U.K. says Uber drivers are employees, and the future of cyber attacks

[Start of Part 1 of 3]

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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 am one split end away from cutting my own bangs, Kara. By the way. Bang is what you should say. Bang.

Kara Swisher: Is there a hair on that head of yours? Have you seen my eyebrows and the amount of hair I have in my ears? I'm going to start braiding the two together.

Scott Galloway: Oh, that's a good idea. You know, let me just tell you, a handsome bald man, Stanley Tucci. I was watching the CNN special of him wandering around Italy. He's very handsome. He reminds me of you a little bit, except he's charming and delightful.

Kara Swisher: Go on. You don't move unlike each other. You're both tall, skinny men of baldness.

Scott Galloway: Oh, you're tracking my movements. You're a sexy beast today. What's going on with you?

Kara Swisher: No, listen. Before that, the reason I watched Stanley Tucci is because I watched the Dylan Farrow documentary, *Allen versus Farrow*.

Scott Galloway: Oh, shit. Here we go. We could only have bald, handsome fun for 10 seconds before we got into males abusing children. I watched that documentary. And by the way, everybody should watch it.

Kara Swisher: You know, I can't even do it. I've seen it. It's so well done.

Scott Galloway: I haven't seen it and I've seen that documentary. No, you haven't. This is well done.

Kara Swisher: Oh, God. This is devastating. I have to say. In any case, I then had to switch. It's going to ruin *Hannah and Her Sisters*. One of my favorite movies, *Hannah and Her Sisters*. It's just going to ruin her. You can't watch it anymore after seeing it.

Scott Galloway: Don't watch the documentary then. That's all I have to say. *Crimes and Misdemeanors*.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, *Crimes* is a good way to get into this issue. And not misdemeanors. So wait, back to my quote. We had to watch Stanley Tucci afterwards because it was so heartbreaking. And then we were happy because he was eating seafood stew in the area. Italian food, right?

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Yeah. Just like going from a wine. Like there's like in Florence, there's holes in the wall they hand you wine out of. He's very likable, very handsome. I have to say.

Kara Swisher: He'll probably be accused of cultural appropriation or something.

Scott Galloway: No, he's Italian. Tucci. By touring around Italy. Hello, Tucci.

Kara Swisher: Swisher's Italian too, by the way. That sounds very Italian. I'm half Italian. Like an Italian cleaning product. My grandparents were full Italian. My mother was full Italian. Get rid of the kitchen grime. We are people of Italy. We're born in a, my grandfather was born in a town called Felite in Italy.

Scott Galloway: Oh, that's fascinating insight.

Kara Swisher: Anyways, back to me. So my statement, one, what was it, split in? That split in away from doing my own, trimming my own bags.

Scott Galloway: That's a quote or that's a line from, have you been watching *WandaVision*?

Kara Swisher: No, but I should. You really should. It's really interesting. It's on my list.

Scott Galloway: You're one of these Marvel weirdos. You like that whole thing? I haven't gotten to yet. It's a Marvel. There's way too much to get to. I've been watching it with my 10-year-old son, and I'm not exaggerating. We stop. I do what I hate when other people do. I pause it, and I'm like, what's going on here? Who is that? What's going on here? I hate when people do that. I'm like, just watch the goddamn program. You're not supposed to understand it all. And I've been pausing it.

Kara Swisher: We never watch TV together. We should watch TV. What is this? Are you kidding? We watch an hour of TV together every week, twice a week. We talk to ourselves. That's true. But I'm talking about like a – well, you and I are going to watch a mutant movie together. That's what we're going to do. A mutant movie. We're going to watch something. Let me just say. But anyways, *WandaVision*, I think Disney has kind of a second big hit on its hands. So I think it's really –

Scott Galloway: Could be. It's really interesting. It's very different. And there's a lot of really good actors in it.

Kara Swisher: There's so much good TV. I like cross-generational TV, too. I like being able to watch TV with my boys. There's a ton of good television. There's nothing to be said about it. There's so much going on. Anyways, *WandaVision*. Watch it, Kara.

Kara Swisher: Okay, I shall. Now, enough with the TV recommendations. Watch out your kids. Big news today from the Supreme Court. Denied Donald Trump's bid to block New York's prosecutors from accessing his taxes. It's the Al Capone moment. Dominion Voting Systems is suing the MyPillow guy, which is a pleasure, Mike Lindell, for more than $1.3 billion. You know, I talked to the Dominion Voting System CEO, and he said he was going to do this, and then he did. And now Merrick Garland's up on it. It's just not a good moment for the Trump people today. This is a bad Trump time. But there's a—I think there's some—and a little bit of this is aspirational or confirmation bias, but I think there really is a very strong sense of the immunities kicking in and talking about unification.

Scott Galloway: I don't think after something like this you can unify until you hold people accountable. I think you have trials. They're still kicking, though. They're still kicking.

Kara Swisher: Well, I don't know. I think there's a decent chance the former president is in real legal jeopardy.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Everyone is saying, oh, he's going to run for president. I'm like, I don't know. I think he's in real trouble. This one's bad. This one's bad. Tax fraud brought Al Capone down. Al Capone moment.

Kara Swisher: That's right. It's an interesting question of whether he's still, he's going to appear this week at CPAC, I think today or tomorrow or something like that. So he's back blabbing away. He's going to do the same old act. But you're right. Immunities are kicking him. By the way, Pfizer's COVID vaccine stopped 89.4% of transmissions in Israel. This is the most important news story of the year.

Scott Galloway: One of them, yeah. And this is so exciting. I've been thinking about this a lot because there is a narrative that is developed amongst college-educated, wealthy, and middle-class households that, okay, so you know how 80% of people believe that they're better than average drivers? Which obviously makes no sense.

Kara Swisher: I don't, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, all right. Okay, you're in the 20% of self-aware. But essentially, the majority of people have convinced themselves that, okay, I'm in decent shape. I take care of myself. I'm a good driver. I'm probably not going to get it. But even if I did, and I know a bunch of people who have gotten it and said, oh, it wasn't a big deal. So, and then they hear the nonsense junk science that is amplified on Facebook, less so on Google. On YouTube, I want to just give a shout out. When I talk about my book *Post-Corona* on YouTube, they take it down because like we don't want anyone talking about corona. And I respect that. But anyways, on Facebook where they continue to spread or where anti-vax content continues to run amok. And they have done a little better. Anyways, the bottom line is people have bought into this narrative that, oh, in a cost-benefit tradeoff, I'm going to wait.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Because even if I get it, it's probably not. I'm probably 0.01% fatality rate. I'm in that group. And what this shows, what this shows is the question you should be asking yourself is not are you worried about getting COVID? The question you should be asking yourself is are you worried about someone you love getting COVID? And if you are, if you are, even if you've talked yourself into believing you'll be fine, doesn't matter. You need to get this vaccine. This is about not being a fiber in the web of death that is snaring our most vulnerable.

