TACO Trade, Elon's DOGE Farewell, and AI Video Gone Wild

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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: Hello, Scott. How's it going?

Scott Galloway: It's good. I'm trying to, I've been setting up my home gym. Actually, you know what, I took a week off of alcohol and edibles. And I found this research that I find accurate. It said that if you cut out alcohol and edibles from your life for just 21 days or more, you lose 60% of your will to live.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I knew that's where that was going.

Scott Galloway: Also, Elsa, it's been a while. Hold on. I'm not stopping there. My in-laws are staying with me.

Kara Swisher: Oh, God. Oh, how's that going? You like them.

Scott Galloway: Oh, they're wonderful. It's perfect because they don't speak very good English, so we don't communicate.

Kara Swisher: Nice.

Scott Galloway: I'm convinced that your relationship with your in-laws starts to come off the tracks when you begin communicating.

Kara Swisher: Oh.

Scott Galloway: But something kind of awkward happened over the weekend. I had left my computer out.

Kara Swisher: Oh, no. Is there nudity involved?

Scott Galloway: And my mother-in-law opened it and what did she see on my computer?

Kara Swisher: No, no. What? Well, you can imagine. One guess.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, porn. Porn.

Kara Swisher: Porn, yeah.

Scott Galloway: But I had the perfect excuse.

Kara Swisher: What?

Scott Galloway: I said, "I get my weather from cockgobblers.com."

Kara Swisher: Okay. But this didn't happen.

Scott Galloway: Okay. Cockgobblers. I mean, that is good branding. That is real. It's not. That signals awareness. It signals intent. It tells you what the product offering is. I love that.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I get my weather there.

Scott Galloway: All right.

Kara Swisher: Okay. Well, I'm going on a big trip.

Scott Galloway: He's back.

Kara Swisher: Okay. We're going to try to move on. Okay. So I think you should start taking edibles again immediately as soon as possible.

Scott Galloway: Well, okay. You talked me into it.

Kara Swisher: Okay, good. You talked me into it. Good. I'm thinking of starting to take edibles. I'm so tired. So much work.

Scott Galloway: Really? Yeah. I'm tired today.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but you're doing this to yourself. I keep warning you.

Scott Galloway: That's true. You're right.

Kara Swisher: More of the house stuff. I was doing a lot of gardening. I have my gardeners here and we're gardening up a storm.

Scott Galloway: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Two words: undocumented immigrants.

Kara Swisher: They're not. They're two amazing gay guys from San Francisco and they're very macho and also gay. So I have the most beautiful garden.

Scott Galloway: Really? Yeah, they're great. Gary and Michael.

Kara Swisher: So why is that taking time if other people are doing it?

Scott Galloway: I'm a huge believer in comparative advantage. I can do a small number of things very well and everything else I outsource. I like it. I like to scrub the pollen off of patio furniture. I don't know what to tell you. I love it.

Kara Swisher: Oh yeah, you like to clean.

Scott Galloway: I like to clean and it's very satisfying. I built myself a tool shed and I have organized it. I couldn't be more happy about that situation.

Kara Swisher: Built myself a tool shed.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, yeah.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, well, I didn't build it. God, we are literally a different species.

Scott Galloway: I know. I have a tool shed. You built yourself a tool shed? I'm going to show it to you when you come visit me if you ever do. Are you handy?

Kara Swisher: Yes, I'm very handy. Saul always hands me things and says, "Fix it."

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I'm the handy one.

Kara Swisher: I'm the handy lesbian.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, see, my kids cut out the "hand it to me." They just look at me and say, "Fix it." And I'm not even sure what they're referring to. Or "Buy it." They're just, "Fix it. I'm upset, fix it."

Kara Swisher: No, I'm very handy. I bought myself an electric lawnmower, an electric blower, and an electric weed whacker and of course my power washer. So I'm very happy now, but it takes a lot of time to get everything in place.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you need to travel less. I actually am worried about you. You do need to travel much less.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I haven't traveled in a while. This is the first big trip I'm taking in a while. And I'll see you in France.

Scott Galloway: That's good. I also think you need to spend some of your money and enjoy yourself and relax a little.

Kara Swisher: I'm not a vacationer, Scott, like you.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you should start. It's a lot of fun. I'll show you how. I'm really good at it.

Kara Swisher: I don't like it. I never like vacations. There's a lot of wonderful stuff out there. I like doing gardening. I like organizing my things. Anyway.

Scott Galloway: Can I give you a hint?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Two hints. One, don't take your kids. And two, travel to hotels, not to cities.

Kara Swisher: Oh, well, I'm going to be in San Francisco. So I'll be at my beautiful home there, which I love too. That's not travel.

Scott Galloway: I understand that. That's not travel.

Kara Swisher: But I'm happy. I'm a homebody because my mom moved us around a lot. And so all my brothers and I have beautiful homes that we love, like very comfortable. And I don't mean stunning, enormous.

Scott Galloway: Because you inherited a lot of money, wife and I?

Kara Swisher: No, because we work hard. I work really hard.

Scott Galloway: You do work hard. I just said that. You work too hard.

Kara Swisher: My brothers and I are very into making lovely homes where we live. And my younger brother just built a beautiful house that's off the grid, if you can believe it.

Scott Galloway: Off the grid?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's like one of those houses that can survive an apocalypse. He has energy, water.

Scott Galloway: I've got to meet this guy.

Kara Swisher: You do. It's beautiful, too. You would like it. It looks like a Four Seasons. It's gorgeous. It's up in Pennsylvania.

Scott Galloway: I'm not going anywhere. I'll take him to Shea Margot in New York, but I want to meet him. I've heard so much about him.

Kara Swisher: He's really interesting. This house is gorgeous, but it also has its own electrical thing. It's all kinds of stuff. And he's got himself one of those carts that you drive around across the land and stuff. Anyway.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I immediately liked Dr. Swisher.

Kara Swisher: He liked lawyer Swisher very much. He's a lawyer. He took over the family coal business, right?

Scott Galloway: Yes, he did. Good for him.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. He's just, we're all stay-at-home people, which is interesting. Anyway, because we were dragged all over.

Scott Galloway: It's because you're all old. That's what happens when you get old.

Kara Swisher: No, we were always like this. No, I'm telling you, we were dragged from place to place. You get afraid. I saw some teenagers with a skateboard. They're criminals.

Scott Galloway: Anyway, you didn't really show your mother-in-law porn, did you?

Kara Swisher: I hope not. No, that's a lie. She is a lovely lady, as I recall.

Scott Galloway: I clear my browsing history now. I'm all paranoid because I found out people actually listen to this thing and they get angry when I say stupid things about them that aren't true, by the way.

Kara Swisher: Oh, okay. My in-laws are blessed with young, competent in-laws. They are.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they are. We moved to Florida to be near them and it was one of the best moves we ever made. They're really lovely people. Also, having grandparents, that is a... I did not witness that. I did not participate in that because all my grandparents passed away. The grandkid relationship is just so incredible to watch.

Kara Swisher: Absolutely. My grandmother was critical to my life, I have to say. She really was. She raised me in a lot of ways.

Scott Galloway: So anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including Elon's farewell to Doge with his long goodbye, the Trump Taco Trade, and what happens when we try Google's new AI video generator, Veo.

