Goldman Sachs' Earnings Woes, X Tests Subscriptions, and Marc Andreesen’s Manifesto

[Ad Break]

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. How you doing? My voice is a little better today, don't you think?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it actually sounds a lot better.

Scott Galloway: I know. Now we're in the hacking cough and sore throat part of the equation of whatever I have. I don't know what it is.

Kara Swisher: The good news is I find at our age, despite—I'll say our age generously because you're much older than me—coughs tend to hang around for like months.

Scott Galloway: Do they? I find they're lingering.

Kara Swisher: They're lingering? You just sit there and go, "Eh, eh, eh," like that?

Scott Galloway: Just like, yeah. I can see you wandering around the house coughing late at night. Do you wander around the house late at night?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's actually one of my favorite things. I get on.

Scott Galloway: Me too. I do that. I wander around and I do things and I have a good time. Are you a night person?

Kara Swisher: I am a night person. I would stay up until 3 a.m. if I could and sleep till—I used to be able to sleep till noon and now I can't because of kids, but I also can't sleep. I wake up every morning at 6, 7 o'clock.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. No, I actually went to sleep at 4 a.m. last night. But the nice thing is I get to get up every 90 minutes and pee. So that's the good news.

Kara Swisher: That's an old man thing. That's a prostate thing, right?

Scott Galloway: It is a prostate thing, yeah. You should wear a diaper. An adult diaper.

Kara Swisher: You know, it's on its way. We all come into this world and leave it in diapers. It's the great equalizer.

Scott Galloway: Yes, it's true. I think diapers must be comforting. We're getting Claire off of them almost completely except for nighttime, and she's working on nighttime, and I think she likes it. Like, I don't know, I think she likes the comfort of it or something. You should try it. I'll send you a box.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, maybe in 20 or 30 years, but yeah, I'm in.

Scott Galloway: Okay. I'm in, not yet.

Kara Swisher: Okay, good. Cool. So there's a lot going on. There's still the ongoing crisis in the Mideast. Also, Goldman Sachs' earnings woes. The DJ is no longer. The side hustle was a distraction, apparently. X's plan to charge will go into effect, I guess. Google making cuts in its news division. All kinds of things happening. We still don't have a Speaker of the House. As we record this on Thursday morning, Representative Jim Jordan has failed to win a second vote for speakership. He actually lost Republican votes on the second round. Every House Democrat voted for minority leader Hakeem Jeffries. Members of both parties are looking to give interim Speaker Patrick McHenry the authority to run the House until a speaker can be chosen. I think this is a plot by that little bowtied man to take over everything. A lot of it's been drowned out by news from the Mideast, but it's still a circus. Any thoughts?

Scott Galloway: I think you summarized it. It's a circus. It's a bad look for the Republicans and leadership and American general. I think it makes sense. I don't. I find Jim Jordan—I have much different political views than his—but I think it's just sort of ridiculous that they would offer up someone to lead the House of Representatives. At the end of the day, they're lawmakers, and he's never made a law. I just don't.

Kara Swisher: So we're going to have—yeah, what's he been doing that whole time?

Scott Galloway: He's been throwing red meat at his base, getting on TikTok and fundraising and getting reelected and getting more and more senior appointments. That's why we need more churn. This isn't a career built on achievements. It's a career built on seniority, built on saying incendiary extremist things that your base loves and gives you more money, which gets you elected. Wash, rinse, repeat. He says he's shaken up the system. He really isn't. The system remains and he's just loud and on the side of it. A lot of the wrestlers at Ohio State are coming forward again talking about his behavior, which is also reprehensible according to them. I'm going to say you're innocent until proven guilty, but there are a lot of people coming forward talking about how he behaved during that time. He also bullied a lot of people. That's what they're alleging. He's saying he wasn't the bully, but people have been calling offices of Congress people who voted against him—Republicans, very conservative Republicans, by the way, I might add—and making death threats and cursing. And he's, of course, saying this is terrible, but all roads lead to bullying, leads to Jim Jordan, including around the election denial stuff. So I don't know. It's really quite depressing that this is who they think is qualified.

Kara Swisher: And not only that, I've seen a couple of TikToks of different Republican congresspeople, and a lot of them seem quite reasonable. A lot of them even seem as if they could reach across the aisle and occasionally work with people to pass bipartisan legislation. Making him speaker is going to do nothing but decrease the likelihood we're going to get anything done.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, which may be his point.

Kara Swisher: I agree. I was listening to several, and I was like, okay. Reasonable. And I then looked up a record. I'm like, not so reasonable, but that's okay. It's a policy debate, right? And she was like, sort of made sense. There's a lot of them. It's actually kind of good to get this middle group that's been quiet. They call them the squishes, I guess. I don't know. They're kind of like, "Screw this. Fuck this guy." I'm kind of glad they finally stood up. My favorite is Ken Buck, who just—who knows what he's going to say, what's going to drop out of his mouth at any point. But all he wants Jordan to say is the election wasn't stolen. And Jordan won't do it, which is crazy. Anyway, we'll see.

Scott Galloway: But let's get to something that has to do with you, because I know you like that.

Kara Swisher: A number of tech leaders are dropping out of next month's Web Summit conference in Lisbon. This is after Paddy Cosgrave, the co-founder of Web Summit, accused Israel of committing war crimes. Cosgrave posted that, quote, "War crimes are war crimes even when they're committed by allies and should be called out for what they are." He's since issued an apology sort of condemning Hamas and saying he supports Israel's right to defend itself. But he was getting into beefs all over the place and kept sort of doubling down on a lot of stuff. Scott, I'd like you to talk about it. I would just say a lot of this to me is narcissism on his part. He has no place here. I know he can say what he wants, but at some point, especially at a very emotional moment, he might want to sit down. Just want to sit down and shut up for a minute. Even if he has opinions, I have opinions too. So, Scott, talk to me about this.

Scott Galloway: So, the last few years I've been asked to be one of the keynotes at Web Summit, and it's never worked.

Kara Swisher: Yep.

Scott Galloway: I've been invited myself, but I haven't gone in years.

Kara Swisher: Oh, you had to add that in there, didn't you?

Scott Galloway: I was invited before you.

Kara Swisher: Okay, you were. No, I've gone. I've gone. I have gone. I've never been.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, Web Summit is the South by Southwest, if you will, of Europe. I was really excited about going. I was opening the night, the opening night, and I have two really close friends in Lisbon, and we were going to make a weekend of it. I was really excited to go. And then he does this stuff. He puts out what most people would label as at a minimum anti-Israel and potentially anti-Semitic comments or commentary on Twitter. So immediately I started getting emails saying, "Are you going to pull out? What are you going to do?" What's different about the decision process is that I think 10 or 20 years ago, I would have thought, "How can I be seen as most awesome and interesting and get into a grievance contest and express my outrage?" And I thought, "Okay, how can I be more thoughtful about this?" I started, I said, "Okay, I'm going to call some people who might be able to help me read the label from inside of the bottle," which you can't.

Kara Swisher: You did. You called me. I can't believe it.

