Build Back Better Passes in the House, Amazon’s Exposed Customer Data, and the Holmes Trial's Surprise Witness

Kara Swisher: Not all journalism is the same. Take The Guardian. Our coverage has something unique. Fierce independence. Nobody owns us or tells us what we can and can't say. So we're free to report the whole picture. We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe. Expose corruption wherever we find it. And give fresh perspective on everything. From wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more. Read, watch and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com.

Kara Swisher: AI agents are getting pretty impressive. You might not even realize you're listening to one right now. We work 24-7 to resolve customer inquiries. No hold music, no canned answers, no frustration. Visit sierra.ai to learn more.

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

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway.

Kara Swisher: Hey, Scott. How are you doing?

Scott Galloway: I'm good, Kara. How are you?

Kara Swisher: Good. A little tired. I had one sick child this weekend. I'm exhausted. And a baby. So, a new baby. You have to keep the baby and Clara apart, which means we each sort of split them up to conquer and, you know.

Scott Galloway: Don't babies come out chock full of immunities?

Kara Swisher: Not exactly. The doctor was like, do not bring the toxic stew child who's in preschool near the baby for a little bit.

Scott Galloway: Doctors always say that, though, right? They always say that kind of thing.

Kara Swisher: Nonetheless, she was indeed sick. There was projectile vomiting, et cetera, et cetera. But now it's all so.

Scott Galloway: Yes.

Kara Swisher: It turned out to be an ear infection. I went to one of those clinics that are now popping up. There's all these things. This one was called PM Pediatrics. They're actually quite good.

Scott Galloway: Law and urgent and all that, yeah.

Kara Swisher: Well, kind of. It's just an interesting business. I was thinking of it as a business that was going in. Actually did a great job, and thank God. They do a great job. I like those things a lot. And like many people, I have insurance, and it was great. But it was definitely an interesting. They just popped up everywhere because the whole way doctors work is so inefficient. All children get sick on Friday at 5 p.m., just so you know.

Scott Galloway: That's when it happens.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, exactly. It always happens. But nonetheless, anyway, so we have a lot to do today. We're going to discuss how one tech giant left its users' data in the lurch, the latest changes to Biden's agenda. And we'll take a listener question about responsible disclosure.

Scott Galloway: Sure.

Kara Swisher: So first off, interestingly, I just got the book, and I think we're going to have them on Pivot, called Out of Office by Charlie Wurzel and Anne Helen Peterson. It's all about the big problem and promise from working at home. But Apple said they're going to have employees go back to the office in February. But, you know, it had been moved and moved and moved again. And the new policy will eventually have employees commuting to work three days a week only if they wanted to. Apple had to change its previous back-to-office plan after employee backlash. which I think is really interesting. Similarly, Disney had to pause its vaccine mandate for workers in Florida as it complies with new ban in state. I suspect they had a lot of problems, and obviously they really rely on their workers quite heavily. So what do you think of this? What do you think about this?

Scott Galloway: Well, if you want to get a group of people in denial together, get a group of commercial real estate owners together. Supposedly, the narrative is we can't wait to get back into the office, and they always publicize how Jamie Dimon or somebody says, you know, we're going back to work. If Apple is a proxy for what's going to happen, you know, we want to process information into zeros and ones. So, the argument is whether we're going to be back to the office business as usual, or we're going to be all remote. And the answer is 90% of companies are going to be somewhere in the middle. But what we have done here, the incredible innovation, the change in lifestyle, what you call the great reassessment, which I really like, has resulted in if Apple is a proxy for more largely what might happen, where people go into the office three days a week, not five days a week, that effectively is probably a net destruction in office demand of somewhere between 20 and 40%. So, assuming we're going to want more office space per person, you still, at a minimum, are going to lose 20% of the demand, maybe even as much as 40%. And when you look at office buildings is an asset class, depending on how you calculate it in North America. They're somewhere between $6 and $12 trillion asset class. They're enormous.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: So wait, are they the proxy, though? Why are they the proxy, necessarily?

Kara Swisher: Well, to me, that just sounds kind of infinitely reasonable. And the majority of big companies I talk to are saying that we want people back in the office at the same time we recognize the remote technologies and the needs of our workers likely mean we have learned how to not demand you're in the office at 9 a.m. till 6 p.m. I think there's just a general recognition that the traditional way of doing work, that we can innovate around it. We have gotten used to being productive remotely, and there's value to being in the office. But we are thinking the unthinkable now. The notion that you could start a job and not come into the office, the majority of companies just wouldn't have allowed you to do that. So if you're talking about a destruction in 20% to 40% of demand, which seems conservative, you're talking about an asset class that is somewhere between $6 and $12 trillion. You're talking about $2 to $4 trillion of the GDP of Germany dispersing from one asset class, commercial real estate, to another asset class, which is residential. So, you know, Williams-Sonoma, Restoration Hardware, Sub-Zero, you know, Coulter, Lanier, all these home builders. I think you're just going to see a massive destruction in stakeholder value around the office industrial complex and an increase in value, some of it good, some of it not so good because housing is just going to get more and more expensive, to residential. But if it costs you $25,000 to $35,000 an employee, which it does to put them in this structure of steel, glass, and asbestos, and you say to them, okay, you can work at home. We're going to decrease dramatically the amount of money we save. I've saved my ed tech startup, second for it, we've saved a million dollars in office costs over the last 12 months.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, and travel, not just that, travel and office costs.

Scott Galloway: And business travel, sure.

Kara Swisher: There was a very good story, I think it was a column in the New York Times about how starting your job over Zoom was really not great for young people, especially your first job. And that was an interesting piece. I mean, it sort of stayed to the obvious that you don't really get to meet people, network, et cetera, et cetera. So how do you work that out to create office culture or company culture, really? Not office culture more than company culture.