Kara Swisher: But first, Donald Trump's tariff strategy has been dealt a major blow. The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled Wednesday that Trump overstepped his authority by using emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs, in fact, not bypassing Congress. The three-judge panel found the federal law did not grant Trump unbounded authority to tax imports from nearly every country around the world. The White House plans to appeal, and the case is likely going to the Supreme Court. They're working hard over there. Tariffs on steel, aluminum, and a few other sectors are still in place, but they were imposed under a different law. This is going on. And let me just bring in Taco Trade. You've heard about Taco Trade. Taco, short for "Trump Always Chickens Out," is a new acronym coined by a Financial Times columnist. It describes a pattern where Trump rattles the markets with his tariff threats only to backpedal a few days later, sending stocks surging. The latest example: Trump floated 50% tariffs on EU goods last week, hit pause on Sunday after a good call with the European Commission president. And when the markets reopened Tuesday, the Dow jumped over 700 points and the S&P 500 saw its biggest gain in weeks. Trump doesn't like the Taco terminology, mostly because he probably doesn't love tacos. Remember that whole thing with tacos he had going? His pissiness was on full display when asked about it on Wednesday. Let's listen.

[Audio clip plays: Donald Trump speaking] "Isn't that nice, 'chicken out'? I've never heard that. You mean because I reduced China from 145% that I set, down to 100, and then down to another number. And I said, 'You have to open up your whole country.' And because I gave the European Union a 50% tax tariff. And they called up and they said, 'Please, let's meet right now.' And I said, 'OK, I'll give you till June 9th.' I actually asked them, I said, 'What's the date?' Because they weren't willing to meet. And after I did what I did, they said, 'We'll meet any time you want.' And we have an end date of July 9th. You call that chickening out?"

Kara Swisher: Oh, man, is he sensitive about that Taco Trade. So talk about the two things: the court ruling and then this Taco Trade, the idea that his unpredictability has become predictable.

Scott Galloway: Well, I just have an adjacent thought. The first is that there's a lot of conspiracy theory from the right that there was this gigantic cover-up of Biden's cognitive decline. First off, if it was a cover-up, it was the worst cover-up in history. They let him go debate and put his cognitive decline on full display. But it was no more a cover-up than the cover-up of Trump's cognitive decline right now. Did you see his speech at West Point?

Kara Swisher: I agree. I was really struck by it.

Scott Galloway: So is this a cover-up? The guy is rambling about nonsense.

Kara Swisher: Trophy wives. Sounded like one you might give, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Are we in the midst of a cover-up? Anyways, in terms of the Taco Trade, since the inauguration, Trump administration officials have announced new or revised tariff policies more than 50 times.

Kara Swisher: Wow.

Scott Galloway: And I'm having trouble finding one deal. I mean, he talks about deals, announced a deal with the UK, but nothing was signed. It was an agreement to have further discussions.

Kara Swisher: Right. He's saying it's helping them come to the table by his crazy moves, his wave or something, whatever he calls it.

Scott Galloway: This is how terrible a business person and negotiator Trump is. Trump puts a policy, a tariff of 145%, and then he admits himself, "Well, that was kind of high." And then he lowers it to 30 because the markets throw up. So he essentially, if he's a poker player, he shows up to the table with all this bravado and swagger. He goes all in. And then before he even sees what the other players say or do, he goes, "I fold. I fold." He negotiates against himself.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's what it feels like.

Scott Galloway: And nobody takes him seriously. But here's the real story, in my view. This is nothing but a weapon of insider trading. He can create volatility. He can take markets up for some of their biggest gains in history when he takes these ridiculous trades off the table. He can take markets down, and the people around him are trading stocks like crazy.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Including, you're going to find that some of his hedge fund buddies that he speaks to or tucks in a bed at night, some of whom we talk a lot about, are going to vastly outperform the index.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And even representatives, Marjorie Taylor Greene, there was a whole bunch of them that were trading.

Kara Swisher: Okay. Let's talk about this. The fish rots from the head. The nation's top cop is the attorney general.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Pam Bondi?

Kara Swisher: State Department officials, Michael Platt, staff director in Congress, sold around escalating. They are trading in and out of the market based on who knows what, when. Huge spike in options volume right before he makes these announcements, which means that people know something.

Scott Galloway: And people hear this. I just want to try and connect the dots here. People hear this and go, "OK, there's always been grift. Speaker Pelosi. So if some people are getting rich, you're fine." What people fail to make the connection is the following: when you buy same-day options because you know he's about to reduce the tariffs and the markets are about to scream up, somebody is on the other side of that trade that doesn't have that insider information. That person is selling that option and is going to get taken to the laundry, is going to lose a shit ton of money. The reason why we have a trillion-dollar market cap stock market, which gives companies the ability to raise money, gives people the chance to save money for their retirements, gives people incredible compensation upside if they get options... The reason why we have such incredibly deep pools of capital that create prosperity and risk aggressiveness, we have $5 million in risk capital for every startup. Europe has $1 million. It's because people believe there's a rule of fair play and fair trade.

Kara Swisher: And here is a grift.

Scott Galloway: Let's look at Russia. Russia is one-fourteenth the size of our economy, $2 trillion or about $28 trillion. The total value of the Russian stock market is $80 billion because people don't trust it. People are like, "Unless you know Putin, you don't know what's going to happen." And there's so much insider trading and kleptocracy that the markets don't have any trust. So essentially, even on a size-adjusted basis, our stock market is 70 times the value of the Russian stock market, even ramping it up to adjust for the difference in the size of the economy. So when a bunch of people think, "I lost money and I'm not on the inside, I'm not going to participate in the markets."

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I agree. That's a really fantastic take, actually. What's going on here is he's also doing it because he doesn't have a plan at the same time. And people are either he is in on the grift, or he's so dumb and a bad business person, they're playing him.

Scott Galloway: He's rewarding his allies.

Kara Swisher: He's rewarding his allies and also doing what he does, which is run businesses right into the ground. That seems to be the consistent part of his business career, to run businesses into the ground in some fashion with these sort of capricious things. And the fact that he gets so angry about it was really revelatory. It's like he knows exactly what he's doing. He's trying to put it off. And it's really depressing when someone like Scott Bessent says, "Oh, acting crazy is a strategy." I'm like, "No, it's not." Maybe once, but you can't do it over and over and over again. And that's what he's doing. And so Europeans, he's like, "Oh, they came to the table because they made that threat." I'm like, "They probably waited until you did this. And then they're like, 'OK, now time to come to the table.'" But they are long-gaming him so badly. It's really an astonishing thing. And he deserves every single insult he gets about how he's conducting these. The court thing, how do you feel? They are just, all the courts, 96 of courts are against Donald Trump on all these rulings, not just the tariff ones but all of them. 96.