Kara Swisher: Indeed, although, let me just say, some people think the Biden administration is too negative and it's causing more of that anti-vax. Too negative? Well, they're being like, be careful, it's not working. We're still in trouble.

Scott Galloway: I think the problem is they've got to keep warning people not to.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they don't want anyone to get relaxed.

Scott Galloway: Relaxed. And at the same time, they're encouraging it and they're making it possible. 1.7 million vaccines, way above what they said they were going to do. So it's a real interesting question. I mean, David Leonard.

Kara Swisher: It's a lot more than that. Something like 14, 15% of America has already been vaccinated.

Scott Galloway: No, no, I meant 1.7 million a day.

Kara Swisher: Oh, excuse me. Whatever, the number they're doing a day or a week. I think it's a week, sorry. But one of the things that's really interesting is that you, like, Fauci was on the thing saying, keep your mask on. You have to have masks in 2002. And then, you know, they're saying things are getting better. And then the herd immunity is getting closer. They have to thread a needle. 35% of people are immune because they had COVID. Another is 12% to 14% have had the vaccine. So it's getting to the, they got to get to an 85%. Anyway, you do feel like today is a freezing day in D.C., but the temperature is rising today. And all this week, it's going to be in the 50s. And I have a feeling I just – I cannot take it anymore this winter and this COVID and everything else. I think people are at that moment. So, they've got to keep in control of the face masks and things like that at the same time. Feel hopefulness at least and want to take the vaccine in order to move that along faster.

Scott Galloway: This is so exciting though. If you think about it, it's not only – I mean, my – My biggest fear has been my kids' grandparents, one of them is immunocompromised. And I thought, okay, this is how she dies. One of us gets it. We get a flu. Okay, we're fine. A headache, a flu, whatever. And then there's always a non-zero probability to be a long hauler. I know some young people who have contracted this and are still dealing with it. But the majority of the people I know have gotten through it. But then you give it to somebody. My friend's father, a close friend, David Lister, father was a pediatric surgeon, lived a fantastic life and passed away from this and probably had a few more good years. So this is not only about, again, the question isn't about do you want to get COVID. The question is do you want anyone you love to get COVID? And this shows, this shows that the narcissist, what I call playbook of, well, I'm going to wait. Well, that dog doesn't hunt anymore. You get in that line. Do not wait. Get in line. You get and take that thing.

Kara Swisher: It's so interesting because there's a whole, you know, who gets in line and stuff like that. I still obviously haven't gotten mine because I'm not up yet. But the idea of line waiting is really kind of, I think it's frustrating to a lot of people. At the same time, you have to wait in line. As I told you, I have some relatives that jumped the line and I just don't want to speak to them. I just don't want to speak to them. Unfairly. And then other people are guilty because there was a friend of mine who was eligible for the line and was thinking about not taking it. I forget why they were eligible. It was either they were a teacher or something that was totally legit, whatever state they're in. But then they're like, well, my grandfather hasn't gotten it yet. And I'm like, well, you're in the line, whatever the line's rules are. Get it. Get a needle in your arm.

Scott Galloway: That's what I said. Get it. Get it. Get it. As quickly as possible. If you're in the line and you're being fair, if you're a vacation tourist or you're jumping the line unfairly, you're an asshole. And take pictures of you getting it to make people like you more comfortable with it. The number of people who claim they're going to get it has gone up because what's happened is now that, I don't know, 55 million people have received a vaccine. And there's been very, very few. I mean, like no instance. I mean, this is like odds are not only greater being eaten by a shark or struck by lightning. Your odds are about the same of being struck by lightning while being eaten by a shark. Immunity is kicking in.

Kara Swisher: All right. Speaking of immunities kicking in, we're going to talk about big stories. Big stories. Very exciting. The UK's Supreme Court has ruled that Uber drivers are not self-employed. The ruling essentially means that the UK Uber drivers need to be treated like employees and not gig workers. That includes paid time off and minimum wage. Uber's share prices dipped in the United States following the news. It's unclear how the UK ruling will affect Uber's business model overall. When Uber listed its shares in the United States in 2019, its filing in the Securities and Exchange Commission included the section on the risks. if they would have to classify drivers as employees in compensating them. So, Scott, is this like GDPR for gig workers or not? That was the law that changed things around privacy, et cetera, in the U.S., changed globally. But what do you think is going to happen?

Scott Galloway: I think this is, again, it goes back, I think this is directly related to the Facebook Australia fight. And I think the rest of the world, their immunities are kicking in sooner because they don't – they get all of the downside of big tech and a fraction of the upside. And the notion that also reflects well in the U.K. where money hasn't perverted politics as much as it has in the U.S.

Kara Swisher: Right. Where a proposition in the U.S. This is a law. This is legal. This is judges. But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, $150 million to the AB5 and then $3 million against it. Guess which ballot, which side won. But I think, look, there's just no getting around it until we – if we want to wait for the government to catch up and have a new classification of worker, fine. But until then, until then, we want to err on the side. Billionaires have increased their wealth from $1.9 trillion to $4 trillion in the last 10 years. Minimum wage has exploded from $7.25 to $7.25. And yet we have a company that's figured out a way to skirt even those minimum wage laws with software called Uber, called Lyft. The gig economy is – there's a cancerous part of it. And if we're going to err – if we're going to err and maybe it's clumsy and maybe we need a new classification, fine. But the fact that a guy or a gal turning on software to drive people in the back might make at least minimum wage. I mean is that really a threat to capitalism? Is that really?

Kara Swisher: It's definitely a threat to their business. I mean, you know, I mean, I think it has iterations throughout the, like, to DoorDash, to everything else. There's a real struggle between things that consumers really like, like fast delivery or cars on demand and stuff like that, and what it actually costs. And when Uber was initially, when they were doing those $4 across the city things, I don't remember when you'd take it and it would cost like $6 or something like that. I literally was like, I just paid $4 over. It did not cost $4. It did not. It costs me $4, but not society, not the driver. This is just bullshit. Like someone somewhere is paying for my ride.

