression, so I spent too much time in the past. And as a successful person, I am successful. I spend a lot of time in the future constantly trading off the present for the future. And my greatest challenge is not getting to the end of my life. And looking back on it and thinking, wow, what a life of exceptional privilege, blessings, people who love me, people I love immensely. But I was never really there. I never really lived it. So my greatest challenge is, quite frankly, is just, it sounds passe, is being in the moment.

Kara Swisher: That's really, that's a great, that's a great thing to talk. So very deep, actually. See, they also talked about how they liked that you had access to that very much. Besides the penis jokes, they said it's really nice.

Scott Galloway: It's all fun and games when it's your mother.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. See, this is the problem. What's your greatest challenge?

Scott Galloway: Well, my indulgence was power washing the deck. I love to power wash the deck.

Kara Swisher: Jesus.

Scott Galloway: I do. I take my time. I take it. You should see. I'm going to send you pictures.

Kara Swisher: I take it we're hanging out with lesbians again.

Scott Galloway: No, not at all. But there was a straight woman there who also loved to power wash.

Kara Swisher: Power wash?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I love power. It's so satisfying.

Kara Swisher: I would have not guessed that if you'd asked me to guess a million things. I love the power washing of the deck. I did it for hours the other day. It was so lovely. And you can see the difference in the dirt. It's totally meaningless, but it's so beautiful.

Scott Galloway: I'm telling you, you want a TikTok that goes viral? There is. Get an Insta360 of you doing power washing your deck. Let me just tell you, power washing is a big deal on TikTok and everything else.

Kara Swisher: Because the difference, I'll send you a photo. If you power wash, I power wash something that I didn't know was light. And it was light. And I was like beyond belief, thrilled. And so that was my adulthood, which I enjoyed. And people like that. And my challenge was time management, that I have lots to do. And I wish I had more time.

Scott Galloway: I think you're great at time management.

Kara Swisher: I am. But it's still trade-offs. And I wish I had two of me and stuff like that. I am good at time.

Scott Galloway: Well, it's more, it's behind the scenes. You don't see how the, I am very good at it.

Kara Swisher: It looks that way, but it's also very.

Scott Galloway: Do you overcommit? Does your professional life challenge your personal life and vice versa?

Kara Swisher: It used to much more. I've gotten much better at it. I spend a lot more time with my kids than I used to. And it's all worth it, obviously. But it's just, it gets you tired at times. Like committing doing the book and all my podcasts and this and that. But succession ended, so I have some more time. And the book is done.

Scott Galloway: So your book is done.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, the book is done. That's exciting.

Scott Galloway: You know, I think that book is something you will tell your great-grandchildren about when you see them later tonight because you're old. Get it? Anyway, I took Louis with me yesterday. I went to see Aurora.

Kara Swisher: I saw the Instagram.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, he went to – I haven't shown you the Aurora one, which was great, which is a truck company. Makes software for autonomous trucks. They're much more further along than the car stuff, which is really interesting. It was run by the guy who started Waymo.

Kara Swisher: I was wondering how long it would take before there was a dig at Elon.

Scott Galloway: No, it wasn't. Seven minutes into the show.

Kara Swisher: No, the old car. So it's not a dig. It's just an easier thing to do because these are these long haul truckers on long straight routes in the south, for example, they're working on. That just makes so much sense, doesn't it?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it does.

Kara Swisher: I'm just saying it's a better market.

Scott Galloway: It's a better – they were outfitting Peterbilt trucks. It was really cool. I'll have a podcast on it. But it's just a better economics. So trucker is the number one job for men without college degrees.

Kara Swisher: Well, there's not enough of them by a lot, actually.

Scott Galloway: That's one of the reasons all these companies are participating in it. They've got a lot of partners as opposed to doing it by themselves, making their own trucks. And this isn't – Cybertruck is not the competitor. These are real long-haul trucks. These aren't like Rivians and things like that. But it was cool. And we were in the cab with the truck. But that's not going to exist. It's all going to be computers. And it doesn't even have to look like that. Which was cool.

Kara Swisher: So you take your kids to autonomous. He wanted to go. Autonomous driving software companies.

Scott Galloway: I'm taking my kid to Man U versus Man City on Saturday. And then I'm taking my other one the next weekend to Istanbul to see the finals of the Champions League.

Kara Swisher: Oh, well, that's a good thing to dad son thing.

Scott Galloway: Inter Milan and Man City again. Yeah, we wanted to see it. He was really interested. I'm taking my daughter to Disney Princesses at Wolf Trap at some point.

Kara Swisher: Disney Princesses at what?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, Amanda won't come. It's a Disney princesses concert at all this disney princesses sing all the disney princess songs have you seen the princess whatever you want to call it experience at disney where the not yet little girls i'm not exaggerating it is magical i've seen it from afar i almost decided to have a third kid because i thought i gotta have a daughter because a because i need someone to take care of me when i get older when yeah when yeah my wife rises up and kicks my ass to the curb and two okay it is you see these little girls emerge with their wings and i'm not exaggerating they can fly i have it is the most like a wonderful experience i'm like disney i hope disney does really well just because yeah it's interesting because amanda doesn't want to go she doesn't want to lean too heavily into the disney princesses and i kind of like them and it's a really interesting issue because Clara loves them. She wears her Disney princess outfits all the time. And, you know, she's a spunky young lady, but she's also very into this. And it's really, I want to take her, but it's something you think about a lot. Like, do you want, but-

Kara Swisher: What, Amanda wants her power washing? How can you not have your little girl dressed up as a princess?

Scott Galloway: No, but, you know, I'm more eager to see the, they've done a much better job with these movies lately. But no, I don't know. It's just a thing you think about. You think about, like, just, you do. You have boys and I have boys. My youngest, was it my youngest or my oldest? The best birthday present, a friend of ours brought over a pram, the pram for a doll. And she said, boys like cars and girls like dolls, but both boys and girls love the pram. Yes. And he absolutely loved it. He would put things in the pram and drive it around the house. And it was wonderful.