Scott Galloway: Okay, I talk about the courts. I want to give you some more data around the insider trading that has gone out of control and is going to scare the shit out of capital to leave the U.S. People using markets. Okay. I feel for the most part, 80 to 90% of executive actions, tariffs, EU tariffs, Apple tariffs, going after international students at Harvard... All of this, they know, will likely be swept away and these organizations will get injunctive relief and these things will not stand. I think it is, they're like, "Okay, what could get us kicked out of office, how we lose Congress, is if Americans wake up and instead of focusing on international students that might be kicked out of Harvard, which will be turned over and the media clutches its progressive pearls for good reason... I realize it has larger implications, but folks, this is going to have no impact on anybody because it's going to go away. Over the long term, it's bad, and I'll come back to why it's bad for one of our biggest exports, and that is education. But it is a distraction from what really impacts people. And this is my problem with the left: we get outraged and we're more interested in proving and grasping its social virtue as opposed to actually focusing on what impacts the material and psychological well-being of millions of Americans. And this is what is going to impact tens of millions of Americans. This big, beautiful tax bill is about to cut taxes for 5% of the wealthiest Americans and take away Medicaid for 8 million people and increase the deficit by almost $4 trillion, which will be a tax on tens of millions of young people. And by the way, it's going to disproportionately impact red states. So if we focus on that and say, "What is really impacting millions of people?" we might actually take back control of Congress. But instead, we go for, "Oh, no, let's get outraged about Harvard." Okay, I get it. But they are purposely trying to misdirect us. Now, in terms of these court cases, if he wants, he can make life really difficult when essentially imposed tariffs in different ways. But it's not going to happen. I have made the same prediction over and over. In a year from now, two years from now, the tariff and global trade situation will look remarkably similar to the way it looked when he started. And his people will have grifted their way into insider trading. Can I give you some more data just real quick?

Kara Swisher: Sure, but we have to move on. But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Okay, just because this insider trading thing, I don't think people realize what this does to the unbelievable, incredibly cheap capital and pools of capital that the U.S. has.

Kara Swisher: And the trust that people have in the markets, despite all the problems they've had.

Scott Galloway: For 99% of our existence on this planet, people would never give money, sell something to strangers in a marketplace if they thought it was all insider.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Scott Galloway: Trust in markets is literally the jet fuel of our, one of the jet fuels of our prosperity. Okay, so this has been going on for a while. In this first term, Carl Icahn sold $31 million in steel-related stocks the day before Trump announced steel tariffs in 2018. On March 30th, three days before Trump's initial tariff announcement, at least three hedge fund managers attended a private dinner at Mar-a-Lago, and all three dramatically increased their short positions in the 48 hours following that dinner. One of those funds, Bluestone Capital, is run by a guy named Brian Shevlin, who was instrumental in the early days of Trump's media SPAC merger. Bluestone Capital increased its short position in Tesla.

Kara Swisher: Shorting Tesla. That's perfect.

Scott Galloway: By 300% or fourfold on April 1. One day, Kara, before the tariff announcement that sent Tesla shares down 17%. And then the fund then closed most of its short positions on April 8th, right before Tesla rebounded 18% up on news of the tariff pause. So this guy either has a crystal ball or a gut like we've never seen, or he is getting information from people at the very top about non-public information. So why would an average investor ever buy or sell Tesla stock when chances are someone on the other end knows more than I do? And we have an SEC who's not enforcing any of this. As I told you, there's a lot of people outside of government following all of this and collecting all this information. If our government's not going to, there are technical people.

Kara Swisher: Even some podcasters.

Scott Galloway: Yes. I'm keeping notes on all this shit.

Kara Swisher: Yes, exactly. But they're keeping the actual transactions in case they try to do it. People with actual power.

Scott Galloway: Power, yeah, exactly. Not yelling into TikTok. They are going, "This is someday they will probably run off with this money but it is absolutely a grift." And someone who understands the griftiness of it, Elon Musk has talked about it. He is officially using the term "grift" but he's talking about the problem with deficits and tariffs. Elon Musk is officially an ex-special government employee posting on his social platform that the Doge mission will only strengthen over time, which means it will not. It's over. Musk thanks Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending, but only after throwing some shade at his former boss. Here's what he told CBS News.

[Audio clip plays: Elon Musk speaking] "I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it. And it reminds the work that the Doge team is doing. I actually thought that when this big, beautiful bill came along, I mean, like everything he's done on Doge gets wiped out in the first year. I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful. But I don't know if it could be both. My personal opinion."

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yucking it up with Elon. He's not the only one out there. Doge spokesman Katie Miller is following him. For those who don't know, she's married to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. By the way, there is a lot of very funny memes about this on the internet, but I'll let you go there and find out what they're insinuating. Elon, meanwhile, has ordered himself back into the offices of X, SpaceX, and Neuralink with mixed results. The SpaceX Starship system exploded in a Tuesday test. It went further, but it's still, this is the third failed launch in a row. It did go further. This is what he does a lot of the time. X crashed twice in one week, which Musk attributed to failover, redundancy, whatever that is, issues that need to be addressed. On the bright side, Musk says Tesla's been testing Robotaxis in the streets of Boston with no incidents and promises delivery to customers next month. Meanwhile, Waymo does millions of these all the time. And Neuralink just raised $600 million at a $9 billion valuation, which is good for him. So a couple of things. One is they have wiped out, they're sending up, I think it's a rescission package of just $9 billion from Doge cuts that they may try to fix. But that's $9 billion in our multi-trillion dollar promise that Musk made to us. I think he's been used as a chump by Trump in a lot of ways, sort of a hand-wavy thing, and then Trump turns around and ruins the whole thing through a deficit. And I think Musk does understand that the deficit and the tariffs are a real problem. Whether he can bring back his businesses, that's an open question. He certainly is talented. Your thoughts, Scott?

Scott Galloway: Well, I'm glad you brought it up. It was a good week in the sense that Neuralink, which creates diversification for him, raised money at a... I thought it was seven, but you're saying it's nine billion. That's incredible. And also a testament to his genius and vision to do things like that. We'll see how it pans out. But yeah, the two seminal impacts of Doge are the following. It has almost no impact on the budget, because if you look at it, essentially what's happened here is he's also cut a ton of staff at the IRS, and the estimates are that that will reduce their ability to collect what would have been another $400 billion in revenue. So give him his word that it's $150 million in savings. That means that Doge is essentially taking the deficit up another quarter of a trillion dollars a year by virtue of these cuts. Nobody believes that 150 number, by the way. Most people think it's about $10 billion. But anyways, I like what Mitch McConnell believes, that the chocolate and peanut butter of our power around the world is a combination of hard and soft power. And he's essentially gutted our soft power. I mean, that $75 million in U.S. aid was just... When there's genocide in a nation, a bunch of people show up and try to hold people accountable such that it doesn't happen again. And a lot of those people are Americans.

Kara Swisher: Yep.

Scott Galloway: When there is a war-torn, ravaged village town in Ukraine, a soup kitchen gets popped up and a lot of those people are Americans. And that just makes people think, "Oh, they're good guys."

Kara Swisher: It's mostly Jose Andres, but now it's not the government.

Scott Galloway: Well, but we do have all sorts of hospitals around the world that help kids with vaccines. There's just a ton of stuff. It's the old Hershey bar American GI story, right? This idea.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, 100 percent.

Scott Galloway: And that will have a long-term impact on our brand. Doge is going to end up costing us more than it saves.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And again, I go back to the same thing, Kara. It did its job. It was a distraction from this administration's decision to blow up the deficit to give a tax cut to you and me. I mean, that's what Democrats should be focusing on right now.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I mean, it's been a failure for him also. At first, it sort of raised his wealth substantively, and it certainly got the regulators off his back, which was one of his goals. He got his Mars money. He got some regulators off. He lost a lot of money in terms of Tesla. And also his personal brand is decimated, I think. He certainly could get it back, I suppose. But he's certainly not draped himself in glory in this effort at all. He looks, you know, one of the things about these tech people is they look a little godlike, and now he looks like he has feet of clay. You've seen parts of him that are a nuisance and irritating and weird. So it hasn't been... This is stuff a lot of us who spent time with him have seen. His book, like telling jokes like that and laughing at his own jokes and stuff like that. He seems odd and strange. So I just feel like this has not been a plus for Elon Musk. He may bring it back. He may do other things. The question is whether he's going to return to politics or if he's had it with them. It felt like a little bit kind of he had it. He kind of has enough of this. And he realized he got taken by the world's most adept con man, which is Donald Trump.