Scott Galloway: Order that little black dress from H&M and decide how much that's costing society. I think about it a lot. I think about it a lot. We have fetishized the consumer in our society. We've decided whatever the consumer wants, whatever the end consumer wants, that's how we should dictate antitrust law, consumer laws. And it's like, no, we have people who are thoughtful, who will look at the supply chain, who will look at emissions, who will look at carbon, who will look at child labor, who will look at minimum wage laws, and will step in when there's externalities that arise. And unfortunately, big tech is very smart, very well-researched, and steps in with charming individuals and lobbyists to suppress that intervention called regulation around externalities. Capitalism is not an organic state. If it doesn't sit on a bed of empathy, you end up as a Central American nation with a rich –

Kara Swisher: Bed of empathy? You're full of them, Dave, fetishizing consumers.

Scott Galloway: Bed of empathy. It the edibles. You sleep on a bed of empathy.

Kara Swisher: No, I slept on edibles and I think I still tripping a little bit.

Scott Galloway: But essentially, if we don't have people in all this bullshit narrative that oh you against capitalism, the whole point of capitalism is we intervene to adjust around externalities. And a huge externality around a class of people called Uber drivers, and not all of them, a large portion, maybe even the majority of Uber drivers when we talk to them, like it. They say they like it. They provide flexibility. They do. But there's a percentage of them that should be making more money, and they should be passing those costs on to the consumer, even if it makes it a smaller business, even if Uber isn't worth more than Ford and General Motors. That's okay. That's okay. That's our job to make sure that capitalism, we continue to do well by doing good. Anyways, go UK. Go United Kingdom. Go United Kingdom. God save the queen.

Kara Swisher: But if you're a shareholder of Uber, how would you play it? How would you play this? the situation of beds of empathy and fetishizing.

Scott Galloway: I would get out ahead of it. And you know what? Dara Khosrowshahi should be credited with what was probably the most strategic and deft acquisition of last year. Their acquisition of the food delivery company was a Postmates. Who did they acquire? One of them. Postmates, yeah.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: So, look, he has pivoted his business and diversified it and said, okay, instead of the novel coronavirus taking wind out of my sail, I'm going to put more wind in my sail. And he took an inflated currency, in my view, I think Uber is dramatically overvalued.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And used that. And what do you do when you have a fully? Still an employee problem. I guess they wouldn't be consistent. Delivery people really aren't thought of as employees, are they? It's interesting. But that was a great move. So I think that was probably one of the better acquisitions. If I were Dara, I would try and get out ahead of it. And I would say we're going to, I mean, quite frankly, you should pull a Brian Chesky, where I'm a shareholder, and say, we're going to get out ahead of this and position the company around its stakeholder. There's a face-the-music issue on employees and a face-the-music issue on advertising. And, you know, interesting, Cory Doctorow had a really amazing thread on Twitter. I recommend it. I was going to read the first part. There's an old Irish joke whose punchline goes, if you want, get there. I wouldn't start from here. That's basically how I feel about the so-called Australian link tax and Facebook's retaliation. Let's start with the fact that it's not a link tax. and then they talk about the arbitration and stuff like that. They design their system so publishers leak intelligence to them, then they exploit the leakage to gouge the publishers further. It hurts advertisers, readers, and publishers, and it's a result of illegal, collusive, corrupt ad technology duopoly. And the existence of an advertising duopoly, meanwhile, is a result of a lax antitrust enforcement. Facebook and Google were permitted to execute a long string of anti-competitive mergers in acquisition and producing the hyper-concentrated market we see today. The obvious remedy to this situation is to break up the monopolies. That is off the table for now. 40 years of neoliberal orthodoxy said monopolies are efficient and breakups don't work. So we're left yanking on other policy levers.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, these are the two areas, I think, this idea of owning markets and how to deal with employees that are going to be the big ones for tech to deal with.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, and I think there's an investment strategy here. For the first time, my investment advice for the last 10 years has been don't buy anything that's not an unregulated monopoly. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. There's no need to buy anything else. And I'm actually personally about to make two investments, and I make usually one to two investments a year. And I think there is a – my big thing is dispersion. But I also think that content and a healthier web ecosystem is a great place to invest right now because I think a lot of people, including consumers or elected representatives, have decided, okay, we need a less toxic web. and also, I think a decent place to invest right now, and I'll talk more about this once the investments close because I like to disclose. I think content and news and local news are about to have their day in the sun after getting the shit kicked out of them for the last 20 or 30 years.

Kara Swisher: I'd like to hear about where you're going with this.

Scott Galloway: Okay.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, so what would you, would you buy Uber? If you didn't call it a menace economy and not lying on a bed of empathy, what would you do?

Scott Galloway: I don't know. I haven't looked at, I just, I look at the stock and I think, wow, this is really fully valued. I think Dara is a really talented strategic executive, and I think it was a great acquisition. I wouldn't want to be on the side of a gig economy company that still has employees working for less than minimum wage. I just don't. Even if it's only 10% of them, I just wouldn't want to. That, to me, feels really offensive. Minimum wage should be what they should be paying, $15 an hour. How about you? Would you buy Uber?

Kara Swisher: I don't buy any of them, so I don't really have to worry about my, you know. But, you know, I have a very small FOMA greed thing going on. So I go, oh, I should have taken that job at Google. And then I'm like, oh, those assholes. You know what I mean? That's what happens. It happens with all of them. I was offered jobs at all of them. So I'm always like, oh, I really couldn't be in like Fiji right now on my yacht.

Scott Galloway: You in Fiji on a yacht.

Kara Swisher: I'm just saying. Yeah, that would happen. I could have. I literally was offered jobs. I would have been very wealthy. And then I'm like.

Scott Galloway: I know, but that's not what you would do with your money. That's ridiculous. You're right. I would attack. You would not be in Fiji.

Kara Swisher: But in any case, every time I do that and I realize that I really was there and actually not just was there but had the offer, and then I didn't take it, and a dozen times it's happened, I'm like, I don't want to work for those assholes. It just kicks in. I don't want to work for those assholes is stronger than my greed and FOMA about money. I just can't sustain interest in it in any way. I have plenty of money. Anyway, Scott, we're going to take a quick break. And when we're back, you'll be joined by New York Times bestselling author, Nicole Pearl Roth, to talk cybersecurity. She has a new book that's really scary.

