Trump VP's Ties to Silicon Valley & Google’s $23B Bet on Cybersecurity

0:03When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, everything you need to know about J.D. Vance, who Trump picked as his running mate. Then Alphabet is planning its largest acquisition ever.

0:42But what does it see in the cybersecurity startup whiz? It's Tuesday, July 16th. Let's ride.

0:53Today marks the start of Amazon's Prime Day sale, which you'll hear about later in the show. So we're doing our own Prime Day sale here at Morning Brew Daily. If you go to your browser and type in shop.morningbrew.com, then order a new Morning Brew Daily t-shirt, we'll toss in today's episode of the show completely free. That's right. With a qualified purchase of our beautiful MBD Radio t-shirt, which you can find at shop.morningbrew.com, you'll get today's business news 100 % free. Wow, Toby. You could sell sand at the beach. But yes, if you buy a T-shirt, we'll toss in every single future episode of the show in perpetuity for free.

1:32Neil, you got to string them along a little bit. You can't just give them the whole shebang up front. Fine, though. Neil's deal stands as long as you go to shop.morningbrew.com and order yourself a beautiful MBD T-shirt. Shout out to everyone who has bought one so far. We appreciate you. Now a word from our sponsor, Meta AI. So I was at Neil's house the other day, and I have to admit, I started to have some bookshelf envy. Like my actual bookshelf construction or the books on it? Well, both. You had a nice Ikea set, but mostly the books on it. I realized I gotta set up my literary game. Well, why haven't you asked me for a book rack?

2:07Well, because I already asked Meta AI. I pulled up Instagram yesterday and said, give me a list of great American novels to read. And? Well, the list it created was really big. so many recommendations like Great Gatsby, Moby Dick, Catcher in the Rye. So I amended the question and asked it to give me books from the 2000s only. And now I'm reading Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I had that on my shelf, Toby. Listen, I prefer Meta AI. Expand your world and your reading list with Meta AI now on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Evglyss.

2:44After an initial dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EBCLIS, LibriKizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies.

3:13EPCLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EPCLIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EPCLIS. Before starting EPCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about EPCLIS and visit ePCLIS.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Ohio Senator J.D. Vance once called Donald Trump cultural heroine, labeled him unfit for our nation's highest office and said he might be America's Hitler.

3:48But apparently that's all water under the bridge because yesterday Vance was selected by Trump to be his running mate in the upcoming election. At 39 years old, Vance is the first millennial on a major ticket and he'd be one of the youngest VPs in American history. He's also a newcomer to politics, having worked in venture capital for many years before first running for Senate in 2020. He's probably best known for his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, about growing up poor in Ohio and Kentucky. That, unsurprisingly, is number one on the Amazon bestseller list this morning. So why did Trump pick Vance after all of those mean things he said about him?

4:24Well, since those criticisms, Vance has done a complete 180 to go full MAGA and become one of Trump's most loyal allies. and he thinks Vance can help deliver the upper Midwest battleground states like Michigan and Wisconsin. But Vance also has ties to an unlikely but growing area of support for Trump, Silicon Valley. Yeah, Vance's ties to Silicon Valley go back to his time at law school. He attended a talk at Yale by Peter Thiel about technological stagnation. He called that moment the most significant moment of his time at Yale. And then in 2015, after he graduated, he joined Mithril Capital, which was a venture firm founded by Peter Thiel.

5:02He then went on to found his own venture film, Naria. He named it after another object from the Lord of the Rings book, which just shows how much he really was kind of this Peter Thiel stan. And the general consensus is that his relationship with Thiel in the broader venture world gives him sway with this new coalition of conservative business people that is forming around the RNC. I mean, last month, Vance helped organize a Silicon Valley fundraiser at the home of David Sachs, who is a big Trump supporter, also host of the All In podcast, raised$12 million for the Trump campaign. So clearly Trump sees Vance as this vector to this new coalition of conservative people in Silicon Valley.

5:41Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Elon Musk really is the standard bearer of that. It was just reported last night by the Wall Street Journal that Musk plans to commit around $45 million a month to a new super PAC backing former President Trump's presidential run. That is an insane amount. I mean, he is the world's richest person, but the largest known donation of the 2024 election so far is 50 million dollars. And Musk is pledging 45 million each month. So there really is this bastion represented by Vance's VP pick of support for conservative candidates in Silicon Valley. Let's talk about Vance's policies.

6:17Where does he where does he stand on various things? Well, there's very little daylight between Vance and Trump on really anything. Vance has completely come over to the MAGA movement. He's seen as the natural successor to Trump in that area on abortion. He generally opposes abortion rights, but says each state should craft its own laws. January 6th, he says the election agrees with Trump that the false assertion that the election was stolen from him. This was seen as a major litmus test for who Trump was going to pick on immigration. He's very much for building a wall and not granting amnesty to immigrants who arrived here illegally.