Kara Swisher: Saul loves his stroller. He loves it, loves it, loves it, loves it. It's his favorite thing. He also bangs it in and throws it, but it's also, he loves it. I'm so glad there's not a real baby in it. Let me think. No, my kids like this. And tonight, Louie's going to cook here with Jeff and a whole pack of people. Your brother's in town?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, he lives here. I'm in San Francisco.

Kara Swisher: Oh, you're in San Francisco. Okay.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's why I was down in Silicon Valley. D-Swish. D-Swish. Dr. Swisher. J-Swish and also Louie are going to cook, which is going to be great. They're making Wagyu beef. Jeff got some somewhere.

Kara Swisher: Wow. Wagyu-ing the beef.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: So that's what we're doing. It's very exciting. Sounds great. Anyway, so we have a lot to get to today. The winners and losers of the debt ceiling deal. And AI is either an existential threat or an incredible investment opportunity, depending on who you ask. We'll get into that. And the hardest question to ask another parent. First, Facebook said it could pull news from its app in California if the state passes a bill requiring it to pay publishers. It's the same threat made in Australia over a similar law in 2021. In that case, Facebook briefly banned news from its Australia platform before reaching a deal to pay publishers in the nation. I don't know. It's going to go on all over the world. Do you think they'd have a better answer than bullet? I don't know. What do you what do you think?

Scott Galloway: One of the greatest slow burns that have really hurt America is that journalism plays an exceptionally important role. The national stuff, the geopolitical stuff, the stuff on the markets and the stuff on money is either adequately or over covered. But if you're talking about corruption at City Hall in Worthington, Ohio, there used to be, I think you call it gumshoe, a guy or gal on the B that said, these people are stealing. or these people were supposed to funnel money for this program to the homeless in Worthington and they're not. And journalists were arguably, other than the algebra of deterrence and that is punishment, journalists were the best sort of forward-leaning security force or police without a badge in America because of free press, because we had remarkable people who got great certification and learned this journalistic skill around trying to do the work and have a balanced view around stuff and fact check. And in the last 30 years, the number of journalists in America has been cut in half. And the number of PR comms people, who I hear from about 15 times a day telling me what a great podcast guest they have for me, or inviting me to dinner with some incredibly, remarkably uninteresting douchebag, just because he runs a tech company, for some reason I'd want to have dinner with him. Those people have gone up. So the ratio of spin and bullshit to on-the-ground coverage of really key issues has gone the wrong way 12x.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's true. But is Facebook bluffing here?

Scott Galloway: Oh, 100%. I mean, who would benefit their VPNs so you could get the full Facebook experience by just dialing in through a Las Vegas VPN or something? I think this is a total bluff. What are your thoughts?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I think you're right. I think they're going to maybe do it. They'll end up paying. And then the thing is, we need national laws on this, not state laws. This is another issue with state laws. I've talked to so many people recently around AI, around all these different privacy. These state laws make it impossible for, you know, whether it was Montana with TikTok or whatever, even California laws. It creates all kinds of chaos, including for these companies. Like, what do we, who do we look at? You know, there's got to be some global initiatives around certain AI things. There's got to be national initiatives here. And that would be – they're not going to pull it from the U.S., right? They're not going to pull news from the U.S. They can try. They tried to do it in Australia and threatened to do it. But it's a complex topic. And I'm not going to just say, oh, they should pay – like how they should pay is going to be hard. Figuring out who benefits is going to be hard. But they certainly know. Or change the business where the news is not important to their thing. I don't know. I just feel like it's a bluff. And I wouldn't bluff California on lots of things. It might get blocked in the courts. I mean, there's.

Scott Galloway: It might. I was looking at the Montana thing and there one Oh yeah Interstate commerce You not supposed to get in the way of a company ability to do Oh Montana going to lose on it like nine different things The Montana bill is really bills of attainment when you target a company This is targeting, I think, a sector or all social media. Disney's going to win in Florida. But yeah, I'm a fan of being very aggressive with social media that has basically pulled up a dump truck to every media company. And because media companies, and I saw this firsthand at the Times, so desperately want to hang out with the cool kids and, you know, accessorize their analog outfit with digital earrings that they entered into a series of just ridiculously stupid deals and then normalized the notion that they do all the work, take all the risks. I had Bill Keller. He used to be the managing editor on my podcast in New York Times. And I remember at a board dinner and I was at the table with Bill. I remember in the middle of the dinner, Bill had to leave early. And I said, what are you doing? He's like, I'm negotiating. I'm trying to negotiate with several different parties the release of a journalist from the Taliban. Yeah. And I thought, okay, that's what we do here at the fucking New York Times. And meanwhile, Google's off printing money in their sleep because we send people into harm's way to report. And they end up as hostages. And we got to negotiate for the release. I mean, the balance. The balance, we were so stupid to fall in love with this bullshit notion of information wants to be free. Remember that one?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I do. I sure do.

Scott Galloway: Oh, Senator Kerry, it's early days and we're going to send you a ton of traffic. And these companies essentially just pulled up a dump truck and started taking money from media companies. And it's been very damaging. I mean, the flip side is it's given a lot of people voice and access and some incredible talent bubbles up. It doesn't have to go to the Columbia School of Journalism and get in the right platform. It has democratized a certain level of journalism. But on the whole, I think we've been net losers.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. By the way, Bill Keller was the founding editor-in-chief of the Marshall Project, which looks at criminal justice things.

Scott Galloway: That's right.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. But he's had quite a legendary career. We do both think they're bluffing. Speaking of not bluffing anymore, one person is headed to jail. Elizabeth Holmes reported to a minimum security prison in Texas to begin her 11-year sentence. She follows Sunny Belwani, the former COO of Theranos, who entered a different prison last month. His sentence is nearly 13 years. The pair are also on the hook for more than $450 million in restitution to victims. They probably do not have that money. We'll see if she serves her full sentence or gets early parole. She's still appealing her conviction. It's a, as I said, minimum security prison where families can visit more. But three women escaped the prison where Holmes is serving her sentence. One is still at large. You know, there were tons of stories about this. There's never been so much coverage of one woman, given all the fraud that's happened in Silicon Valley, going into prison. But she's a, you know, she's a, she's someone who people seem interested in reading about. And she's headed to prison. So that's that.