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Kara Swisher: Moving on, we have a friend of pivot. Nicole Pearl Roth is the New York Times cybersecurity reporter and the New York Times bestselling author of *This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends*. It's about cybersecurity weapons race, essentially. Nicole, welcome.

Nicole Perlroth: Thanks for having me.

Kara Swisher: So, you know, one of the things, we've talked before many times about this, and you write a lot of stories of what happens. Talk about why you decided to write the book, because we're in the middle of a huge attack, the SolarWinds attack. We'll get to that in a minute, and the role of FireEye and Microsoft in this. But talk to me about why you decided to write this book.

Nicole Perlroth: So the short answer is I had been covering these major attacks and I kept seeing my name in the footnotes of other people writing books. And I just had to kind of give myself a pep talk and say, you know, you know, these attacks better than anyone except for the people on the ground, write a book. So that's why I wrote the book. And I crammed everything in from the last seven to 10 years of reporting. And then I sent it in and then this giant SolarWinds attack happened. So in some ways, it's the prelude to SolarWinds. But why I chose to focus specifically on the cyber weapons market is I had seen over and over again that regulation was not going to get us out of this. Businesses were just incentivized to get their product to market. Government was incentivized to keep a lot of the software vulnerable so they could preserve their espionage advantage and their battlefield preparations. And as individuals, security is so annoying. You know, we don't like turning on two-factor authentication. So I wanted to focus on the incentive models and see what the incentive structures were and how they could possibly pull us out of this.

Kara Swisher: So you're saying that they want to get the software out to serve people who don't want to deal with issues of security. And then the government likes it, that U.S. government especially, lets this sort of gray market go on and attack these software programs we all use every day.

Nicole Perlroth: Yes. And I had heard murmurings of this gray market, but it still blew me away that the U.S. government, you know, these agencies charged with keeping us safe, were paying hackers, some of them all over the world in Europe and Israel as young as 16 or 15 years old, to turn over a vulnerability in software that we all rely on and then never tell a soul, you know, lock them up in NDAs and then increasingly classification levels. and maybe that was okay two decades ago when Russia was using one piece of software and we were using another, but we all use the same software now. Whether you know it or not, we all use Microsoft Windows. And so I was fascinated by this idea that our own government would preserve a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows so it could spy on Iran or so it could get into Iran's centrifuges and take them out one day. And increasingly, we're rolling that. Yes, this is Stuxnet. And increasingly, we're rolling all that software into our things and into our power grid and into our water treatment facilities. And so it seemed like the stakes were getting higher and higher, but no one even knew that this secret market for vulnerabilities existed.

Kara Swisher: Right. I'm going to ask one more question, then Scott will jump in. SolarWinds, Explain it to people. This is the biggest hack that has happened on the United States government and companies.

Nicole Perlroth: Yes. So SolarWinds is probably the most pervasive attack we've seen on our systems. And we only learned about it. And this is the part I think really is key. We only learned about it, not from our government, not from the NSA, not from Cyber Command. We learned about it because FireEye, a security firm, was itself hacked. And then in unwinding its own attack, it realized that these hackers had come in through technology made by SolarWinds, an American company that makes software that just allows IT administrators to see what's on their network. And that software, that visibility software was used by more than 400 of the Fortune 500 and some of our most sensitive government agencies like the Department of Energy, which oversees our nuclear labs, Treasury, Commerce, State, Justice, and Homeland Security, the very agency charged with keeping us safe. The problem is that they've been in our systems for so long, we think since at least March of 2020, that they had vast opportunities to plant more backdoors and more applications. And it will be a very long time before we uncover every single one of those. So essentially what's happened here is the Biden administration just inherited a communication system it cannot trust. Now, the good news is we think this was espionage. We think they were after emails, strategy planning documents. The bad news is Russian actors, not the one we think was guilty here, the SVR, but other Russian actors have used the same technique for much darker purposes, like wiping data, paralyzing networks.

Kara Swisher: This is ransomware attacks.

Nicole Perlroth: Yes. And in one case, shutting off the power in Ukraine.

Kara Swisher: In Ukraine.

Scott Galloway: All right, Scott. So just I had never really looked at that. I think that's fascinating that companies and people are not only competing against bad actors, they're competing against the government. That's just such an interesting insight. So, thank you for that. The question I have is, can you give us a state of play around competence? If you think of every nation state that has its own cyber warfare and cyber defense resources, give us a sense for handicap the league. Who's kind of best to worst among, call it the G20 or non-G20? Who are the Tom Brady's and the people who just don't know what they're doing?

Scott Galloway: Such a good question. So, I think we remain the world's top cyber superpower. What we did with Stuxnet, us being the NSA and Israel, we hacked into an Iranian nuclear facility 10 years ago, jumped from the Windows systems into the industrial controls and spun those centrifuges so fast in some cases that it destroyed the uranium, and in some cases slowed them down to a trickle. We did it in a way that looked like a natural accident. No one has ever come close to that. That is still, to this day, 10 years later, the most sophisticated cyber attack we've ever seen.

Other countries who are capable of doing that include Israel, because we did it with them. And then I would say just below them, if not tied, are Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and maybe France or Germany. But then below that is this huge, wide gap. And then you have the actors who really want to do harm or really want to exploit financial systems for profit, like North Korea. Ten years ago, they were way behind us. They had the intent to do harm, but they didn't have the capabilities.

What this market has done, the one I'm writing about—purchasing these capabilities from hackers, these vulnerabilities and code you can use for espionage but also destruction—has closed this capabilities gap substantially. Iran is not where the NSA is, but what they've learned is they can do just as much damage with rudimentary code that just wipes out the data at Saudi Aramco, which they did a few years ago, where they replaced it with an image of a burning American flag. So the gap is closing.

The other thing I would say is, yes, we are the most advanced cyber superpower, but we are also among the most targeted nation states on Earth because we have systems of most interest. And we are the most vulnerable because we're the most wired. We don't seem to understand that this philosophy at Facebook of "move fast and break things"—get as much out there as possible, be first to market—has really harmed us when it comes to security. So we have some work to do on defense, but we are still way far ahead on offense.

Kara Swisher: Just offense alone doesn't work.

Scott Galloway: Right. So defense—you're essentially saying the reason we're robbed is because that's where the money is. That's where ransomware attacks are. Or if you're trying to do malevolent things like what happened in Florida on a grid, because there's all kinds of flavors of this. There's malevolent, there's just money, there's espionage, and then there's wreaking havoc or trying misinformation and disinformation campaigns by Russia.