Scott Galloway: I called you. I called Jonathan Rosenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League. I called Paul Sagan, who's on my board of directors. I called Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, although I knew what Jeffrey was going to say. I called Todd Benson, a few of my friends who I think don't have as much affinity for Israel, to get a more balanced view. Where I was struggling was the following, or the process I went through is, when I first heard his comments, I got very upset and thought, "That's it, I'm out." And then the second layer, peeling back the onion, I do have a concern, a very real concern, that corporations, universities, and gatherings like this are safe places where we come together and we enjoy what we have in common and our shared beliefs, whether it's at this summit celebrating Europe, Portugal, entrepreneurship, digital innovation, capitalism. There's a lot. Ninety-nine percent of the people who attend this share views on a lot of wonderful things. And I worry that if everybody just withdraws, if Leslie Wexler and all Jewish alumni and supporters and then ultimately students withdraw from Harvard, do we as Jews just end up at a small number of schools? Do corporations are all required eventually to take a political stand on everything, meaning that if you're of a different political view, there's Chick-fil-A, which is one type of political orthodoxy, and there's In-N-Out, which is another. Slowly but surely, every organization becomes red or blue, pro-Israel, anti-Israel, and we have even more segregation and less reason to come together and celebrate the things we share. I have a very real concern that we are finding reasons to segregate from each other, which creates less understanding, more coarse discourse, war.

Kara Swisher: Can I make one observation? People did self-select a lot more than you think, men especially.

Scott Galloway: Say more?

Kara Swisher: I think people did it without talking about it. You hung out in country clubs you liked or went to parties you liked with the right people.

Scott Galloway: Oh, sure. That's what I mean. I think people did this. And as a woman being left out, I was one of the few at that conference on stage early on. And they've tried to change, obviously. But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Universities, corporations, and these types of events are usually generally great ways to bring people from different backgrounds and different viewpoints together to celebrate their shared interests.

Kara Swisher: Sure.

Scott Galloway: And I think that's a wonderful thing. And I worry that we just continue to segregate. And then the reality is I started thinking more and more, and as things have unfolded here, one, there are different levels of bad. There are different levels of crime. I think that the far-right policies that largely indicate the Israeli approach to the occupied territories or Gaza have been wrong. I think Netanyahu is a criminal, and I think there's a time to talk about both of those things. There is a different level of evil, a different threat of DEFCON a million that is represented by terrorism. And there needs to be a swift and crisp response to the apologists out there, whether it's Elon Musk, whether it's the media immediately asking everyone to slow down when there are reports of Israeli babies being beheaded—"Let's take a moment. This hasn't been confirmed." And then a hospital is destroyed. And immediately everyone's like, "Israel destroys hospital." If Hamas put down their weapons, there'd largely be peace right now in Gaza, and I would like to think we could move to something resembling some sort of reparations or start thinking about the next chapter here. If Israel puts down their weapons, they're all going to be exterminated. And the level of both-sideism here, the thinly-veiled anti-Semitism which is infecting our culture, I think we have to have a swift and pretty severe response.

Kara Swisher: Let me ask you, as a devil's advocate, I just want you to put this. It was interesting. I was watching CNN last night. I was noticing they had a lot of Israeli families on who have hostages, and they're incredibly brave, given that most of these people have children being held hostage, adult children or older teens or whatever. And then they just started to bring on a lot of Palestinians whose relatives are suffering there, either stuck in some of these areas, et cetera. It was an interesting choice. I didn't think that was both-sideism. I thought the way they handled it was information. And I agree on the new stuff because they go too fast, too far, especially around the hospital, around all these things, whichever fingers being pointed wherever. But there is a time and a place. I think you're correct in saying that. And at the moment that Cosgrave said that, I thought, this is just not the moment and not the right message and not you. That's what sort of struck me.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And I think it's important that people have empathy for both sides. This is a layered and nuanced problem. But the different level of inhumanity being demonstrated by one side here.

Kara Swisher: Agreed.

Scott Galloway: And there's so much going on. I think young people are conflating the struggle of the Palestinians with civil rights and have a lot of empathy for them. And quite frankly, I think the far right in Israel has not draped themselves in glory and has created a real decline in empathy and support for Israel. And I think they bear some responsibility for that. But people all around the world in the media and Americans, and especially Jews like myself—it's one thing to have an opinion, but if you have a principle, and my principle I'd like to think is that terrorism needs to be in uncertain terms repudiated, it's not a principle unless you're willing to sacrifice for it. Then it's just an opinion. So I called a lot of people. I wanted to be thoughtful about this. A lot of his comments as I read his tweets, I would describe them as he's being an apologist for terrorism.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, he also was quite angry and on his high horse. That was really irritating.

Scott Galloway: And indignant. And also just as a leader, he's being a terrible leader. He's putting a lot of people's economic livelihood in the crosshair of his grandstanding and political beliefs. That's not what a CEO does. Does everyone—do the thousands of people who work at Web Summit feel the same way as you? Because this is how you are representing your organization, whether you like it or not.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, there was also the controversy around the Qatar event that he's having. He's going to Qatar, doing an event there, just to put that in there. And also, just on a personal level, I thought about my mom. My mom was a Jew, and I thought she would be really disappointed if she knew I was going. And I thought, you know, that matters to me.

Scott Galloway: And look, I hope that there's a lot of other events. I hope that in an era of social media, I see Twitter as nothing but kerosene that is ready to be poured on our worst instincts.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I agree with you on that.

Scott Galloway: And he got caught in that. And I do believe we need to move to a society, and I hope we teach people this as part of high school, that in an era of social media with network effects where there's a 24/7 camera on your life, that we become slow to judge and quick to forgive.

Kara Swisher: That's a very good way of putting it. Who affected you the most? What pushed you over the edge? Because you were definitely on the fence when you and I were talking.

Scott Galloway: I have an image of my 80-year-old aunt, hide it.

Kara Swisher: It's okay, Scott. I get it. I think you're making the right decision for yourself. I really do. People will pile on you one way or the other no matter what you do, and you have to do what's right for you and what's correct for you and how you feel instinctually. And I appreciate that you went and called all these people and wanted to talk to people and took a moment rather than got on your own high horse and made a series of declarations, which you did not do. I thought that was incredibly smart of you to do for yourself. But you've made the right decision.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I think so. And I hope that we make an effort again to move to forgiveness for people and be a little bit more gracious, whether it's students who say dumb things. But when it comes to different levels of wrong, there has to be a pretty swift and unequivocal response to terrorism. Full stop.

Kara Swisher: I would have to agree with you on that one. I think you're right. This has been a really interesting Rorschach test on the whole world on this thing, because there's no—did you read "Night" or "Day"? Did you ever read that book?

Scott Galloway: I don't think so.

Kara Swisher: You need to read it. It's a very short book, so you'll like that. It's about those—does it have pictures?