Scott Galloway: 99.9% of the time, if you're on a board or you have a temptation to take a political stand as a corporation, the answer is no, you don't do it. And not only that, he not only bet one way, he went into politics, which is sort of a no-no. He bet the wrong way because three quarters of the people that he's endeared himself to by taking a red pill stand, three quarters of them say they would never buy an EV.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: So it's just very unusual that he would decide to go into politics in a way that alienates his core market. Maybe it's some psychological problem he has.

Kara Swisher: Please hate me. Hate me. Please hate me.

Scott Galloway: I don't know. It's very strange. We'll see if he can recover. He's certainly a talented business person. He may have gotten data and information that he didn't have before. Who knows?

Kara Swisher: I think that needs to be investigated. Not just me, but Sadiq Bannon does. What exactly did they download? Where is the data? What happened to it?

Kara Swisher: I think there needs to be, at some point, a real look at what they did, what Doge has done. And we'll see if they continue. But without the engine and the threat of Elon Musk, I don't think it's going anywhere. They will just smother it.

Scott Galloway: I was feeling the need to try and bring some semblance of balance around Musk. I've thought for a long time Waymo's just so far ahead they'll never be able to catch them. And I did speak to an analyst around Tesla and said, Tesla does have some very real advantages around autonomous, and that is they have more data. That's correct. Because they have a huge, you know, they have hundreds of thousands of cars that have been in the market for a while and all about is great data. And also the average cost of a Waymo car is almost a quarter of a million dollars.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's Jaguar and outfitting it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it's outfitting it. It's just really expensive. And they say that the Tesla autonomous driving vehicle is going to be substantially less expensive.

Kara Swisher: Except that they may be sacrificing safety for that. There's all these debates over whether they have enough points of failure. And look, he doesn't, he takes them off. This guy likes to go commando on a lot of stuff.

Scott Galloway: Well, you bring up an interesting point because a lot of people say regardless of what has happened in the markets or the perception of his brand, the Tesla brand has gone from the eighth most revered brand to the 93rd. I don't think I've ever seen a destruction like that. I don't even think that happened to Exxon with the Valdez. But you bring up an interesting point and that is a lot of people say, well, he's playing the long game because all of the inspectors and all of the lawsuits that were getting in the way of his regulation around autonomous or going after him for lawsuits or whatever have all just disappeared.

Kara Swisher: So safety.

Scott Galloway: So it still might have been. He might in fact be playing chess.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. In his case, opposed to Donald Trump, who is eating the pieces, Musk does. That said, I would not get into Tesla right now. I think they don't have as many points of failure. You know what I mean? He doesn't care about safety as much as others. And I just don't. I have talked to a lot of experts about how they're putting them out there. And they're just, I would rather have an extraordinarily safe. Eventually, it'll be looser, but not today. And I just don't trust them. I trust those Jaguars more than I would trust a Tesla.

Scott Galloway: I don't get into Teslas because I don't like the men and I don't want to paint the fence with someone who I think is such a terrible role model for young men. But on the safety point, I would get in a Tesla because I—

Kara Swisher: I'm talking about an autonomous Tesla.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, an autonomous Tesla.

Kara Swisher: Really?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, because I think from a perception standpoint, I think if they have two or three crashes in their first month, they're pretty much out of business. I think just from a pure economic standpoint, they've got to make sure this thing is pretty safe.

Kara Swisher: He has a theory about what they need on those cars. It's very different from every other person I know. And they all are like, this is a risk you should not be taking. And it's not because they want me to ride in their cars. I'm going to send some people to you because it's really, he argues with the entire industry about how much, how much. We need test pilots and it's a dangerous job. You can get in them. I'm not getting in them forever. But I do not feel unsafe in a Waymo. I suspect I would feel—

Scott Galloway: Do you know what I did about a year and a half ago? I went to the DMV and my son, who has barely driven a golf cart, took a test saying that he understood the difference between a single yellow line and a double yellow line, and then they gave him a driver's permit, and he was allowed to drive home. I mean, it was just like, God be with you. Here you go.

Kara Swisher: Okay.

Scott Galloway: I will get in a Tesla rather than drive near it with your son.

Kara Swisher: I was at the DMV going, wait, he can drive right now?

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And I said to her, I looked and I'm like, are you sure that's a good idea? He can drive right now?

Kara Swisher: Oh, and your son probably was like, dad.

Scott Galloway: And on the way home, on a red light making a left, he pulled out into the intersection. I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, I stopped first. I'm like, you can't make a left. I don't, I. I think there's a lot of dangerous drivers. I think humans are much more dangerous than a thompson.

Kara Swisher: I agree. You know what? I'd rather take a...

Scott Galloway: Quick lucky story. She comes over to our place with her sister. They drove there, which is crazy.

Kara Swisher: You've told this story.

Scott Galloway: And after her kind of, you know, mildly offensive comments to me over and over, she leaves and you're giving her instructions to get to Palm Beach, which is north of where I live. And first off, I'm horrified. I walk out and I see Lucky behind the wheel. I thought you were giving instructions to your aunt or whoever, your niece, whoever that is, who is much younger than Lucky. She's like 90.

Kara Swisher: Aunt, my aunt.

Scott Galloway: I see Lucky behind the wheel.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And so I walk over and think, okay, Lucky, all you have to do, you come out of the driveway, you bang a right. Got it. Stop talking to me. Stop talking to me. Right? Heads out. Gates open. Bangs a left. Without looking. Without looking. And I'm like, she's going to end up in Havana.

Kara Swisher: It's true. Can I just say, I didn't let my children drive with Lucky at any point.

Scott Galloway: Oh, no. Never.

Kara Swisher: She's like, why can't I drive them? I'm like, because I want them to live into the next century.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. No, she should not be driving.

Kara Swisher: No, no, no. I have not gotten in a car with Lucky for decades.

Scott Galloway: It's a cover-up. You're engaging in a cover-up.

Kara Swisher: This is one of the things she'd do. She'd throw us in the car and we never knew where we'd end up. This is why we stay home. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. Someday I'll tell you the story of her leaving me behind in a store, but that's another wonderful memory from childhood. So let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Trump, many feuds with Harvard, Putin, and Tim Cook.