6:54He's against the U.S. support for the war in Ukraine. He agrees with Trump that we should apply broad-based tariffs on a lot of goods. And also, like Trump, he's praised authoritarians all over the world, like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. So he's very much in the MAGA mold of Trump, which some critics of this pick say, look, you guys don't have a lot of daylight between you. What are you complementing him with? On environmental issues, he falls kind of where you'd expect. He's a big proponent of the oil and gas industry. And during his first year and a half in the Senate, he's consistently voted against Biden's environmental policies, especially relating to the hybrid and electric vehicle push.

7:30Yeah. In a radio interview in July 2022, he said the whole EV thing is a scam. And he introduced legislation last year to repeal a$7 ,500, the consumer tax credit for electric vehicles, which makes you wonder why, you know, Musk would be so behind this ticket. Definitely a pick that a lot of people saw coming from a while. Polymarket definitely had the prediction markets had. J.D. Vance is one of the favorites to be named. So yesterday wasn't exactly a surprise, but now we have the ticket. Now we know exactly kind of what the platform Republicans are putting forth of this upcoming election. And you're starting to hear some of the criticisms that will be lobbed by Democrats.

8:08and Biden came out saying that Vance, who wrote Hillbilly Elegy and talks about his upbringing in a poor working class family as only pretending to be a champion for ordinary Americans while hobnobbing with the Silicon Valley elite and wanting to cut taxes for the wealthy. And then Mitt Romney has lobbed, you know, from the centrist Republican coalition, they consider him a sellout for doing this complete 180 and going to Trump's side. He says, I don't know any I don't know that I can disrespect someone more than J.D. Vance. That's what Mitt Romney has said about Vance's complete pivot to to back Trump.

8:44Google is famous for some savvy acquisitions over its 25 year history. YouTube, Android, the list goes on, but none have been bigger than the one it's currently closing in on. According to The Wall Street Journal, it's an advanced talks to acquire Wiz, a cybersecurity startup for around 23 billion dollars. It would be Alphabet's largest acquisition ever, nearly doubling its$12.5 billion purchase of Motorola back in 2012. From a strategic perspective, the move would signify a significant investment in the cybersecurity and cloud security space, where it currently lags behind rivals like Microsoft and Amazon in the cloud services business.

9:21As for Wiz, its growth has been staggering. It's only four years old, but recently raised$1 billion at a$12 billion valuation. It hit$100 million in annual recurring revenue after just 18 months. It's one of the only startups outside the AI space to raise money at a higher valuation this year in 2024. Neil, Google has been relatively quiet compared to its big tech brethren when it comes to these splashy acquisitions. What does it see in Wiz? It sees the way the winds are shifting, which is toward the cloud. as, you know, they don't say this is an AI acquisition, but it really is about AI because as these companies use more models, they need more computing powder, and they're going to the cloud to do it.

10:05And Google sees this as a major growth area. I mean, it dominates online search. It dominates advertising. But as you said, it lags behind its peers in terms of the cloud. And it thinks that if it can go to companies and say, hey, we have a cloud that is backed, that is so secure, you're seeing all those hacks out there, where you're going to be under lock and key with us and Wiz, you should come to our platform and use this for your cloud services. And Wiz is very ubiquitous across the Fortune 500 now at this point. 40 % of Fortune 500 companies, including Amazon, including Microsoft, actually uses Wiz's software.

10:39Use Wiz's software. That's a tongue twister right there. So it definitely would boost its cloud security features because you're right. When it comes to I'm a company, I'm surveying the landscape of what cloud provider I want to use to support my business. If one is more secure than the other, that could tip the scales in favor of Google, for instance. And Google has been focused on the cloud because you're right, that's where the growth is. That's where it sees a bunch of growth opportunities. It's one of the fastest growing segments within Google, especially when you see maybe the advertising market is how much better can it possibly get?

11:11I mean, Google clearly thinks it can continue to grow, but this is definitely a growth area for Google. But the big question here is whether this deal will get past antitrust regulators. The DOJ and the FTC have been cracking down maybe harder than ever in history on any acquisition, especially tech. They block JetBlue's acquisition of Spirit Airlines, Penguin Random House's potential bid for Simon & Schuster, Adobe's bid of Figma. So, you know, this is just, it's very unclear whether Google will be able to actually complete this acquisition. But if they do, It's a windfall for these four founders who already sold another company for$350 million, and they each own 9 % of Wiz.

11:52And so they'd be running off with a check of$2 billion if Google is able to complete this. So they're going to go to the ends of the earth to convince Lena Khan to let them get this deal through. Truly not a bad haul for just four years. I mean, they found it in 2020. It's only 2020. It's crazy. 24 now. $2 billion. Not a bad haul. If you like to shop online while pretending to work, and let's face it, who doesn't? Today is your Super Bowl. It marks the start of Amazon Prime Day, the annual shop till your phone battery drops summer extravaganza, where the discounts are steep and the hit to your bank account is steeper.

