Winners, Losers & WTF Moments: A Look Back at 2025’s Top Tech Stories

17:59Kara Swisher:Right, Marsha Blackburn. Yeah. But the real question is, I mean, one, I'm not sure that this moratorium that they pass is even constitutional. But the other thing that they've said is that they're going to try to get some sort of framework from Congress. And it's like, good luck with that. We've been trying to get frameworks from Congress for a lot of tech-related issues over the past decade, and we haven't had a lot of success. One thing that they did make a big deal of, and the stuff he was muscling around, was TikTok. Remember TikTok? Suddenly there was a ban, then there wasn't. Last year, Congress passed a law to force the sale of ban from app stores.

18:27Kara Swisher:President Biden signed it to law, and the Supreme Court unanimously upheld it this year. And then nothing happened, largely because Trump intervened and did nothing. Possible investors include a lot of Trump allies. It's not going to be a Larry Ellison-owned TikTok. It's Oracle is one of the partners. I think Oracle have 15%. I mean, Oracle is Larry Ellison, but it will own 15 % of this consortium, and there's others in it. What happened to the national security concerns when TikTok was digital fentanyl? I think it goes to what Casey was just saying. Think about where we were in the Biden administration.

19:05I mean, last year we would have been sitting here wondering if Google was going to be broken up this year, right? Like, that was, like, the real thing. We were like, will Chrome have to be its own business? Will TikTok shutter and we will, you know, oh, maybe someone will get the algorithm. Oh, the whole app is going to be dismantled. It's like, no, none of that happened this year, and I don't think any of it's going to happen. I don't think there's any true fear that, you know, yeah, I mean, like, TikTok is digital fentanyl. I mean, I think we all agree on that. It doesn't love it. Um, but like, is there really any potential of this happening?

19:40Is there potential of maybe what we've already had two, three years ago, which is the thought that stuff will be moved to U.S. servers, it will have some U.S. involvement, but still China's pretty much largely control of parts of this algorithm and part of this app.

19:54Kara Swisher:They own under the amount. Go ahead, Casey. I really think this is one of the most important stories of the year because it was basically the first thing that happened in the Trump administration. And as you just said, Kara, this was a law that had been passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. And Trump just decided he was going to ignore it, write a little memo called an executive order, and just say, no, actually, this ban doesn't apply. And he got away with it. How many more times did we see him run that same playbook in 2025 to the detriment of all of us? So, you know, this is one way— And he kicked the can.

20:24Like, the can kept getting kicked down the road. Like, oh, we're going to deal with it now. We're going to deal with it now. And that's why I'm like—

20:28Kara Swisher:But to be fair, Biden also pondered he could have let it go into effect for at least a few days, and he didn't. True. He waited. Go ahead, Bill. I'm sorry.

20:35Bill Cohan:Just to Casey's point about, I mean, yes, Trump has been fabulous for crypto entrepreneurs, CEOs, for tech CEOs, all those bros who put on suits and lined up behind him at the inauguration, who go to those dinners. Yeah, okay. They are rich as creases. They're just getting richer and richer. And so, of course, they're loving Trump, okay? and they're enabling his graft as well. But, you know, that's like a tiny subset of CEOs and companies in this country. The rest of them are feeling ignored. They're feeling put upon with tariffs. And, you know, they do not like the idea that they have to kiss up to this guy to make sure that he doesn't, you know, whimsically do something that is going to hurt them.

21:29Kara Swisher:Well, the tech companies are getting what they want. What could lead to a breakup that he doesn't have influence anymore, right? Then they'll move along to whoever does, presumably.

21:37Bill Cohan:Well, you know them better than most. I mean, yeah, they'll move on. Your buddy Elon has sort of moved off center stage, but he's still getting everything he wants, like a trillion dollar pay package. SpaceX being worth$800 billion.

21:48Kara Swisher:Right, right. He is. He's getting what he wants. Now, you mentioned crypto. Charlie, 2025 was the year of Trump meme coin. Reuters reported the Trump Organization took in more than$800 million during just the first half of the year. It was a stunning display of corruption. I've called him a coin-operated president, big coins, by the way. Anyone wants to make him buy influence if they have the money, yet the public, do they care? You've written about how the crypto capitalized on a cynical culture that distrusted institutions. You know, you see stories about the military trading crypto, although, let's be clear, Bitcoin is really far down.

22:22Kara Swisher:Talk about the cynicism that's bled into this sort of corruption. Well, I will first say I don't know if the crypto bros actually are that happy with Donald Trump. Right now, it is not the bonanza that was promised from the crypto president. Right. I think a lot of retail investors are really hurt by that one. I mean, I think what was interesting to me in the 2024 election was how we had for a long time said crypto is looking for a use case, right? It's technology that doesn't have this great use case. It's basically a speculative asset. But what it was for the people who got in early, who had these big investments, is they basically used it in 2024 to buy a bunch of influence, to lobby, to, you know.

23:08They got rid of a U.S.