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Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. I know you don't think it's important, but I do actually the feud. And I think it's a real feud. The feud between Donald Trump and Harvard doesn't appear to be wrapping up anytime soon. Trump now says the school should cap international student enrollment at 15 percent. Why is he telling people what to do? This follows last week's legal fight where a judge temporarily blocked the White House from revoking Harvard's ability to enroll international students. Trump is also moving to cancel remaining federal contracts with Harvard. It's not just Harvard. The administration is now considering social media vetting for all foreign students. So free speech, hello. And is halting student visa interviews in the meantime. Secretary Marco Rubio, what a chode he become, also says the U.S. will aggressively work to revoke the visas of Chinese students. Ah, crazy. He's also accusing Russian President Putin of playing with fire after Russia recently ramped up attacks on Ukraine, launching its largest drone and missile attack of the war so far. In a post on Truth Social, Trump also claims that Putin has gone completely crazy. But despite floating sanctions on Russia over the weekend, Trump now says he's holding off because he thinks, taco, he's close to a deal and doesn't want to screw it up. Taco. Trump said he was going to resolve this conflict on day one. It's not day one anymore. And he bragged about his relation with Putin. So that's something. And lastly, it's not the only one. He's still got Tim Cook in his crosshairs of Apple, threatening a 25% tariffs on iPhones made outside the U.S. The move comes in the wake of Cook reportedly blowing off the White House's invitation to join Trump on his recent Middle East trip that all the others went along on, all the other tech moguls. There is also a Financial Times report that Apple contractor Foxconn is preparing to spend $1.5 billion on a new plant in India. And problems for Apple are piling up in addition to these tariffs. Cook is also juggling legal battles, global regulators, and a rising AI competition. There's a book out by, I think it's Patrick McGee, talking about how much money spending in has created the Chinese tech sector, essentially, and they train them up. So let's start with all these things. I know you think they're distractions, but I think he's quite committed to this Harvard thing. Either he didn't get in, or something is going on here, but he seems obsessed with controlling the amount of foreign students that enter the United States too, and Harvard is a proxy for doing that at this moment.

Scott Galloway: Look, if you look at, there's few people that have added more economic value than graduates, foreign graduates of our elite institutions.

Kara Swisher: That's correct.

Scott Galloway: 70% of graduate students in AI research in the U.S. are international students. And over half of America's startup companies valued at at least $1 billion. So over half of our unicorns have at least one immigrant founder. Let's even go beyond that. Let's just go short term. I have said the term we should use for international students is they are cash cows. They pay full freight. They're not eligible for a lot of financial aid, unless they're PhD students who are the brightest people in the world who we bring in and we actually pay. And who we want here. At the first day of class at NYU at business school, I say, get to know the international students because they're rich kids. So the richest kids in El Salvador and Brazil. Get to know them. They like to party. They're fun. And they're really rich. And when you go and hang out in Brazil, you want to know them. By the way, America does a small number of things really well. Hands down, we're the best in tech and software. I don't even know what the export volume is about. I tried to figure it out this morning. I couldn't figure it out. We make the best weapons in the world. We sell about $300 billion, $350 billion, about a third of a trillion dollars. We export weapons around the world, right? Violence and death are fantastic businesses for us for the ability to deliver them. And we have the best military industrial complex in the world. We make the best media in the world. And we ship the total export volume or business of our movies and TV. So all the money we make from Fantastic Four and Frozen and Big Bang Theory and The White Lotus, that is we get $40 billion in revenue from exporting our TV shows and our movies. We get $43 billion from the tuition and the economic value of international students who come here to buy our education. So U.S. education is really a bigger U.S. export than movies or TV shows. And if you want to raise tuition on domestic students, just take away the full freight high margin cash flow of international students. I'm not even talking about the brain drain.

Kara Swisher: Right, the money we get from them.

Scott Galloway: It's, we make so much coin from international students because why? It's the ultimate luxury item. What's the ultimate signal of your success if you live in China or South Korea or Singapore? Your kid gets in and attends an elite American university. Going to Harvard. Of the 100 best brands, we own like 70 or 80 of them. So it's great for us.

Kara Swisher: Why is he doing the Harvard thing and then Russia next? I think Russia just tickles his censors. I think a lot of his far right supporters love this. But why attack Putin and then come back on it?

Scott Galloway: Because he's being played by Putin.

Kara Swisher: I don't know what he is thinking on the— I mean, you want to talk about somebody who makes absolutely no sense. You know, Putin bombing cities. "I don't like what he's doing. He's sending missiles in the city." Okay. You realize he's been doing that for two and a half years, right? Nothing. I don't know if he got personally incensed or I don't know what's going on there. It's a sclerotic, impossible, and Marco Rubio has to be the clown behind this elephant cleaning up his shit, trying to make some sort of sense of our nonsensical foreign policy.

Scott Galloway: He's being played. I think it occurs to him and he's mentioned it. Maybe he's been playing me.

Kara Swisher: Yes, he has, sir, been playing him. I think, look, for Russia right now, the war is its economy. It's not going to pull very quickly away from it because they don't got nothing else. And they got this war. And Putin has created Russia as a military economy now with this war. And he hasn't— and so they're in a world of hurt to get out of this and create a dynamic society. And so war is their best choice right now in a lot of ways. So not going to be easy for them to pull themselves out of this situation.

Scott Galloway: Putin's life depends on it.

Kara Swisher: Depends on it.

Scott Galloway: I mean, we think that he has total control. There's a lot of other people.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: If Putin loses face in Ukraine, we're going to find out he's going to fall out of a window. He cannot not win. And the economy is now based on it. And Trump is being played like a fiddle. It's just like, and this going back and forth publicly is so embarrassing. Same thing. It's the same thing as the tariffs. It's the same stupidity that got us Trump steaks or the casinos. He's just not very good at business.

Kara Swisher: The Cook one is really particularly strange. And it all is about feelings. It's all about feels, it feels like. He has a point that Apple has created a very robust technology economy in China over the many, many years, $50 billion, something like that, and not in the United States. But there were reasons for them doing that, obviously, to save money, to do it at a cheaper amount. Where do you think Apple is at this moment on the outs for sure?

Scott Galloway: It's so fascinating. You referenced that book by, I think it's Patrick McGee, and he really opened my eyes. So Apple has upskilled and trained 25 million Chinese. That's amazing. Think about that. They've upskilled the population of California.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And Patrick's thesis, and I thought it was a fascinating one, is that essentially Apple's investment in upskilling of their tech sector has given rise to Xiaomi and Huawei. Basically that the Chinese, who are very smart and play the long game, have an IP flow that is one way. At the same time now that Cook is trying to move manufacturing from China to India, China is getting in the way of that flow and not issuing visas to Chinese employees who Apple wants to send to India to set up manufacturing capacity there. Also, the notion that I said, I used that stat that analysts used, I think it was Dan Ives, that a phone produced in the U.S. would be $3,500. And he said, it might as well be a million. We're not capable of it. There are a thousand parts in every iPhone. They make a million phones a day. So that's a billion distinct parts. It was easier for Oppenheimer and the army and these universities to get to splitting the atom than it would be for us to get to producing all of the iPhones. We just couldn't do it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, so what is happening with it? How will this affect, you know, they have their legal issues, of course, with the government right now in terms of cases and all kinds of stuff. But this falling out, I mean, this appeasement that Tim did, I never thought would work. There's no appeasing Trump. There's no appeasing this guy. He's endlessly thirsty. And I think I did talk to Maggie Haberman over on my podcast this weekend. He was genuinely angry that Tim didn't go, like genuinely angry.

Scott Galloway: Strange. Well, he takes these slights personally, but the market.

Kara Swisher: He does. The market is starting to respond to the taco trade, and that is the juices coming out of it. Because if you look at Apple, I mean, if he did what he said he's going to do, it would seriously diminish the most profitable product in history. And Apple stock would take a pretty big hit. Apple's off. I mean, it's down 15 percent in the last six months, but that's off an enormous high.

Scott Galloway: Right.

Kara Swisher: And it's still up in the last 12 months. What would you do if you were Tim?

Scott Galloway: Be nice, stay out of his way, and put out fake press releases that says, oh, we're investing because of the great work of President Trump.

Kara Swisher: Does Tim want to be totally focused on shareholder value or on the rights afforded him as an American?