Scott Galloway: Well, it's proximity bias, but I can tell you what we're doing. I think a lot of startups are doing this, and that is we're going to have smaller office space. It's going to be nicer. It's going to be more like a place to recruit and inspire. But what we're also doing, and there's more nuance around the travel argument, is that we're going to be doing more off-sites. And the off-sites are going to be over the top. When we get people together, you know, we just did a Thanksgiving dinner and we go somewhere really nice and we do gifts bags for everybody. We're probably going to do an offsite. You know, all these sort of what I call fat offsite resort or resorts that are sort of optimized for nice corporate retreats, they're just going to kill it.

Kara Swisher: With New York cities or where?

Scott Galloway: You know, that's a really interesting question. So I can tell you firsthand in New York, if you have a restaurant that has private rooms, you're never been busier. Because when people get together, they want to do really nice things. They want to go to really nice places. But I also think destination resorts for retreats are just going to do incredibly well. So we're going to spend – I think the actual gross demand for office space will go down by probably 40 percent. But the dollar, the destruction in actual expenditures, I think will go down $20 per square foot because I think we're going to spend more on the few feet we decide to keep to make it more inspirational. It'll be less great drab cubes. It'll be more in like nice conference rooms, more coffee, you know, places that people create connections. And then the off-sites are just going to be over the top because they're going to want people to be inspired, meet. What's interesting is it has all these second-order effects. And we don't like to talk about it because we immediately go to like Matt Lauer or something. But one in three relationships begin at work. And it used to be kind of loosely speaking, one in three at work, one in three at school, and one in three online. It's now gone to two in three online.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And because people aren't going to work, so they're not meeting mates. There's very few places that have a more curated selection of like-minded potential mates than either college or your workplace. And the workplace is kind of going away as a place to meet. You know, every company I've started, we end up having weddings. You know, people meet and get married from work. So it'll be just interesting to see what it means for marriages and mating and relationships. And now two and three relationships are beginning online, which has a third order effect. And then there's huge mating inequality online.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, absolutely. So then you have the Walt Disney Company pausing coronavirus vaccine mandate. You talked about this, that they pushed the state legislature around and the governor DeSantis, but not so. They could be facing fines. They decided after the Republican-controlled legislature put up a bill blocking COVID-19 vaccine mandates that was signed into law, protecting them in all kinds of ways. Even though the Biden administration has ordered vaccinations for workers in large companies across the federal workforce, there's resistance everywhere. And Florida has challenged that. So now Disney World, who previously struck a deal with employees to require theme park workers, according to the New York Times, to be fully vaccinated against coronavirus to keep their jobs. A company defended the rule in a statement. Saturday, I'm going to read the statement. It was in the Times. "We believe that our approach to mandatory vaccines has a right one, and we continue to focus on safety and well-being of our cast members and guests," the statement said. Now, more than 90% of its active cast members have been verified as vaccinated. So it's an interesting, like, why bother fighting them, presumably? I don't know. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: And we did one of these Friendsgivings over the weekend, and it was really nice. And it's basically the Thanksgiving everybody wants. It's sort of this wonderful holiday minus the downside of holidays, specifically your family. And so Friendsgivings are everywhere, and they're wonderful. And we all went around and said what we're thankful for. And I said I was thankful for science. And the moment I said it, I immediately felt like a certain amount of guilt that, uh-oh, I've turned Thanksgiving political. because I live in Florida, and Florida kind of where I live looks a lot like America. It's not red, it's not blue, it's kind of purple. And I thought, you know what, fuck that. Science never used to be political. And I find that we suffer on the left from this both-side-ism where we shouldn't. And there just is, in my view, no excuse for government officials all pandering to evangelicals or ultra-white wingers in Iowa and are reducing our safety. Disney World draws people from all over the world, including Europe, which is seeing an enormous spike in COVID-19. So this, what I'll call irrational spread of death, disease, and disability by politicians who are all jonesing to get one more straw on a poll in Iowa in 18 months, I find it repugnant. And I think, you know, Disney's kind of cotton in the middle. It's nice to see that they're at 90 plus percent. I think it's a good organization. But I think Florida, a lot of people will say Florida is going to come out of this looking really good because you have had a balance of life. And, you know, there's a balance between quality of life and taking precautions. But it's just so sad that we have taken – it just seems to me pretty reasonable that when you're bringing millions of people to a small, dense area and putting them on rides sitting shoulder to shoulder, that you would decide to opt for the conservative. And not only that, Disney is willing to take the financial burden here. They're not asking the state to bail them out to have additional. The state is coming in and say, no, we want you to loosen your restrictions. And pay for testing of the people that decide not to. Because apparently that's reasonable. I find it discouraging. I can't believe a test is reasonable. And a vaccine, I don't know. It's just interesting. It doesn't make any goddamn sense.

Kara Swisher: It doesn't. It doesn't. It's just, you know, it's this whole change in workers, though. I have to say, it's really interesting. I'm excited to talk to Charlie and Anne about this, because I think it's a really interesting time around the workplace. For a lot of people, not everybody, but certainly for a lot. It's definitely knowledge workers, et cetera. Speaking of unusual and surprising things, Jeff Bezos donated a cool $100 million to the Obama Foundation. He asked a plaza at the museum, I guess, that's coming, to be renamed in honor of John Lewis, which they probably would have done anyway. According to the press release, it seems like not very much money compared to his wife. That's all I thought. I don't know.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, the whole thing's just so weird. The dollars are becoming—I mean, didn't you give $100 million to Van Jones? Something like that, yeah. I'm not very much. He's so rich. It's like giving $25. Because he really likes him? I don't know. He gave out all these, like, hero awards or something like that. In a weird way, I don't think you can be – I think it's nice. I think it's good when people give money. I'm not one of these people that's like – I understand the structural problems with philanthropy and how it indicates a larger problem that we shouldn't just be depending on the grace and generosity of billionaires to fund our essentials. I get the argument, but I think it's hard to criticize people for giving money away.

Kara Swisher: Yes, that's fair.