23:09Kara Swisher:senator in Ohio. And also just to show Donald Trump. I mean, is there a piece of technology more ripe for Donald Trump, right? Here's a thing that's like basically you can do shady financial crimes with. Right. It is an instrument for graft. And I you know, it makes complete and total sense that he saw this and said, hey, let's go and do this. But I think like World Liberty Financial, the Trump crypto company there that has made them, you know, billions, I don't think a lot of people really understand it. I feel like that's one of those stories of this year that if regular people really were able to, you know, grasp onto this, people who aren't paying attention to Twitter and sort of, you know, the tech stuff like we are, I think it would be a genuine outrage.

23:56I mean, it's like if you look at, you know, some of the meme coin stuff that happened in those first couple of weeks or like right before the inauguration, retail investors got absolutely murdered by that. I mean, nobody made money except for the Trumps and World Liberty Financial. And so I think that, you know, that is – it's really set the tone for what the rest of the year was going to be in terms of, you know, kickbacks and kissing up and enriching oneself. Right.

24:24Kara Swisher:But, you know, it's crashing. If any of you, if it does crash or even kind of crash, will the Trump family feel the effects of that? How exposed are they? That's the great thing about running multiple graphs at one. They sort of have a diversified portfolio of graphs. So if any one of them goes down, they can always fall back on the other ones, you know? Yeah, that's how one invests. Diversity. Diversification. Not diversity, because that's wrong. We'll be back in a minute.

25:23We'll be right back. location. Soil Offer excludes Alaska and Hawaii.

25:28Kara Swisher:Hi, everyone. It's Kara Swisher. I'm excited to put something new on your radar from the Vox Media Podcast Network. It's called Project Swagger with the one and only Robin Arzon. And it's all about helping you trust yourself, level up your mindset, and actually make the changes you've been thinking about. Robin is Peloton's Vice President of Fitness Programming and Head Instructor. She's also a 27 seven-time marathon and ultramarathon runner, founder of Swagger Society Media Company, and a two-time New York Times bestselling author. In under 30 minutes, Robin shares the rituals, routines, and mental shifts that fuel her hustle and show you how to apply them in your own life.

26:08Kara Swisher:In the very first episode, she opens up about the moment that forced her to transform her inner voice and the strategies that helped her become what she calls a self-talk ninja. You can find Project Swagger with Robin Arzon on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday.

26:54Kara Swisher:So let's get to our favorite character this year in tech, I think. It has to be Elon Musk. He kept on giving in 2025. Bill, the year started with Musk taking over Doge. He threw USAID into the wood chipper. That was very kind of him to say it that way. He made what appeared to be a Nazi salute. No, it didn't. Why are we saying appeared? He made a Nazi salute on stage not once, but twice. He proposed to slash trillions of dollars in federal spending. Tens of thousands of federal workers lost their jobs. He compared them worse than Hitler and Stalin. Cruelty on all ends of it. In the end, he only managed to get a fraction of the spending he promised.

27:28Kara Swisher:If that, we're probably never getting our doze checks. He might have actually cost money. And the first buddy clashed openly with President Trump and sort of launched the refocus on Epstein. He attacked Trump over that, over the handling of the files, and made a U-turn to get back in his good graces. Where have Musk's adventures left him from a business perspective, Bill? What do you think it is? Because Tesla stock is raging right now for some reason, even though the car sales are declining.

27:56Bill Cohan:Well, we live in an era of the cult of the billionaire, Kara. I think you early on predicted that he and Trump would have a clash of egos, which, of course, they did. but he's come out, you know, just getting richer and richer and richer. I mean, the obscene trillion dollar pay package that he managed to, well, was it really a surprise, get out of his very pliant shareholders? I mean, it's grotesque in every way. I think I wrote a Times op-ed about that. And, you know, now SpaceX, which, you know, actually he's probably had a bit of a more hands-off approach about, you know, is actually run by somebody who knows what they're doing.

28:40Bill Cohan:Now he's going to reap the benefit of, you know, a huge valuation and a huge IPO. And the banks are, of course, lining up. I mean, Larry Ellison, you know, his Oracle spaceship has sort of come down to Earth a little bit. And he's, you know, struggling to prove to the Warner Brothers Discovery Board that his equity is real in the Paramount deal, which is a fascinating failure to communicate, it seems to me. You know, he's come down to earth, but Elon is like getting ready to go to Mars, at least financially. I mean, guy gets richer and richer and richer.

29:16Kara Swisher:In July, Musk's AI chatbot Grok started calling itself Hitler and NECA Hitler, and it went on an anti-Semitic tirade. Casey, on Hard Fork, you called Grok both a joke and a warning. Explain what you mean by that, and what did it reveal about how difficult it is to control these chatbots, even when you're the richest man on Earth? Yeah, I mean, the joke of it is that while, of course, you know, Mecca Hitler Grok said many offensive things, as did White Genocide Grok, another Grok character from earlier this year, a lot of the output I did find just sort of comical, right? This is a chatbot that is trained on the internet, and most of these chatbots, when you do it and you're trying to make them helpful, they do come across as kind of a little bit liberal, and that keeps infuriating Musk.