Scott Galloway: I mean, it depends who you're calling on. If it's calling on his fiduciary obligation to shareholders, he should just kiss his ass, put out a bunch of fake faux press releases, stay out of his way and what do you know, Trump will move on to the next red dot that angers him. And the cult of iOS will be fine. It's like a cat. If Tim Cook recognizes that the reason I'm a billionaire, the reason why if I want to marry a woman or a man I can do that, because America has had the foresight and the rule of law to afford to give people rights, or if I want to continue to access the deepest pools of capital in the world, if I want to have a society where I am fairly safe, if I want to have a society where someone can't wake up and come take all my shit just because they don't like who I am, then he should, in my view, take a stand. He won't. And say, this is an American company and what is going on here is un-American. Nobody has done that.

Kara Swisher: I don't want to put that pressure on Tim Cook because nobody has done that.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: He is going to be a billionaire the rest of his life.

Scott Galloway: That's correct. The question is, at the end of his life, does he want to be known as an American hero?

Kara Swisher: Right.

Scott Galloway: And most of these CEOs, and I understand it, have decided my job is just to stay out of the angry child's way until he gets mad at somebody else and go about my business.

Kara Swisher: You know who could do that? An owner of a company, a Zuckerberg. Someone who has full control is the only one who can do that, is the only one who has the ability. Tim is not the owner of Apple. The shareholders are, right? And so it's got to be that guy, whoever that guy is. There's a Zuckerberg controls his company. Very few companies are controlled. I guess Snapchat, nobody cares. It'd be very hard for Apple to all of a sudden get high and mighty about American patriotism when they've essentially outsourced their entire supply chain to China and upskilled China. So shareholders will win.

Scott Galloway: The company that has the ripest opportunity here to wrap themselves in the flag through the lens of sport and immigrants is Nike. And their stock has been kicked in the nuts so badly, they don't have a whole lot to lose. That is the ripest opportunity in branding right now would be for Nike, not even to mention Trump's name, but to talk about American immigrants who have excelled, built the world of sport and competition and rule of fair play. When you're on a field, you have to have rule of fair play. And they also have the creative resources. They are known as risk takers. Go Nike. Just do it. Just do it. The majority of their business comes from young people who are more progressive and don't want to be part of a fucking fascist state. Anyways, Nike, get on it.

Kara Swisher: All right. Last quick, quick, quick, quick. Harvard, what should they do?

Scott Galloway: Well, they've already—

Kara Swisher: Many people, there was a New York Times piece saying they've got to, they're going to get hit hard by this, even if quick, quick. Quick, quick, quick, quick. Harvard, what should they do? Well, they've already... Many people, there was a New York Times piece saying they've got to, they're going to get hit hard by this, even if Trump is wrong. Get rid of, because of the... All the things he's doing is very damaging to Harvard. They were like, they may not win this fight with him until he goes away, which is inevitable.

Scott Galloway: I don't, I don't see, I think Harvard has so many, in a weird way, I'd go long Harvard. I think Harvard comes out of this stronger.

Kara Swisher: Maybe so.

Scott Galloway: I think Harvard was developing such an awful reputation for the definition of elitism and how progressivism, when it goes out of control, can accidentally turn into racism.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And I think them standing up, if you think about it, what I'm urging Nike to do, Harvard's been the first important organization to actually stand up and say, fuck you.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And they're winning in the courts. They have a lot of powerful alumni. They have the capital.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you're right. It cleans them out. It starches them white.

Scott Galloway: That's correct. It starches their hat white. I never thought I'd be wearing a Harvard T-shirt. I wore one at the 92nd Y a month ago when I was on with Jess.

Kara Swisher: You like to slap those Harvard people a lot. You like to run around Harvard Yard and slap them.

Scott Galloway: Well, when you have a $54 billion endowment and you decide to let in the number of students at a good Starbucks service, you're not a public servant. You're a fucking Chanel guy.

Kara Swisher: Oh, there he's back. He's back. All right. All right, Scott. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Trump dives deeper into crypto, if possible.

[Ad break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. President Trump's romance with cryptocurrency is getting more serious. Earlier this week, the administration killed Biden-era guidance against using crypto in 401k plans.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my fucking God.

Kara Swisher: Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, announced raising $2.5 billion to invest in Bitcoin, a Michael Saylor move. And listening to what J.D. Vance told a crowd in a keynote address at Bitcoin 2025 conference: "I'm here today to say loud and clear, with President Trump, crypto finally has a champion and an ally in the White House. In our administration, we understand the full potential of the digital assets industry, not just as an investment, not just as a flashy technology, but as a symbol and driver of personal liberty for all our citizens."

Scott Galloway: Also grift. He left out grift.

Kara Swisher: The president's crypto holdings now reported represent around 40 percent of his net worth or approximately $2.9 billion. Scott, you had a rant where you called the crypto dealings in Trump's first 100 days the greatest grift in our history of our economy. And now it is a divisive issue for Democrats. Some want to support the Genius Act, which regulates stablecoin. Others say it supports Trump's grift. What do they do here? Public companies are leaning into crypto as well, not just through social. There are reportedly 114 publicly listed companies that own Bitcoin, up from 89 at the beginning of April. What do you think about also the reports that big U.S. banks are having internal discussions about expanding into cryptocurrencies?

Scott Galloway: Look, they're smart. One of the genius moves of the Trump campaign was recognizing that this was not going to be a referendum on women's rights. It was a referendum on struggling young men. I'd still hold to that. And I think the evidence is everywhere. That who showed up was young men and the people worried about them that swung this election in terms of the people who pivoted hardest from blue to red. And the easiest way to signal that was to go Joe Rogan, embrace Musk, and also really embrace crypto, which has this almost like, you know, testosterone smell to it. It's so male.

Kara Swisher: What is testosterone smell? And is that your perfume?

Kara Swisher: I don't know what it smells like. I'll tell you later when I inject it in my ass.

Scott Galloway: But actually, I don't think it has a smell.

Kara Swisher: I don't think it has a smell. I don't want to think about that.

Scott Galloway: Smells like victory in the morning.

Kara Swisher: Okay. Anyways, that's right. I think they're smart to embrace the crypto. We should have scratch and sniff on this podcast. Go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Sorry. I think they're smart to embrace the crypto community. I think financial services innovation is a good idea. I'm a no-coiner. I was on the board of a company that was the leading hardware wallet. But it feels to me that the Democrats screwed up by not at least being more clear about what the regulation is so people could actually do something with it. Do a mega business. And I think Trump has leveraged beautifully the crypto community. And also, it's the perfect vehicle for a grift because there's no records. People say you can track it, but my sense is when a guy launches a meme coin the Friday before his inauguration and it runs to 70 billion, and now he's made a billion dollars a month since he's had this thing... I think they're smart to embrace it. I also think a lot of small and medium-sized investors are probably going to lose a lot of money. What I tell people is if you want to take 2%, 3%, 5% of your net worth and put it in Bitcoin, I wouldn't do any of these other coins. There is a genius to Bitcoin because it has established a credible sense of scarcity because people do believe the technology will result in them stopping mining at 21 million coins. I do think that's actually a very elegant way of creating a currency that has more veracity than a fiat currency, which everyone has failed throughout history. The other coins I see as just Vegas.

Kara Swisher: I think it has to become something more than just a speculative instrument, like it's useful in some fashion. And there are all kinds of companies working at that. For Trump, it's a casino. This is a casino mentality that he's got around it. And a fee, getting fees. Most of the money he's made has been in fees of the transactions.