Scott Galloway: I think they got this wrong.

Kara Swisher: Really?

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: I think she's guilty of fraud. I think she should go to prison. I think 11 years does not match the crime.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. What, more?

Kara Swisher: No, I think it should have been less.

Scott Galloway: Oh, less.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it was like, God, Scott, I'm going to have to come and reach through that.

Scott Galloway: The four factors of sentencing are the severity of the crime, the defendant's history, mandatory minimums, and the purpose of the sentence. So the severity of the crime here, she committed fraud and she stole money from institutional, accredited, wealthy investors. It was nothing around health here. No one got an incorrect diagnosis and they died. That they proved, yeah. She didn't pump up a stock on CNBC and call it a software. I mean, she didn't retail. No retail investor lost money. She committed fraud against institutional investors. Should she go to prison? Should she go to prison for 11 years? Yeah, yeah. She probably won't go to prison for 11 years. It was interesting.

Kara Swisher: Okay, but that's what she was sentenced to.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I know. No, I know. I get it. She's got two kids. What, should she judge Scott? The thing here, and I'm not a sensing guideline person here, but I think that you had a series of very well-connected, older, very kind of credentialed and well-connected people, including former heads of allied, supreme allied commanders of NATO on this board. They felt lied to. They wanted to cover their own ass. They wanted to position her as the criminal here and went after her. And let's compare and contrast that with the Sacklers.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: The Sacklers, by the way, for people who don't know, will pay up to $6 billion to help address the effects of the opioid crisis, but they won't be held liable. The federal appeals court granted them immunity from civil liability suits. But let's compare the two. Elizabeth Holmes lied to investors. She stole from them. She's going to prison for 11 years. The Sacklers delayed and obfuscated and ignored a ton of evidence about the damage that their product was doing. And we have what is arguably more deaths per year than died in the entire Vietnam conflict because these individuals were so incredibly greedy. And they're gonna have to give up half their wealth, which means absolutely nothing. Being worth 6 billion versus 12 billion means nothing. And the problem in corporate America, or a problem, it's not immorality. People who are immoral are easy to find and starch out of your company. It's amorality. Specifically, you talk yourself into believing that because there's not direct attribution between you and someone who is an opioid addict in the Midwest, in a small rural town, you come up with reasons and the ability with lobbyists and regulatory capture and investors who love you and people around you tell you you're a genius to continue to incrementally do massive harm. And because of the corporate, and this is one of the great innovations in America, the corporate shield protects you from criminal liability yourself around what the company, quote unquote, the company does.

Kara Swisher: Let me just say, they think that getting money to the victims, I was reading all the stories about it, was important. About under a billion dollars will go to individual victims and survivors. And so they felt like they just needed to get this money out because these people had continued to try to get out of this situation. But let's look at the severity of the crime. Let's look at both of them. The severity of crime is about a billion times worse than the Sacklers, Elizabeth Holmes said. The defendant's history, none of them had a criminal history. Mandatory minimums. There are no mandatory minimums with a corporate shield. There was a minimum with a federal case around fraud. The purpose of the sentence, I would argue that the purpose of these sentences or these fines is very simple. It's a deterrent. They're trying to say to other CEOs, regardless of how big your economy is or how many turtlenecks you have or where you went to school. If you lie to your investors, you could go to jail. What is the deterrence here if you're a pharma executive? What is the deterrence? It's not a deterrence. It's an encouragement. It's an incentive. If you kill 50,000 people indirectly, you might have to give up half the $12 billion fortune you acquired by creating this damage.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. It's interesting comparison. I want to get your view on this. Do you think Elizabeth Holmes should go to jail for 11 years? I think she shouldn't be. 11 years was a surprise to me. I had forgotten it was 11 years and it is too long. You know, a couple of years, I suppose. It is interesting that, of course, of all the many hijinks in Silicon Valley, she's the one that gets it. The one with the ovaries gets put away. Yeah. And same thing with Martha Stewart and going to jail for insider trading. I was like, huh. I haven't heard many of those for high profile people like Martha Stewart. And maybe she did that, but boy, was that a real, and of course she's bounced back rather significantly, but it still is. I think it's too long, obviously. And the Sacklers, I think should be thrown down in a hole. I just don't know what else to say. They were clearly pushed this stuff out there and there has to be some liability that is more significant that they can't shield themselves from, but they did. That's what they've done. Let's move on. Elon Musk may have cut costs at Twitter, but he also cut something else. Its value, again, Twitter is worth just one-third of its $44 billion purchase price, according to Fidelity, which already cut that number, marked it down, and now they're marking it down further. It's not even worth what they just marked it down to. So, you know, there you have it. It's continuing to lose value. Musk's stake is worth now eight, I guess. Not a surprise, of course.

Scott Galloway: Marks are really interesting. And if you want to look at perverse behavior on a board and management team, you can almost always reverse engineer it to compensation. Uh-huh. And so, and I'm on these boards currently or have been. And that is, rather than get, you should always, when you're doing a next round of investing, you should always get a third party lead. Because it's easy for us to smoke our own supply and say, oh, the company's doing better even though the market's shitty. Yeah. And we've hit some bumps. We raised money at $3 billion. Right. But now we're worth $4 billion. Yeah. And you're not. Right. And what you need is a third party to come in with fresh capital and say, this is what the company is worth. And then if your existing investors think that's too low, they can do their pro rata. But you need a third party mark. And what there has been an abundance of over the last decade is a lack of third party marks. Because what happens is the following. The guy at Fidelity who made this investment gets compensated based on where the performance of his investments are relative to a benchmark. That's right. And it's based on, with private companies, right, such as this one, the mark. And so the real mark on Twitter, Cara, is zero for the equity. Because they have $13 billion in debt. The company will do $2 or $2.5 billion. Unless it's worth more, in terms of valuation metrics than Meta or Google, the value of the company is less than $13 billion, meaning the equity value is zero. So the real mark should be zero. But the guy running that and the IR people that have to report that number don't want the mark to be zero. So back to private company boards, what you see a lot of times is an internal round. And this happened like the last two or three rounds at WeWork where they keep investing at higher valuation so they can report a mark to their fund and their limiteds and maybe even fake out retail investors when it goes public. But marks are very dangerous because there's perverse incentives around them. They should just say zero. It's worth nothing. The equity is worth zero at Twitter.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah, yeah. How is this? Show me the math, the comparables, the EBITDA, the growth rate. Just because someone will pay for it. This is a company. No company in history without some sort of a legal act or force to majeure has gone from $5 billion in revenue to $2 billion in about eight months.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that is interesting. A historic decline in revenue. $13 billion in debt. What's the multiple here? Two to three times? It's worth $6 to $8 billion. That means its equity is negative.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, he's got to get a business. He's got to get Linda Yaccarino in there working. I'd heard that she's got some contract issues at NBC. It was a rumor at the party last night.