Scott Galloway: No, you don't want pictures in this book. It's about torture and Israel becoming, having the people of Israel having just been brutalized. It's Elie Wiesel. It's "Night." There's "Night" and there's "Day," but you should read both. And it's about being brutal and being brutalized. It really stayed with me. I read it in college. I should read it again. I haven't read it since then. But it's about those really difficult moments, which this is. Scott, you've become a very thoughtful man. I really appreciate it. I thought this is where you were going to end up. I did in the end, although I know you want to help those entrepreneurs. I think that was what was sticking in your craw most of all. You wanted to be there and sort of give advice and et cetera. Plus, I heard it's just a good time.

Scott Galloway: It is. There's really good prawns in Lisbon.

Kara Swisher: We'll go to Lisbon together. How about that? We'll go there.

Scott Galloway: Well, I'm going to propose now that we bring back Code, and we have an event at Code in 2024 in Tel Aviv.

Kara Swisher: Oh, wow. Okay. Let's talk about it.

[Transition]

Kara Swisher: Anyway, Google has cut around 40 jobs in its news division. A spokesman for the company said the cuts were made to streamline and that hundreds of people are still working on a news product. Reminder, Alphabet cut 6% of its staff this January. I've never thought news—I thought it was always a virtue signal for them, at least. I don't know. Any thoughts?

Scott Galloway: I think they've figured out what a lot of billionaires and shareholders of Gannett, The New York Times, or The Washington Post have figured out. And that is news is a shitty business. Keep in mind, when I was growing up, the news was something that played for 21 minutes every night on CBS, NBC, or ABC, and it was seen as a social good. The networks thought, "All right, we're just clocking money selling Tang and Chevys during 'Brady Bunch' and 'The Partridge Family,' so we're going to give a little bit of it back and we're going to have 21 minutes of news." And they started something called "Point Counterpoint." It went 18 minutes of news, three minutes of opinion. And they noticed that the greatest engagement was in those three minutes. Then Ted Turner said, "People want news 24 hours a day." And then Rupert Murdoch said, "Oh, wait, people want 24 hours of news slash entertainment." And the whole thing came off the rails. Unless you were offering entertainment, actual news, the nuance and the depth and the journalism required is a shitty business. In addition, when you have algorithms that elevate false content or misinformation and you subject yourself to warranted criticism and you don't want to make the investment because you have margins that are just ungodly and you don't want to reduce those ungodly margins in things like fact-checking and journalism, you just throw up your arms and you say, "Let's get the hell out of Dodge if Dodge equals news." And they've come to the same realization that our economy has come to and that the UK government kind of came to and said to have fact-check reporting, we need to charge every household to have the BBC.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Because news is important, but real news and real journalism is, in a profit model, not a good business.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I would agree. I never thought, honestly, I know they think they're serious. And I remember being at my house once, and Larry Page was there, and he was talking about how all news is equal to me. And I literally was like, "I'm going to throw a drink in your face." Like he thought if you give everybody everything, they will figure it out. And I was like, "Oh yeah, yeah right. Go to 4chan, Larry." I remember thinking, this guy just doesn't—I don't think they value it. I think everything—they think a cat video is the same as a—whatever you think of The New York Times this week, that headline was problematic that they had about the bombing. I was just like, they don't care. A cat video is the same as a New York Times article to them. That's my feeling, was always my feeling with those people. And they don't want to—they've taken no responsibility, all of them, and they want no responsibility. And that's where we are with these people. We'll get to that more in a minute.

[Transition]

Kara Swisher: But let's get to our first big story. It's been a tough week for Goldman Sachs, with the company reporting a 33% decline in profit for the third quarter, though it's slightly better than some analysts expected. The losses are tied to Goldman selling off pieces of its failed experiment in consumer lending, plus a large drop in revenue in its asset and wealth management division. In an earnings call, CEO David Solomon attempted to convince investors that the company is headed for future growth, but made it clear that rising interest rates and the war in Ukraine and Israel will present challenges. He's also said he's going to stop doing his DJing. He's called DJ D-Sol. As he's known, he's played at a number of high-profile events over the years, including Lollapalooza and the Sports Illustrated Super Bowl Party. He stopped DJing after getting criticism. It created a distraction from his work, according to the Financial Times. Well, I'd love your thoughts on that.

Scott Galloway: Well, it's not that complex or interesting. The banks that are largely dependent upon investment banking revenue—that is M&A, transactions, and the IPO business—it's an amazing business. There is no higher margin business than getting Twitter, selling Twitter to Elon Musk and collecting $200 million in fees. But it's lumpy. And the markets don't like bipolar businesses. They like steady businesses. So the business that's driving the most shareholder value is wealth management because it's just a slow build and people typically keep their money with their investment bank. So Morgan Stanley, who is also much more dependent on investment banking and M&A revenue, also had a shitty quarter. And then the banks that have huge consumer divisions where they take in money and pay you 3% on a CD and loan it out at 7% on a mortgage—the spreads between what they have to pay savers and what they can charge borrowers has grown enormously. So they're killing it. So again, it's more market dynamics than individual leadership.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, although this is the eighth quarter in a row where Goldman reported year-over-year profit decline. The detour into consumer lending seems to be the cause of some of these problems. Goldman Sachs announced last week that it was offloading GreenSky, the lending platform which it acquired. It was trying to go all digital. I recall him talking about this quite a bit, which it acquired in 2022 for $1.7 billion. They're offloading it. The partnership with Apple, the card, which included the Apple card, which I have in savings account, is likely to be on the chopping block. I bet there was not an uptake to it. JP Morgan and Wells Fargo are doing pretty well. JP Morgan reported a 35% jump in third-quarter profits from last year, and Wells Fargo had a 61% increase, probably reflecting exactly what you're saying. What is the problem here? He's got a lot of controversy around him. Bill Cohen's written about it quite a bit. He thinks he's not in trouble so far, what I've been reading, but other people do quite a bit. There's a lot of spin around this DJ D-Sol. I don't know if that's the biggest deal, although he kind of looked ridiculous in my opinion, but whatever makes him happy.

Scott Galloway: Well, look, it sucks to be a grownup. And David is the CEO of Goldman, which comes with a lot of wonderful things. People want him at his conferences. He makes a shit ton of money. It's an important position.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: The DJing had become a distraction. Whether it was warranted, whether it was fair, it had become a distraction. So he made the right decision.

Kara Swisher: Let me give you the quote. "David hasn't publicly DJed an event in well over a year. Music was not a distraction from David's work. The media attention became a distraction." That's kind of bullshit because him doing it is a media—they're creating a media event, the head of Goldman Sachs. So stop it. Stop it, PR person.

Scott Galloway: Well, what I would like to say, and I'm 100% sincere about this. I'm not friends with David, but I'm friendly with him.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, me too.

Scott Galloway: Well, not like you. I have a big birthday coming up. Not this November, but next November I'll be 50.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And I have rented out this amazing castle in Scotland called the Five Arms. And I am issuing a formal—and this is sincere—invitation to David Solomon to show up as DJ D-Sol and DJ the weekend. And here's the key.

Kara Swisher: Okay.