Scott Galloway: The current income, they made over 300 million in fees so far.

Kara Swisher: Right. And so the value of it is that it's not traceable in some ways. And so it's a perfect sort of bribery, grift, slash scam kind of thing, which he's very familiar with. That said, you're right. The Biden administration didn't really lean in. They had the SEC head who was openly hostile. I think these people got activated politically and they should have been because they needed to defend themselves. They took out Sherrod Brown in Ohio for sure. They really got organized in ways that Trump helped facilitate and were able to do that. And I think they will remain political. But at some point, there has to be safety around it. If you put a lot of Bitcoin in these 401ks and they get destroyed through scammery, it's going to be a real problem.

Scott Galloway: Bitcoin, or crypto, is a bit of a... whenever you have these levels of income inequality, you have war, famine, or revolution. I think it's a form of revolution because I think young people have decided: if you're going to continue to bail out the markets so the incumbents stay wealthy, I can't buy a house. I never get disruption. I can never buy a house or stocks on sale like you guys have gotten to do time after time every seven years with the recession. I'm going to create my own asset class.

Kara Swisher: Yep, absolutely.

Scott Galloway: And I get it. I can empathize and understand it. It's like, great, Scott, you had your time in the sun to buy Netflix at 11 bucks a share. But now that you and your other seniors are voting yourselves more money and using my credit card to bail your ass out every time the economy gets rough and I have an opportunity to buy in inexpensively, fuck that. I'm not going to play your game. I'm going to invent my own asset class.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. And they have become very politicized. And so it's up to the Democrats to not cut your nose to spite your face, I think is the play here. Trump is grifting this thing, but you can't not lean into it just because he's doing that. You come after him later if you have to. But a lot of them are saying, "We can't do it because Trump will grift more." He's going to grift no matter what. He will find a way to grift. And we can't make policy based on that. You need to lean into this, Democrats, in a way that's safe and good for consumers and good for young people, and not worry about the Trump part until later. That's my feeling.

[Break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, a story we didn't get to chat about last week is Google's launch of Veo 3, which is a video generator that creates full video with audio. Its main competition is OpenAI's Sora, but the key distinction is Veo 3 is supposed to be able to incorporate audio. And that includes dialogue between characters as well as animal sounds. That's the main buzz about it on the Internet. Will this replace movie studios? Some of this stuff is pretty impressive to look at. And will this flood the news media with misinformation? Oddly enough, I interviewed Jesse Armstrong, who is the creator of Succession, for his new movie that's coming out this week called Mountainhead. And this is one of the plot points in it: a social media company with a sort of Musk-Zuckerberg character who runs a company called Tram that floods the world with tools like this and causes worldwide destruction. In any case, you talked a lot about this during the writers strike. Quick thoughts.

Scott Galloway: I think it goes after commercials first and quick hits. If you're selling stuff on Facebook or Shopify and you need just a 30-second, competent, elegant-looking ad, I think it starts there. It starts moving its way up. I see it similar to what CGI did in terms of reducing the cost of special effects. It just lowers the cost of the means of production. It'll be especially hard on certain people. But I still think, as someone who has a limited but increasing amount of exposure to the industry, the way I see it is we outsourced the shitty manufacturing jobs overseas, but the real value add in the higher paying jobs are in design, distribution, product marketing back here. I think this is the same thing. I don't want to say the low value work, but things like lighting and sound and extras. The people that Tom Cruise is going to be very aggressive and smart about protecting his own IP and his own likeness. What I have seen with this, and we talked about this before, whenever I write, I use AI to brainstorm and to say, "I don't like this paragraph, what additional data could be out there?" But when I try and write stuff with just AI, it's very anodyne. It lacks all sex appeal. It's all chip, no salsa.

Kara Swisher: For the boring stuff, it works. For press releases, things like that, like commercials, it's showing up.

Scott Galloway: I think you're absolutely right. Or simple legal agreements. By the way, the document you signed with Vox, I generated on AI.

Kara Swisher: Oh, good to know. So. Oh no. What did we give away?

Scott Galloway: I was sick of dealing with my lawyers who were going back and forth with Vox lawyers to run up our bills. And I'm like, fuck it. I just produced it. And by the way, I didn't even run it by our lawyers. I just sent it to Vox. I'm like, "Sign this and we're gonna sign it."

Kara Swisher: Oh, good. No, thanks for telling me.

Scott Galloway: I'm flexing.

Kara Swisher: Okay, flex. But I think it's going to lower the means of production. Did you give away our liver or kidneys at all in the agreement? Did AI suddenly do that?

Scott Galloway: Just one.

Kara Swisher: We have two.

Scott Galloway: Okay. And plus, you don't want to give away my liver. You really don't want to give away my liver.

Kara Swisher: So it's my liver that's going.

Scott Galloway: There you go.

Kara Swisher: It's in excellent shape. All right. So you're absolutely right. I think this is something I discussed with Armstrong, who's just a brilliant person. He was like, "I'm not really sure what to think. I've seen some of this and it's very impressive." I'm like, "But it's not you, Jesse Armstrong." You can't make... For the untalented, it will be a problem. Or the stuff that's anodyne, as you said, it will be a problem. And there's a lot of people like that, right? There are a lot of people who make the boring scut work that are going out. Now for our personal experience on doing this: we had our video producer Kevin mess around with it and he said he's not too worried about his job just yet. We just hired him. I hope not. Here are his initial findings. Veo 3 automatically puts makeup on Kara, but not Scott. It crashed and failed to generate video an aggravating number of times, and people are complaining online about its audio failures as well. And what Veo 3 can do frighteningly well is generate videos of fake people. For example, this AI newscast we asked it to create.

[Audio clip plays: "Scott Galloway has broken the record for most dick jokes told in a podcast. The competition was extremely stiff."]

Scott Galloway: That was good. That's it? I was waiting.

Kara Swisher: That wasn't a real person. I was showing the video to someone and they asked, "Who is that person?" I'm like, "That person doesn't exist." And they were attracted to the person. It was a fake newscaster reading a very realistic but unconfirmed story that the competition was stiff.

Scott Galloway: I don't think the competition is stiff at all.

Kara Swisher: When prompted to use images of real people like me and Scott, it failed to generate audio and came up with some less than ideal results. Here's what we got with the prompt, "Kara and Scott podcasting on Mars." What we're seeing here is Kara and Scott. Kara looked with a lot of makeup on. And Scott, why don't you describe it?

Scott Galloway: Oh, you look like... what's that scoop neck shirt you've got on? I'm more handsome than that guy, aren't I, Kara?

Kara Swisher: I think so.

Scott Galloway: And I have a third hand.

Kara Swisher: I have a third hand.

Scott Galloway: At least I got the Panerai right.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. You don't look like you.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, no, that's not me. That guy looks like he knocks on your door and says, "The law mandates that I notify you I've moved in next door."

Kara Swisher: All right. Here's what we've got with the prompt, "Kara and Scott as bodybuilders." Scott, describe the situation as we're watching it, please.

Scott Galloway: Oh, hello. Oh my God. That does look like you. That does look like you. It's us as bodybuilders, and the faces are actually quite accurate.

Kara Swisher: Jeez, this is so disturbing. This looks like the beginning of the most disturbing Cinemax.

Scott Galloway: It's like from that movie, Stanley Kubrick, with Malcolm McDowell, the really disturbing one about...