Scott Galloway: Did one of your waiters tell you that?

Kara Swisher: No, they were useless. It was interesting because, by the way, there were a lot of Twitter people at this party. And he's not paying them. He's not paying them. He's not paying anything, not paying rent, not paying. He owes lots of money. Severance, yeah. His attitude is, sue me. There'll be some breakage.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, sue me. That's right. He's like a health insurance company. Make it really hard to get reimbursed, and you'll just have a certain amount of breakage.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, the whole thing is a financial meltdown. It was so interesting when I said, it's not even worth this. What are you talking about? It's not worth anything? You went on Twitter to do that. And of course, all his stans came out. And like, you don't get what he's doing. He's making a super app. It's going to be this big business. I said, the only thing this is going to be is a meme stock, maybe?

Kara Swisher: I was like, that seems to, like, he'll sell it to a bunch of imbeciles like yourselves, and he'll run away with the money. Like, are you kidding? And he won't go to jail, by the way, for doing that. He'll just have bought a ticket on the Dumb Dumb Express.

Scott Galloway: Wealthiest man in the world as of today.

Kara Swisher: Is he? Again? Because of the increase in Tesla stock. Took it back from Bernard Arnault. So, there you go. It goes up and down.

Scott Galloway: It's worth zero. Yes, that's correct. But he can afford it, and it gives him influence. That's what he's buying in this case. What'll be really interesting is when the banks that underwrote the debt take the debt off the balance sheet and cure it and price it to see what the debt trades at.

Kara Swisher: They seem to try not to be doing that. They protect him, for sure.

Scott Galloway: Well, I don't think it's them protecting him as much as they don't want to take the loss. Because right now, I bet they have it on their books. Again, back to this notion of marks and perverse incentives. When Morgan Stanley has called it $5 billion worth of Twitter bonds, if they have to sell them at two and a half billion, they have to take a two and a half billion dollar loss and they have to talk about it in their next earnings call. That is not a good look. So they're probably keeping it on their books at 80 to a hundred cents on the dollar. And if it goes out at less than a hundred cents on the dollar, what that means is the equity is worth zero. The company is not worth the $13 billion in debt, which the debt will not go out at 100 cents on the dollar. So, again, the equity here is worthless. I think he's already tired of it. He wants out of Dodge. He's going to blame Linda Yaccarino for his failings. She's there a year or less.

Kara Swisher: One very smart person said that to me at the beginning. It's not about money. He'll lose a ton of money. It's about influence and his profile. And it's probably worth it to him.

Scott Galloway: That's true. That's what these guys do, right? I mean, they buy media companies.

Kara Swisher: He could have bought a lot of media companies. He could have bought a lot of things.

Scott Galloway: For $44 billion?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's a lot. What could he have bought? He could have bought CNN. He could have bought the New York Times, not that it's for sale. I think Bezos looks like a genius in comparison, paying a couple hundred million for the Post, almost nothing, much less than his yacht.

Scott Galloway: Bezos paid $250 million for the Post. That means Musk could have purchased about 176 Washington Posts. Or one Twitter.

Kara Swisher: But he doesn't get to tweet and be crazy.

Scott Galloway: There you go. He could have just tweeted for free, actually. He could have been crazy on Twitter himself.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, all right, let's get to our first big story. The House of Representatives approved a deal to suspend the debt limit late on Wednesday. As we record this on Thursday, the deal is headed to the Senate. And even if approved, Wednesday night's vote has big implications for the future. An embarrassment to Speaker Kevin McCarthy, more Democrats voted for the bill than Republicans. 71 Republicans voted no. I think it was 149 Republicans voted yes. They were supposed to be 150, but that's what it was. And Republicans cited findings from the Congressional Budget Office, which said the changes to SNAP benefits wouldn't save any money, but would increase costs over 10 years. Republicans aren't the only ones voting no. But these are the losers in any case. 46 House Democrats voted against the bill. AOC was the first Democrat to come out against exciting cuts to social programs. In the Senate, Bernie Sanders has pledged to vote against the bill for similar reasons. He also opposes the approval of a pipeline in West Virginia that's folded in there for Joe Manchin. I think it's going through. It looks like it's moving through. And McCarthy and Biden did almost the impossible. It's amazing how doddering Biden is and managed to get this bill through.

Scott Galloway: But OK, OK, doddering. He's doing very well for a doddering old man who's eating applesauce.

Kara Swisher: So what do you think? Work requirements here. Let me say what's in the bill. Work requirements for government benefits, some. Rescinds IRS funding, caps spending for two years, approves the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a priority for Joe Manchin as I said. Ends the freeze on student loan payments. A Times analysis said the bill reduced deficits by a trillion. Republicans wanted a trillion in cuts. Anyway, he's trying to also get rid of the debt limit. Jonathan Chait wrote at New York Magazine, the deal makes financial hostage taking a normal accepted way to govern. I don't know. It felt like compromise here and less than that, but many people think that. So what do you think?