Talk about defense, because this is one of the issues you and I have spoken about. In the Biden administration, there is now Ann Neuberger leading the way in terms of dealing with this, but it's on an emergency level. I wrote a column recently about this, which I also quoted you in. They missed it in the Trump administration. One of them called me and said, "We didn't miss it." I said, "Well, you missed it. I don't think you didn't miss it. Maybe you knew about it. You didn't tell anybody. I don't know." How did that happen? How did our defenses fall so badly? And is the solution to do it on an emergency basis every time rather than have a central command? Because there's so many different players—Paul Nakasone, this person, that person. What do we have to do to have better defense?

Nicole Perlroth: It's a really good question with a really hard answer. What Russia did with SolarWinds is they got our number. They exploited our red tape brilliantly. They got into SolarWinds, an American software company, through their software update mechanism. But where they set up their command and control was in New Jersey using servers from GoDaddy and from Amazon. That's where the NSA can't look. The NSA cannot look into these domestic systems. That's how we are set up.

In a lot of ways, Russia just used our constitution against us, like they have with misinformation and disinformation, where they've used our First Amendment against us. This is a really hard problem to solve. One of the things the Trump administration did was roll out this executive order that basically says companies like Amazon and GoDaddy have to report which foreigners are registered under their systems, in part because clearly we were blinded by this attack by Russia. I don't know if that's going to be enough. And I don't know what the American tolerance is for going any further, especially after all the discussions we had with Edward Snowden, the contractor who leaked the NSA documents.

It's a really hard question to solve, which is why in the book, I say let's just start with baby steps. Let's take inventory of what's in our systems. Let's know what software touches our systems. Let's know how much of it is American made. In the case of SolarWinds, a lot of that software was built in places like Belarus, where we just don't have the same visibility or maybe the same level of security. A lot of the victims didn't even know they used SolarWinds. A lot of the tools that make their way into software like SolarWinds is open source, these open source protocols that are often just one dude sitting on his couch operating on a volunteer budget.

Let's take inventory of how much software is making its way into these critical and sensitive systems. And then let's talk about how to secure it—whether it's making sure it has multi-factor authentication, making sure we're doing code audits and penetration tests, making sure individuals understand it should be mandatory to turn on two-factor authentication and to use different passwords. There's no point in even discussing the higher-up things when we can't even get the basics right. The basics would wipe out 70% of the threat. It wouldn't stop SolarWinds, but it would get us to a much better place than we are right now, where hospitals are getting ransomware all the time, schools are getting locked up and taken offline, everyone's using phishing for fraud scams.

Scott Galloway: Nicole, this is my theme: everything is essentially a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, the young to the old, and from small and medium-sized businesses to large businesses. My understanding of espionage is that there's political and geopolitical espionage, and then there's corporate espionage, which is basically China planting spies inside companies and saying, "Send us the IP for this company, and we're going to figure out a way to knock it off." My understanding is that the resources allocated to corporate espionage has exploded exponentially because money is very powerful in terms of geopolitical power.

When you see this ransomware, at the end of the day, isn't there an entire industrial complex dependent upon small and medium-sized businesses remaining vulnerable, such that big companies and big tech can ring the register or go public? And there's a disincentive to protect small and medium-sized businesses because this is an enormously lucrative industry for big tech?

Nicole Perlroth: It's such a good question. Kara and I have talked about this before. Where this is all going is mom and pop businesses, small and medium-sized businesses, do not have the resources to hire the top security engineers. They don't have the money to put in place the intrusion detection tools and the network monitoring tools and all the fancy stuff you can buy from FireEye and CrowdStrike. That's not the case at Amazon and Google. Most of their security teams these days are like mini intelligence agencies. They're all former NSA, CIA, Australia, UK, GCHQ analysts, operators, and hackers. They have huge intelligence agencies within their businesses looking for this stuff.

That means you are better off as a medium or small business using Amazon Web Services or the Google Cloud than you are trying to manage all your data with some server in the back office. What that means is precisely what you just said, Scott: the business is drifting to the big players because the small players just don't have the resources to protect their data. In a lot of cases, that is why ransomware is hitting these small and medium-sized businesses—and not just businesses, but municipalities, small towns that just oversee these tangled webs of outdated software. They don't monitor who's accessing what and they don't have two-factor authentication on. They're really ripe, easy targets for ransomware.

Scott Galloway: I want to talk specifically about a platform. I would say I'm paranoid, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. Tell me if I have a tinfoil hat on or if there's any logic to my fears here. When I started being very openly critical on Twitter of Putin, I started finding that a lot of people came into my feed with a very basic, "Scott, love your work." It's always the same thing. "Love your work, but on this one, you have it wrong." Then slowly but surely, when I also started criticizing the septic tank that is the portfolio of some VCs in San Francisco, all of these bots started showing up. Or if I say Tesla is overvalued, now my feed is littered with accounts that say very disparaging things and seem in a methodical way to be attacking my credibility. I click on them—low follower count, can't find a person.

I'm under the belief that if I were in the GRU, the most cost-effective weapon would be to identify 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 people who are anti-Russia and just slowly but surely attack their credibility. Is that going on to the extent I think it is? And what do you think? I think Twitter should have identity. I think this First Amendment cloud cover bullshit—"what about the journalist in the Gulf reporting on human rights?"—I think we could probably figure that out. It's pretty easy to see when someone is reporting legitimate news and when they aren't. Is the problem as absolutely out of control as I think it is specifically on Twitter? And what do you believe should be done around identity or forcing identity on these platforms?

Nicole Perlroth: One caveat here: there's a lot of enthusiastic Tesla fans. I don't know if that's the Russians. But I agree with you. I think Twitter has vastly underestimated what we call sophisticated chatbots these days. They're much more sophisticated than they were in 2016. They recognize natural language and they can respond in natural language. They're taught to search for keywords or tweets critical of Putin and come after you. That is very, very real.

