Trump's Iran Strategy, Tesla's Robotaxi Rollout, and Meta's AI Ambitions

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

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway. I'm jealous that I'm not going to Bezos' wedding this weekend. I had lunch with three guys who shall go nameless who seem like really fun, cool guys, and they're all going. They're all going. And we're not going.

Kara Swisher: Still not invited.

Scott Galloway: Still not invited.

Kara Swisher: Did you see they had a phone party? It was so you, Scott. They had a phone party on the yacht, on the Kuru or whatever the hell they call it.

Scott Galloway: I didn't see that.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Phone party? Lauren and Jeff were in a phone party, which I have not—someone commented to me they hadn't done since they were 25 years old, but apparently it was for her son who was turning 19. But they had a phone party on the deck of the yacht.

Scott Galloway: Good for them. I'd say enjoy it. Lean into the phone. The rumor is Lauren has been calling people and saying, "I need more single men."

Kara Swisher: Oh.

Scott Galloway: I think it'd be a really good time.

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah. Well, we weren't invited, Scott. You had an outside chance possibly of being invited.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I think you brought me down. I think I would have been invited had it not been for my affiliation with you.

Kara Swisher: I know. I feel that that's the case. I feel like you could have been. Because you're kind of an interesting man. You're attractive enough for them. You have to be attractive. You're fit. You would have fit the bill. You drink. You're down for it.

Scott Galloway: Ever since the scrotum lift, it's all coming together.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you're DTF, as I like to say.

Scott Galloway: I'm also on testosterone. I'm on the NAD.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, the NAD. You're just like them. I don't know why you're not friends with them. I don't know why the Kardashians have moved their way in and you haven't. I just don't. There's something wrong.

Scott Galloway: I agree with you.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. We can fix it. I actually would have rather gone. Well, no. I think I'd rather go to the bachelor party. I think I'd rather go to the wedding.

Scott Galloway: Supposedly, the wedding vows include a commitment to provide emotional support within 48 hours. And also, every wedding plate has a list of items that says, "If you chose this wedding, you might also like..."

Kara Swisher: Oh, okay. Okay. A little Amazon humor. Actually, it's not Netflix humor. Anyways. Anyway, congratulations, Bezos. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today. So let's dig right in. And obviously the big story: the Pentagon says three of Iran's nuclear sites sustained extremely severe damage following the U.S. strikes over the weekend. But it's too soon to know whether Iran still has nuclear capabilities. And the administration is saying different things, including J.D. Vance versus the president, etc. President Trump declared the mission a spectacular military success on Saturday, and he claimed the nuclear sites were completely and totally obliterated. Trump also said the strikes should force Iran to make peace and threaten future attacks if it doesn't happen. Iran's foreign minister is calling the attacks outrageous and warning of everlasting consequences. That's an interesting word, everlasting. Trump is also now floating the idea of regime change in Iran, posting on Truth Social, "Make Iran Great Again," or MEGA. Though the vice president, J.D. Vance, said on Meet the Press, the U.S. is not at war with Iran, we're at war with Iran's nuclear program. Vance also attempted to explain why this attack won't lead to a broader U.S. involvement in the Middle East. He is much more on the non-involvement wing, even though he's doing this for the president. Let's listen.

[Audio clip plays: J.D. Vance speaking on Meet the Press]

J.D. Vance: I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East. I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives. So this is not going to be some long drawn out thing. We've got in, we've done the job of setting their nuclear program back. We're going to now work to permanently dismantle that nuclear program over the coming years. And that is what the president has set out to do.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it sounds like a long war, essentially. Calling ex-presidents dumb is just ridiculous. What an idiot.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I don't get that either. What an idiot.

Kara Swisher: He also—a lot of the other people in the administration are countering what Trump is saying. They don't know how much damage is done. General Cain, in particular, was like, "We don't know," because he's an adult and he can say they don't know. Obviously, he made an effort to do so. A lot of people think it's a bold move. Other people think it's going to be part of a long-drawn war. We'll get to the Trump of it all in a second, but overall thoughts?

Scott Galloway: My favorite thing is the name of it: Midnight Operation Hammer. Operation Midnight Hammer.

Kara Swisher: Operation Midnight Hammer.

Scott Galloway: I think that was the WhatsApp group planning Hegseth's bachelor party where he got his first DUI. Or it's the stage name of a porn star who's addicted to Red Bull. Midnight Hammer.

Kara Swisher: He got hammered too, from what I understand.

Scott Galloway: So I've been thinking about—you'd be proud of me. I've been called by two fairly big networks and asked to come on and talk about it. And I'm like, "Okay, I'm willing to talk about a lot of things I don't have expertise in. This is not one of them."

Kara Swisher: Yeah, good for you.

Scott Galloway: I see geopolitical strength as having three legs of the stool. The first is kinetic power. The second is alliances. And the third is competence. So just in reverse order: Israel has demonstrated more competence than any. The IDF just knows how to do more with less than any organization in the world right now militarily. They have executed perfectly across some incredible operations, including taking out the air defenses of Iran. Going back to kinetic power: we have the most kinetic power in the world. And I do believe that if you're going to spend $800 billion on your military, you want to go off your heels and onto your toes and exert and proactively display power and offensively protect your national interests. So I think there's a really good argument that we shouldn't be in forever wars. None of our business? Then fine, take military spending down to $200 billion and spend it somewhere else. But Canada is not invading Buffalo. So unless we're going to do things like this that project our power, I don't see why you'd spend so much money. Flying B-2 bombers that deliver bunker busters—both of which are armaments and ordinances that nobody else has in the world—I do think it's impressive and sends a strong signal to our adversaries and our allies. It sounds to me like the operation was executed really well. I do think this was a moment in time to go on the offense, trying to put aside my disdain for the administration. So kinetic power, that box is checked. The second is alliances, and this is really where we start to fall down. Despite having 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's GDP, the only successful military operations are basically a gauge for how much support you have from other democracies. In every other military operation like this, immediately other Western nations weigh in and offer support. There's coordinated nonverbal support from unexpected countries, including the kingdom of Jordan. If you'll notice, the only countries that are putting out press releases are Russia claiming that we have exaggerated the damage done, and China saying, "Here they go again, making the world more uncertain." This is, in my opinion, the first real example of the fact that our alliances have somewhat been sequestered to an alliance where it puts us hip to hip with Israel, which I like because I'm very pro-Israel. But the reality is the Israeli brand globally is not very strong right now. I think that not going into this war unilaterally—strength and greatness are in the agency of others. It struck me just how few alliances we have of people willing to...