30:02And so he goes in and he tries to adjust them and rewrite them and make them sort of, you know, more anti-woke, and this has reliably turned them into Hitler. I do think that's funny, unfortunately. Now, the warning, though, is that it speaks to how difficult these things are to wrangle. And if you assume that these models are going to become more powerful over time, as I do, the warning there is you want to figure out how to align them to what we actually want them to do. So I do think we will look back on the Mecca Hitler era of Grok as a moment when more folks should have started paying attention to AI safety.

30:35Kara Swisher:Although they're way behind, presumably. Go ahead, Joanne. Yeah, I would say like XAI seems to be way behind. But I think what we've seen from Tesla, and you'll hear all the Teslables talking about how they're the biggest AI company, and that is because they could arguably be the biggest physical AI company when you do think about where they are in self-driving. And that's likely where the stock is up right now, right? Is that, you know, okay, he's promised you can turn every Tesla into a robo-taxi. No other car company can do that. And so you've got them on that. You've got whatever's happening with these Optimus robots, which are clearly far away, but they are putting a lot of effort in towards.

31:15And I've spent a lot of my year talking to companies about robots.

31:18Kara Swisher:We're going to talk about robots. Yeah. I mean, the hype is exactly there. It's hype, but, you know, he's encouraged people. And so I think the AI focus for Musk is really in Tesla, even though he may not be spending much of his time there.

31:33Bill Cohan:He's also used AI this year. Don't forget, this was the year that he somehow pulled X or Twitter, whatever we're calling it, Twix, off the edge of going bankrupt because the banks couldn't sell the$13 billion of debt. Next thing you know, he's calling it an AI company. He's merging it with XAI, and the debt flies out the door, and the valuation's going up. I mean, he's Mr. Hype Cycle on the AI front, both in Tesla and in X. So he's pulled X back from the brink.

32:01Kara Swisher:They'll merge Tesla into that too. And for what it's worth, when I talk to people who work at the leading labs, they do not count out XAI, right? Like they do basically count out meta at this point. But when it comes to XAI, people say like that guy still has the infrastructure, he has good engineers, and there is still enough that is unclear about how to get sort of all the way to super intelligence that they still think that Elon has a shot. So, Joanne, in November, X rolled out this location feature to help users verify the authenticity of some content. Then it revealed some popular mega accounts that claim to be run by proud Americans are actually based in places like Eastern Europe, Thailand, Nigeria, and Bangladesh.

32:39Kara Swisher:It's not exactly shocking. It's certainly not unique to X. But talk about the takeaway from that. Did it have any impact? Was anybody surprised? One. And two, so what? It's funny because I did not realize that was just like a few weeks ago. It felt like a year ago that that happened. I know. So much of what we've talked about right now feels like basically two years ago. Um, the bigger story, I didn't follow specifically so much on what happened there with the geographic location. I guess it wasn't shocking to many people that, like, guess what? These accounts say something that's just completely untrue.

33:11I mean, that's the story of the platform, really. I think what was interesting about X's years is how many different product things they were trying, especially around, you know, Ani, their sex bod. And, like, they just were, like, throwing random things into the product all the time. It's also the year that Linda Iaccarino has left and there seems to have been the real changeover in terms of like product change. Gosh, I miss her. Me too. I forgot about Linda. Bring her back. I had a real takeaway from the location thing, which is more and more of the time we are, I think, coming to grips or trying to suss out how much of the internet is just absolutely synthetic or fake or not what it says it is or tricking people who aren't paying as close of attention.

33:58And I think that something that has come up multiple times this year along the same vein, right, whether it's the Cracker Barrel thing or the Sydney Sweeney jeans controversy or whatever with these internet inflated, social media inflated discourses, is that these platforms are really inflating culture wars in interesting ways. It's not that we're not divided, that we're not polarized, that we're not arguing with each other in the ways that we are, and that these fights aren't actually playing on the social media that are real and have, you know, some kind of meaning and political, you know, jockeying.

34:29But there is a lot of these controversies, these little things that are bubbling up synthetically that everyone, news media on down, is taking the bait from, right? And there's this whole economy that people play into of, you know, aggregating and moving it up.

34:44Kara Swisher:It's sort of snakes on a plane. But you called X a worthless, poisoned hall of mirrors. I believe I call it a Nazi porn bar in the wake of this. I've done that. Yeah, I've said that, too. So is that – so it doesn't matter is what you're saying. No, it absolutely matters because, like, X is going to be the place until the people who are obsessed with it and stay on it all the time. A lot of people whom are political elites, cultural, you know, influencer type people, tech elites, the people like, you know, building all of the, you know, the AI tools that we've got who are, you know, have their own niche communities like media Twitter did.

35:22Like all of this, it matters because this is the place where those conversations are still happening. There's still a vibrancy to it. And that is part of this problem, right? Like, I mean, I would urge a lot of people, a lot of journalists to get off there. I see a lot of people cooking their brains on there. And, like, people who I used to talk a lot with and who I think are probably decent people who are just talking now with, like, race scientists and being like, hey, that's a super fascinating interesting blog post. And you're like, maybe I'd get off there. But it still has this outsized influence in our discourse in sort of helping, you know, assign what is popular.