I have talked to former Twitter security folks who say that is one of the reasons they quit—because Twitter was not adequately addressing the bot problem. They've come a long way, but they're nowhere near where they need to be. I have the same problem. I've had things where I've said anything critical of Russia or tried to attribute a Russian disinformation campaign, and next thing I know, people are tweeting out cartoons with my face on it walking into a gas chamber. Really heinous, anti-Semitic stuff. So it's a big problem.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Nicole Perlroth: In some ways, yes, I agree with you. It's the same trade-off we always talk about—be careful what you wish for. But my knee-jerk reaction is we need better identity on Twitter. I don't see the same level of vitriol or bots or disinformation on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is much—

Scott Galloway: Because of identity. 100%. Yes. And it's not an ad-driven model. Subscription and identity. And what do you know?

Nicole Perlroth: No, it's true. I've noticed it just with my book coming out. The conversations on LinkedIn are nuanced, pleasant, thought-provoking. Twitter is civil.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, exactly.

Nicole Perlroth: I don't know what to do about the journalists in the Middle East and how to solve for that. But Saudi Arabia, we caught them planting spies at Twitter, literally planting employees at Twitter. So they're working their way around it anyway.

Kara Swisher: And also Twitter has a profit motive. Keep it going. Ignore it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. One of the things people have said is let's get rid of trending topics because that really drives a lot of these thoughts. And in Facebook groups, certain rules around groups, which is the same thing.

All right, I have one last question for you. *This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends.* How does the world end for us from a cyber point? If you had the worst case scenario, what is it?

Nicole Perlroth: The worst case scenario is sort of where we already are.

Scott Galloway: Oh, dear.

Nicole Perlroth: Our intellectual property is gone. We're at minute to midnight. You and I should roll. You and I are the same. Other than you being more educated and more credible, we have the same view of the world. I like the glass half empty kind of guest.

Kara Swisher: Okay. All right. Go on, my sister. Rock on.

Scott Galloway: Okay. How does it end?

Nicole Perlroth: Russia's in our government networks. They're in our grid. They've gotten into the power plants. We've seen them break into nuclear plants. Our hospitals are getting ransomware. China is making off with our intellectual property. Our water treatment facilities are now getting hacked. The reason the worst case scenario is just one more minute away is because no one has actually used these accesses to turn off the power yet, but it doesn't mean it's two clicks away.

That's why *This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends.* It's time to really wake up. What are we waiting for? Are we waiting for them to turn off our lights? Are we waiting for this geopolitical trigger? Or do we want to do something right now? I think the answer is we probably should start doing something right now.

Kara Swisher: So Ted Cruz may be a victim? No, I'm kidding. He's not at all.

Scott Galloway: Oh God. Why?

Kara Swisher: Because Texas—it seems to be the weather in that case, at least.

Scott Galloway: Oh, right. Yeah.

Kara Swisher: I've been talking about what would be the threat if the power got turned off or the drinking water supply was contaminated. And it turns out it wasn't a cyber attack. It was just this underinvestment in winterizing. But that's what it would look like.

Scott Galloway: 100%.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, Nicole, thank you so much. Her book is *This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends.* It's so worth it. It reads like a thriller. Is there going to be a movie?

Nicole Perlroth: A TV show. I can say that now. This will be a big announcement—you're the first time I'm telling this. Breaking news. FX optioned it, so it'll be a TV show.

Kara Swisher: Who's going to star as you?

Nicole Perlroth: I don't think I'm going to even be in it. They're making it much more interesting.

Scott Galloway: Jessica Chastain.

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah, yeah. She's in a lot of movies.

Scott Galloway: Such a babe.

Kara Swisher: She's such a babe. All right.

Scott Galloway: Oh, God, you're just like Scott.

Kara Swisher: I don't see looks, Nicole. She's just a very impressive, intelligent woman.

Scott Galloway: You are like a Scott lady. It's terrible, with a lot better hair.

Kara Swisher: In any case, Nicole, thank you so much for coming on. Congrats on the book.

Nicole Perlroth: Thank you. Thanks a lot. It was so fun talking to you guys.

Kara Swisher: Likewise. That was Nicole Perlroth. Scott, I knew you would like her.

Scott Galloway: I did, yeah. She's a cyber brilliant reporter. And she reinforces my paranoia, which I like.

Kara Swisher: Oh, great. Perfect. All right. They are out to get you, Scott. They really are. We'll be back after this for Wins and Fails.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, wins and fails. Do you have any?

Scott Galloway: I always have them, and I literally develop them as I'm talking to you. Here's a fascinating win. This is not really a win or a fail. I just discovered all these girl singers. I'm aware of Selena Gomez and Britney Spears, et cetera. But I'm thinking about Jojo Siwa. She wears a bow in her hair all the time. She's kind of crazily capitalistic—selling shampoo and stuff. She just came out as a lesbian, and she's doing it with the same cheerleading enthusiasm she uses in selling shampoo or dancing. I'm fascinated by her. I think she's a win on some weird level because she's got my attention. I can't even explain it.

Kara Swisher: I have absolutely no comment on that.

Scott Galloway: I know. Well, she's in that genre, Britney Spears, but different. What's her name again?

Kara Swisher: Jojo Siwa.

Scott Galloway: And recently a rapper attacked her. This guy named DaBaby. He had some line in one of his songs that attacked her. It's just fascinating. I love all this pop stuff.

Fail: John Cornyn at the hearings for Merrick Garland bringing up the Steele dossier again. Honestly, these people. It's like the mixtapes of the right wing—Hillary's emails, Hunter Biden, the Steele dossier. They need to get a new act. If Trump comes back tomorrow and doesn't have some new material, I think we need to move along.

Kara Swisher: Okay. Thank you. What are yours?

My win is the news that 89% of people who—I don't know—it was a reduction of 89% of transmission once you had the vaccine. In Israel, yeah. That is incredibly wonderful news that further supports the vaccines. Our numbers are plummeting too since people have been getting it.

Scott Galloway: That's my actual win. Despite all the well-documented and warranted deficiencies in how we've handled the novel coronavirus, we are, as a percentage of the population, vaccinating as well or better than every nation in the world except for five. Better than Canada, better than Japan. There's just a small number of nations, including Israel and the UAE, that are doing a better job. A lot of it is we have tremendous manufacturing capability. Pfizer and Moderna are producing the vaccines here in the U.S. You do have to give Operation Warp Speed and the previous administration some credit for committing a billion dollars to these companies. They bought a ton of vaccine early. And then our healthcare workers and frontline workers.

Our win is we are vaccinating at a great rate. Americans are embracing their brothers and sisters and getting them off this beach of death, if you will. The vaccine rollout, credit where credit's due, is really starting to get momentum. According to a lot of people, you're going to see the infrastructure every day—not only the vaccines, but the distribution system that actually inoculates people—each of those things is getting better every day.