Scott Galloway: We will lie and tell his investors and his board that we were playing croquet and hunting stags and doing what all good white people do. Because the thing that I don't understand about any of this shit is, would they rather he be playing golf and drinking Pimp cups?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, fair point.

Scott Galloway: Fair point. It's his time. It causes attention.

Kara Swisher: It does. Well, you're right. And per my previous comments, when anything you're doing—it sucks to be a grownup. Whether it's fair or not, when anything you're doing as CEO is distracting from your mission to create shareholder value and add value back to your stakeholders, then okay. If all of a sudden everyone was obsessed and joking about his kayaking, then fine, you need to give up kayaking.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: So I think they got this right. What should he do instead? I don't know him that well. Whatever makes him happy.

Scott Galloway: Pickleball.

Kara Swisher: Pickleball. Oh, God.

Scott Galloway: He can play pickleball.

Kara Swisher: I don't know. Yeah. You're having a party. Are you inviting me to that party?

Scott Galloway: Let's focus on the party. You know, Kara, I meant to tell you. We only have room for 100 people, and you came in at 102.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God.

Scott Galloway: So I apologize. If we have cancellations, you're welcome. But we only had 100 spaces.

Kara Swisher: Okay. But, yeah.

Scott Galloway: Of course you're going to be there. I expect you to be there. I've already RSVP'd yes for you.

Kara Swisher: Oh, okay. Good. You better tell me when it is because I'm a busy lady.

Scott Galloway: No, of course I would come to your party. I would give a great toast to you. I would give a great toast.

Kara Swisher: Well, what's going to return this to other people?

Kara Swisher: Jamie Dimon's doing great. You know, I see why Wells Fargo.

Scott Galloway: By the way, Solomon was appointed CEO in 2018. He took a nearly 30% pay cut in 2022, a result of the firm's performance. I think he's more in trouble from the other partners who can get a little testy with this kind of stuff. I think the word is that he fired a lot of people, or people aren't making as much money, and people just don't like the guy internally. So there are a lot of people going on background and shitposting him. But if you look at who matters—and that is the board—they just put an ally of his on the board. And if you look at the stock performance relative to his peers, he's done just fine.

Kara Swisher: I mean, the stock—it's pretty simple here. When you're J.P. Morgan or Citi or Wells Fargo, who you could argue are or are not, or Bank of America, well-managed, when you used to take money in and have to pay people 1% and you could loan it out at 2%, okay, and then all of a sudden you can take in money and pay 4% and loan it out at 6%, you double your margins.

Scott Galloway: Well, you got more. Well, he did have the Apple card.

Kara Swisher: He had the Apple card. I actually think that stuff, the way they handled their foreign consumer banking and the way they got out—

Scott Galloway: I would argue that, look, no one likes failure. We don't embrace failure. That's bullshit, but we tolerate it. But they tried to foray into consumer banking, and it didn't work. And they performed what big companies usually don't do: they performed infanticide. They said, "This isn't working, let's get out."

Kara Swisher: Yeah, interesting. Why didn't it work? What do you think?

Scott Galloway: Just not their business. The honest answer is I don't know why it didn't work.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I don't know. Interesting. I bet nobody had an Apple savings account. I didn't—it's not something I would. I use my Apple card every now and then. I don't use it as much though, that's for sure.

Scott Galloway: I never use the Apple card. I use Apple Pay four or five times a day.

Kara Swisher: Exactly. That's why. Hello. That's why.

Scott Galloway: But I—you know what the most valuable real estate in the world is, hands down? The real estate in your wallet.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. It keeps getting smaller. My wallet keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And now that real estate has almost gone away.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. It's like, I use my wallet as much as I go into an office now because everything's on my phone.

Kara Swisher: I agree. I agree. I left my wallet somewhere the other day, and I'm like, "Oh, no problem. Who cares?" It didn't matter. Everything was on my phone. As long as I have my phone.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, exactly. My phone would be more problematic.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, DJ Soul, we're so excited to see you in Scotland. Where in Scotland is this?

Scott Galloway: It's about an hour's drive out of Edinburgh.

Kara Swisher: Oh, good. Perfect. I went to a wedding up in Scotland like that. It was wonderful. It was really beautiful.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it is. It's one of the most—

Kara Swisher: Is there going to be kilts? Are you going to be wearing a kilt?

Scott Galloway: Mandatory. Mandatory. I'm bringing a kilt.

Kara Swisher: No, we'll have a fitting. Yeah, oh, good. A fitting.

Scott Galloway: I'm going to go to Edinburgh and get myself a whole outfit. That's what I'm going to do. Because they have stores where you can outfit yourself.

Kara Swisher: They do. They do.

Scott Galloway: I'm going. I'm getting a little jacket, getting a little hat, the whole thing.

Kara Swisher: I'm going to get a little dog, probably a thing of whiskey.

Scott Galloway: A little dog? That's a little much.

Kara Swisher: A little dog. That's a little much.

Scott Galloway: I'm going to do the whole thing. Are you kidding? I'll bring my dogs.

Kara Swisher: Anyway. You can share my dogs.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, okay. I'm getting a little dog, one of those little Scottish-looking dogs.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about X's payment plan going into effect for some users and take a listener mail question about a tech manifesto.

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with our second big story: the state of affairs of the social platform formerly known as Twitter. X announced this week that it had started testing the "Not a Bot" subscription plan in the Philippines and New Zealand. Under the plan, new users will pay a dollar a year to post content, like, reply, repost, and bookmark. Elon said in a post, "It's the only way to fight bots without blocking real users. This won't stop bots completely, but it'll be a thousand times harder to manipulate the platform." I honestly would prefer bots to some real users, I'll be honest with you. So it's finally happening. X said in a statement that the move is not intended to be a profit driver. New X users who do not pay the dollar a year fee will only be allowed read-only actions. I don't know if it's expanding or anything else. So what do you think?

Scott Galloway: Strategically, theoretically, I think this is a good idea. I think this should clear out—it reminded me of Bill Gates' idea 20 years ago to try and reduce spam. Remember your email box used to be incredibly clean, and then all of a sudden it turned into something you couldn't even wade through? He said if you charged everyone one cent to send an email—his idea was with Microsoft Mail—they were gonna charge you one cent, and then give the one cent away. So I think this is a good idea. The problem is that they have had so many different confusing pricing mechanisms and products and new strategies that I don't think people really understand it or see the value in it. He'll get criticism for it. So it's the right idea, it's all about the rollout. But I think it is an efficient, elegant way to potentially reduce the number of bots on the platform.

Kara Swisher: Well, they've thought about it at Twitter for years. They've thought about doing this exact thing. And there are all kinds of reasons why they didn't. And Bill Gates never did charge that one cent, by the way. It never happened. And people have been trying to fix email forever and just sort of gave up on it and deal with it. And they've tried to increase blocking. Google's tried very hard, et cetera. I think it comes down to the fact that nobody wants to give this guy any money, even if it's a dollar, and giving him your credit card is a little... I said, "I don't know. I don't think I want to pay for this." And I can't really block people I hate. I can't do comments because people who are commenting are not bots—they are actual people that are really rude. And I don't trust him with my credit card. I got so much response of, "I don't trust him with my credit card. I don't want this guy to have my credit card." It was really interesting. That was the response more than anything else.