Scott Galloway: There's no compromise here. I'm going to turn to our favorite pastime, and that is patting ourselves on the back. What was our prediction around this? And famous last words, because it hasn't been approved as of recording. Our prediction was the following. This deal was already done. They will take it right to the 11th hour. So Speaker McCarthy can claim to his crazies that he took them right to the limit, and Biden will throw some symbolic and meaningless gives.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And so let's be clear, people not getting food stamps or, I'm sorry, a work requirement, that is real. But if you actually read the bill, it actually expands eligibility for food stamps, having to start, restart student loan payments. And then what was the other one? Taking IRS funding, additional funding from 80 down to 60. Keep in mind the context here. The national debt is $32 trillion. Our economy is $25 trillion. I think our budget is $5.5 trillion. And we're talking about a few billion dollars here and there. This was Biden saying to McCarthy, this blows up. You're going to be the shortest serving speaker in history.

Kara Swisher: Well, he still might be.

Scott Galloway: What can we do that gives your crazies something to nibble on? But let's be honest, boss, I'm not giving you shit because you're going to have to fold one way or another here. And they didn't give them anything. They got nothing. And everyone did their performative voting like AOC, et cetera. And the people on the far left are upset. The people on the far right. And that's exactly what should happen. Reasonable people, the president played this perfectly and said, okay.

Kara Swisher: So is he still a doddering old man? He shouldn't be running for president.

Scott Galloway: He can do better than this. He's pretty good. He's done some pretty good things in infrastructure. He's going to be 80. I get it. I don't even want to go here. This is where we are. Grandpa's working. Grandpa's got a lot going on.

Kara Swisher: He should be able to do better than a good man who's smart.

Scott Galloway: Just throw him a fucking bone. He's doing a good job here. I like the man. Every decision he makes, I would make. But at the same time, there has to be something resembling reality.

Kara Swisher: I would agree with you. Nonetheless, he's not going to start. Anyone checked in with Senator Feinstein lately?

Scott Galloway: I get it, but he's not Senator. Come on. He's going to be 86 in his last year of the presidency.

Kara Swisher: I get it. I know lots of 80-year-olds who are perfectly fine.

Scott Galloway: They can be the president of the United States? I don't love that a president, all of our elected officials this old, you know I don't. But nonetheless, I'm going to say this was, once again, he managed to get to the middle. Oh, and also, what happens if he dies?

Kara Swisher: Yes, that's right. President Harris?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I know. That'll be bad for the Democrats, probably, as much as I think she's quite accomplished and competent.

Kara Swisher: But nonetheless, and younger, by the way. She is younger.

Scott Galloway: Sure. What do you think? Is my assessment here incorrect?

Kara Swisher: I think yours is correct. I think they managed to do a quite good job. And Kevin McCarthy probably might suffer. There are a lot of noisy Republicans like Chip Roy and Dan Bishop voting against the bill. That's a lot of people voting against it. I think he made that deal. One House member called for a no confidence vote, they might do that. And then we spent a lot of time on that. Again, one of those things where you were watching it like a TV show, whether Matt Gaetz would say yes or no, which is ridiculous. Lauren Boebert had any moment in any sun and hopefully should be taken out in the next election. She's the best thing that could have happened. Her and Marjorie Taylor Greene are the best thing that happened to Democrats. It's just a reminder.

Scott Galloway: OK. Yeah, it's crazy. You may think we're crazy, but just, you know.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, we're much crazier down over here. So, it'll be interesting to see if he starts to really push back against these people and can have real power. There's a huge power in the Speaker's job, obviously. But he certainly has some highly competent people around him. There were a couple, even though I don't agree with him, that really moved to get this done. I think that you never know what the crazies are going to do. And so he's at risk at all times because of deals he made to get the job. And in Biden's case, there were ideas that he may use the 14th Amendment in order to get it to court to get rid of these debt limits. Most other economies set debt limits at a percentage of GDP. If we adopted the EU model, 60% of GDP, our debt ceiling would be lower than its current limit. Most people think that the debt limit crisis every couple of years is ridiculous.

Scott Galloway: It's fucking ridiculous. And it creates a hostage situation. And I've read some very smart columns about it. And I think this is ridiculous. This is not something people should be politicking over. There should be spending cuts. They should do it in the old-fashioned way, which is through bills and everything else, not to link it to something so important. So it shouldn't be there to allow them to do it. It's a gun. It's on the table. They'll shoot it at some point. I think a good move for Biden coming out of this once it's done is to get very serious about some sort of fiscal responsibility and say, we need to cut spending, folks. And also, we need to do away with loopholes and raise revenues.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. That's a non-starter with the Republicans on taxes or anything else.

Scott Galloway: Every fiat currency in history has failed and gone away because the dangerous part about a representative democracy is that when you can vote yourself money, you have a tough time.

Kara Swisher: You do. Exactly. Bingo.

Scott Galloway: You do. And you start inflating and you end up with debt you can't support. Countries don't go out of business because they're invaded. They go out of business because they go broke.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I agree. It's just this is going to be really hard. Just look at this short thing to do something that was obviously they had to fix. But we'll see. There's definitely spending cuts need to be made. And we'll see if they have the stomach to do it. I do think Biden's been a very deft president on these and lots of issues that they thought he couldn't pass. So maybe he definitely has a left wing that's really up in arms about some of these cuts. And McCarthy has the right wing who's up in arms about not making enough cuts. And some of the cuts are ridiculous. Some of them are stupid. They're not truly committed to really balancing the budget.

Scott Galloway: By the way, did you see his first campaign ad?

Kara Swisher: Who's Biden's?

Scott Galloway: You know, at the very beginning, they have to disclose, it says, "My name is Joe Biden, and I approve this message."

Kara Swisher: Oh, stop it. You know what? Again, give him a moment. You could not pull this shit off. And by the way, one of the people who's gotten a lot of the credit for this, besides Steve Ricchetti, who's his advisor, is Shalanda Young, who's the head of the OMB. Very important. And even McCarthy was like, this lady really helped us get to the right place. Anyway, it was interesting. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about a dire warning about AI, and we'll take a question about guns in other people's homes. Ooh, that's scary. That happened to me once. Anyway, Scott, we'll be back in a minute.