Scott Galloway: And what it does do, though, is that I like to think of myself as a philanthropic person. And what I've been thinking of lately, and I'm embarrassed to admit this, is I'm like, when there's guys giving this much money away, does my money make any difference? I mean, you know it does and you continue to do it. But it's like what's a lot of money for most givers? You then look at these donations and it's like, okay, sweat off his brow, $100 million. You know what is my ex going to do I wonder what happened to small dollar donations when they see these guys and it almost those guys kind of rolling up and saying okay 100 million bucks And by the way, that is, what is he worth? 150 billion? It's like nothing. I mean, it's literally nothing. But hey, good for him, Obama Foundation. I don't know what that means. Gets to go to all their parties, I guess.

Kara Swisher: That's where it happens. You think they throw a good party? Anyway, it's fine. Whatever. I think his wife's doing a better job. That's all I have to say. But whatever.

Scott Galloway: McKenzie?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, McKenzie.

Scott Galloway: McKenzie's a baller.

Kara Swisher: Baller, yeah.

Scott Galloway: Mackenzie, Mackenzie, like, put out a billion dollars overnight.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, overnight. I love how she does it. Doesn't put out a press release.

Scott Galloway: Doesn't.

Kara Swisher: Doesn't. And she gives it to non-cool places that, like, need the money, like Cal State Fullerton.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Or places that—

Kara Swisher: I'm not sure the Obamas need more money. Mental health counseling for trans kids. She's just like, this seems worthwhile. Cut them a check. No press release. No name on anything. I'm liking her way of doing it. I have to say I still do. I don't like to compare divorced people, but I'm on team Mackenzie on this one.

Scott Galloway: Oh, she's fantastic.

Kara Swisher: So lastly, surprise witness testified in the Elizabeth Holmes trial on Friday. Who do you think that was?

Scott Galloway: I have not been following it. Elizabeth Holmes.

Kara Swisher: Oh, Elizabeth Holmes.

Scott Galloway: You're never supposed to take this stand. Have you been following it?

Kara Swisher: Well, she has. Yes, it's fascinating. I'm sort of trying to – the line's apparently around the block. John Kerry Rue wrote, you know, showed a picture of what was happening. But she said she believed the company's blood testing machines could work. She's testifying right now. It's really quite something that she's doing this. After all the testimony previously, which is like she thought it wouldn't work, she kind of has to get on the stand and say she believed it and trying to use her powers of persuasion. I don't really understand it. I guess she has no choice or I don't know what.

Scott Galloway: That means that her counsel did a risk-adjusted assessment and said, you're fucked. We've got to throw a Hail Mary. My understanding, and we should ask Preet about this, but my understanding is you never want to take the stand. And so the fact that they put her on the stand means –

Kara Swisher: Not always. No, sometimes it's like I want to tell my – I'm not guilty. I'm going to tell my story. But what she's saying is essentially that she didn't do anything. She thought she believed in it. You can't – there's something legally – someone was explaining to me. If she believed it, it's not illegal, right? I think that's what she's trying to establish here.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but I actually think – and to a certain extent, I don't like all this courtroom drama. I think that you should just let the courts do their job. But I think she's cooked because they've been playing audio or voicemails from her where she is clearly – she knew that the company did not have a contract from the military to do rapid blood testing on helicopters in Afghanistan. She knew that was not the case. And she was claiming that. She was not exaggerating. she was lying about the state of the business to investors and to the media. And they have what's really damning. It's because it's very emotional. These are people who make these decisions on the jury. They have her voice. They basically say this was not happening. She knew it was not happening. These emails validate she knew this wasn't happening. And this is her on a call. "We have opened our first doors and have patients coming in live every day. We are working to expand that as fast as possible. The speed with which we expand is critical in the context of capturing the market opportunity that we have created." I think she's pretty cooked. And my understanding is that almost always your counsel will say, okay, you're a megalomaniac and you think you're going to get up there and tell a great story. But guess what? There's someone who's going to get to cross-examine you and it's going to be really fucking ugly. So we're not going to let you take the stand.

Kara Swisher: Well, I don't know. This is according again to the Times. First they said Mrs. Holmes, they're trying to – this is their theory. First they have said Mrs. Holmes was a – Ms. Holmes was a hardworking entrepreneur who believed her claims that Theranos technology was revolutionary and whose failure was not a crime. So, oh, I tried to make it and it didn't happen. Second, other Theranos employees, executives, investors, should have known better that it might not work. And third, Ms. Holmes was manipulated, if that doesn't work, by Ramesh Balwani, who is known as Sunny and who was formerly Theranos' chief operating officer. He had control over her.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: She's got a whole bunch going in. This is what she's going to do. Although it looks like her emails are like, I will cut you, that kind of thing. You know what I mean? It's really, it's funny. What do you think is going to happen here? Everyone likes to bet on this stuff. I think they're going to – this idea of being a hardworking entrepreneur that didn't – just tried her best is not going to work, I suspect. There's too much email and stories of her threatening people, I think. You know?

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: I think people are on to her. I think it doesn't help that she's a woman. Honestly, there's lots of men who've done stuff like this in Silicon Valley. So, I think saying, oops, you know, oops, I made a – I didn't know it would work. It's not going to work. I don't think so.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it's going to be very interesting. And I wonder if it'll send a chill through the tech community. People say that. Probably not, right?

Kara Swisher: I don't think so.

Scott Galloway: Why?

Kara Swisher: Why? They don't care. She really went very far in pushing the limit. You know, you have all kinds of hyperbolic claims. And I think that's what people say. Oh, now you can't be hyperbolic. And so, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think, you know, if you don't have emails showing that you threatened people for exposing you, you're not as big. I don't know. There's very few and far between of those people. I think there's a whole lot of liars in Silicon Valley and that's very different. But they call themselves the hopeful, right? They're hopeful. And I think that's why she's doing it. But I don't know. She can't rely on all these. She can't be stupid, bad at business. Everyone else should have known that maybe it wouldn't work. And my boyfriend made me do it. It's just way too much data for the things. Anyway. All right. Let's go on to our big story. Amazon left its customer data completely exposed inside the company, according to reports from Wired and Reveal. These reports say Amazon employees abused lax security to snoop on purchases of celebrities and accepted bribes from sellers trying to get an edge on the competition. The situation was allegedly so chaotic, Amazon's own security teams couldn't map the flow of data or who was accessing it. Oh, this is so typical. This happened at Facebook and other places, Uber. These problems occurred on the retail side of the company. Amazon Web Services runs its own data security that's not part of the problem, which is what it's a new CEO, Andy Jassy, ran AWS. So I guess not surprised. A lot of the data ended up being in China and India. We'll see where it goes. But apparently Amazon employees looked into Kanye West's purchases and the Avengers actors. But they could have looked up to anyone. This happened on Uber. It happened on Facebook in the very early days. So what thinks you of this?