Let's take a listen to what ex-CEO Linda Yaccarino said when asked about the plan by Julia Boorstin at Code a few weeks ago, which was her last, and perhaps last, interview as CEO of X because she's dropped out of a number of them.

[Audio clip plays] Julia Boorstin: Elon Musk just announced a new monthly fee for users. Yep. And my question for you is, do you want to start charging all users of X, as he said, and how many users do you think you will lose as a result? Linda Yaccarino: Can you repeat? Julia Boorstin: Elon Musk announced you're moving to an entirely subscription-based service. Nothing free about using X. Linda Yaccarino: Did he say we were moving to it specifically or is he thinking about it? Julia Boorstin: He said that's the plan. Linda Yaccarino: Yeah. Julia Boorstin: So did he consult you before he announced that? Linda Yaccarino: We talk about everything.

Kara Swisher: Oh, God. Listening to that again, I have a stomachache. She didn't answer, obviously. Terrible.

Scott Galloway: Oh God, that just gave you a stomachache listening to it. "Can you repeat?" Yeah, no, that's what I do. This morning with my 13-year-old, his mother called and started asking me a series of pointed questions, like, "Did he eat last night?" Yeah. And I would say, "Could you repeat?" And she doesn't get the joke. She's like, "What do you mean? Did he have dinner?" I'm like, "Could you repeat? Can you repeat?"

Kara Swisher: Oh, good God. Well, she is obviously not dialed into this one. She hasn't dialed in. What do they say? She's not read in. She's not read into this, or maybe she is now, I guess.

Anyway, we're approaching the one-year mark of his acquisition of Twitter. A new report shows usage is on the decline, according to data from SimilarWeb. I think this will lead to more decline. I'm not paying for it. According to data on SimilarWeb, X's global website traffic was down by 14% year over year in September, and U.S. traffic was down by 19%. That's a big drop. In July, Yaccarino claimed the usage was at an all-time high. It's just—I don't know what to say. Traffic to Elon's profile page was up 96% year over year because he has directed there. I don't know if you'll see that trend continue because—I mean, I have to tell you, Threads is getting better. It is.

Scott Galloway: You like it more? You like it?

Kara Swisher: I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying it. There was a flood of people after this Israeli-Hamas thing.

Scott Galloway: I bet.

Kara Swisher: I do miss Twitter. I miss the rawness and the viscosity of things being thrown at you. And a lot of really wonderful information would bubble up. But it wasn't worth it. It got to the point where the amount of vitriol and venom and sewage—and also just back to the notion of having principles. It's like, okay, I love what you said. I'm not going to paint this guy's fucking fence.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And I would argue that for a lot of people, a creative mental health move is to get off of Twitter. I have lost some stuff. I don't get the dopamine hits. I don't get feedback on everything I do in a granular way. I think I—

Kara Swisher: Gosh, I get a lot of feedback on Threads now. It's really interesting, and it's all helpful. It's much more positive. It's much more—I wouldn't even say positive, constructive. It's constructive.

Scott Galloway: What's interesting is, I'm thinking someone like Ian Bremmer, who I read on Twitter, is now putting it over there, the same thing. And I like it over there. I'm seeing a lot of people that I like to see.

Kara Swisher: And the only thing I'm not doing is the Jim Jordan stuff is faster over on Twitter. So that's where I'm going for that, right? And then I go right back over for the regular life. So in that regard, for fast news stuff, but for the news about what's going on in Israel, absolutely not Twitter. It's so full of crap.

And let me talk about that. Companies like Meta and TikTok have said they're trying to moderate this content. It's still a mess. Twitter is impossible. There was so much bad information, it was hard to sort through and find the good stuff. Eventually, I did for, say, the bombing at the hospital. Even though Hamas has been banned from most social media platforms, their content is still showing up in violent videos and political messages. The messaging app Telegram seems to be where particularly violent, extreme content is getting posted. There's little, if any, moderation. We talked about the EU taking action last week. Here in the US, Senator Michael Bennett is calling on X, Meta, TikTok, and Alphabet to explain what they're doing to address it. Some people think you should let it on there and then use community notes. Some people think you should take it down. I think it's almost impossible to do it given the thing. It's really problematic, I have to say. This war has shown this very clearly.

Scott Galloway: Well, a lot is coming to light here. One, the flaw in social media about how it just absolutely turbocharges our worst instincts. And also what it's reflecting in our society is that when I was growing up, America was just incredibly pro-Israel. And I think a combination of poor policy that's been overzealous from the right wing in Israel, a leadership right now that is trying to dismantle their democracy in order to avoid their own corruption charges, and an incorrect conflation of the struggles that many minority groups have faced in America with the struggles that the Palestinians face—I don't think the two are equivalent. I think it's much more nuanced than that. It has resulted in a dramatic schism or chasm between how the alumni of universities and older Americans feel about Israel versus younger ones. And that's just been thrown in our face.

Also, I don't like the fact that we're so dependent. I give money to my alma maters, but I don't like how dependent on universities that are supposed to encourage people to be provocative. The leadership there—I kind of agree with the University of Chicago. We're just neutral. We don't make these statements. We support free speech. I think that's the right advice for most corporations. If you're Microsoft and you have people in Tel Aviv, I think you need to say something. If you're an organization like Disney that has a really vibrant LGBTQ community driving your business and you get this shit from DeSantis, I think you have to say something. But for the most part, be careful. When you start taking political positions to virtue signal, then you're going to be expected to have a position on everything.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, everything.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: But in this case, you're not on Twitter, but I have to tell you, it's impossible to get good information about this, except on Jim Jordan. There are a couple of reporters who are very good. And that's it. That's all I look at. I'm so particular because now I cannot wade through the crap on Twitter. And I'm not using Threads for news really yet. I could, I certainly could. And I've seen—one thing it has delivered to me is stories I didn't know I wanted to read, like all these interesting sort of what Artifact is also doing. Like, "Oh, I didn't know about that. That's interesting." And I like that. I find that helpful.

But you're right—I just don't think they ever had an intention. I don't think they want responsibility, and I don't think they're taking responsibility. They're just like, "Whatever." And they're trying all kinds of little tools, from community notes to actually taking stuff down, and none of it's effective because they don't have an intent to make it effective. It's going to be very—anytime there's a crisis like this, where all of a sudden people's appetite for news and information grows exponentially. I mean, I'm just glued to my phone right now.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: But there's usually a reshuffling of the deck, right? The first Iraq war was where CNN kind of really became super important.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Remember the Scud Stud?

Scott Galloway: I imagine there was an event where Twitter saw a step change up. I don't know if it was the Arab Spring.

Kara Swisher: Oh yeah, that absolutely right. It would be really interesting to see when the dust settles here which platform—how which platforms accelerated or decelerated and why.