35:58I'll say I don't post a lot anymore. I don't post a ton, but the conversation happening around tech elites, happening around new releases, like I read it a lot and I keep up with it there. And also the algorithm is just really good. I mean, the algorithm really will just give you – it's just comparatively to the other things. It gives you what you want and whether that's good or bad. I mean, my stuff is very innocuous. It's – oh, I can't say I'm on your show. So it's tech news and lesbian shows. It's great for me.

36:32Kara Swisher:Yeah. I find the others getting better and better, though. I find them getting just as fine. And there's the mental health of not being called a cunt every five minutes like I do over on Twitter. The owner hasn't done that yet, but he's thinking it. Casey, are you still on it? I mean, I have my account, but I haven't posted there in more than two years for all the reasons that Charlie outlines. And yeah, I just applaud everything he said. So, Bill, getting back to what you were saying, this chance of becoming the world's first trillion, let's be clear, he doesn't get the money unless he delivers, right?

37:04Kara Swisher:Although they could change the parameters at any time.

37:07Bill Cohan:He's got to make that an$8 trillion company. He's got to deliver. Right. But he's proven he has.

37:12Kara Swisher:So why did the stink of Doge come off him? Because he does other things? Did you think it put any stink on him? Because he still seems to have an impact on the tech industry and not American culture more broadly because he's quieted down in that area.

37:27Bill Cohan:You know, I think Doge just turned out to be, you know, sort of this sort of PR flop. I mean, it was just all, again, hype. It was all like, oh, Trump, of course, Trump and Elon are hanging out together. You know, two guys who deserve each other. And, you know, I'll bring my kid to the Oval Office and he'll, you know, make a scene. And, you know, and it was so obvious that Trump was going to get tired of this guy trying to steal the Trump limelight because he can't share it with anyone ever. And we know that. So to me, it was just like this phase that had to be gotten through, and it ended up being quicker than I thought and much less effective than I ever thought it would be.

38:03Bill Cohan:I mean, how many times in my lifetime have we tried to, you know, talked about cutting the budget and actually trying to balance budgets and be fiscally responsible? You know, and it never happens. Even the times that it happened, they reject it because they don't want to do it. and you're going to have this guy come in with a chainsaw and do it, who's erratic and on ketamine, apparently, according to Susie Wiles. So I say, you know, it's just a matter of something we had to get through.

38:30Kara Swisher:Get through. What about each of you? What do you think the impact he has? First you, Joanna, and then Charlie and Casey. Like long-term impact of Doge? Yeah. Or just of his? No, of him. Where is he as we end the year? Because he failed at Doge. He called it a failure himself. He failed at Doge. And I think, look, I look at the Tesla sales and what happened there. I mean, there were all of those protests in front of Tesla. There was damage to the Tesla brand. There is absolutely no doubt there was damage to the Tesla brand. I think that's the thing I hear about most, like, in the personal tech and automotive space is, like, I'm not buying a Tesla because I don't stand for him, even though it's the best car and truly, like, the most affordable EV you can get in America.

39:11I see it two ways. I see the first is that it was, I mean, I think he got a ton of egg on his face or like reputational whatever. I mean, he looked like a complete and total boob. He failed. You know, it was sort of this idea of like, if you apply the Silicon Valley, like, you know, move, fast, break, everything, whatever, you know, cliche framework to this really complex institution, you're going to fuck it up big time. Right. And it's going to be this huge problem. There's real lives at stake. a lot of real lives around the world with USAID and all that stuff. I think the second thing, though, is that this was a rerun of the Twitter playbook, right?

39:50Come into this thing and basically say, this doesn't work the right way. Strip it for parts. Turn it into a political weapon, right? And that, I think, he still gets a lot of credit among the right wing of the party for doing that. That is still a thing that a lot of tech bosses, frankly, I think look on and say, like, I want to run some version of that playbook. Maybe I don't want to screw it up the way he did, but I still think that that's innovative.

40:19Kara Swisher:So on the whole, going up, Casey? He's gotten me really interested in ketamine as a performance-enhancing drug. You know, at some point you think it would have cost him, but it's like the way that this guy has thrived since he made that a part of his lifestyle, potentially the world's first trillionaire. Suffice to say, I'm interested. You're interested. You really got to keep your dosage good, though. Yeah. And it seems like, you know, it's kept the Elon birth rate up, too. So, you know. All right. I am the only one among us probably that has done ketamine. I'm not sure. How did it go? I did.

40:50Kara Swisher:I had it on camera. I hated it. It made you feel isolated and alone and paranoid. And I understood. You did it on camera? Yeah. Well, that's not the fun way to do it. Where do we watch that? Oh, it was still ketamine, my friend. And it was still catamaran. You've got to be doing that late night. You've got to take it to the club. That's Kara Swisher's jam. Where do we watch that? I'll send it to you. It's really actually very funny. It's very funny. I didn't like it. I didn't like it. I found it boring. I was like, are we done? But I'm not a big drug person.