Scott Galloway: To be blunt, I think it's a big nothing burger. I don't – yeah, I don't. Because when you're talking about a bunch of people making 15 bucks an hour who are naturally curious to see what Kanye is buying, I don't want to say we empathize, but we can kind of understand it. And I think it happens informally all over the corporate world. People are fascinated by celebrities and everything they do. And also the downside of this is maybe some sellers on Amazon got an edge or it was inappropriate or it was just unprofessional. But I think there's a big difference between that and weaponizing elections and violating election laws. I don't know. It makes me uncomfortable knowing what I buy. I guess – I don't know. Okay. Go ahead. Keep going.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Your purchase history is much more – probably much more interesting than mine.

Scott Galloway: Diapers, diapers, diapers, hardware.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, there you go. You know? So I don't think – and Amazon for the most part has such a reservoir of trust and kind of executional competence. I think they roll right over this. I don't think it's a big deal.

Kara Swisher: Okay. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: I think governments are a little less kind about, oh, well, people like to look at Kanye's purchases. It's kind of like you don't have trust in the company you're doing. You assume data leakage all the time, but not. I remember when this happened at Facebook and Uber. It made me super nervous about their data. Now, of course, I'm like, I don't care where I go. I go to work and back. Like, who cares? Right. But I think in this case, this is a lot of data that's quite personal. I mean, it's not that personal, but it is. in a lot of people. Again, people should be able to buy what they want in secrecy if they feel like it. So their former chief information security, head of information security, said it was put together by tape and bubble gum. So, you know, this is, the problem is when they have all this data and they're not protecting it. He said it was an afterthought. It was shocking to me. Launches were shot in utmost security and employees were giving astounded amounts of access to practically everything. Now, of course, they need access to a lot of stuff, but the data breaches should be limited. I think that's what happened to a lot of these other companies is they limited the amount of access and that the group of people in InfoSec was too small. It was too small and it drained money from other things. And so I could see them being sloppy in this way and that's how leakage happens across things, but it leaves it open to like, in this case, the Chinese, other sellers, et cetera, et cetera, and that they're expanding too fast. This is what happened at Robinhood too, right? Expansion too fast. Not enough customer service. You know, it's the same old story.

Scott Galloway: But I do think there's a distinction. And Robinhood, which is my favorite punching bag, when Robinhood doesn't make the requisite investments in customer service, you end up with people who think they're down $700,000 when they're not. And they can't get anyone on the phone to explain to them, no, you're not. You don't owe us $700,000. And that can lead to much uglier places. than a certain reseller getting access to information they shouldn't have or the fact that Kanye buys a certain type of Nespresso pods. The harm here, I do think that the downside, if you will, when Amazon is weaponized or hacked, it doesn't present nearly the threat that if Google were to be hacked. If Google were all of a sudden, I think the ultimate hack that creates social chaos would be, and it just goes to how much we trust Google, If there was a hack and your name and your picture were above every search you'd ever conducted chronologically, I think it would create total social chaos.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I was thinking that on Twitter. And Google, to their credit, I think has people who are thinking, unlike Amazon and definitely unlike Facebook, I think Google does a decent job, at least at the core search engine. That we know of. of saying, well, what if this happened? Right. And they have, because as far as I can tell, search query data from individuals has never been hacked. And you want to talk about some embarrassing shit that would lead to, like, What's your most embarrassing thing that you search?

Scott Galloway: Oh, what's my least embarrassing thing? Come on, give me one. Anything that pops into my mind. I'm like, oh, what's my old girlfriend up to these days?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, right, yeah.

Scott Galloway: Look, Google knows if you're contemplating divorce, if you're contemplating getting engaged. It knows your sexual fetishes. It knows who you're obsessing over. It knows if you're about to quit your job. It knows if you're thinking of terminating a pregnancy. It knows if you're worried if you've exposed yourself to HIV. It knows if you go – I mean, it just knows everything about you. And this – that hack would cause chaos. Whereas if Kanye's purchase patterns are somehow revealed on a website somewhere, okay, that's meaningful, but it's not profound.

Kara Swisher: So we bought a lot of, like, for instance, with me, it would be like paper towels.

Scott Galloway: Interesting.

Kara Swisher: Interesting. It's a lot of paper towels. You can be honest. You're a freak. It's a freak show over there. You can be honest. You know, I can't look it up right now. But you're right. I think your search, even your search on Twitter, I just, the other day, I literally was like, what if someone could see what I'm looking for on Twitter? Not good. Like, how protected is this, right? Because, you know, you're sitting up late at night, just bored out of your mind kind of thing. And so I'm actually never bored. But you know what I mean? It creates an interest in you that I think would be dangerous for people to have, right? As opposed to Amazon, which is your stuff. It depends on what you buy, right? So here's – I bought a lamp. I bought some light bulbs. I bought track lighting. I bought a mock turtleneck. Leather pants and a gag ball.

Scott Galloway: Leather pants and a gag ball. That rounds out your list.

Kara Swisher: I bought some power strips that are cool looking. I bought some shampoo. I'm going through it just to give everyone my – I bought an OXO top bottle drying rack. That was great. I bought something – a Tine Row retainer for my Bosch dishwasher. It's really old and it needs it. I bought some diapers. I bought a potty seat. I mean, it just goes on. Like, you could see – this was easy, but you could also listen to me. I bought face masks, which for my son who's working. I bought – Does this get more interesting? No, I don't think – I think I'm pathetic at this point, now that I'm reading it for you.