Kara Swisher: Still, I'm going to stop you. 500,000 deaths we passed. So unnecessary when you compare it.

Scott Galloway: Agreed.

Kara Swisher: This is going to be looked at and studied forever. Who didn't get it and why? A century. Other countries like us just didn't die at the rates we did. So either we're a sickly group of people here in the United States, or we're a bunch of assholes.

Scott Galloway: The answer is yes. We are. The reality is we are overweight. But it wasn't our physiology that really hurt us. It was our arrogance and our competence. But we've spent a lot of time talking about that. The vaccine rollout in America, on a relative basis, is actually going really well. That's my win.

My fail is the continued war on the poor, as evidenced by what's happening in Texas with these utilities that are demand-priced. They sign up people. There are instances where it's taken out of your checking account. There are senior citizens who've seen their electricity bill go to $7,500 for a week. What choice do you have? You could either freeze to death as a 75-year-old retired cross guard. People have. You've had these seniors and low- and middle-income people literally wiped out. Little kids.

Essentially, it's the same war. We want to disparage government and infrastructure. Why? Because if you can't afford heat but you're rich, you can get heated by the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun. You can buy that heat. Any disparagement of government—that was a Ted Cruz reference for people who haven't been paying attention to that fatuous popinjay.

When you cut funding—and granted, I actually think crisis is a terrible thing to waste. I'm not in favor of giving states and local governments bailouts unless it goes directly to schools, because I do think a lot of states, including California and New York, have to have some tough conversations about how they spend money, specifically unions. I do think there needs to be more efficiency. But having said that, when you disparage and underfund and discriminate against government, and not only that, investments in public infrastructure, that really is just a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. It's poor people that need a train running every 15 minutes to get to work. It's poor people and middle-income people that need to know that electricity isn't going to go to $7,500 a week if a crisis hits.

Kara Swisher: They didn't cut the numbers in New York. They haven't cut into transit, which was interesting. There were threats to cut into transit, and then they didn't.

Scott Galloway: Well, that's good news.

Kara Swisher: A lot across the country, which is interesting. I do think there's going to be—I know you don't think we should go to state and federal to deal with them. A lot of them have done a little better than they thought. A lot of municipalities, including D.C., thought they had a much lesser tax base than they thought, and now they're getting a little bit. They had these drastic cut scenarios. In D.C., I think they have 500 million more than they thought they were going to have.

Scott Galloway: This is so fascinating. You know what's happening in New Jersey and Manhattan, New York? Tax revenues are up. I think it's across many municipalities. I think it's in California. It's not quite hitting the bottom line as much as they thought it would. Maybe over time it certainly will, maybe if they don't recover economically.

Kara Swisher: One of the things, as I told you when I interviewed someone last week with this idea of COVID learnings—what do we learn from this? I think this is going to be one of the things. This is such an opportunity to look at every facet of society.

Scott Galloway: 100%.

Kara Swisher: Understand the failures, why they happened the way they did, what was the cause of them. It'll be argued forever and used politically. But rather than doing the reductive political thing—"Trump, you killed us" or "Biden, you saved us," which they're going to do and that's fine—we have to really look at what actually happened. I'm excited to see what people like Raj Chetty come out with, all these economists, in terms of what it's going to do and how it's going to change. Things like telecommuting—you can see there's going to be more of it. Even though we all hate Zoom, I think we're going to continue to do it. Telehealth is another area that I think is going to progress really fast.

Scott Galloway: 100%.

Kara Swisher: But teleschool, no. Has anyone written a book on who the winners and losers are post-COVID? Sounds like you should.

Scott Galloway: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, *Post-Corona.* But I think even more so, study the actual—

Kara Swisher: Who's that lesbian who's the cheerleader who just came out? That's what I want to talk about. It's so confusing.

Scott Galloway: I hate when lesbians don't fit in their presupposed stereotypes.

Kara Swisher: It's like, "Oh, now I have to come up with another genre of lesbian."

Scott Galloway: I think it's dangerous to make stereotypes. Do you want a Subaru?

Kara Swisher: I did. I had one. I left for—oh, my God. I did for years.

Scott Galloway: That's ridiculous.

Kara Swisher: I had a Subaru. Of course I did. I had children, but that is the chosen of my people. Not that there's anything wrong with that. They're great cars.

Scott Galloway: No, I don't believe in stereotypes. It's just such an interesting world now in the way it didn't used to be. There's the sporty lesbian. There's the angry lesbian.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, sorry.

Scott Galloway: Just to go back to our regulation control.

Kara Swisher: You're both of those things.

Scott Galloway: I'm not. Just angry. And skirting the edge of cancellation. Here he is.

Kara Swisher: I find the lesbians are much less harsh on me.

Scott Galloway: They are. They don't care. They're like, "Yeah, you're funny. Whatever. Come to our conference."

Kara Swisher: "Yeah, whatever." That's right. "We'll beat you up if we need to."

Scott Galloway: No, it's straight white women that have decided they're outraged for everybody around me. And tech bros. Even the tech bros don't like me lately. I can't handle that.

Kara Swisher: That's interesting.

Scott Galloway: It is interesting.

Kara Swisher: Everybody likes me.

Scott Galloway: I can confirm that is not true.

Kara Swisher: Anyways, but what you said before was really interesting. Do you know what the tax revenue in D.C., New Jersey State, and New York State is? The tax revenue is up.

Scott Galloway: Up, that's what I said. It's up. That was such a shocker because all we hear about is wealthy people moving to Texas and California to take advantage, to realize their capital gain and have lower taxes on it. I think it's got to be a function of the stock market. I think it's got to be the capital gains taxes they're getting from an explosion in the stock market.

What'll be interesting, Kara, is what happens in 24 to 36 months when things normalize and the tax base—because so much wealth has left these states—what happens then? That's when you're going to see a fiscal crisis.

Kara Swisher: It should be interesting. Right now, I have this other house that I couldn't sell to begin with COVID. Everybody wants to buy a house now. There's this weird pent-up demand for things. We'll see where it goes. Everyone does want to get out. You can feel it.

Scott Galloway: We are going to have—we're in the last mile of this. We have a trillion dollars that has not been spent in stimulus. We have $500 billion in additional savings from families because they're not going to Disney World or to Chipotle. You have a trillion and a half dollars waiting on the sidelines. You have so much emotion, people waiting to get out. It is going to be the Roaring '20s for 24 months. It's going to be Sodom and Gomorrah. I don't know what you would call it. It's going to be so out of control.