41:21Bill Cohan:Marijuana paranoia?

41:22Kara Swisher:No, you're just alone in a dark place and floating around. It's stupid. It's just stupid. I'm like, can I go watch Law & Order now? I mean, really, that's what I thought in the middle. I was like, I'm really bored. I'm tired of floating around. I don't have any big thoughts. I need to move along. We'll be back in a minute.

41:46For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat. I am officially running for president of the United States. It's going to be only America first. America first.

42:10Bill Cohan:Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox. The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items. It really does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump. But like for the first time, you see on a major issue open opposition from the start of this war.

42:45I'm Estet Herndon and welcome to America Actually. All the way back in the year 2000, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had this big idea that maybe the future wasn't typing. It was talking to your computer with your voice. Jeff Bezos didn't invent this idea, but he did push his team to invent what would become Alexa and the Amazon Echo. Two things that brought voice computing into millions of homes around the world. This week on Version History, our chat show about the best and worst and most interesting products in tech history, we're telling the whole story of the Echo and how Amazon managed to get it right and still kind of miss the future.

43:24That's Version History on YouTube and wherever you get podcasts.

43:32This week is the 50th anniversary of Apple. And so this week on The Vergecast, we're taking stock of where Apple is five decades into its existence. How's the company doing? And we also decided to do something slightly ridiculous, which is identify and rank the 50 best Apple products of all time. After a lot of hours of debating, I think we finally got there. That's on the VergeCast this week, along with the state of open AI as it raises a ton of money, tries to go public, and tries to convince you that you also love AI. All that on the VergeCast, wherever you get podcasts.

44:06Kara Swisher:So let's look ahead to 2026. Let's finish up. Talk a lot about the grab bag of big stories that are coming. They're going to see, including with Elon, some huge IPOs. SpaceX is among them, also open-air and anthropic. Bill, first, what are you going to be looking at as these companies prepare to go public? Because they've stayed private for a long time, which is their preferred place of being.

44:29Bill Cohan:Well, again, getting back to what we first talked about at the beginning, hype cycle. I mean, IPOs are a perfect product for the hype cycle. And, you know, these things come and go. They're a little rollercoastery. And, you know, Wall Street underwriting of IPOs has been kind of cool for the last three or four years. I guess maybe because everybody in tech hated Joe Biden. I wasn't aware of how much they hated Joe Biden until this conversation because they weren't getting everything they possibly wanted and more. But now we're in the big-time IPO hype cycle. And, Cara, nobody is better at hyping up and getting people excited about overvalued companies than the Wall Street underwriting machine.

45:18Bill Cohan:They get paid for it. They're really good at it. They favor their institutional investors. And it's really a bonanza. And so we're really – the floodgates of all that are just going to open. And so it's dead for the year now.

45:33Kara Swisher:Which one do you think is the most promising? So SpaceX, I assume.

45:37Bill Cohan:Well, I think Starlink is a real thing. You know, a real thing that has helped people around the world connect to the Internet. And I don't know if you've ever seen, I was up at my house upstate once and saw the whole Starlink constellation go by the night sky. It was unbelievable. It was riveting. I didn't know what the heck it was.

45:58Kara Swisher:Yeah, he was very early to that. So is that the one you think is, what about the open AIs and anthropics or strips?

46:03Bill Cohan:Open AI, you know, is it losing to Gemini 3? I mean, SpaceX is clearly unique and is clearly being hyped. And it's going to, I mean, that could be the first trillion dollar IPO.

46:15Kara Swisher:Right, 1.5, that's what they're saying. Anybody else on where this is going? Which ones, are you paying attention to them? I mean, look, I think everyone's really excited to see these S1s, right? Like, everybody wants to see the actual financials of these companies. We want to see all of the debts. We want to see all of the risks that they're pricing in. And we want to see the real revenue number. So I think we're just going to get a lot of information from these IPOs that I think might help us understand the actual state of our economy a little bit better. A little better. Okay.

46:43Bill Cohan:And one thing about Anthropic that I just love this part of it is that, you know, Sam Bankman-Fried invested in that. And, you know, everybody thought he, you know, obviously mishandled his financial, lost money, spent 25 years in jail. And that thing, when it goes public, I mean, they've obviously sold their stake by now. But had they held it, it would have been a bonanza. And he was obviously right about that.

47:07Kara Swisher:He was right about that one, yeah.

47:08Bill Cohan:Yep.

47:09Kara Swisher:Gotta hand it to him. So we're waiting also to see what happens when Netflix promotes acquisition of Warner Brothers and HBO. Paramount Skydance is mounting a hostile takeover bid for all of Warner Brothers' discovery, including CNN. Though this recording, Warner Brothers is told its shareholders a rejection. Paramount is run by David Ellison with a backing of his father, Oracle's Larry Ellison, Big Daddy. Both are allies of Trump's who says he gets involved in the deal, but he's kind of been dissing them recently. This is important because they've been promising to techify media, but this sort of ownership by tech companies.