Scott Galloway: I would say none of them.

Kara Swisher: But things are getting—the reporting is actually getting better and better from these areas and people are figuring it out, which is great. I have to say media, I know you were very critical, but they're figuring it out in a way. And initially, as always, it sucks, but they're being much more thoughtful. And I'm so glad for really good media and all kinds of experts like Ian. You know who I think has done a great job? I think CNN's done a great job.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I have to agree.

Kara Swisher: But I do think—and all kinds of experts. I like Bellingcat. I thought BBC Verify has been very good. So they're getting their act together and they care about it, but the social media companies don't give a fuck. So just don't expect any good behavior from them.

Scott Galloway: Well, it's a shitty business. I mean, to a certain extent, they're uber-capitalist. They're like, "We're not here to—"

Kara Swisher: Cat videos.

Scott Galloway: The people that go there aren't on a mission to make the world better. They're on a mission to create economic security for themselves. And I think that's fine. I get it. But be clear.

Kara Swisher: Cat videos. Go watch your cat videos. That's what you need to do. By the way, there are some very good cat videos on Threads.

Okay, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question.

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

Kara Swisher: All right. This question comes from a listener, Tim McGrath, who has some questions about a blog that tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen put out this week that has a lot of people talking. I'll just give a quick context. He likes to put out these things. One of his most famous ones where he said "Software is eating the world," which was actually a very good post. This is not the same, I would say. But I'll read the question. "Kara and Scott, would love to hear your thoughts and commentary on Marc Andreessen's 'Techno-Optimist Manifesto.' The title starts problematically. Anyway, obviously it's self-serving, and I'd love to hear what you think. I'm a bit offended that he starts off with lies and also sets the tone. There will be no real introspection in this piece about the role of technology in society or the ways to mitigate its evils. It reeks of libertarianism and tech-bro-ness, but the real question is why? Why does it come out now? What is pending that precipitated this? It would be awesome to include an interview with Mark to talk about it. I'd love to hear how Mark thinks."

I'll start. He's not speaking to me. He blocked me. We used to talk all the time. He really turned in a way that he turned before Elon turned, I tell you, in a really unpleasant way. I thought this piece was terrible. I thought it was a straw man for everyone who hates AI is evil, essentially. So I thought it was a terrible, terrible piece. I think he's doing it because he's not being relevant right now and he wants—he's making a bid for relevancy. I don't know, Scott, what do you think?

Scott Galloway: I don't know Marc Andreessen. I've never met him. I'm not that familiar with his work. I was trying to find something that he had written on Twitter, and I found out that he had proactively blocked me. So I think someone managing a social media account has decided that I'm anti-Andreessen Horowitz, or I'm a co-investor with Andreessen in a company, but I've never met the guy. I personally find it distasteful, and I'm grouping him, maybe unfairly, into a group of tech entrepreneurs that have a lack of appreciation for the blessings they got by virtue of being born in America or building their businesses in America. And I find that they leverage—almost every major tech company has been built on the back of the greatest venture capitalist in history, and that's the US government and middle-class taxpayers who are the limited partners who invested in GPS technology or the internet or DARPA or subsidies for vaccines. And the moment they have theirs, they decide that they want out. They start endorsing this weird form of libertarianism. And I find it just very disappointing that the people who should be the most patriotic oftentimes end up being the least patriotic. A lot of what I've seen from Mark feels very—

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I think he was the first person to start getting funny. That's what I noticed. Let me tell you what I wrote on Threads. I also put it on Twitter. "Typical boneheaded straw man setup that everyone but the fine minds of the tech elite hate the future. Most of us are both excited and wary, given the cost so far about tech. And that is how adults behave. Literally, these deep wounds these people suffer in childhood keep expressing themselves in the most nonsensical of ways, in which they are always the aggrieved victims and deeply misunderstood, even though they are geniuses. The real story: we completely get you."

I also added that you don't hear Tim Cook doing this, right? They just make their stuff. And when they have a problem, they tell you, et cetera. And they just literally can't stop talking like this. They can't stop being aggrieved. You do not hear this from the adults of tech. You just don't. And the idea that you can think AI is great and at the same time say, "Oh, there might be some problems," is offensive to this guy. Especially when he just had a whole little flirtation with crypto that didn't go very well is particularly galling, I find it.

And then lastly, let me read this one thing. "Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable, playing God with everyone else's life with total insulation from consequences." Honestly, he's literally talking about himself. Look in the mirror, dude. Look in the mirror. I read that and I thought, "Oh my God, he's describing him and all his friends who have gone down this sad highway they're down right now." And that drove me nuts because they're the ones that are unaccountable and insulated more than anyone. And the real world—these people, I've seen their world. They don't live in the real world. They just don't.

Scott Galloway: The periods over the last two years that have made me—I have wonderful relationships with my venture capitalists now. I've only worked with, I've worked repeatedly with General Catalyst. They're good people, always trying to do the right thing. I've had just great relationships in the last 10 years with a small number of venture capitalists. Where I see some of the—I don't want to call it West Coast, East Coast—but I think when the story on Silicon Valley and venture capital is written, the things of the last two years, I think, are really damaging and will be really damning in retrospect.

One, I think a lot of them who had financial stakes in cryptocurrency companies were fomenting, catalyzing, and rooting for an implosion amongst regional banks and a decline or potentially even a collapse in our banking system, thinking they could make a lot of money because Bitcoin and their crypto alternative financial vehicles would skyrocket in value.

I also think we're going to find that a lot of these VCs—and I don't know if this is true of Andreessen or anyone else—would invest in a project. They'd put $10, $20, $50 million into a technology project that ultimately minted a coin that could provide—had underlying technology that would facilitate micropayments on Twitter or something that had absolutely no use case and no adoption whatsoever. But because XYZ famous venture capital firm was doing it, everyone—they were tapping into what is the ultimate FOMO across middle-class investors. And they said, "Well, the CumRocket crypto coin is going to replace the dollar. And these guys are on CNBC talking about it. So I'm going to invest in it." And the shitcoin would go from—they invest $30 million at an $80 million valuation. It goes to $800 million. And because there's no SEC mandating the disclosure of their sales, I think we're going to find out the next day they sold everything. The coin goes back to one cent from 50 cents, and everyone goes, "Oh, these guys got burned." No, they didn't. They made a shit ton of money.

I believe there are a lot of venture capital firms that are nothing but an efficient vehicle for transfer of wealth from middle-class investors to the 0.1% in these firms who leverage their brand, leverage a CNBC that is hungry for carnival barkers, and the FOMO of middle-class investors that want to participate in the next Google or Amazon. I think these people have lost more money of middle-class investors than they've made.

Kara Swisher: I would agree. That's the thing. That's the thing. I was sitting in these meetings listening to him talk about this. I was like, "I don't know." "You don't believe in the future." I was like, "Fuck you."