Kara Swisher: Clockwork Orange.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, Clockwork Orange. You know, when they basically want to turn him off violence and sex, and they force his eyes open and they show him... This would literally turn you off. Do not watch this, folks. This will turn you off any physical encounter with anyone for a long time. This is so rattling.

Kara Swisher: Get them back. "Kara and Scott as bodybuilders." This is so rattling. All right. Here's what we got with the prompt, "Kara and Scott getting married." Okay.

Scott Galloway: Seventh circle of hell.

Kara Swisher: Oh, that's nice. Holding hands or walking down the aisle.

Scott Galloway: Oh, oh no, no.

Kara Swisher: Oh my God.

Scott Galloway: No, no, no, they're kissing. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Oh, no, stop.

Kara Swisher: It looks like Stanley Tucci and Marlo Thomas. And by the way, I'm a good foot taller than you. That is just unrealistic.

Scott Galloway: Look at me, thrilled to be married to you. A very heavy version of me. They make me a lot fatter.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, okay. We'll post these on our social media accounts later today. But we are unimpressed. George Clooney doesn't have anything to worry about right now is what we have to say.

Scott Galloway: Well, no, he'll be able to. I do think that, but again, it'll be more of a transfer of wealth from the entrants to the incumbents because the incumbents that already have established their IP will be able to scale it. A guy like Jesse Armstrong is going to make a lot more money because he's going to get to produce three things a year, not one. And because he has already established brand equity, it's like a really good lawyer. I think they're going to make more money because they'll be able to scale themselves faster by outsourcing the 80% of the document.

Kara Swisher: And then have the creative part, yeah.

Scott Galloway: But I think the entrants are just going to have a really tough time because there's going to be less training, fewer jobs at the lower and mid-levels that really teach you about creative and filmmaking and give you an opportunity to shine and rise up. I think the incumbents are just going to get wealthier and wealthier.

Kara Swisher: I would agree. One of the things I was talking to Jesse about was like, what if you put all of your work in Succession? They could make more seasons of Succession eventually. They will be without your input. And he's like, "Well, we have those rights and the contracts." I said, "But do you?" It'll be interesting to see what happens. For example, I would love more episodes of The West Wing, and they're not going to make them, but they could, right? If they jammed all the West Wings in there, they could possibly make a pretty decent thing. I have the feeling they will be able to.

Scott Galloway: Well, that's a really interesting thought because it ends up that HBO owns the IP to The White Lotus. And that was, I think, $100 or $200 million, I don't want to call it a mistake, for the original producers. Now, they still make a lot of money because they want that incredible talent back to make seasons four, five, and six. But if at some point it's no longer worth the $150 million in production for that season, they might say, "Well, we'll spend $3 million and we'll use new characters and we'll do seasons five, six, seven, and eight and squeeze." And then it makes it even harder for new entrants to break in.

Kara Swisher: I can't figure out, does it help? Does it make it less expensive? It could help the studios. Whoever owns the IP of the original IP. And there's got to be a lot of it. So you could make all kinds of shows like Happy Days. There's lots of shows that went on for 10 seasons that you could possibly... it could write them.

Scott Galloway: It could write them.

Kara Swisher: It could. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Or go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show, or call 855-51-PIVOT. Elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe this week: on the latest episode of Prof G Markets, Scott spoke with Aswath Damodaran, professor of finance at NYU's Stern School of Business. Aswath shared his take on the recent tariff turmoil and what he's watching with the next round of earnings. Let's listen.

[Audio clip plays: "This is going to be a contest between market resilience and economic resilience as to whether, in fact, the markets are overestimating the resilience of the economy. And that's what the actual numbers are going to deliver: is maybe the economy and markets are a lot more resilient than we gave them credit for, in which case we come out of this year just like we came out of 2020 and 2022 with much less damage than we thought would be created by what we saw happening on the ground."]

Kara Swisher: That's interesting. He's so smart. And by the way, an Indian immigrant who got his PhD at UCLA.

Scott Galloway: That's correct. And is arguably one of the 10 best instructors in America.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, right. I know.

Scott Galloway: That is a guy training young Americans. So much value.

Kara Swisher: And OK, but yeah, let's go after those folks.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Well, good thing Barron's at NYU.

Kara Swisher: Scott, before we go, you have a quick fail. Trump is claiming that America would benefit if Harvard reduced the number of international students, that it would open up more seats for domestic students.

Scott Galloway: I do think there is some truth to that, that we need to expand freshman seats for Americans. There are great university systems like the University of California that do take their commitment to native Californians really seriously. 83% of the University of North Carolina seats are reserved for graduates from North Carolina high schools. I do think University of Wisconsin is living up to its mission. But if he was really serious, though, it's all such bullshit, because also in this big, beautiful bill, he's talking about gutting Pell Grants. He wants to cut Pell Grants by about $67 billion through 2034, reducing grants to low-income students by more than one from 2027 through 2034. And really it's more like one when you take inflation into account. More than half of Pell students would have their aid reduced in some way. I'm not exaggerating.

Kara Swisher: Kara. There are a lot of things that led me to being here and having the wonderful life I lead. One of them is Pell Grants.

Scott Galloway: I didn't know that.

Kara Swisher: I got Pell Grants because my mother was a secretary. We were considered in the lowest quartile of income-earning households. Every summer, I had to save $2,300 at least, work and save $2,300, because I knew I would get a Pell Grant for $1,300 to $1,800, and I could go back for my next year at UCLA.

Scott Galloway: Wow, I didn't realize you were a Pell Grantee.

Kara Swisher: The reason I got through UCLA was because of Pell Grants. Wow. And by the way, the Cal State system in California is the largest grantor of Pell Grants. Pell Grants, in my opinion, and I'm biased here, is where all affirmative action needs to go. Affirmative action should be based on color, should be based on green, specifically the economic situation you face. Without Pell Grants, without affirmative action, I'm a beneficiary of affirmative action. It's called Pell Grants. These things are a lifesaver for those of us who just wouldn't have had access to college. It gives you that extra amount of money that gives you the chance to excel. I wouldn't have graduated from UCLA. I just couldn't have done it. It also gives you the relief that you don't have to work slinging burgers.

Scott Galloway: Well, and it's a grant. It's not a loan. I don't have to worry about, "Okay, with my philosophy degree and 150 grand in student debt, is this worth it?" The fastest way for us to level up America, full stop, is to put more money in the pockets of people who don't have money. That's correct. It's not complex, folks.

Kara Swisher: Yep. All right. And Pell Grants figured that out. But we need to save Pell Grants, a really important program. I'm going to give a quick positive one: go see Mountainhead by Jesse Armstrong. I'm curious what you think about it. It's really crazy, but it's Mountainhead.

Scott Galloway: Mountainhead. It's an HBO show that's going up, a Max show that's going up on... I get that in Aspen every year at the summer solstice.

Kara Swisher: Oh, stop it.

Scott Galloway: I knew you'd say that.

Kara Swisher: Anyway. Mountainhead. Steve Carell is starring in it. It's really good. Anyway, and it's by Jesse Armstrong, who's fantastic. There are so many good lines in it that it's crazy. One line: they were in nature, up in Utah essentially. And the guy who plays the Mark Zuckerberg slash Elon character goes, "Oh my God, it's so beautiful. You could fuck it." And I just thought that was the best line ever. That's exactly how they look at nature and think. Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Scott, read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Laren Amon, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, Kevin Oliver, and Corinne Ruff. Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Miss Severo, and Dan Chalon. Nishat Kharouaz, Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.