Kara Swisher: What did I do last night? Looked at where I could go for Christmas, like somewhere great. I'm getting the big one.

Scott Galloway: I got to be honest, I'm doing the same thing. Where does Kara Swisher want to go that she thinks is somewhere great for the holidays?

Kara Swisher: I love Hawaii.

Scott Galloway: Oh, you love Hawaii. That's right. You love Hawaii.

Kara Swisher: I love Hawaii. Hawaii speaks to me. I'm going to Hawaii. And I'm getting the big one.

Scott Galloway: Hawaii speaks to you. Does it take you to another place?

Kara Swisher: I love it there. I don't know what it is about that place. Is there somewhere like that for you?

Kara Swisher: I just, the minute I went there, I felt like I was home. It sounds crazy.

Scott Galloway: Vegas strip clubs speak to me on a very emotional level, on a very soulful level. Scott will be appearing nightly in the big penthouse at the Caesars.

Kara Swisher: My favorite. I think Italy. I want to go back to Italy.

Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah.

Kara Swisher: Well, watch Stanley Tucci.

Scott Galloway: You're a doppelganger. That's right. You watch him.

Kara Swisher: I appreciate you say that.

Scott Galloway: That guy's handsome.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, he is. He looks good. He wears a suit.

Scott Galloway: Well, everyone looks good in this thing. It makes you long for better businesses.

Kara Swisher: Is it European porn where they just show how beautiful a city is?

Scott Galloway: It's literally European. That's exactly what it is. You're like, why am I not driving?

Kara Swisher: If you like Euro porn, I've got a show for you.

Scott Galloway: Oh, wait, we already talked about Killing Eve is total Euro porn.

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah. They take a city and they take fashion in that city and they just put it on display.

Scott Galloway: Okay, fine.

Kara Swisher: But this is just pure.

Scott Galloway: Pure. Have some mozzarella.

Kara Swisher: I'm not into food, though. That's the only problem.

Scott Galloway: Chianti. Let's go.

Kara Swisher: All right. This is such a nice feeling. Let's go to Italy. Can we have a pivot event in Italy?

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Actually, I'm not dying to spend more time with you, but I would like to get to know Amanda better. So maybe send her. You stay home with the Subaru and the kids. I want to take Amanda and the new one.

Kara Swisher: I want to take your little one. She's a cutie.

Scott Galloway: She is a cutie. She's welcome.

Kara Swisher: She is a cutie. She's got a lot going on. I'm very excited. That is a win for me in 2020, 19 and 21. Anyway, Scott, that's the show. We're leaving on a happy note. Look at that, how we are. Here we are trying to bring hope to the world. That's our job. We'll be back on Friday for more. There's a lot going on this week. We'll be back sort of slagging people as soon as possible. By the way, speaking of which, we're going to talk on Thursday. I did an interview with Sacha Baron Cohen yesterday on my weekend.

Scott Galloway: You're kidding me.

Kara Swisher: No, 90 minutes. I don't think we'll use all 90 minutes.

Scott Galloway: Well, I'm sorry. Sacha Baron Cohen. Oh, it's so great. We're going to have him on our show.

Kara Swisher: Oh, no, wait. Let me guess. You had him on your other podcast.

Scott Galloway: That guy is my fucking hero. And you take him on Sway? Jesus Christ.

Kara Swisher: You know what? He doesn't give many long interviews.

Scott Galloway: I'm not talking to you. He's not coming on him for 20 minutes.

Kara Swisher: I'm not talking to you. I will get him now.

Scott Galloway: I am not talking to you. No, you're not talking. That guy is literally my role model.

Kara Swisher: Well, you're going to love this interview. He went.

Scott Galloway: Well, great. I'll be sure to tune in. Jesus Christ.

Kara Swisher: All right. Enough of that. But Sasha Baron Cohen went on your podcast. I've been working on that for years. It's a long podcast. He doesn't want to do these 20-minute ones. He wanted a long amount of time to talk, and that was an hour. We'll get him on. We will get him on an event we're doing, okay? We're going to do an event, and I'm going to put you on stage with him. How about that?

Scott Galloway: Gosh. If you'll do it. That guy's a total gangster.

Kara Swisher: He is. He's fantastic. He's very funny. Fearless, creative, socially conscious.

Scott Galloway: Yes. Ridiculously hot wife.

Kara Swisher: Not that I've noticed, nor does that have a criteria for being a gangster. Okay. All right. I'm sorry. We're going to talk about Sacha Baron Cohen, and you don't have to listen to it with clips and everything. He is so impressive. Sorry, Scott. I don't know what to say to you. They all want to come on The Sway. The Sway is The Sway. It's what it is. I will get him. I get lots of people here. Don't you worry about it.

Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah. Anyway.

Kara Swisher: You're probably going to get that woman who just came, that cheerleader who just came out of the, that's who we get.

Scott Galloway: That's who we get. Glee meets Golden Girls meets, I don't know, meets the L word. You kidding? We have great people. Give me a break.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your questions.

Scott Galloway: That's right. We had Bill Gates.

Kara Swisher: Oh, no, that was Sway, too. That was Sway, too.

Scott Galloway: Okay, anyway. Anyway.

Kara Swisher: And we have someone talking about cybersecurity.

Scott Galloway: Well, it's just fucking Easter here every day. It's an Easter parade here every day. Send in a question about envy. Envy and fear and loathing. I'm the other family. I'm literally the other family. Like every other weekend, you swing by and you bring a pair of Adidas for me and a Bain skateboard. I'm the other family. I'm literally the other family.

Kara Swisher: I'm not going to tell you who's coming on to its way really soon, but it's big. There's a lot of big ones. I've had it. I'm going to read this out. Today's show, producing more with less because one of us is not invested in this podcast, but still, nonetheless, turning chicken shit into chicken salad is Rebecca Sonanas, who produced the show. Annie Indra Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burrows. Make sure you're subscribed. If you liked our show, please recommend it to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. The question isn't whether or not you want to get COVID. The question is whether you want your loved ones to get COVID. Get vaccinated. 90% reduction in transmission when you are vaccinated. This is a wonderful day for America and for the world. Also, nice bangs, Scott.

Scott Galloway: Thank you. Thank you. We'll see you soon.