12:28This year's Prime Day is the 10th edition of Amazon's made-up holiday, and it's expected to be the biggest one yet. shoppers are expected to spend 7 % more on 2024's Prime Day than last year when they shelled out $12.5 billion in the largest single sales day in company history. But has Prime Day lost its spark? Is it, dare I say, past its prime? After all, Amazon is far from the only retailer offering sales this week. Everyone from Target to Macy's to TikTok to Temu have all launched Prime Day copycats to ride on Amazon's coattails. And if you can beat if you can't beat them, join them strategy has been successful.

13:06Amazon's market share of online purchases made between July 16th and 17th. It's prime days is projected to shrink for the third year in a row. Toby, when I say prime day, does it even get your heart rate going faster anymore? It gets a little bit because I have some things on my wish list. But you're right. July has just been this absolute blur of sales at this point. I mean, we're coming off of Target Circle Week, which was last week. Walmart has been running sales all of July. TikTok Shop has something called Deals for You Days. Doesn't quite roll off the tongue. Temu has Temu Week, which runs through July 18th, where they're dropping prices as much as 90%.

13:40All of those deals are a reaction to the center of gravity that is Amazon Prime Day, the mother of all sales. So it's time to shop because it's never not time to shop these days because think about just all the great deals that are out there across all the different e-commerce platforms and it all started with with amazon prime day it all started back in 2015 when prime day was launched in order it was the 20th anniversary of amazon's founding and they really wanted to juice sales of prime their subscription which only 40 million people had at the time and this has been a wild success i mean people are paying what is that over 130 $130 a year for two days shipping and other perks.

14:20So 40 million back in 2015. And now there are 180 million prime members in the U.S. That's more than half of the total population of this country. So we are a nation of Amazon shoppers. And I think the goal now is to keep with so much more competition from those low cost Chinese retailers to even social media companies like TikTok is to keep those people spending on Amazon when there is just so many options out there for people to shop and at very low prices. Do you remember the first Amazon Prime Day back in 2015? It has seared into my memory because they build it up as this huge, huge sale and then it kind of stunk the first time because all they did was try to push at that time the Amazon Fire TV sticks, which everyone logged on and like, wait, are you really just shilling Amazon Fire TV sticks?

15:08It's obviously expanded now to include lots more different brands out there. I wish I had a list of all the great deals out there. The one tip that I saw about shopping Amazon Prime Day is that prices fall throughout the week. And so if you have your eye on something on the first day, chances are it's gonna fall in price a few more times. Amazon loves cutting prices time and time again for certain items. So maybe just exercise a little patience. You might get a better deal. Up next, Toby's Trends coming in hot.

15:39Tuesday on NBC. Jimmy Fallon and Bozema St. John host a highly anticipated new competition show. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea. This is not play play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you. Make the best idea win! On brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC. I'm Christian McCaffrey, pro running back, and Abercrombie is an official fashion partner of the NFL. I'm not kidding when I say NFL by Abercrombie broke the internet last year, and I think this season's lineup is even cooler.

16:21And so does my wife, who keeps stealing all my hoodies. Stay fit for the season and Abercrombie's newest arrivals. Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online, and in store.

16:39In 2012, National Geographic rolled out a reality series called Doomsday Preppers. At the time, it felt more like comic relief, people capitalizing on the supposed ending of the Mayan calendar, than a serious faction of society. But things have changed in the years since, and it's why on today's edition of Toby's Trends, we are going to dive into the doomsday economy and the rise of preppers. The doomsday economy is alive and well because there are lots of people who are gearing up for the apocalypse. According to data from FEMA, almost 20 million Americans, or around 7 % of all households, now identify as, quote, preppers.

17:16And over half of Americans have taken three or more steps to prepare for a disaster, according to a recent national survey. That level of interest has led to the rise of companies like Fortitude Ranch, which operates essentially timeshare survivalist properties with all the food, guns, and bullets you need to ride out the collapse of society in style. The New York Times talked to its founder, Drew Miller, who's a retired Air Force colonel, about what's driving interest in his properties. First, Miller is not happy about that Nat Geo show saying it set the survivalist movement back years. But now with the rise of AI, increasing threat of climate change and geopolitical uncertainty, he says business is good again.

17:54Neil, this feels like a lucrative industry to be in right now. It is definitely growing. I love the slogan of Fortitude Ranch. It's called Prepare for the Worst, Enjoy the Present. So they have these bunkers all over, these properties all over the country. And what they do is they rent them out to members and they say, OK, well, you can come here when the apocalypse happens or if everything goes to crap. But for now, why don't you come for two weeks? We'll give you two weeks where you can come with your family and enjoy a vacation here. So they're basically renting timeshares at, you know, bucolic places all over the country.