Scott Galloway: I hate to interrupt this fascinating narrative. I've always thought a really dangerous hack would be if someone hacked Uber and then put a layer of intelligence on top of it, you could absolutely track or figure out, okay, infidelity. What is this woman leaving her apartment at 1 a.m. three times a week and going to this same apartment? What are you planning to terminate a pregnancy?

Scott Galloway: You have diabetes. They could, with a small layer of artificial intelligence layered on top of your travel patterns where you're taking cars to and from. This person is clearly an alcoholic. This person is clearly buying drugs three or four times a week. I mean, with a thin layer of AI placed on top of Uber data, you could find out some – you could really violate people. Or somebody else could violate people's privacy.

Kara Swisher: Although, honestly, I think people are using Ubers less because they cost so much now. But yeah, that's absolutely true. One hundred percent. I agree. I agree. That's what I'm saying. I'm not as nervous that I bought a three foot inflatable pumpkin on October 21st. I just don't think it's that big of a deal. I was just trying to think what it says about me. I like you to read yours out like that. I lead the clean life. I use Amazon a lot. I'm embarrassed. One relationship I have that I'm embarrassed by.

Scott Galloway: Anyway, you're right. I think you're right. It's going to be a big nothing for them, but they need to clean it up. They said they cleaned it up. Amazon said they cleaned it up, and this was passed. But they should keep cleaning it. They should not, you know. Bump in the road. Clean it up. Clean it up. Nothing burger.

Kara Swisher: I don't agree. I think they have to clean it up. Anyway, let's go. There's going to be a lot of jobs in cybersecurity. We're way down for all of those things. That would be a great job for anybody to go into cybersecurity. And then you could also hack people, too. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the Biden agenda and take a listener question.

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with our second big story. The House of Representatives passed the Build Back Better bill on Friday. That doesn't mean it's through because it's got to go through the Senate. It's going to change a lot. The bill funds universal pre-K, renewable energy, Medicare expansion, four weeks of paid parental leave, up from zero, and a lot more. The total cost: $1.75 trillion. It's not out of the woods. It goes to the Senate. It's going to be revised by President Joe Manchin and Vice President Kyrsten Sinema. Joe Manchin doesn't like the paid family leave because why would he? Bernie Sanders spoke against the increased SALT deduction. It's going to get mangled. And of course, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who does speak up, talked to the New York Times, sort of threatening on the progressive side. She said we've already made enough compromises. And then a lot of people focused on things like tree equity, which you can make fun of, but people in poor areas don't have trees, and it might be nice to give them some trees. Anyway, because we give rich people things all the time. So what do you think after a year? They won't give family leave.

Scott Galloway: Look, I really hope this happens. I'm just so fed up hearing about Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. I really hope they get hit hard. They're getting lots of money from Republicans, just so you know, from their donors. Oh, yeah. And, you know, I used to think, well, they're moderates, they're legislating, they're doing what they're supposed to do. And now I feel as if they are just drunk on their own power. And they're literally at this point supposedly riding the legislature. Biden's basically thrown up his arms and said, okay, what will you pass? Let's be honest. You have all the power here. Well done. What will you pass?

And look, it all comes down to this. The middle class is not organic. The greatest ballast in the history of mankind has been the American middle class from the end of World War II to now. It's fought. It's turned back Hitler. It's found the cure for polio. It's spread democracy and women's rights all over the world. We get a lot wrong, but we get things less wrong than anyone in the world, I believe. And the thing that's been the ballast for that, the source of that incredible good, has been the American middle class. And it's not an organic thing. It's not self-sustaining because of network technology, because of capital, because of certification from universities. It's largely sequestered to the freakishly remarkable and the children of rich people. You are going to have the top 1% and the top 10% pull away if you don't intervene. And unless you redistribute, like investing in bridges, which have no short-term payoff but have immense long-term payoff, unless you reinvest in the middle class, you don't have a ballast for the greatest experiment in the history of mankind, the U.S.

And so we have to – and Republicans will say that it happens on its own, that the way you unleash the middle class of prosperity is by letting the market take over. That is absolutely not true. If you look through economic history, the middle class in any nation is something that has to be fed and cared for and invested in. And this investment is long overdue. So I hope we really come together and pass this. It's enormously important, and it's key to America's prosperity.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see. Galloway 2022. It's interesting because the progressives are making a big play. A chicken in every pot of Cialis in every medicine cabinet. We have had it. We've been promised. Let's talk about the real things. I think it's going to pass, but they'll take away the trees for poor people and give rich people the SALT deduction. That's what happens. I love that. No tax increases. We're going to restore the tax deduction from SALT. There were a couple – whatever. It's such a small money. Give them fucking trees. Like everyone should bend – you know what's interesting? I interviewed Rutger Bregman, the historian who yelled at the rich people at Davos and then had a fight with Tucker Carlson. He's really fantastic. He has a new book called *Humankind*, which is saying that basically people are decent. And he previously had a UBI book a long time ago. And he was like – instead of looking at it like – I had one of those. I took a – Income. I took antibiotics for it. Oh, wait, UBI, not UTI. I'm sorry, no more. Sorry, go ahead.

Anyway, he was saying the way it's been – calling it income allows people to feel like it's a gimme kind of thing when you should think of it as a dividend for people who – for our country. And that it's – he's called it venture capital for the poor or regular people, essentially. This is UBI, essentially. But at the same time, giving things like that to people is a good thing. Like, you know, I don't know. It's just – we are so mean to poor people in terms of cutting them off. And I'm not, I would say if I had to put myself anywhere in a political thing, I suppose I would be centrist, I guess. Not anymore. I feel like I've been shoved pretty far over to the left. But it's really interesting that two people are sort of running the show here and there's just no choice whatsoever. And then once the Republicans take over, which seems likely, they're going to get a whole lot of nothing. Or maybe they're positioning themselves well in a Republican-led Congress. Who knows?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I think things look really bad for us, quite frankly, right now. I mean, there's a lot of time until 2022. I know. But I think this is really important. And infrastructure used to be something that was fairly bipartisan. Yeah.