Kara Swisher: Yeah, just Israel.

Scott Galloway: ...people willing the next day to say, "Great job." We used their airspace, and MI6 provided intelligence. Typically, when any responsible president—of which J.D. Vance thinks are stupid, whereas he's a genius—they coordinate like crazy with their allies to say, "We would really appreciate you coming out the next day in support of this." And it creates greater emphasis and strength in a unified front. The third thing is competence. And this is really where we fall down, in my view. Something that Americans, I don't think, focus on nearly enough is that when you have our National Guard and our military and agents of the government focused on raiding a Home Depot in Westlake, California, it detracts from the focus we should have our military on operations such as this. When you decide to declare economic warfare on everyone with tariffs that were derived from bad prompts to ChatGPT, it shows that you're incompetent. On this specific operation, Secretary Gabbard comes out and says there's no evidence they're moving towards a nuclear bomb. He says, "My intelligence community is wrong." Secretaries Hegseth and Rubio state we don't want regime change. Hours later, he says, "I'm in favor of regime change." These guys just look incompetent in terms of their messaging.

Kara Swisher: Right. Or they don't have control over him. That's really it. He doesn't care what any of them say. And they've been trying to message it, that's for sure. One of the things that they tried to do is act like this was all part of a chess game when, as we always notice, he's not playing chess. He's throwing the checkers everywhere and eating them, essentially. He said he was waiting up to two weeks to decide on an attack plan. It appeared to be a decoy move or maybe not. Who knows? Which was effective, to call balls and strikes. It fooled me. If that was what he was doing.

Scott Galloway: If that was what he was doing. Yeah, fair point.

Kara Swisher: Reportedly, he made the decision to bomb Iran earlier in the week, according to The Atlantic. He also had a lunch with Bannon, which would show that he was maybe not going to do anything because Bannon's sort of anti any of this. It's probably a fake move, but maybe it's not. Now, Republicans are rallying behind Trump, but Democrats and a few Republicans are calling the attack unconstitutional since Trump did not have congressional approval. To be fair, again, balls and strikes, other presidents have done this, have done attacks. It's just that he's so violative of most laws that it just seems even worse when he does it. But other presidents, to be fair, have done this. I think the braggadocio about whether we're successful—I think probably you say very little. One of the things that's interesting is whether it creates a fracture in the MAGA coalition. MAGA's pretending it's not, but there's clearly—they're trying to signal as best they can. They don't like this, even in the soft language they're using, never using his name. But there's got to be a real problem here because once you get involved in this stuff, you don't get uninvolved. It's very easy to get into war, very hard to get out. The markets have had a muted response, which is interesting. And that's what I really think we should focus on because we actually do know something about that. The U.S. markets are up as of this recording. Oil prices jumped after the strikes this weekend but are falling now. Trump is watching those oil prices—he posted on Truth Social on Monday morning, "Everyone keep oil prices down. You're playing right into the hands of the enemy." So talk a little bit about that because nobody knows what to make of it. It must mean that they don't think he's going to escalate. That would be one thing. That said, if Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, as they've threatened to do, those oil prices could spike. It's not clear whether they can actually close it or we can open it right back up. But nonetheless, there's uncertainty, but the response has been muted. Why do you think that's the case?

Scott Galloway: I generally believe Trump is looking to bask in some macho light. I do think this was a well-executed military operation. We won't know the extent of the damage. And unfortunately, because we can't trust our intelligence services anymore, it's hard to get accurate information. I'm not sure that we can count on Trump. I don't think Trump did this as an act of support of Israel. I think he did it as an act of trying to—he got jealous of this dick measuring contest where Netanyahu looked like the bigger package. So he showed up and he wanted some of it. But I think he's looking to get the hell out of Dodge and not be drawn into a larger conflict. Unfortunately, similar to our elected public, the IRGC is run by the Khomeini, who is an 86-year-old theocrat. Who knows what this guy...

Kara Swisher: Right, what's happening internally.

Scott Galloway: ...what's running through this guy's head. He's not in a good position the way he was previously. He has to make a bad choice between bad choices. But the Strait of Hormuz, which everyone is worried about them seizing—the reality, Kara, is that if the Strait of Hormuz gets blocked, it hurts China a lot more than it hurts us. China gets 5.4 million barrels a day through the strait. India gets 2 million. South Korea, 1.7. We barely get anything. People just don't realize how incredibly blessed we are and how productive our economy is. We're pretty much a self-sustaining nation. We're food and energy independent. There are maybe three other Western countries that can say that right now. So if the Strait of Hormuz gets blocked, China gets very upset and pissed off. Now, the way it hurts us is that you could see a spike in oil prices, which would hurt us.

Kara Swisher: That's a good point.

Scott Galloway: For every $10 a barrel goes up, it translates to $0.25 in gas here. But the reality is the Strait of Hormuz coming under blockage or descent or tumult or chaos hurts Asia a lot more than it hurts the United States.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that still is an indicator. I think they won't be able to do that either. But the oil markets are saying they're not worried.