47:45Kara Swisher:Charlie, how do you look at that? And I suspect Disney will get sold, possibly to Apple, possibly to Amazon. I'm just hoping that there's one company we can all just pay attention to, right? Just one. The mega blob. I think what's really interesting is when you listen to people like creatives or people kind of like high up in the entertainment industry talk about the potential, especially with Netflix winning out, and just how it's a lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose. No matter who wins. It's genuinely nobody wins. And even the people who win other than, you know, the top, top, top folks, those Sarandos, you know, even the winners start to lose in the end, right?

48:25And I just, I feel like, I kind of get the, when I think too hard about this, I get the thousand yard stare of just like, you know, we started out with three DVDs in the envelope, you know, and it was like a pretty delightful thing. And then we got some other, some really delightful, you know, tech-enabled, like, streaming stuff. Oh, my gosh, we could binge this stuff now. This is so amazing. And you just kind of fast forward with this, like, rapacious style of, like, we must scale. We must do this. You can never rest on your laurels. You must keep going. And then it's like, well, maybe we won't have movies in movie theaters anymore, right?

48:59Maybe there just, like, won't be a lot of people working on movie sets.

49:02Kara Swisher:I'm sorry. Isn't that up to the consumer? If they don't want to go, it's not Netflix's fault that they don't. I'm sorry. I just, that one, when's the last time a lot of these Hollywood people were in movie theaters? Except for Quentin Tarantino, I guess. I just, sometimes. I don't know, I don't know about that part. Consumers don't like it. Consumers don't like theaters. I don't like theaters. I don't think it's that. I think it's that, I mean, I think that there's a lot wrong with the movie theater business model with the industry. Like, it is way too expensive to take your kids and some other folks out for, you know, for a night at the movies.

49:32That is a problem, obviously. But I think it's going too far to say that, like, that experience, we voted on it as a people. I mean, playing to convenience, I think, always wins out because people—

49:46Kara Swisher:Yes, but I don't think—I think we did vote on it. Are lazy. But anyway, Bill, you've been writing a lot about the acquisition. What are you—you and I text a lot about it. And I thought Paramount was in much more—because they're naive and David is not as smart as he needs to be. So what were you hearing as it's headed into the next year?

50:03Bill Cohan:I would be shocked if Paramount didn't raise their bid. And the bids are too ambiguously close at the moment. And so that gives the Warner Brothers Discovery Board all the business judgment that they need to go with Netflix. But if the Ellisons decide to really go for it, and I think they probably will. They've already said their last offer was not best and final. I think if they make it clear that it's unambiguous that they have the highest bid, I think they'll win. And we'll know that sometime probably in the next month or so.

50:41Kara Swisher:Yeah, so that would be$34, very clean, guaranteed.

50:44Bill Cohan:Well,$34 was my—right now it's$30. Yeah, I mean, if they went to$34, all cash, very clean, I think it's over because I think Netflix can walk away with their breakup fee and some sort of content deal from HBO Max, et cetera, and be very, very happy. So the question is, are they going to raise their bid? But there's this continuous disconnect, which I really don't understand, that the WBD people think Larry Ellison really isn't on the hook for all the equity. And they keep saying, well, he is on the hook. What more do we need to do to convince you that he's on the hook? I don't know how they're going to bridge this divide, frankly.

51:27Bill Cohan:I mean, they could come out and say, you know, here's my blood on a guarantee. And isn't that good enough? but I think in the end they will prevail because their pockets are deeper and Netflix is going to have to drop because their stock has been going down and they can declare victory and get what they want.

51:47Kara Swisher:The only outer thing is if Big Daddy decides what the hell, he's so smart it seems dumb, this seems dumb.

51:52Bill Cohan:Yeah, dumb like a fox, Kara.

51:54Kara Swisher:Oh, I don't know where he wins on this one.

51:56Bill Cohan:World's second richest man.

51:57Kara Swisher:I get it, but on this one I don't see him winning. There's no winning. Anyway, Joanna, speaking of robots one of your stories that got a lot of attention this year was how you tested a live-in humanoid robot, 1X Neo. Pre-orders are open. The cost is$20 ,000. The delivery is expected sometime in 2026. In your story about Neo, you wrote the home is a trickier environment for robots, even trickier than factories and city streets. So what will you be looking for in this area of home robotics? Will we all have something like the Jetsons Rosie robot in our home by the end of 2026? Well, I think we're going to – the hype for humanoid robots and home humanoid robots, personal humanoid robots, is going to continue next year.

52:40And so, yes, that company, OneX, with their Neo robot has said they're going to start beta testing in homes. I have cleverly signed up, and so we will see if that happens, and we will see if my year ends in divorce. And so they're one company. Another company, they're called Sunday Robotics. They're going to be launching a small beta program. And so where we're in in this moment or robotics is that these companies need tons of data. They cannot make these robots do things that we want in the home. Fold your laundry, empty your dishwasher. Unless they have them in your home. Unless they have some in homes and these robots are doing the things, right?