Let me read you another report thing that's coming out from Satya Nadella. It's their own manifesto, I guess, their annual report. This is from the CEO of Microsoft. Now, look, Microsoft has all kinds of issues, but let me listen to how an adult speaks about this issue. "As we pursue our opportunity, we're also working to ensure technology helps us solve problems, not create new ones. To do this, we want to focus on four enduring commitments that are central to our mission that take on an even greater importance in this new era. For us, these commitments are more than just words. They're a guide to help make decisions across everything we do as we design and develop products, shape businesses and policies, help our customers thrive, build partnerships, and more—always asking ourselves critical questions to ensure our actions are aligned with them." And then he has a series of stuff that just explains it in pretty plain English. It's not just virtue signaling here about their commitments and different things like that. Whether they reach them, I don't know, but he's actually not defensive. He's not angry. He understands that you can have two ideas in your head at the same time, and he doesn't have to create a "punch your face in the notes" thing. And these are the people at the forefront of it, right? Which is why I'm feeling a little better.

Scott Galloway: I don't think this is a virtue signal at all from Satya Nadella. I think he's an adult. And let me just say, Marc Andreessen is a great mind. He is. I've spent a lot of time with him over the years. He's also totally juvenile in his need to always top people. And it's really disappointing that someone who has such a great mind has to stoop to this. Just like we were talking at the beginning of this with Patty Cosgrove—maybe sit down, fella. Just sit down and stop talking for just a minute, because what you're saying is almost complete nonsense.

Kara Swisher: Thank you.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I mean, we'll see. I don't know the man. And I think I have a tendency, because I had such a bad experience with venture capitalists on the West Coast, to stereotype them. But it is disappointing that people who have been given so much just want to credit their creativity and their grit and never acknowledge the market or the country.

Kara Swisher: It's a fatal flaw for them, I have to say. It is. And it's actually what my book is about. It's their fatal flaw. And they don't like people. I think that's ultimately except themselves. And they literally have to constantly pat themselves on the back. Their arms must be exhausted from it.

Anyway, 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. And by the way, Marc Andreessen, come on and talk to me. Come on. You used to talk all the time.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that'll happen.

Kara Swisher: Are you scared? Are you fucking scared? What's the deal?

Kara Swisher: Give me a break. I thought you were smarter than me. You always used to tell me that. But just please don't be whining. Please don't whine. Anyway, that's my invitation, which you will not take because you can't take a lesbian like this lesbian. I'm just trying. You invited DJ Saul to Scotland. Let's invite Mark to Scotland. Mark, come to Scotland and we'll do it from there. But these people aren't as tough as me. I can handle anything, Cara. I've flown Spirit Air on.

Scott Galloway: Okay, all right. I can handle anything. All right, all right. You keep talking about how gay you are.

Kara Swisher: I'm not gay, but 20 bucks is 20 bucks. No, I'm talking about how lesbian I am.

Scott Galloway: That good. That good. The penis joke slips in there, so to speak.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, let's go on a quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

[Ad break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. I shall go first. Women in sports, if you're going to believe I'm going to talk about this. GM Kim Eng of the Miami Marlins walked away from her job this week after the organization tried to hire someone over her. This was after one of the team's most successful seasons since 2003. Meanwhile, over at the WNBA, the Orlando Mercury got a new head coach, Nate Tibbetts. As sports economist Dave Barry points out on Twitter, the highest paid coach in WNBA history is a white male with no head coaching experience in the WNBA or MNBA. Oh my God, really? Come on. That's all I have to say. That's my fail.

And then my win is I would like to pay tribute to Suzanne Summers, who I really loved her on television. I thought she was great. Even those Three's Company episodes, if you watch it right now, you really have to be like, oh my God, every time they say something. Still, at the time, she sort of did this dumb blonde thing. She wasn't dumb at all. She created the Thighmaster. People were jokingly calling her a thigh con, but she did a lot of businesses. Very smart. People who knew her—I knew a lot of people wrote me when I mentioned it on Threads—said she was a lovely person. Someone said she was a great cook, a great mother, a great friend. I don't think she got her due. She was a lot more than people saw. But I really am sad she died of cancer. She seems like a really good person. And she gave a lot of... it made me happy, at least. She made me happy and she deserves a lot more credit.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I mean, I've always thought that whenever anyone accuses me of being a sexist, I'm like, if you knew what I was raised on—specifically, I Dream of Jeannie and Three's Company—you would think I'm fucking Alan Alda in terms of where I've come from. I mean, do you remember how homophobic Three's Company was?

Kara Swisher: Oh, homophobic, date rapey. I went back and looked at one after she died, and I'm like, oh, my God. Like, even right-wing people would be like, hey, that's a lot. Like, how can I drug someone to have sex with them?

Scott Galloway: But I agree, it was highly homophobic.

Kara Swisher: What Scott's talking about is the principal character was living with two women in an apartment, and he had to pretend he was gay in order to live there. I don't know why that was the case, but that was the case because the landlord didn't want that. Because Don Knotts wouldn't let a man live with him.

Scott Galloway: Oh, no, it was Mr. Roper at the beginning.

Kara Swisher: Oh, Mr. Roper.

Scott Galloway: And then it was Don Knotts.

Kara Swisher: Norman Fell.

Scott Galloway: Norman Fell, yeah. So anyway, it was... go watch it again. You'll be like, oh, I can't believe I watched this.

Kara Swisher: Like, anyway, go ahead. It was nostalgic because these things are markers of time, right? And you realize, wow, the mortality rate is 100% and it takes you back to a time and you miss that time. I mean, you also probably get a little bit worried about your own mortality. But so now it's just Joyce DeWitt.

Scott Galloway: Joyce DeWitt.

Kara Swisher: Joyce DeWitt. You know, who was always ignored compared to the other two. Yeah. Rest in peace, Suzanne Summers.

Scott Galloway: My win is President Joe Biden. My father is sort of a man's man. And I remember a couple of times, a few times, I remember when we were in the garage once and the car wouldn't start and we were trying to figure it out and I kept just turning it and trying to turn it over. And my dad just came out to the garage hearing us trying to start the car, threw up the front hood, put on a pair of gloves, looked around, went and grabbed a wrench. My father was an airplane mechanic on an aircraft carrier for the Royal Navy and just didn't even say anything, just like, I got this, and fixed the car. And I thought, wow, dad, age and experience kind of matter.

And I saw President Biden on Air Force One, coming back from the Middle East, answering questions. And I thought, well, first off, there's just no getting around it. He looks very old. And that's a bad thing. We talk a lot about it. I probably talk too much about it. But I felt like I was watching my dad throw up the hood of the car and then be like, I got this. I think he is providing comfort. And I think he's going to... I think this period of crisis in the Middle East, you just get the feeling these decades of public service, foreign policy, relationship building, he, in a very equivocal voice or non-equivocal voice, is like, I got this. I know what to do here. And I do think he's providing comfort. I think the Gerald Ford carrier strike groups and the second carrier strike group that have shown up—I don't think people realize how important it is that those are there keeping the peace. He is the only guy that can, in my view. He is sort of providing a lot of comfort. And it's pretty obvious in this situation that his age is a feature, not a bug. And I remember seeing him on the plane and thinking, he just looks like a guy who knows how to fix an engine. And so my win is I did think, wow, this guy, it's actually good to have someone with this level of foreign policy experience.