Scott Galloway: They're not worried. The oil markets—if you hadn't known this had happened and you were looking at the markets, you wouldn't know this had happened. It doesn't look as if the markets are yawning right now. The markets are saying—and who knows, they can be wrong—that this will be that Iran will have some sort of symbolic gesture similar to what they did with Israel sending over all those ballistics, the majority of which didn't impact them, and that this will, quote unquote, de-escalate, and that Trump gets his macho participation trophy and we all move on.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, one of the things that's really interesting in the Trump era is we all move on. It's something that happened—what was a couple weeks ago? Something—every week is something unprecedented, and then it's precedented, essentially. What's interesting about it is, look, no other president has tried this. And I agree with you. I think sometimes you do the big move, the big grand gesture, and then move out. I think the question is—you're right—they will attack Israel. They may attack U.S. bases abroad. As we record this, Iran has launched an attack on a U.S. base in Qatar, which is home to about 10,000 U.S. troops. Qatar closed its airspace and suspended flights as a precautionary measure. A Qatari spokesman says the missiles were intercepted, and so far, no injuries have been reported. I would expect more attacks in the region.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it looks as if they also attacked in Iraq. And you never know, but so far this looks like what I'll call a saving face attack. It looks like they needed to do something. Let's hope this is all they do.

Kara Swisher: Now, one thing that was striking to me was the polling on this thing. Most Americans don't want anything to do with it, even an attack. It's fascinating that he just did it without allied support, without polling support, without anything. That is one reason I'm like, "This guy, this fucking guy, he's just doing it because he wants to." He doesn't seem to care about polls. Well, why would he? He doesn't have to run again, really.

Scott Galloway: They were perfect for a moment. They had the perfect statement: "This is not a war or an attack on the Iranian people. This was an attack on nuclear facilities." That was J.D. Vance. That was exactly right. But then they can't help themselves.

Kara Swisher: Well, he can't. He can't. And he starts talking about regime change. And here's the thing about regime change: we don't want to do that. It's an oxymoron. When regime change is forced externally, it doesn't work. It's not truly regime change. We tried that once in Iran. There was a democratically elected president of Iran. He was overthrown by the CIA and MI6 because he had this crazy notion that Iranian oil belonged to Iranians. So we got him thrown out and we put in the Shah of Iran, who was an autocrat. Ultimately, he was thrown out, and then the Islamic Republic came in. 50% of the time where you think you have a democratic regime change, it ends up going back to something else. We should just never be in the regime change business. It doesn't work. The people have to decide. But at the same time, I'm sort of—the IDF has done an amazing job taking down their defense infrastructure, their aerial defense infrastructure. And the people...

Scott Galloway: Well, it depends how you define it. They've killed a lot of senior level military officers, but there's actually been very little death here.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Scott Galloway: They keep taking out leadership, is what they keep doing. And they've sent a very, very strong signal. We've punched. The biggest mistake you make in strategy is you think you're punching a speed bag. There's always a law of unintended consequences, not only in war, but in the Middle East, no one can predict. It is so difficult to predict. There are so many X factors flying around, anything involving the Middle East. To think that they might not respond—I don't know. We can all guess. But at this point, anybody who lays out what they know is going to happen doesn't know what they're talking about.

Kara Swisher: You're 100 percent right. I think the issues—this has been good for Israel. That's what it's been good for. It's been less good for us. But we'll see. We'll see if Trump keeps his mouth shut. I do think Vance and the others and Cain are signaling the curve: "We don't know how much we've hit. This is only to stop the nuclear." If they stick to the nuclear program—Iran should never have a nuclear device, period. And that's in our interests. That should be that. The question is, can it be that? Unfortunately, many other people have been dragged in here, many other presidents. But by the way, Jimmy is calling presidents dumb. Just "you're dumb, you're dumb." Why add that line in? It was a good line, and then you add it. Why are you destroying alliances with former Republicans?

Scott Galloway: And also Americans in our tendency and our fascination with self-hate—we aren't willing to take a victory lap in the sense that if you think of us as having four enemies—China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran—why not go over there? The Ukrainian army has beaten the shit out of Russia through support from Western Europe and the U.S. and has basically defanged Russia. If Russia had not gone into Ukraine, or if they'd ended up in Kiev within seven days—I'm not sure Russia was still the scary military power we all thought it was. I'm not sure we would have done this, because if Russia had still had its proxies in Syria and could be more supportive of Iran directly with technology, I think we would have been less bold around Iran. So the West right now, when it comes to two of our enemies, Iran and Russia, we are kicking the shit out of them.

Kara Swisher: That's true.

Scott Galloway: And we should celebrate that—that the West is winning. The question is—and these guys never ask this question—what now? What bothers me is that we don't have a unified front with all of our Western allies around what is next here. Or within the Trump administration, that's clear. They can't get their own messaging straight.

Kara Swisher: I was sort of like, "What? Huh?" They keep saying—anyway, it's because Trump, you never know what he's going to say at any given minute. Anyway, we'll see what happens. We're not experts here, but it certainly seems the market's going, "Oh, well, okay, like another thing. What's he going to do next week? We'll see. We'll see what happens." Let's hope very little happens, actually. Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Elon's robo-taxis hit the road. Emphasis on "hit."

[Ad break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. Tesla's long-awaited robo-taxi service is now on the streets of Austin with a few caveats. This initial rollout has Tesla employees riding in the front passenger seat to ensure safety. The service is also currently invite-only to fans, with a geofenced area of Austin—a small area. Riders are paying a flat fee of $420,000. The launch comes just days after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a new law regulating self-driving cars. The legislation takes effect in September and requires companies to get a permit to operate self-driving vehicles. The state can revoke those permits if safety becomes a concern. You know, this is just—shares are up 10%. I can't believe this because it's the smallest little service going. It's not going to create the billions and billions, tens of billions or trillions that Elon has promised. There are very many competitors. And by the way, VW is getting into the game. The company just unveiled a robo-taxi that will be used by Uber's fleet next year. This ID they make is beautiful. I'd love to have an ID. I have a Volkswagen ID, actually. Great-looking electric cars. Look fun and interesting to drive. So who knows what's going to happen here. He's also facing other challenges. His startup xAI is reportedly burning a billion dollars a month while generating just $500 million in revenue this year. According to Bloomberg, the company is now seeking $9.3 billion in debt and equity to close the gap. And what SpaceX is calling a major anomaly—the Starship rocket exploded during routine testing for the launch last week. It was an important test, actually. I have been saying this over and over again. His leverage is very tight. He's got a lot of tight. Everything is depending on it. It feels very Jenga-like what's happening here. He often does pull a rabbit out of the hat, but it seems like given the competitors in both the robo-taxi and the car space, the competitors in the AI space, and SpaceX seems to be struggling a little bit and still hasn't gone public and hasn't provided him the funding he needs. What do you think is going on here?