53:18And so what went really viral about that one next thing was like the way that the robots have to be in your home is actually a human has to operate it back in their headquarters. And so it's really a puppet, right? So the puppet comes into your home. It's learning and doing these things in your home. And it's also like looking at you and all of these things. And it's crazy. It's just like a totally crazy dystopian idea. But also these companies are very convinced that people will do it. And I think it's really, it's like, it's crazy. It's fun. We're going to see what happens really when some of these get into these beta tester homes next year.

53:51And I expect there will be some crazy headlines. I hope I write them.

53:54Kara Swisher:Doing things badly is not really something you want in your home. That's my feeling. So, Casey, this month, Australia became the first country to ban social media for kids, in this case for users younger than 16. Already, we're seeing other countries look at similar legislation. You said Australia's ban has been the moment you realize quite all the bad choices these tech companies made over the past decade have caught up with them. But the tech companies are going to fight it. There are some people who think it's Mike Masnick is one of them who think it's a problem. Where do you see this headed?

54:21Kara Swisher:I just think a continuing of it. But what are your thoughts? I agree with you. I think this was the first domino to fall. Already, Malaysia has said that they're going to adopt something similar. Denmark and Norway are not far behind. So I predict that a year from now, a ban on social media for under-16s is actually going to be the norm. I don't think we will get there in the United States due to the First Amendment, although there are many states that are trying. I mean, look, these companies had well over a decade to make these products safe for children, and they still aren't. And every time that we get leaks out of these companies about what the workers who are working on this stuff actually say, it's that they tried to make them safer and were rebuffed at almost every turn.

55:03So I just think that this is an argument that the social media companies have lost and democracies just aren't willing to put up with it anymore.

55:10Kara Swisher:Yeah, I would agree. Also this month, Charlie, Disney announced it's investing$1 billion in OpenAI and doing a licensing deal. It's characters to the company's video platform, Sora, starting next year. It makes Disney the first major Hollywood company to license its content on an AI platform. Casey's written about how AI is winning in the copyright fight in music. Charlie, you've written about generative AI platforms like Soar, tools to crush creativity more than anything. They incentivize the creation of slop. So I've talked to the Disney exec. They feel like they have to figure this out, and they did a short-term deal.

55:42Kara Swisher:I think it is a short-term deal. What do you make of what's happening here? Could you see a public backlash to AI Slop or more deals like this? I think there's going to be a big dance here between people who see these things as fun and silly and throwaway things and people who are generally really worried, upset, and frustrated by the copyright issues they're in, right? Like people who make their living on this stuff. There's just so many different artists and folks who are really mad about this and also who are getting it from so many different angles, right? Like you have a lot of artists, you know, clashing with big platforms like Spotify who feel like they've been taken advantage of forever or, you know, who are having copies of their work come out and things like that against their best wishes.

56:30I think that this is all going to take a long time to really iron out here. I don't think that there's a really long-term vision with the Sora-style stuff. I think maybe some people will want to outsource their avatars if they're very famous and there's some good reason for that. But I think for most people, it feels really to me like this flashy proof-of-concept kind of thing, right? That it's just trying to continue the hype of these products are really good at generating synthetic, lifelike quality, whatever things. They're going to bring people like Disney on board and stuff. But I mean, I really don't know.

57:07It's a brand safety nightmare. Like, I've already been watching so many videos of Toy Story characters trapped in the Twin Towers on 9-11 on X that have 91 million views. You know, stuff like that where you're just like, all right. I mean, Thunderdome is here.

57:23Kara Swisher:Yeah, it's pretty gross. It is a little hypey, but it's definitely brand safety is a real issue. But they also can't avoid it at the same time. Okay, last question to wrap up in just a sentence or two. Give us your top tech prediction for 2026. We'll start with Bill, then Joanna, Casey, and with Charlie. Bill?

57:43Bill Cohan:I guess my top prediction would be that these tech bros are going to fall out of favor, finally.

57:52Kara Swisher:Fall out of favor with who?

57:53Bill Cohan:With all of us. With the American public, with the MAGA crowd in Washington, with politicians. I think they've just pushed things way too far.

58:04Kara Swisher:Right, right. Because we've had far too much of them. How can we miss them if they won't go away? Joanna, can I have two? Yeah, go ahead. All right. Well, I think the one that we haven't talked about and I think it's naturally going to happen is that Apple will release a foldable iPhone. It'll be$2 ,500 and people will freak out about it because there's finally a foldable iPhone. It'll be fine. People will be fine with it. That's my take. Are you going to buy it? Will I buy it? I'm going to buy it. Yeah, I'm going to buy it. Yeah, what am I kidding? I'm going to buy it. Yeah. I mean, it's my job.

58:34I'm going to buy it. But it probably also is like, it's fine. And then I would say, you know, I've really been thinking a lot about Waymo, and we didn't talk a lot about it here, but I really think next year is a huge year for Waymo. And I hate to, like, say it in this way, and I talk a lot about this in my book, but something bad is going to happen with Waymo. It's just eventually going to happen. And I think maybe next year, you know, just the odds are that— Bad?