Kara Swisher: He did look old, but you know what? He pulled it off absolutely perfectly. He flew his old ass over to Israel. Yeah, 100%. Conducted the meetings, did a great job. He got over there. You know, someone asked him about Jim Jordan, who must be like... a lot of the attention would be on Jordan and the Republicans right now, if not. And he was like, "I ache for him." It's very funny. Let me say the best thing he said there was when he said, "Justice must be done, but I caution this. While you feel the rage, don't be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes." What an incredibly wise and reasonable thing to say. He also got the border open to bring in aid. Totally effective. A lot of people are like, he's been there. He fixed an engine before. He got the border open.

Scott Galloway: That's exactly why he should have been there.

Kara Swisher: That was the goal of that, I think. It wasn't to just pat Netanyahu on the back. You know, he said he was going to be tough on him. He was there to get the border open. He was there to get shit done that needed to be done that was decent and human at this point, which is what absolutely had to be done. So I don't care if he's old, he gets shit done. You know, get shit done. And I don't even like to imagine Trump on his way over there just making it all about him and, oh God. Are you kidding? You're listening to him? It's all about him. "This never would have happened if I were running the place." Yeah. Anyways, that's my win, is the president seems to know how to fix this car and has been doing it for a long time.

My fail is that I think that leaders don't recognize what it means. A key component of fiduciary is that if people grant you with a leadership position, you're supposed to represent their interests, not your own. And I just think it's everywhere. I think, I mean, going from the profound to the meaningful to the not very meaningful, I think that Hamas is not interested in advance. They want to put civilians in harm's way. They want to kill, have their own civilians killed as a means of creating empathy and sympathy. I think Netanyahu is trying to dismantle democracy to insulate himself from corruption charges. These people, there's nothing resembling leadership here. I think when Paddy Cosgrove grandstands in this weird way, his narcissism has overridden his obligation to his employees, and he is going to create a lot of economic harm totally needlessly.

You know, it sucks to be a grown-up. When you bring together 13,000 people and build a great organization, you may want to lay off Twitter regarding your own political manifesto the month before your event. It's like, how are you serving as a fiduciary and leader? And we just see this everywhere that people don't want to be fiduciaries. They don't want to stand back and say, okay, for a moment, most moments it can be about me. And I use this—I remember when I was running L2, there was a luxury brand that had unpaid interns, including those from Stern. And I got all angry and upset about it and said, we're going to resign this client. Because I went and spoke to him and said, you got to actually pay people. Most kids don't have parents who can put themselves through Chanel. And all you're doing is deciding only rich kids can come to work for you. And I said, we're going to resign this client. And then I called someone on my board and they said, Scott, you're kind of grandstanding. And unless you do a survey of all your employees and decide that this is more important to them than their economic livelihoods, you need to be a grown-up here. You need to be a fiduciary for your employees. And this feels like grandstanding. And they were right. And there's just bigger fish to fry, including ensuring that this company did well and that the employees did well. And I think there's so much grandstanding, so much just lack of fiduciary responsibility, lack of responsibilities of fiduciary. So a tremendous lack of leadership and an inability to be a leader, to be a fiduciary, and you're representing other people's interests.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's true. And you're also representing yourself. I can't tell you how many times this week I started—I've been tweeting so much less, like by a factor of 100, I'd say. I have stopped and closed it when I thought about tweeting something, and I just didn't. I was like, not mine to say. I do have something to say, but I think I'll just tell a friend, right? And it was really interesting. I have stopped myself at least a dozen times this week because I was like, why do I need to say this?

Scott Galloway: 100%.

Kara Swisher: And the stuff I say, I really care about, right? The stuff I do, like this Andreessen thing, which again, I think is fucking nonsense. I know something about it. I will speak out, but there's some stuff like this Congresswoman just retired and she's such a terrible person. And she was like going on, she was like blaming everybody. I was like, you know, I wanted to tweet something like, "pot, meet kettle." And I thought, you know, no, she doesn't deserve my time or my attention. And why am I doing this? It diminishes me, not her necessarily. So anyway, I agree with you. I think you're 100% right. I think about it a lot more.

Scott Galloway: Well, Elizabeth Spears said something, and I'm going to paraphrase here, but—

Kara Swisher: In a column.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but the opening line was like, "I don't have to post about my outrage, neither do you." You know, it's just, we all feel like it's an obligation. And we live in an environment where these algorithms and these social media platforms have an incentive to convince you that you have an obligation and a right as a DJ or a personal trainer to let us know how you feel about the conflict in the Middle East.

Kara Swisher: It's true. The pushback on that, just so you know, and I really like that column, is that a white lady has the comfort not to have to speak out, but Muslims or people or Palestinians have to. And I like, you really should. But it doesn't prevent you.

Scott Galloway: I think she was talking about a different thing. Like, she does not feel uniquely qualified. If it affects you personally, if you have real passion, if you have real domain expertise, then have at it. I would argue about 99% of the exhaust we're exposed to online, people don't check any of those boxes. They're all looking for affirmation from strangers or feel a need to go on. And it's not even virtue signaling. It's very strange how these platforms and the reward systems and our inability to update our need for dopamine from when we were on the savannah has resulted in—we've gone from the Gutenberg era, we've gone into the network economy era, where it's no longer reading information in isolation, being thoughtful about it, and then communicating with it in more thoughtful mediums. It's, oh, I gotta communicate how I feel on everything. And the more emboldened I am, the more strident I am, the more coarse I am, the more reward I will get from the algorithm and other people.

Kara Swisher: I think you're spot on. I think people should speak if it's something they know about or they're passionate about. I have talked down so many people from ledges this past two weeks, week or so. Like all I say is say nothing, say nothing. You know, I know you can say something. It's your First Amendment right. But maybe take the First Amendment and put it on the shelf for just a week or something, because it's not going to be good for you. And that's what I'm thinking about.

Scott Galloway: An excellent piece of advice, Kara Swisher. And again, thank you for sharing that about what you went through. I appreciate your advice.

Kara Swisher: I really wasn't... I really struggled with it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you did.

Kara Swisher: It wasn't 90-10 for me. It was more like 70 or 80, 30 or 20, but it's still.

Scott Galloway: And I don't think it's because you wanted to start around the stage, though I do think you like that. And I do think you like having prawns and liquor in Lisbon too. But I do think you cared about the entrepreneurs there, you know, meeting and greeting and stuff like that. I think you enjoy that mix. So I'm sorry you're not going. And it will be lesser for it.

Kara Swisher: It will be lesser for it. Go on.

Scott Galloway: Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Can you read us out?

Kara Swisher: Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertott engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Emil Severio, and Gaddy McBain. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks 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. My colleague and friend Jonathan Haidt, who was kind enough to call me at literally 1 a.m. last night, had something that really struck with me, and that is in this era, we need to be slow to judgment and quick to forgive. Thank you.