Kara Swisher: It seems a little precarious for Elon Musk.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I think some of your bias is coming out.

Kara Swisher: He, look, the reason he's the wealthiest man in the world is he's incredibly risk-aggressive.

Scott Galloway: That's right.

Kara Swisher: Yes, he is, 100%. And he makes these just dramatic huge bets. The difference now versus making the huge bets he made on Tesla when he legitimately could have gone bankrupt if he didn't get a $50 million loan or personal loan from Larry or Sergey or whoever it was, is that he now has businesses in space, EVs, AI, brain implants, and any one of those if they hit to the same extent that Tesla hit for a while.

Scott Galloway: SpaceX is still a remarkable company. I mean, the anomaly or the explosion, to a certain extent, that's what makes SpaceX what SpaceX is. And that is NASA can't blow up rockets.

Kara Swisher: Right. I've said that. You know I've said that. You've said that.

Scott Galloway: Absolutely. Yes, yes. Many times. And it is, Starlink is still a superior service. The robotaxi thing, I mean, it all comes down to this. He uses technology. Waymo uses LiDAR, which strikes me as better technology, safer technology, and much more expensive.

Kara Swisher: Correct.

Scott Galloway: It costs about a quarter of a million dollars to put a LiDAR-enabled autonomous car on the road. Whereas Tesla's saying, if this works, we can produce these things for $36,000. Now, if they're able to show that they can deploy these things safely, of which you pointed out, and it's true, there's some concern, they're going to have a real cost advantage. And they also have a lot of data from the Teslas already on the street. I think consumers win here. I think Waymo is way ahead. But, you know, we'll see. There's also Zooks from Amazon. There's also the Zoox car, which has been testing for a long—I've been in Zooxes for years.

Kara Swisher: I think the issue is he's been slow. It doesn't mean that he can't catch up.

Scott Galloway: You're 100% right. Like, I agree with you.

Kara Swisher: I just think that he's acting like he's the king of this area where he is not the king. He's the Johnny-come-lately in this area and shouldn't have been. He should have been far ahead in robo-taxis and sort of the pace setter. And the same thing with AI. He should have been the pace setter in AI.

Scott Galloway: Well, all this stuff is going on in AI, and obviously it's still unsettled with various investments. There's rumors that perplexity is going to get bought by Apple. There's rumors, you know, there's all kinds of like who's going to get bought, who's going to get sold, et cetera, et cetera.

Kara Swisher: But he should have been out front here, and he's not out front. What he's succeeded in is areas nobody else will enter because he's so risk-aggressive, which is great, which is a really great quality that he's had. He was in areas nobody was in. Right now, he's competing in areas other people are doing rather well in. And that's where I find the problems for him. The only one that is not the case, which is in Starlink, but the Chinese are coming in, the Europeans are coming in, Jeff Bezos is coming in. He's in competitive areas and he doesn't, just simply doesn't, his boldness doesn't work here. It's a level of quality of service that you provide with these robo-taxis that requires a little more discipline than just, oh, well, we've crashed a couple of cars. You can't do it anymore because the others aren't crashing. GM was thrown out for crashing. So I feel like it's not a bias. It's like the aggression is not an advantage in most of these businesses necessarily. Cost might be, as you pointed out, that might be the case. But I think those other companies will figure out a way to bring down costs, too. Like, I don't think he has a definite advantage in any of these areas, including Starlink at this point. I think eventually they will catch up with him and sooner than later.

Scott Galloway: See, I see it as if you're going to bifurcate his winners and losers in terms of his portfolio, my sense of him is he's able to create such a vision and create so much awareness around the vision that he's able to pull cheap capital forward and run away from everyone else. I think he's the ultimate case study and first mover advantage. And his first mover advantage is apparent at Tesla with EVs and SpaceX with space launch cargo launch capability. I think both of those companies, Tesla has already provided him, made him the wealthiest man in the world. I think SpaceX is going to be a monster, probably the biggest IPO at 26. The other areas where he trying to be a fast follower whether it AI or autonomous driving I don think he as good at because there other people who are already able to sort of you know they have the advantage The market is already maturing He's better as a quote unquote first mover than a fast follower.

Kara Swisher: Agree. And that's how it would quote unquote bifurcate his portfolio in terms of winners and losers. I do think Starlink though is going to have challengers now. No one thought anyone would catch up to Tesla. And I think companies are catching up to Tesla, very clearly catching up whether it's BYD. Same thing in Starlink. He is, let me pay him a compliment. He's always out front on lots of stuff, but he's furthered away his advantage in most of these areas. He should have had, he bragged about that fucking robo-taxi a decade ago to me. Why didn't he have it? Because he's undisciplined. Because he can't, like, doing a robo-taxi takes a lot of hard, detailed work, of which he loves a splash, right? And I agree, he should have gone into, What did he sit around waiting to do XAI for for a decade? Like he was the first person who ever told me about these businesses. And yet he's an also-ran in that space. So why? Like I'm saying it's okay to be a pioneer, but the planes are covered with the bodies of pioneers as far as I can tell. And I think I wish he would just discipline himself. And we'll see what happens with the SpaceX thing. But blowing these things, I get that I always say, well, he can blow things up. There's a point where he can't blow any more things up, right? This is the fourth in a row, I think, of a blow up of these things. He's got to get it right and make it efficient. And I don't think they expected this particular thing to blow up. And it's costly and delaying and et cetera, et cetera.