[AD BREAK]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with our second big story. AI could kill us all again. That's a warning from the Center for AI Safety. In a short statement, the group said that mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war. That's the whole statement. We're doomed. It was endorsed by notable scientists and entrepreneurs, including Sam Altman, Geoffrey Hinton, the alleged godfather of AI, one of many, and several researchers from Google's DeepMind team. The market doesn't seem too worried. This week, the market cap of chipmaker NVIDIA briefly pushed past a trillion dollars, largely based on its role in creating hardware used for AI. Meanwhile, on an earnings call, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff claimed that we are about to enter an unbelievable super cycle for tech. It sounds like a storm we're not going to want to be in. So this was the group of people who are behind this. Are these warnings helpful or accurate, or are they just trying to make people say, we warned you? Meredith Whittaker, who I've interviewed many times, a former Google AI researcher, called the letter theater and said, we'll know it's real when they quit their jobs, unplug the data centers, and actually stop AI development, which is not happening. Should we be focused on the short-term harms of AI? Critics like Kate Crawford, whom we had on Pivot last month, talked about bias, discrimination, and job displacement as near-term risks, which are important. And Sam Altman, who's sort of at the lead of this parade, said, regulate us. What do you think about this? Is it theater? And let me just footnote this or caveat it. So many really smart people who I think their heart is in the right place, and we're at the center of the development here, are sufficiently worried. I just want to acknowledge I don't know what I don't know. And it strikes me that we absolutely need immediately to assemble a group of very thoughtful people who have the teeth and the power to start communicating across borders. We have weapons. We've already decided we don't want bioweapons. That's a bad idea. And immediately we began talking to even our adversaries and said, okay, it's just a good idea if we limit the use of bioweapons. And people came to an agreement and there hasn't been full-scale development of bioweapons. And that's been a good thing.

Scott Galloway: I'm an optimist around this stuff. And I find it a little bit frustrating when Dr. Frankenstein comes out and says, I'm worried about Frank. It's like, well, okay, he's in town now, and he's roaming around, and now you're worried about him. And there is something to the fact that after they made their millions, after they vested their shares, we've talked about this, they're all of a sudden very concerned. And the media loves to run with this stuff, because the end of the world, smart people predicting the end of the world is always great clickbait. I don't see why we wouldn't be able to establish LLM and generative AI that can play defense as well as offense. I think the idea of a pause is ridiculous when you can't monitor it. It's not like underground nuclear testing. As Kate Crawford noted, you can't monitor it. And you really think Iran and North Korea are going to push pause? I thought the metaverse was stupid. Web3, I never understood it. I got bullied into being indifferent about it because I thought I was worried about aging and that it made me look old by not embracing something. I thought the Internet of Things... I think Apple's VR thing is going to be the biggest tech disaster since the metaverse. AI, I'm playing with this thing every night. I think it's going to turn a group of young people, mostly young people, with the right skills and curiosity, into information warriors. And I think we're going to push out preventive healthcare to pockets of people who weren't able to access it because they don't have the money or they were intimidated. I think it's going to be fantastic for the world.

Kara Swisher: There's certainly been more warnings about this compared to any other technology. I mean, crypto, everyone was like, woohoo. Social media, fantastic. The early internet, wow. And in this case, there is more discussion of the problems early on. Now the question is, will there be a global body like you talked about? Probably not, but there should be. Will there be adequate regulation, or will it be this push-pull, like the threatening thing that Facebook is doing? That shouldn't be the way this is. This should be everybody coming together to discuss this. And obviously the business people have their business interests, which usually trump everything else because that's what they do. And there's going to be a lot of money. Look at just NVIDIA, for example, but all these companies that are going to be created. And so there are ways to deal with this because it's not going away. And how do you deal with that? Of course, we know nuclear will kill us, right? It could kill us, but it could also help us. So what are we going to do? It's here. How are we going to cope with it? And I think that it would be really great if there was some global body that had not just, they're never going to have teeth, I guess, but it has high profile to begin to talk about these issues. But they did it with pandemics. It didn't work out so well. Nuclear worked out better. The short-term risks are ones we should be addressing right away. We shouldn't be so enthralled with the long-term risks that we don't deal with the short-term risks. And then look at it as an investment opportunity too. I think making it one or the other is really useless in some way.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, there's no doubt. I'm sure anytime you have this sort of transition of one substance or material to another, there are externalities, as there will be here. But I'm still trying to figure out how the blockchain is going to change my life. I've never understood virtual reality. Every night I am totally blown away by what AI can do.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you love that AI.

Scott Galloway: And not only that, I generally find when the experts are all saying one thing, it usually means they're wrong. Especially around the economy and maybe around this. It's so strange to be the optimist.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. But all the catastrophizing. "Mitigating the risk of extinction." Oh, extinction. Yeah, mitigating the risk. But it should be on the level of pandemics, nuclear war. Social media should have been there too. I think we would have had a lot better legislation, and this will definitely spur people to hopefully write good legislation and not wacky legislation. So, you know, don't go too far, but we'll see. But people are definitely talking about it and they're scared. The public that pays attention to stuff, and it's not just the elite. Lots of people. I get asked about this all the time by everybody. And non-people especially, they like, what is this? And they're worried. They definitely worried in a way that they hadn't been with other technologies. With cyber, with cryptocurrency, they were like, how do I get in? I was like, don't, please don't. Like, don't yet. That kind of thing versus this, which I think they're dipping their toe in as you are. You're dipping your whole body in actually. You're jumping in.

Scott Galloway: I'm swimming. You're swimming.

Kara Swisher: You know, you saw that lawyer thing where he put all the things and AI made it up.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I love that. I love those stories. More stories like that.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, more stories. That's going to happen all the time. Anyway, I don't think that was the end of civilization. It was the end of that guy's career, but still. Anyway, let's pivot to a listener question. This is something much more immediate and dangerous. You've got mail.