Kara Swisher: But anyways, I'm hopeful that I just want something to pass and get through. And I just never need to hear the terms Manchin and Sinema again.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I can't believe paid family leave is anything controversial. Universal basic health care should be that. And same thing with paid family leave when you have kids. Honestly, it's crazy. It's just crazy that you have to rely on states like California. You know what's discouraging data? And this is going to be my fail today. Young people aren't having kids. And when you present a family with these options like, all right, housing is becoming more expensive. Oh, and if and when you decide to have kids, your company isn't obligated to give you family leave. What are people supposed to do? Oh, and by the way, as a percentage of GDP, the wealth of people under the age 40, we've decided to cut it from 20 to 9. So it's like, okay young people, we're not going to give you as much money, we're not going to give any protection to have kids, but we want you to have kids. I mean, people are just not having children. And if you look at the birth rates across Japan and Italy, it's really bad for an economy. And then you decide to militarize the border or not let anybody in. And it's like, well okay, who's going to make our shit? Who's going to actually support all these seniors? Who's going to support Pop-Up and Nana's crews on Crystal if all of a sudden it's no longer five people supporting every retiree? It's three, then two, then one. I think it's very discouraging that we don't want to put in place incentives.

If you look at what's happened through COVID, the great resignation, you really zero in on it. It's like Jonathan Haidt's work shows that depression and social media, you really got to zero in on teenage girls. That's ground zero for it. If you really want to zero in on the great resignation, it's women who don't have in place the support system from the government or from their corporation to make it viable for them to work. And that is bad for the economy. The American economy hummed, the great growth we had through the 60s through the 80s, was because we created an ecosystem where women could enter the workforce. And we decided to go back. It's just dumb.

Kara Swisher: I feel like if they don't pass it here, Biden's got to pull out the – I was reading the AOC interview. Like, pull out the executive orders a little bit. Once people get paid family leave, they're going to like it. It's going to be very hard to take back by Republicans. And we're going to give you money. But paid family leave, not just to take care of kids, but to care for ill family members, et cetera. It's just crazy that this hasn't – it's throughout the land. I mean, it's in certain states. But I can tell you just having all the kids, I have money and it's exhausting, which is not like, oh, no, Kara. But Jesus Christ, paid family leave should be something everybody should have. It's a social safety item that's good for the economy. It's good for the economy, for people. It's not a gimme. It's not, you know, everyone talks about it that way, any of these things. When they're given to poor people, they're talked about like they have their hand out. And when it's given to rich people, it's because they're going to use it to help the economy. So anyway.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I don't think that's leftist to say. It is pretty rational to believe that the greatest investment you can make is in kids. And the most important thing for kids is that they have a secure, loving – I mean, the resting blood pressure for kids in poverty is significantly higher than the resting blood pressure for kids who live in homes that are not low income. So it's like, okay, how do we get children to not have high blood pressure? There's some basics here where you think, well, if we're the wealthiest society in the world, we need to start acting like it. There's just some basics that – and what I was so excited about was the child tax credit. There's few programs in history that could do more to eliminate child poverty. I mean, you'd think it would be a bipartisan issue. Most people on either side of the aisle go, child poverty is a bad thing that we should address.

Kara Swisher: Yep, yep. It's interesting because one of the leading proponents, Kirsten Gillibrand, is being apologetic about it to try to get it to pass. She's saying all nice things about Manchin, et cetera. And this is, we know if it's parental leave, parents, mothers are 40% more likely to get back to work if they have paid leave, which goes to Senator Manchin's concern that he wants to strengthen our social safety nets. He wants to strengthen Social Security. That's what paid leave does. It gets people back to work. It allows people to stay in the workforce even when there's a family emergency. Like, apologizing for this, I'd be like, listen, you Yahoo, pass this frigging thing. I know she's saying that in the back of her head. So, who knows?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, we'll see. I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful, Kara. We'll see what happens.

Kara Swisher: I'm not. Anything that helps women manage children seems to be not a positive thing. Anyway, we'll see where it goes. But I think of all the things, both universal pre-K and four weeks, at the very least, paid family leave should be eight weeks, these seem like things that should be absolutely, I can't believe people aren't for them. It's really shocking. And the people that need it the most are probably the ones that are being convinced they don't need it, which is ridiculous. Okay, let's take a listener question about responsible disclosure. You've got, you've got.

Scott Galloway: I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail.

Kara Swisher: All right, this came in via email from Madison Kantzer. Yeah, K-A-N-T-Z-E-R. You want me to read it to you, Scott? Because you're eating.

Scott Galloway: Sure.

Kara Swisher: Okay. "In other engineering disciplines, you need to do impact analysis before you start work. You can't build a building unless you've done a full study on impact on local wildlife and water runoff analysis. You have to do safety studies where you can put humans in a car or on a rocket ship. Why shouldn't software and algoboys be treated the same? To do a full rollout of the new model, you need to do an impact study and publish it. You don't need to publish how you built the model, but you certainly need to publish the effects. Does it tend to make people happier or sadder? Does it tend to increase or decrease violent behaviors? Does it reward or punish false claims? If you don't have the resources to build a bridge safely, you don't have the resources to build a bridge. If you don't have the resources to test a model, you don't have the resources to deploy it."

Scott Galloway: It comes down to one word, and that is attribution. If you're riding the Matterhorn at Disneyland and you get thrown out of your bobsled and you die, they know that it was a lack of safety standards and protocols that killed you. That Disney is responsible for it because they charge people and give them some inherent guarantee of safety when they ride their rides. When you program a company to connect people or algorithms that connect people and then slowly but surely you start to tell the algorithms to spread content that kind of engages people and it ends up the algorithm starts saying okay the stuff that engages people is rage and misinformation, it's really difficult to reverse engineer specific content back to specific self-harm. It's really difficult to reverse engineer teen depression to specific causes. You know, it's a variety of things. So software and the interaction and human behavior around software, it's very hard to ring fence it and isolate it and not end up on Twitter with a bunch of self-appointed statisticians saying shit like, well, correlation isn't causation. When in fact, when you take out every other cause, you can say, well, in fact, it is correlation. So that's the problem. It's attribution.