Scott Galloway: I still think Starlink's an incredible product and arguably has the most differentiated product lead of any product that is that important to people. It's like water for wealthy people. It's broadband. It's just, and there's just no comparison, especially if you're on a plane and they have Starlink. You literally, you start salivating. Oh, this is, I'm going to be so much more productive on this flight. The extent to which other competitors can catch up, you know, I don't know. I've just been contacted quite a lot by the Amazon folks with their, is it Kuiper?

Kara Swisher: A Kuiper.

Scott Galloway: But I don't know. What I'd be curious to know is he controls 60% of low orbit satellites. I don't know. Do you need 2%, 10%, 20% to have a viable product? I just don't know what the technology is involved in.

Kara Swisher: I feel like everyone's going to chase him here and he's not going to have that advantage forever.

Scott Galloway: Well, and that's what we want, right? We want competition.

Kara Swisher: Right, 100%. He'll either innovate and maintain his lead or he won't. The one that I think is his biggest weakness is I just think XAI. I think he's emotional about it and trying to catch up. And he's not even the number two. He's the distant number three or four.

Scott Galloway: Four or five. They're projecting 500 million revenues. and I think OpenAI is projecting around $13 billion. Anthropic is projecting about $2 billion and it's carved out sort of an interesting brand as the number two player, if you will.

Kara Swisher: They have.

Scott Galloway: And they're chewing through so much cash at XAI. I think they're spending about a billion dollars a month and he's going-

Kara Swisher: $500 million in revenue, $12 billion a year, $500 million in revenue. That's a lot of fucking money.

Scott Galloway: And he's building out this data center in Tennessee called Colossus, which is powered by, over, get this, 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs. It's going to be the largest supercomputing cluster in the world.

Kara Swisher: But he's also facing legal challenges there because of the energy, the way he's doing energy. Is that right?

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: I don't know why he wasn't first in several of these things previously. I can't tell you how many times he talked about robo-taxis and autonomous cars years ago. And I like the vision, but I would like a delivery and everyone else delivered. And he needs to focus on, I just don't think, it's also, why did he have to say, it's like, why did J.D. Vance have to say they're dumb presidents? Why did he have to say it's a trillion dollar business? Why not not say that? Because now that's the number he has to beat, right? The first robotaxi I got in, it immediately dropped down an air freshener. I don't know what that means. Have you ridden in one yet?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I rode in one and I was so blown away. I was in LA and I called a Waymo and it pulled up and immediately I go to an intersection where there's an accident and there's a cop with a yellow vest and cones. And I'm like, there's no fucking way this thing is gonna be able to figure it out. And it drove like a 16 year old girl who just got her license, or I'm sorry, 16 year old boy who just got his license. Very careful. And you know what? The thing figured it out. It was unbelievable. It said the amount of sensors and processing power to go, OK, this is a law enforcement official telling me to go into the wrong lane.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Scott Galloway: On the other side of the yellow line and I'm going to do it. It didn't used to be able to do that. Because I have sensed that this person is a law enforcement official and they are waving me over to this lane. And I'm like, wow. It's amazing. You know what they used to have problems with is plastic bags blowing.

Kara Swisher: Oh, that's interesting.

Scott Galloway: Of course, the people who really don't like Tesla are doing all the tests with the Tesla robo taxis. and they keep running over like fake children, you know, like dummies. And, you know, that's not any good for their brand. And so I would not get in a Tesla right now because I don't feel like their safety is their biggest concern. I wouldn't do it. I don't like getting into them as an Uber, but that's a different thing. That's my bias.

Kara Swisher: That is my bias. I love robo taxis, as you know. And so I'm very eager to get in these things, but I would not find it safe enough. I would not trust it. I just don't. I don't think they've squared every corner the way that I think the Waymo people have. And I'll be in, Zook's was a very good experience too, by the way. Anyway, and by the way, I wouldn't get in GMs either. This is not an Elon thing. I was very worried about their, when they were doing their business. Now, maybe they'll come back, maybe they won't, but we'll see. Anyway, good luck, Elon. All right, let's go. I wonder if he's going to the wedding. Do you think he's going?

Scott Galloway: I don't know.

Kara Swisher: No, I don't think they like each other.

Scott Galloway: Just so you know, Jeff, Scott is free.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I got nothing going on this weekend.

Scott Galloway: He'll come at the last minute. He'll just show up. He'll wait on you hand and foot if that's what needs to happen.

Kara Swisher: Well, we're just joking about coming at the last minute. I've become the Albert Einstein of sex. And that is, I'll say to my partner, that was fast for you. Get it? Get it?

Scott Galloway: Oh my God, it's so bad. You need to up the game on the penis jokes, okay?

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Come on, you need some help.

Kara Swisher: I don't know. I hope Godzilla comes to that wedding. And the great thing about watching Godzilla have sex is you can see it coming a mile away.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God.

Kara Swisher: All right. We're moving on. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, investors sour on big tech.

[Break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with more news. Mark Zuckerberg's support for President Trump isn't a shock to people who know or work with him, according to a report in the Financial Times, which wrote a very kind piece about you, by the way, recently.

Scott Galloway: Who did the New York Times write a kind piece about?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they did. They did. Those close to Zuck.

Scott Galloway: About who?

Kara Swisher: About me.

Scott Galloway: Say the shift is just him showing the world his authentic self instead of trying to be a good boy. One former insider said Zuckerberg saw Elon Musk was popular among the tech bros and there was, quote, a push to make him cool, unquote, with new hobbies and wardrobes. But Zuck and big tech don't seem to be catching the eye of the average Joe. Individual investors are cutting back on buying Magnificent Seven and other tech giants, according to a recent report from Vanda Research.