18:28and then you can go there and get your full year of food and ammunition and crossbows should the end times come. Yeah, he's actually using a franchise model, and business is not bad. The company employs around 20 people, and they brought in about$2 million in revenue last year, about a gross profit of$400 ,000. So he's not making bank, but this is a passion project for him. It's something that the industry has been in for a long time, so he wants to make a business around it. And there have been plenty of other businesses that have popped up around it. I mean, there's companies like American Reserves, which offer prepper essentials, which are these 12-month supply of foods that will run you almost$3 ,000.

19:10An emergency crank radio for$60. There's Fieldcraft Survival, which is offering survival classes for$250 across the country. And, of course, you can go very, very high end and get these luxury bunkers that we've seen. the Silicon Valley elites. Mark Zuckerberg has built a bunker out in Hawaii. You can get them as get these built, but also get membership to them for$55 ,000. So there's various stages and various levels of preppers, but clearly prepping is something that you see a lot of Americans kind of indulging in right now. All right, everyone, I think it's time we have the talk. I'm going to ask you to sit down so you can learn about the birds and the drones.

19:49Yeah, this talk is a little bit different than the other one. Instead of coexisting like birds and beads, birds and drones have been locked in an aerial dogfight high above the skies of Rockaway Beach, New York. The turf war began back in May when the city deployed a fleet of drones above the popular beach to scan for sharks and pinpoint swimmers in distress. The shorebirds who called Rockaway Beach home, especially the American oyster catcher, do not like their new neighbors. In the past few months, these birds have been attacking the drones, which they see as a threatening raptor, to defend their nests.

20:23No oyster catcher has been hurt yet, but experts warn that if the combat continues, they could get themselves injured. Worse, it could trigger a stress response that causes the birds to flee the beach entirely and abandon their eggs. Toby, New York hyped up this fleet of drones ahead of the summer to protect swimmers against shark attacks and dangerous currents, but it's having some unintended consequences. The food chain is all mixed up here and tangled because you're right. What makes this so complicated is that these birds, these shorebirds, these oyster catchers are highly endangered. And you do not want them to elicit this stress response where they just fly away and abandon their nest.

21:01So city officials have said they've seen these swarming incidents where they all surround the drones because the drones are noisy. They are very stressful. They do appear to be a predator that are threatening their chicks. So it's a normal response from the birds, but you're trying to keep people safe. You're trying to protect them from sharks. But at the same time, you're trying to protect these endangered species. It is an interesting case of unintended consequences. And these are no ordinary drones. I mean, these are pretty substantial. They're three feet long, and they carry an inflatable raft that can be dropped into the ocean to rescue a struggling swimmer.

21:33New York has been really adamant that this can improve safety around shark and human interactions. And New York is not by far is not the only sort of coastal city or community to deploy drones. Australia has the largest commercial drone operation shoreline drone operation going right now because there are a lot of great whites off the coast there. And so this is an exciting new technology that cities and local areas think they can protect beachgoers, not just from sharks, but people who may be drowning under ripcorns or things like that. But there are also the local wildlife to to contend with.

22:08So in New York, at least, they've changed their flight plans a little bit to take off away from nesting areas because they're listening to wildlife experts and trying to make things safer for the birds. I am glad, though, that we are innovating around shark technology because Australia has relied on nets for a long, long time, mostly because it gives you a sense of security as a swimmer if you have these shark nets surrounding kind of the swimming areas. But a lot of people say it's an imperfect solution. Most of the sharks are actually found on the swimming side of the nets, and then it also causes just lots of other wildlife to be caught up in the nets as well.

22:42So I'm glad that these drone programs are growing. Obviously, you want it to coexist with the nature that you want to protect as well. Neil, a new Airbnb just dropped, and it's tranquil, private, a little bit dusty and out of the way, but you're guaranteed to feel the weight of the world lift from your shoulders as soon as you step foot in it. It's a moon cave. Yes, scientists have found a cave on the moon not far from where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed 55 years ago, and they think it and hundreds more like it could be the perfect abode for future astronauts. It's located in the Sea of Tranquility, just a short 250-mile jaunt away from Apollo 11's landing site.

23:20Radar data shows that the cave, which was likely created by the collapse of a lava tube, is around 100 meters deep and 130 feet wide, which with Manhattan rent prices would go around$4K a month. Other than just being very cool, these caves could serve as natural shelter for astronauts, protecting them from cosmic rays, solar radiation, or in the event that the moon is haunted from other stuff too. as we push forward towards setting up human outposts on the moon. We've come full circle, Toby. We started life in caves as cavemen on Earth, and now when we go inhabit another planet, we're going back to becoming cavemen.