[READS QUESTION]

Kara Swisher: Hi, Kara and Scott slash Scott and Kara. I have a question. I have two young kids, and while I'm not planning on asking their potential playdates whether they're going to be going to any drag shows, I would like to ask parents whether they have any firearms in their home and whether they're locked up appropriately. What's a good way to broach that topic that won't make people uncomfortable or alienate my kids? Thanks.

Kara Swisher: That's an interesting question. I would ask people. If you live in somewhere where you think people have a lot of firearms, I would say, listen, do you have firearms in your home or are they locked up appropriately? That's okay. I don't think people would be offended. People who are good gun owners are not offended by things like that. In my experience, people who aren't the lunatics who just think you should be able to wander around with firearms all the time and not take good safety care, many gun owners are safety conscious, extremely safety conscious. So I would just ask them. And don't worry about your kids. You're trying to protect them. I think you should ask that. I had that happen to me once in San Francisco. There was a guy who had just joined the FBI, and he got one out of the room and he had his gun out showing the kids the gun and the safety was not on. And I wanted to kill him. I was like, I'm going to call the FBI on you. Like, what the fuck? He didn't ask me if it was okay. That's so inappropriate. Totally inappropriate. And I was like, he's like, oh, you just don't like guns? I'm like, no, not necessarily. I just think you should ask a parent if you want them to see a gun or have it around them. These things go off. That's all.

Scott Galloway: I don't think this is about her kids. I think this is about her, and that's important.

Kara Swisher: Okay. Explain.

Scott Galloway: Well, I have a lot of fears around my kids and guns. Yeah. And it causes a lot of stress in my life. And that's important. And if I can do things to relieve that stress, that should be taken into account. If you look at the actual stats, the likelihood a kid is going to get killed by a handgun at a play date, the drive to the play date is much more dangerous.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, of course.

Scott Galloway: And 60%, I think, of deaths from handguns are someone in the house has a depressive event, suicidal ideation, and thinks, I know how to end this all. There's a gun upstairs, and they go upstairs, and they kill themselves.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, the availability.

Scott Galloway: And just the fact that people have kids and are having playdates probably means they're fairly responsible people. So I want to be clear, the data shows your fears are probably not what I'd call... there are bigger dangers than your kid being killed at a play date by a gun. Now, having said that, if it causes you a lot of stress, you have to decide you're going to be known as that mom. I mean, I'm sorry, but when you call me and say, do you have firearms and are they locked up before you let your kid come over for a play date? I understand. I'm a progressive. I get it. I say, no, we do not. You do not need to be worried. And then I'm like, that's that mom. But that might be worth it to you. You might say, I don't care. It gives me a sense of comfort and relief. I think this is a very personal issue.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it is. I think it's fine. I wouldn't be offended if I was a gun owner. If someone asked me, I'd be fine. I'm not offended by, oh, that's that mom. No, I think it's fine. I would not be mad about someone asking about that at all. If they thought I had a gun, I would not. I wouldn't say that mom. Usually it's over snacks. Like, I'm giving my kids Ritz crackers, that's just the way it's going. I would be more like... the danger is to the kids that live in that house. The danger around firearms is that the kid is bored looking around, finds a shoebox, finds a gun, starts playing with it and a tragedy occurs.

Scott Galloway: Anyway, this is a kind of conversation that's uniquely American in a bad way. And we just shouldn't be having these conversations in this type of listener mail. It's just so insane that we've let it come this far that this is now something a mom needs to worry about, whether she should prophylactically be asking questions around where her kids play. I don't know where she lives, but if she's in a red state, it is a good question. It is. Lots of people have guns in their homes and lots of guns.

Kara Swisher: I did walk into one Silicon Valley house. It was a venture capitalist woman, and I brought my sons. A beautiful house. And it was some crazy party they were having. There was like a camel there. It was that kind of party. And I was like, I'm taking my kids to see a camel. So I walked into her husband's office. They've since gotten divorced. And he had guns everywhere, all out and everywhere on the wall. Antique guns and all kinds. He loved a gun. He loved a lot of beautiful antique firearms. And my kids were immediately riveted. And I had to spend the whole party keeping them out of that room. I was like, you're not going in that room. They just wanted to see and touch these things. And I was like, oh, for fuck's sake. There were so many guns. It was crazy. And I didn't know if they were safe or not. I couldn't tell because they were right there. And I always feel like if there's a gun, it's going to go off. I'm assuming it's going to go off at some point.

Scott Galloway: My godfather, just to take this really to a depressing place, my godfather killed himself with an antique gun. Charlie Evans. This wonderful, very successful man, kind of a baller, lived in the Hollywood Hills, beautiful wife, had the life, right? And he lost his business. Wife told him she was leaving him. He went into the garage, pulled out some very expensive antique gun, put it to his chest.

Kara Swisher: I'm so sorry.

Scott Galloway: A long time ago. Really rocked my mother.

Kara Swisher: This is taking a direction.

Scott Galloway: Ask the parents. Be that mother. And thank you for saying, Kara and Scott and Scott and Kara. But don't worry about how you act. But don't ask about Ritz crackers, okay? Just don't do it.

Kara Swisher: All right. If you've got a question of your own you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions, your favorite part.

[AD BREAK]

Kara Swisher: Okay. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only. Then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra.

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction.

Scott Galloway: So my prediction comes back to AI. I do think we're going to see, I think the first realization of all the catastrophizing that's going around in AI is going to come to light in the next 12 to 18 months. Or it's going to happen in the next 12 to 18 months. We just don't know if it's, we might not find out about it till after.

Scott Galloway: But essentially, you have an invasion of Europe and you have an individual, Putin, who horribly miscalculated and is losing thousands of soldiers a week. His popularity is going down. And this war is literally life or death for him. If this ends up in a stalemate, slowly but surely, that means a loss for Russia because we have more resources, I believe, and more staying power. The Russian economy will start to go down. And if he loses, if he picks up and leaves, I think he'll either be murdered by his own people or it's just not. There are a lot of bad options here for him. He horribly miscalculated the Ukrainian army and the support of the West.