Kara Swisher: Look, let me just tell you, Mark was always the person you're seeing now. He was never a good boy. He just did it for a while because that's what he was supposed to do. But he's always been a jerk. Always, always, always. And this stuff that he's doing now is just a version of it, especially the outfits and stuff like that. He is so insecure and self-aware of what people think of him. He was always ever like this, and he will always be like this. So that's my opinion. But talk about the, you can talk about Mark if you want, but the big tech with investors, Do you think the shine is off them?

Scott Galloway: I think it's bigger than that. First off, as goes big tech, so goes the rest of the market. And effectively, the market has come back. And you had essentially almost all of the losses have been recaptured with the exception of the MAG-7 is still down a decent amount, not a huge amount. But they now make up about 34% of the index's market cap. And currently, their forward-looking P.E. is roughly 31, which is higher than the S&P, which the rest of the S&P sits at 23 combined. I think it's about 26. But I think what you're seeing here is a decades-long reversal in the flows of capital. And the worst thing for our economy that I think is going to vastly diminish our prosperity is we have taken for granted the incredible torrential flows of both human and financial capital from the rest of the world into the U.S. And I think that river has reversed. And the euro stocks is having the best relative performance of the year in comparison to the U.S. market since 2000. In just the first quarter of this year, 26 billion euros flowed into the European equities markets, a significant shift. And this came after 12 consecutive quarters of net outflows. And currently, it looks as if in this quarter, we're going to see more than 31 billion in total positive flows, which would shatter a previous record from 2015. In sum, Cara, there's a finite amount of human and financial capital. And financial capital has traditionally over the last 15 years flowed into the U.S., which does a couple of things. It lifts the price of our stocks because people want to be in U.S. equities and they go into index funds, which is spread across all our equities. And it increases the dollar strength. And the dollar has declined despite the fact we're offering greater interest rates if you buy our treasuries because we're no longer seen as a safe bet. But the dollar has weakened about 10 percent. The dollar has been the weakest of the kind of mature economy's currencies because the reality is, Kira, a lot of people are waking up to the notion that it's been an incredible run, but we're going to invest some money in Asian, Latin American and European stocks.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, absolutely. I think, as you said last week, the shine is off our country in terms of brand equity and stuff like that. And we'll see if it returns, obviously, if the economy does better, et cetera. But it certainly is. It's not a surprise. Any thoughts on Zuckerberg? I think he's always been the same way. I don't think he's changed one little bit. He's an unusual guy. I don't... He's very performative. You know him much better than I.

Scott Galloway: Not anymore.

Kara Swisher: I think most of these guys didn't get enough attention from women as younger men.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I just... I don't know. I just think this is very... These guys, there's something broken about these guys that they would... I don't understand the point of all this prosperity. I think it's as easy as deep insecurity. That's all it is. It's like he's always, he like sweated insecurity since the get-go. He was always somehow trying to impress.

Kara Swisher: What do you think? I mean, literally the first thing he said to me is, you think I'm an asshole, don't you? And I was like, I don't even know you. Like, it was so weird and performative and I don't know. Whatever, Mark. Be you. I'd love to know who he is, actually, would be interesting. And if he's a jerk, he's a jerk. And in AI news, Sam Altman says Meta has offered his employees signing bonuses as high as $100 million in an attempt to poach staffers. Let's listen to what else he had to say about Meta on the Uncapped podcast.

[Audio clip plays]

Sam Altman: [Audio clip] Look, I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor. And, you know, I think it is rational for them to keep trying. Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they've hoped. And I respect, like, being aggressive and continuing to try new things. And again, given that I think this is, like, rational, I expect that if this one doesn't work out, they'll keep trying new ones after that.

Kara Swisher: It was so good at insulting backhanded compliment. He does this all the time. He's really so obvious and good at it. But, you know, it's not the only grab meta is making for AI competitors. The company's also discussed buying perplexity before investing in scale AI. You know, this is what he does. This is what Mark does is he pays and pays and pays and burns through a lot of money and tends to win. In this case, I think he's going to have a much harder time again, as we discussed with Elon Musk. There are competitors here and they're good competitors. I think probably Google is probably OpenAI's biggest competitor. Of course, there's Microsoft. There's Apple once it decides to, you know, pull its pants on and get going. So I think it's a little harder for him to win when he was only in the social media space. And here he is in a much bigger space. And it's going to be a lot harder. He's not necessarily as good at this. So your thoughts?

Scott Galloway: So, again, I kind of bifurcated. Open AI has become the Hertz and Anthropic is the Avis, right? The numbers one and two. But Meta, I think, is still arguably gains more market cap from AI innovation this year than any other big company.

Kara Swisher: Absolutely.

Scott Galloway: What I see is a company that has incredibly strong leadership and very strategic thinking from Mark Zuckerberg, which has sometimes been to the detriment of society real large. He's the second largest purchaser of GPUs, and he has 170 trillion tokens of Gris to stuff into that furnace of GPUs in the form of data collected across platforms where four and five people outside of China are on these platforms, you know, every day.

Kara Swisher: Yep, he's got a lot of advantages. He has all the assets.

Scott Galloway: Now, how does it manifest in terms of shareholder value? I don't think it's Lama or some sort of consumer-facing AI program. I think how it manifests in terms of shareholder value is I just think it's going to be a pretty grim year. I think anyone that's not meta is going to have basically a very, very small offering at Cannes next year because I think their offering using AI is going to be so incredible to advertisers. It's like, oh, you can only spend your budget is $100,000. We'll produce a commercial for you in about two hours with decent prompts. We'll optimize the media plan. You give us the objectives. In the area they specialize in, yeah. And they're just going further and further up and down the food chain of the one and a half percent of the economy. I mean, they've already gone after the big guys. They've already gutted WP, Omnicom, and to a lesser extent, Publisi, which is Embrace Technology. They're going to go after regional agencies now. They're going to go after small producers that produce these little commercials for Toyota of Northern California. And they're going to say, using our AI, you don't need to go anywhere else. You don't need creative. You don't need media planning. You don't need.