Kara Swisher: So, okay. Yes or no. You shouldn't be able. You're not able to do it, in other words.

Scott Galloway: Well, I think it's difficult. What I would argue is instead of over-regulating the development of software and asking for them to do all sorts of testing. So the FDA does this. If you want to put out a product or a drug.

Kara Swisher: With technology, I would argue, and I'm going to sound like a big tech lobbyist.

Scott Galloway: You do. That's why I'm asking. You sound a little bit like a big tech lobbyist.

Kara Swisher: Well, technology has created as only so much utility and shareholder value. I think that the idea of a little bit of a Wild West mentality around regulation is important. Where I would address it is that I think that they should be more legally liable. I almost say let the trial lawyers loose. And that's the thing I hate about 230 is that, okay, if you're willing to take the risk that your organization might end up circumventing minimum wage laws, you should be liable for violating minimum wage laws if that ends up happening. If it ends up that they can prove that about the time social went to mobile that young girls started engaging in self-harm, then that organization and across – and then other organizations, including other social media platforms, should be liable. I think it's –

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I agree. I think it's on the back end because a lot of times they can stop it. They can say, okay, there are unintended consequences. We did not initially see it. I don't think the people who initially built Facebook saw any of this shit. I can tell you they didn't.

Scott Galloway: No, he was far too hopeful.

Kara Swisher: Hopeful is what I would say, like naively hopeful. And I, of course, was like, people are shitty. I think he had this mentality that it wasn't going to be used for bad. I think there is a question. I talk about this anticipation of consequences a lot, and they certainly could get a lot better. But I agree, there's no way to measure it until it's out. And this is not like a drug. This is not like a car. It's very hard to bridge. You know, it's just, of course, all these things, it's very, when bridges do collapse, it's rare, right? At least in sort of a higher level society, even passengers with more money. You don't see buildings. I mean, the whole thing around the Miami collapse was it was shocking, right? It was shocking that it doesn't happen without a, you know, an earthquake or flood or et cetera. And so I just think that you can't, I don't think you can do it, Madison.

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, we're going to do wins and fails. I'm going to start with a win. I'll tell you what my win is. It's going to surprise you. It's that Spotify removed shuffle play as a default option on all albums for premium users. So tracks play in order intended. You know who requested this? Adele. Yeah. So it doesn't, I hate shuffle play. I mean, I like it if I want it, but it's always like it suddenly goes to songs that I want. I like it. And Adele, of course, this was said on Twitter. "This is the only request I had in our ever-changing industry. We don't create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason. Our art tells a story, and our stories should be listened to as we intended. Thank you to Spotify for listening." I think that's great. It shouldn't be default. People can do it if they want. That's what I like. I love Adele. She's the best. Thank you. That is my win. Go Adele.

Scott Galloway: Let me do a fail very quickly. I think all the language surrounding Kyle Rittenhouse and those trials and sort of attacks on the media are the fail. This is a jury trial. This is what was decided. I think we have to – it was a jury trial. Whatever you think of the jury, it was done. I think the prosecution had a very weak case, as I noted to you, I think, several weeks ago, and had enough doubt in there. So that's what it is. And whatever side you happen to agree with, that is what it is. It was a jury trial. That seems unfair to many, seems completely ridiculous that he was on trial to many. I'm not both-sides-ing this thing, but it is what it is. And so what I didn't like is all this, there was all, you know, the dunking on the media for doing it wrong. I actually looked over a lot of the coverage and except for like pundits, it was fine. It totally reported what was happening. And, you know, anyone, all these people use any kind of thing to attack the media, like for not like as if we're one lump thing. It's just exhausting. I was, I commented, I was in a laundromat this weekend because my child vomited. And I was cleaning a comforter because you can't clean them in these newfangled machines. And I was sort of like, you people, all you do is dunk on the media for whatever. There are better people you need to dunk on. So that's what I feel like. Anyway, go ahead.

Scott Galloway: All right. Okay. So my fail is that I think we need to get away from the politicization of science. To me, science should be the most nonpolitical thing. And I think it's disappointing that we figured out a way. I mean, even if you look back just a few years, the anti-vaxxers were from the far left. And I think we just need to move back to this notion that science is this nonpolitical closest thing we have to a truth. And it is just so discouraging that with every scientific breakthrough or every application of health care, we've decided, is it left? Is it right? And am I for or against it based on this ridiculous notion of a vaccine for some reason is associated with the left? I think that's an enormous – I don't know if it's education. I don't know if it's getting more Republican doctors out there or if it's for Democrats to be more thoughtful about – I don't know what it is. But it's dangerous that science has been politicized. I think that's an enormous threat and a fail.

And my win is on the same side of the coin. There is now a potential one-dose treatment to functionally cure HIV. While everyone's so focused on COVID-19 and these vaccines, which is understandable, we now have several antiviral treatments to manage HIV infection. But there's never been a cure. And just the thought, I have someone in my life who's HIV positive, and the thought that he, you know, he's had this ghost haunting him for 30 years. It's just kind of always there. You can manage it, but the idea that you might be able to exercise that demon is just such, it's such an enormous victory for science, assuming it happens. So, look, my fail is that we have somehow decided to politicize what should be the most apolitical thing in history, and that is science. And the win is that we continue to attract these incredibly smart people who are backed with a lot of capital. I think capitalism, for all the downsides and externalities around some of the pharmaceutical companies that have happened or that have occurred, I do think that science is, it does feel as if we are reaching, you know, you always talked about the singularity, about how there'd be this great acceleration in discovery. I do think we're going to come out of the novel coronavirus. There's been so much great research done and so many papers around vaccines. I think we're going to have a few years of real wonderful breakthrough discovery. So my fail that we politicize science and my win is just science.