Scott Galloway: There is one thing. The shortest distance between him and victory there is what? How does he win this war theoretically overnight? What would need to happen? Any thoughts?

Kara Swisher: A bomb.

Scott Galloway: A bomb. It's not really winning either. I think that's where most people would go, and it's a correct response. But I think he would be singular and isolated. Even China and India would turn against him if he used a bomb. It'd be over for him. I think he would have already used one if he didn't realize that he would be – I think his own people would kill him if he decided to – I mean, the fallout starts spreading across China. I mean, I don't think he can use a bomb.

Scott Galloway: I think the shortest distance between him and victory is if Trump is reelected. If Trump is reelected, he wins the war. And so what I think you're going to see, so if I'm Putin and I have very smart people, and I also think he's very intelligent, have done the game theory here. They think this war is not going well. We can't win it conventionally or through kinetic power. Our fastest path to a victory in Ukraine is the following, and that is if Trump gets reelected. So we need our best and brightest. We need our assets overseas to use generative AI and every tool possible to come up with misinformation that results in a Trump victory.

Scott Galloway: And I think you're going to see the mother of all and where they're going to take advantage of porous social media platforms and people who are not immoral but amoral and will delay and obfuscate and want to take the money that they'll get from these campaigns as opposed to you want to know where we need a pause. For 90 days before the election, social media should have a pause on anything political.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's true. That's where we need a fucking pause.

Kara Swisher: You know, I've been hearing from a lot of, because I live in Washington, I run into a lot of lawyers and just type, test department type people. They're like, this case that the government has is quite dangerous for Trump. This espionage, this essentially the documents case. They are like, this is like serious. And so it may derail him. I'd never heard them say that. They're always like, oh, he'll get out of this. this way.

Scott Galloway: Well, I hope you're right. But if history is any indicator, he's going to get to run for president.

Kara Swisher: Guess who's in prison, Elizabeth Holmes?

Scott Galloway: It does ultimately get you.

Kara Swisher: I know it doesn't, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: My prediction is the following, is that there are a group of very smart, I mean, they're going to spend, if we're spending, if just the U.S. is spending 60 or 70 billion a year on this war, imagine what Russia's spending, and it's got an economy one-twelfth of size. So if you're Putin, don't you think, Why don't we take $5 billion and get the smartest scientists and rally all of our assets, all of our spies in the United States, and the best and brightest psychologists, linguists, and start testing the shit out of misinformation that depositions Biden and elevates Trump? That's what I would be doing. Because the shortest path to victory in Ukraine for Russia is very simple. If Trump is elected, they win the war. If Trump is not elected, they're going to lose this war. It's that simple.

Kara Swisher: I don't know. I think Trump's got a lot of problems with his own party. Look, Lindsey Graham, well, he turns all the time, doesn't he? But he seems pretty stuck on Ukraine, like in defending them. There's a lot of Republicans who are-

Scott Galloway: I'm not-

Kara Swisher: The prediction is whether Trump will win or not. If you look at the map and issues, Trump looks really weak. Right now, it looks like, unless something weird happens, it looks like Biden handily beats him.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, we'll see. But the odds of ending this war are the best odds they have is to get Trump back in office. So you're about to see the mother of all AI-generated misinformation around this election.

Kara Swisher: Well, they could just have to get Ron DeSantis in. He's another one. You know what I mean? Like, he's been questioning it.

Scott Galloway: That's a good point. They just have to get him, and then they'll take him over. And Trump is harder to get in. So if I were the Russians, I'd back Ron DeSantis. That's actually a wrinkle I hadn't thought about. That's interesting. Why would you back Trump? He's trouble. Like, you never know what he's going to do. And DeSantis, you kind of do.

Kara Swisher: He's definitely, because he's the ultimate useful idiot. I mean, he really is.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but DeSantis feels the same.

Kara Swisher: I just feel like he's the same. And we'll see. We'll see. You know, he's got so much money back in him, DeSantis. It's kind of, at least here in the Valley, he's definitely got.

Scott Galloway: So did Hillary.

Kara Swisher: I get it, but I don't know. People do think he's got to come back in. I think he actually has a lot to run on.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I mean, we were on opposite sides of this last one. You said he brightens up a room by leaving it, and you're right. He's not very charming.

Kara Swisher: No, I agree. He's got $100 million, I think, already raised. And he has a strong case to make to people who are going to be receptive about his progress. He's doing it. If you've noticed, it's like, well, we love Trump, but he's going to jail. That's essentially his message. So I think a lot of people are making that calculation, which is why they're giving him money versus Trump. And, you know, I get that Trump's super popular and may get to it, but this, I don't know. I just feel like maybe DeSantis might be the one or someone else.

Scott Galloway: If you think about who are the beneficiaries of this tsunami of AI-generated misinformation, is it Trump or is it DeSantis?

Kara Swisher: The answer might be yes.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, right, exactly. They might just do it for both. Or they'll just go the other way and start circulating just a ton of misinformation around Trump.

Kara Swisher: Well, he's already doing that to DeSantis about his wife with cancer, whether she had cancer or not, and another thing. They've been doing a lot of it just explicitly. And you know who's going to get a lot of attention?

Scott Galloway: Oh, wow.

Kara Swisher: You know who's going to get a lot of attention is Vice President Harris.

Scott Galloway: Yes. Well, so far, not yet, but they will.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of vice presidents, another thing someone was talking about, which I hadn't thought about, is Trump's pick of a VP will be critically important. If he goes the carry leg crazy route, it's problematic. If he goes to a more Tim Scott kind of pick, that's a better, you know, moves him closer to the center. And so anyway, it's an interesting situation politically. We'll see. We'll see. But right now, the debt ceiling looks like it's on its way to being passed. So old Joe Biden, old Joe Biden seems to have been doing pretty well for a doddering old man.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Scott, read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show is produced by Lauren Amon, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Dertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Miel Severio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Kara Swisher: Cara, have a wonderful weekend.

Scott Galloway: Thanks, you too.