58:58Kara Swisher:Meaning a crash? Yeah, like Waymo will get in a crash, and there will be a crash, and it will make a lot of news, even though there's been so much real data to show the real safety around it. But the more Waymo gets into these markets, they're going to launch in like five more markets next year, and some of them are going to be East Coast markets where they haven't typically been before. Yeah, that's one of my predictions. Wow. Okay. All right. I know. It's sad. I don't want to predict that something bad is going to happen, and I hope it's not a cat again. Foldable iPhone and dead people. Yeah, there we go.

59:30Kara Swisher:Let's sum it up. Casey? I'll also go with two. One, I think Joanna's household robot is going to quit due to the toxic work environment in the home. So that's sort of prediction one. And then prediction two. My home? My personal home? Yeah. Toxic environment in my home? Okay, that's right. Yeah, okay. Great. All right, so we're on the same page. And number two, I think, like, I just don't think that the AI bubble is going to pop in a meaningful way. I think that the leading frontier labs are going to be making a lot more money at this time next year than they were this year. And that while we may see a flame out here or there, if you're counting on 2026 being the year where the whole AI thing goes away and Silicon Valley moves on, I think that is absolutely not going to happen.

1:00:15Kara Swisher:All right, good one. Charlie? I think there's going to be two backlashes that bubble. I don't think they're going to completely foment and go over. But I think one is just like a scrolling and phone backlash. I think we're seeing more phone-free spaces. I think we're seeing more concerts and things like that. And I just think that there's a lot of memes going around in Gen Z and under spaces of just scrolling is cringe, man. Put it away. We're tired of this. We're tired of all that. And I also think there could be potentially if there is any economic trouble related to AI, I think there could be like an AI populist sort of backlash, especially if there's any indications from the government that we're going to help, you know, maybe backstop this, that it's in national security interest to make sure these companies can just do whatever they want.

1:01:00And I think that there could be a political sort of leap onto that from a populist lens.

1:01:06Kara Swisher:All right, I'm going to ask one more, actually, very quick. Key person in 2026 in tech or tech finance. It doesn't matter. Let's go backwards. Charlie, just one name. You can say why very briefly. And then Casey and then Joanna and Bill. Is it cliche or wrong to say Jeffrey Epstein, maybe? You know, we're probably going to get the files, maybe, hopefully. I don't know. Jeffrey Epstein, the dead pedophile for the win. Okay. All right. Casey? Fiji Simo. Okay. Fiji Simo, the CEO of Apps at OpenAI. She has a lot of responsibilities that used to belong to Sam Altman. I think she's brought a lot of Facebook energy into the company, which can be good for growth and bad for other things.

1:01:51So what does Fiji do with the apps under her control, I think is a huge question heading into next year.

1:01:55Kara Swisher:Nice one. Okay, good. All right, Joanna. I'll keep going on the Apple train and I'll say Tim Cook. I don't believe Tim Cook will step down next year, But I think that it will continue to dominate headlines, what's happening internally at Apple and how they fight the AI. Well, they're being behind in AI. And I think we'll hear a lot about more of the moves he's trying to make to move the company in that way and improve Siri and do the things he needs to do. God, if I were him, I'd quit and go home. He's done a good job. You think he's going to do it next year, though? I don't. He probably feels frustrated now, just like Iger.

1:02:29He should leave because he did a great job.

1:02:31Kara Swisher:I take a bow and let someone else deal with it. But these people can't do that. They can't just declare victory and go home. Bill?

1:02:40Bill Cohan:Well, since I had more time to think about it than anybody else, I'm going to go with the next speaker of the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries.

1:02:48Kara Swisher:Oh, wow. Who I think is going to really change the dynamic in Silicon Valley

1:02:53Bill Cohan:and the coziness that these tech bros have been enjoying in Washington for the last few years.

1:03:01Kara Swisher:And Hakeem is on the march, I guess. He's going to come and get him.

1:03:05Bill Cohan:Well, it assumes, of course, that the Democrats take back the House, which I think they will. Even Trump is making that noise, and he'll be the new speaker, and there'll be all sorts of interesting investigations, I think, that are long overdue.

1:03:17Kara Swisher:I would say Representative Garcia is the one I'm paying attention to.

1:03:20Bill Cohan:Right. He could become a deputy, a key deputy. You're right.

1:03:23Kara Swisher:All right, guys. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. This was great, full of information. Bill, Casey, Joanne, and Charlie, thank you for your time and see you all in 2026.

1:03:39Kara Swisher:Today's show was produced by Christian Castorousel, Michelle Eloy, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Andrea Lopez Cruzado and Eric Littke. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following this show, your algorithm is full of tech stories and lesbian news. If not, you're doing ketamine on camera and with Casey. Go over your list in a podcast, search for On With Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On With Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us.

1:04:16Kara Swisher:We've got a special show for you this Thursday. On Christmas Day, we're bringing you an episode of The Long Game with Jake Sullivan and John Feiner. It's a weekly national security podcast that takes a long view analysis of all the major news stories. Merry Christmas and happy holidays. We'll be back on Monday with more.