Kara Swisher: Science. Okay. Okay. All science. Pretty general. Pretty basic. All right. I'll come with it. Pretty basic. And the gag ball I bought on Amazon. That's my win. That's my win.

Scott Galloway: I don't think you can buy a gag ball on Amazon.

Kara Swisher: Oh, you can. Trust me on this.

Scott Galloway: I'm going to look for it. Go ahead. Keep going. Give me a real one. Come on.

Kara Swisher: I'm looking up gag balls on Amazon right now. Just tell me. A real one? What do you mean a real one? Like any one.

Scott Galloway: I don't think gag balls are for sale. I don't know. I don't know for sure, but I don't think they are.

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah. Give me a real positive one. Come on. Is there a movie you saw?

Scott Galloway: I watched that *Red Notice* with Gal Gadot. It's literally the worst movie of all time.

Kara Swisher: I did my film one. You want a better win? My win? I don't know that I just finished being a pharma. I'm telling you, Kara, have you seen *Dopesick*?

Kara Swisher: No, I told you I didn't.

Scott Galloway: Powerful. Best series of the year. Powerful. All right. And a nice crowning achievement for Michael Keaton. Just power. And Rosario Dawson, who is like one of the most beautiful women in the world, is fantastic in it. Yeah. It's, ugh, it is so powerful.

Kara Swisher: All right, I'm going to give you a show. Wait, hold on. In related news, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are changing their name to Sackler.

Scott Galloway: All right. That's good humor.

Kara Swisher: I'm going to give you a show that you need to watch. You already said *Dopesick*. *The Sex Lives of College Girls*, which is so good on HBO.

Scott Galloway: I'm in. I'm in. Don't need to sell me on that.

Kara Swisher: No, it's really funny. It's really funny. And it's Mindy Kaling's show. Funny or not. And it's wonderful. I sat there waiting for Amanda to show up for our, we're going to watch *Red Notice*, and started watching this. And it was clever and funny and lovely. I have to say, it's really, it's about obviously Mindy Kaling's life. I think she went to Dartmouth.

Scott Galloway: With that title, I'll watch it twice.

Kara Swisher: But it's not really about sex. It's like sort of *Sex and the City*, but really lovely. Don't talk me out of it.

Scott Galloway: All right. But I'm just saying, it's called *The Sex Lives of College Girls*. I think you'll like it.

Kara Swisher: It's charming. It's charming and Mindy Kaling. Who are the stars? One of the stars, there's all these interesting stars. They're not people you know, but they've done amazing things. Like one of the women in it was in *Mean Girls* on Broadway. The other is a Chalamet. It's the sister of Timothée Chalamet. I think it's Patricia Chalamet. I don't know. Something like that. She's in it. She plays kind of a dorky Midwesterner. It's really lovely. It's lovely. It's a lovely, lovely show.

Scott Galloway: It's a lovely, lovely show. Well, she's very talented. She has a great reputation, Mindy Kaling.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, she does. I have to say, I've watched a bunch of her shows, and I know she had some hits, but this one's just got a lot of heart. I've got to say, you need to watch it. There's a little bit of sex, but not that much, I have to tell you. But it's really a lovely, lovely show. All right. Now, Scott, before we go, what are you thankful for?

Scott Galloway: Oh, so much. I would say more than anything, I'm really thankful that I have a competent person to raise kids with. I've had such a wonderful year with my boys, and my boys did really well in school. And the reality is it wasn't them doing well in school. It was their mom doing well in school, who I will come home.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, your wife is some top ticket item in many ways, not just in all ways, I have to say.

Scott Galloway: But look, and I think we want to make that investment. I'm tying this back to this infrastructure bill. There's been more people. A society is here, an economy is here for a middle class. And the most important thing about a middle class is to build, you know, give people the opportunity to establish relationships so they can have loving, secure households. And I have, you know, I'm thankful I have a loving, secure household. It's a gift from God. And it's taken a lot of work and a lot of patience and a lot of luck. But I'm thankful. I'm thankful that I am raising children with someone competent such that they can be successful. That is a very nice thing. She's amazing. I have to say.

Kara Swisher: Can I just tell you, you can buy gag balls on Amazon, but it doesn't come up first. Back to the gag ball. I'm just saying, it doesn't come up first. First comes on wobble, wiggle, giggle ball. It's a dog thing. Then there are gag balls. Black open mouth ball diameter. I just sent it to you, just so you know, on the thing. There's also Happy Nuts Comfort Cream Ball Deodorant for Men, which I'm buying you for Christmas, which is very exciting for you. Ball cream.

Scott Galloway: Wow. This is like the page to buy Scott Christmas presents. Kara, what are you thankful for?

Scott Galloway: My wonderful family, I have to say. We are exhausted. Amanda's astonishing. The boys have been great with the kids. Claire is a golden child. She was sick, and she was still fantastic. And the baby, just really great. Really amazing group.

Scott Galloway: I'm so tired, and I realize I'm never going to retire, as I noted to you. But, boy, am I lucky in that regard. It gives me a big old... There was someone who was talking about "fuck you money," that people can earn it and everyone should have the ability to say no and yes. But I have... I don't want to say "fuck your family," but every time I get mad, I'm like, whatever, I have a nice family. So that's what I'm thankful for.

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back after the holiday. I'm getting our turkey from Pam the Butcher, who works for, who Louie works for. As always, you can submit your question to the show at nymag.com slash pivot. Let's read us out, please. We're buying this like $11,000 turkey from a Swiss farm where they feed the turkeys other turkeys.

Kara Swisher: Anyways, today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mio Silverio. Ernie Entretot engineered this episode. Make sure you're subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts. If you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or, frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back next Friday for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Scott Galloway: It's one thing to be thankful for your family and your mate on a podcast. It's another to tell them you're thankful. That's what I need to do, Kara.

Kara Swisher: We just did.

Scott Galloway: That's what I need to do. I'm going to take the gag ball out and I'm going to articulate my thanks.