Kara Swisher: So what you saying is the area they have already excelled in they will continue They don really need to win the open AI consumer product thing They don need a consumer facing AI Even if Llama doesn compete with open AI and with Anthropic or with Claude or Claude I don know what they calling it

Scott Galloway: No, it's not Claude. It's not Claude, it's Claude.

Kara Swisher: My best employee at L2 was a French Canadian woman named Claude.

Scott Galloway: By the way, if someone who's a Canadian immigrant who was on the Yale gymnastics team shows up to your office, just hire them, automatic hire. Elite athletes, individual sports, female. Anyways, those are our three criteria.

Kara Swisher: So the back end, the tech stack they're offering to marketers right now.

Scott Galloway: Mm-hmm.

Kara Swisher: I agree. It's like, okay, good luck competing with that. And the only people that can compete with it are Alphabet because they have such incredible dominance around YouTube and then they can feed it with still what is...

Scott Galloway: Same thing.

Kara Swisher: ...89% share of search. But we're just a can. It cracks me up. Pretty soon, Meta's beach is going to be Saint-Tropez.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you said that.

Kara Swisher: They're going to be like, do you want to come to Saint-Tropez this entire week? It's the Meta beach.

Scott Galloway: It's the Meta beach, the entire thing. And all of the rest of you...

Kara Swisher: Goodbye.

Scott Galloway: We'll invite you. Come to the best party before your execution.

Kara Swisher: It just strikes me that any of these people would accept an invitation to go to Meta Beach. They don't have to win everywhere. That is what you're saying, essentially. They can just win in these areas. They're already winning.

Scott Galloway: Well, they're going to win among companies looking to acquire marketers and spend their media dollars. I think it was John Wanamaker who said, half the money I spend on advertising is wasted.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: The trouble is I don't know which half. They'll know which 50. Meta can tell you.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And Meta can say, I'll tell you what, instead of wasting that 50% with other people, bring it to us, spend 30 of it, save 20, and we'll go from 50% not knowing where it's going or it's not effective to 10 to 5 to 3 to 1 because we'll test it a million times.

Kara Swisher: I think the question is, can ChatGPG hold on to its Kleenex, you know, name? Like, are they Google? Are they Google? Synonymous with it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. We'll see. We'll see if they can.

Kara Swisher: President Trump has extended the deadline for the TikTok ban by 90 days yet again. This marks the third extension after an initial deadline of January 19th. A reported deal came to a halt amid U.S. and China trade tensions earlier this year. J.D. Vance was supposedly doing this with the guy who left, Waltz, or he sort of left. I don't know where they put him, but that's who was working on it. It looks like they're not even working on it. And so TikTok was having a lot of parties at Cannes. So I don't know. What are you? What do you?

Scott Galloway: Look, I think TikTok is the most undervalued company in tech right now. It's trading at the same valuation as OpenAI with 15 times the revenue. It's trading at like one and a half to three times revenues, depending on if you're looking at forward or trailing 12 months. Everyone thinks, oh, well, what about the insecurity, the overhang that's keeping that valuation low because of insecurity around the U.S. market? It's clear that Trump has decided he likes TikTok. He's not taken seriously. It's likely not going to be banned right now. Jeff Yass owns 15% of the company, gave $100 million to Republican candidates, and only 20% of the revenue comes from the United States. So this thing is a juggernaut. And also just personally, I think it's the most addictive of all the platforms. I could right now go upstairs, take off my shoes, take an edible, and be on TikTok for 28 hours and not know what happened. I just think that algorithm is incredible. They continue to grow. and the notion somehow that he keeps extending these deadlines. I mean, they will never come to the table. Why would they? Why on earth would they take anything this guy takes seriously? So I think it's an incredible company. I think they're going to be one of the, if they ever decide to go public, if the Chinese will let them go public, it'll be, I was even, and I like to talk about what I'm doing to show, you know, rather than giving me financial advice, what am I doing? I have been diversifying out of U.S. stocks into European stocks for the better part of a year now. I'm also contemplating going into the private market and going to one of these secondary markets, whether it's Setter or some of the others, and seeing if and when I can pick up a block of ByteDance. Because I think at a valuation of $300 billion, I think there is no company performing as well at this price-to-sales ratio as TikTok. The overhang of the geopolitical risk of the U.S. is vastly overestimated in terms of TikTok's valuation or ByteDance's valuation.

Kara Swisher: Yep. Yep. So we'll see. They're probably going to do nothing. They'll probably just decide suddenly and we'll have some strange deal. But certainly Elon Musk may not be part of it the way that people thought would be. They thought he had the inside track. President Xi doesn't scare this. All this arm waving that Larry Ellison, that Trump's going to get to carve up ByteDance's U.S. operations like a cake and give it to his Republican buddies. She's just like, have at it. Go ahead. Have at it. Good luck. Do what you want. Waste your time. We're going to continue to excel. Anyway.

Scott Galloway: Waste your time.

Kara Swisher: We'll see. They'll probably do it sometime around the next election, would be my guess. We make the mistake of believing that Chinese companies like America are run for profits and shareholder value. They're run for control. He's not going to give up control, even if it costs a lot in shareholder value. Anyway, Trump made a big deal of it. And now, of course, it's off to the side. As it's mostly the same thing. We're on to something else. All right. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

[Break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Shall I start?

Scott Galloway: Yes, please.

Kara Swisher: I actually was very, with some stuff in Los Angeles, both Bob Igers, I think it's the Angels soccer team and others, and the Dodgers have donated, have been doing things, in the case of the Dodgers, they donated a million dollars to assist families impacted by immigration raids. It's a small amount of money, but I kind of like that they stood up a little bit there. People are showing little signs that even Bob Iger, they put out T-shirts about immigration for their soccer team did. I like little stand-ups. I'm seeing a lot of really cool little stand-ups all over the place, but people who should have stood up a long time ago. But I really appreciate them. And the one I appreciate the most in terms of a win was your side piece, Jessica Tarloff, on Raging Moderates, your co-host. Trump called her a disgrace to television broadcasting. I think she's killing it on The Five. And she does a very good job in your show, but on The Five is where he notices it, just so you know. I thought that was great that she got, I loved it. I was like, go Jessica. She's a standup gal is what she is. And I really appreciate how she does that. I really, I like, and she sticks to it. She's very firm, very clever. She's very funny. And so I like all these people that are doing little standups that they do, but she's my favorite this week of all of the different ones. My fail are the Medicaid cuts that are coming. Well, I had two fails, but these cuts that are coming to Medicaid are going to eviscerate certain states like West Virginia and others. It's going to be so bad if these cuts are passed. Now, I know it seems like we've forgotten about the big, beautiful bill, but when it goes into effect, I think it's going to have some of the worst. States like West Virginia, Kentucky, others, they're reliant on this program and these deep spending reductions with the states taking over them. In those states, it's not going to happen. And so that's, I feel sorry for these people, even though I think the way they voted was against their self-interest. But it still is, you know, these are states that are behind already and they're going to be more behind going forward. And that's unfortunate.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. So I love your, I was not expecting, I love your win. That'll mean a lot to Jess. She has a lot of respect for you. Your opinion matters a lot to her. And you know, she's doing something right when Trump calls her out. So I think she wears that correctly. She showed us a badge of honor. I have sort of two wins or a win and a prediction. My first win is a little less serious. Have you seen the series Mobland?

Kara Swisher: No, not yet.

Scott Galloway: No. It's outstanding.

Kara Swisher: Is it?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, really just the cast, the writing, really just fantastic. Tom Hardy, who I think is just a movie star.

Kara Swisher: Oh, it's with, who else is in it?

Kara Swisher: Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan, I love him. He's a sexy... Yeah, he's great. He's really, I wouldn't be surprised if he gets an award. I think it's time for him to get some recognition. I love him. He's very handsome. Patty Considine, who actually played one of the leads in House of Dragons, is in it. The cast is fantastic. It's very violent. I like my mob story about the UK. The guy who plays Daniel Betts, he plays the rival family, the Pierce Brosnan character, the patriarch of the rival mob family. It's just outstanding. It's such good entertainment. And also, it's taken me about four hours to figure out how to fucking download Paramount+. I mean, it's like I haven't watched a lot on Paramount+, and boy, it's not easy. But anyways, my win is, and for those of you who enjoy media, Mobland's fantastic.

Scott Galloway: My other win is more of a prediction, and that is Reed Hastings and my prediction joining the board of Anthropic. The reason why is I think Reed is arguably one of the brightest business people in the world in terms of pulling off the biggest pivots. When I look at Netflix's Achilles heel, it's the following. YouTube is able to capture a minute for half the price or 40% of the price of Netflix. Why? Because they pay the creators directly and it's a commission-based program. So if Netflix could say to a doc person, "I'll give you a million dollars for your documentary," knowing they'll get 2 million back, that's a superior business model. And that's what YouTube has. I think YouTube is going to do potentially to Netflix what Netflix did to Comcast and Fox. As a result, I think Reed Hastings, now on the board of Anthropic, is going to announce within 12 months that he is partnering with Anthropic, who, by the way, is looking for big, big deals to take some oxygen away from the number one, OpenAI. And that Netflix and Anthropic are going to announce a TikTok-like competitor that slices and dices the fattest long tail of content in history, and that is the Netflix library, of which 99% probably gets 1% viewership. They'll slice it and dice it, have it be open source so creators can add voiceovers, do have fun with it, and they'll launch a competitor that attempts to recognize that this newest generation is so attention diffused and TikTok is so strong that they'll take the AI from Anthropic and the content of Netflix and launch a TikTok competitor.

Kara Swisher: I think what's interesting about YouTube is they have no production costs the way...

Scott Galloway: That's right. No means of production.

Kara Swisher: Or TikTok. And then there's Tubi, which sort of does that too, right? It goes to the... it's been growing like crazy because of the way it selects things for people in the long tail of content, essentially. What's interesting about it is that they can survive together because some creators want the money to develop. On YouTube, it's bring your own liquor to the restaurant. So I think they could live together, but you're right, Netflix will be under siege from YouTube if YouTube starts to pay for production a little bit more. Anyway, it's an interesting time.

Scott Galloway: It certainly is.

Kara Swisher: That's a really good one. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. And elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, this week is On with Kara Swisher. I spoke with writer and political commentator Molly Jungfast about her new memoir, which details her relationship with her mother. Let's listen to a clip.

Molly Jungfast [clip]: Sometimes the children of narcissists become stuck on trying to fix their relationships with their narcissistic parents, despite the fact that there's not any role for them to play. They over sort of become overly guilty because of that. And that made so much sense that it made me think that that's what I did.

Kara Swisher: I know all about that. Anyway, it was a great interview. Do you remember Erica John, Fear of Flying?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it's a great book.

Kara Swisher: All of my mom's friends had that book. Yeah, yep. Well, this is his daughter who's a really good political commentator now. And this book is really good, actually. It's really interesting. And it's not very long. Molly's a thoughtful woman.

Scott Galloway: She is.

Kara Swisher: But this book, I was sort of... well, I have similar experiences. Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. Scott, read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, Kevin Oliver, and Corinne Ruff. Ernie and her Todd Engine in this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mia Severo, Dan Shalon, and Kate Gallagher. Nishak Kerouz, 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 later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Women out there, do you really want men who are more sensitive and more in touch with their feelings? All that gets us is two people crying in the car trying to parallel park. Happy wedding Jeff Bezos!