Burn Book: A Tech Love Story with Kara Swisher

0:04Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word, from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know.

0:38Anyways, let's get to it.

0:47I don't think Kara Swisher needs much of an introduction, dubbed the queen of all media and a self-defined badass. I agree with both, by the way. She's fallen out with Elon Musk, made Mark Zuckerberg sweat, and is equally as feared as she is loved in Silicon Valley. But now she's here with a tech love story. And we all love a Kara moment. So let's get into it.

1:16So joining us now on Open Book, Kara Swisher, an award-winning journalist, a podcast host, an author, somebody I consider a friend. It started out rough for me with Kara Swisher. She likes to do that to people. She was lighting me up on a social media formerly known as Twitter, now known as X. Yeah, you deserved it. We became fast friends after we got to know each other. You came up to me. You came up to me and said, I didn't have my glasses on and this small man was running at me and I thought, oh, this is the end. And there you were. You're like, you're funny. You're obnoxious. You're funny.

1:53And I was like, fair assessment. I said, you're charmingly obnoxious. I said, I definitely use the word charming because you're charming. Obnoxious was in there. Obnoxious was in there, but charmingly obnoxious. But this is a fantastic book because it's, you know, first of all, people want to people should read this book. The book is called Burn Book, A Tech Love Story. They should read the book because you're a brilliant writer. But it's also opening up a window into a world that we can really only see superficially without the likes of Gareth Swisher. So I love the book. I also love your writing style.

2:28I actually think we grew up quite similarly, which is a little scary in some ways because we all have these little things that have happened to us that have affected our lives. Sure. But let's talk about the way you look at the world, okay? So if someone said to me, Kara Swisher, I'd say, well, she speaks her mind. Yep. Incredibly honest. Mm-hmm. A lot of people don't like honesty in our world. They do not. They like petite mendacity so that they can smooth out the edges of what goes on. Petite mendacity. Yeah, yeah. Petite, I like that. These tiny little white lies so that we don't upset each other.

3:06Right. You're coming at the people in a way that I grew up. Okay, so tell me why and tell me how you developed that and tell me why you're like that. Because it's not usual, Kara. It's made you who you are. Yes, indeed. But it's not usual. So tell us that first, then we'll get into the book. Yeah, I joke about obnoxiousness, but it's done very, very well for me, obnoxiousness. I think I just was like this. I think people are, I mean, I can't imagine you weren't like this as a kid, the way you are, right? I would assume you are similar to what you are. Oh, I, you know, I think this will probably horrify you.

3:39I feel like we are very similar. No, but you and I are very similar. It doesn't horrify me. We are, because you're willing to say the truth, even if it costs you something. Right. Even if there's consequences associated with the truth. you're willing to say the truth. So what were you like that as a kid? I was like, no question. I was always, I think I was born that way. I think in a lot of ways, and I think it was, it served me well. And I just was like that. I didn't have an ability. I mean, it's not like I don't have a filter. I don't like say personally cruel things to people, but, um, and I'm not, interestingly, I don't often comment on people's looks or anything else, unless it has a point, right you know when everyone's sort of dunking on well you did you did just call me little that's okay though i am little sorry that's okay i'm sitting on a phone i think it was descriptive i think i'm sitting on a phone book right now to talk to you so i get it but you i'm little you're a short you it was just i didn't have my glasses on and this very short man was coming at you remember what your mother said when you're short not only do good things come in small packages but there's more oxygen down here that's right and we're smarter that's why all people the air is too thin for these people.

4:48Yeah, in any case, that wasn't meant as an insult. It was a descriptive, but I just was this way. And I think maybe it had to do actually with my height. I was very pugnacious. I always spoke my mind. I think probably some of it had to do with being gay because I was very irritated that you couldn't talk about yourself, you know? And I was quiet about that for far too long. Not that long compared to most people, but far too long. And I think it just was like I didn't see any sense in not saying what the stakes were or what was going on. I just it didn't make sense to me to be quiet at all. Well, listen, I have, you know, obviously more and everyone does.

5:28I have many gay relatives and my message to them always is get out early. Yeah. And express yourself for who exactly you are so that you don't have any level of anger for not being able to do that. And if people don't like it too bad, you know. But there's a price. Yes, I mean, you know, there used to be a price, right? A long time ago. Well, let's not kid each other. There is still a price. A hundred percent. The question is, do you want to even be associated with the people where there is a price? You know, that's the thing. Right. But there really was one way back. Now, there's ways to live now that are, you know, I have four kids.

6:03I don't live in the shadows. And I think when you and I were coming up, you did. You lived in the shadows. So maybe that was it. I don't know. I just think I'm this way. My chief of staff, the Ronsald, is gay. He came out at age 17 in the town of Manhasset, where you know Long Island. So this is all Irish and Italian macho men. And he's my chief of staff. I'm very proud of him because I've known him since he was a kid. And him being able to express that has made him healthier. Yes, that's correct. And I have a nephew also that's gay, and I'm very proud of him as well. But it's not to say that.

6:40It's being, being, saying what you think makes you healthier. You're just saying that you just are, you don't, you know, the anxiety doesn't build up. You're not trying to figure out what to say. I always say, you know, it's easier not to lie because then you don't have to keep track of everything. You know, you know, Ed Koch used to say, uh, you're not going to give me the cancer. I'm giving you the cancer. I'm telling you exactly what's on my mind. Anyway, sorry. All right. Well, why, why, why is the question I have for you? You have asked the word why since you were a little kid. Why, why, why?

7:12Were you always a budding journalist? I, you know, in a way, I guess it was. I wanted, as I wrote in the book, to be in the military, which I couldn't, again, because I was gay at the time. It was not allowed. And that I was the age when you would join. My dad was in the military. I had great reverence for the military, but I couldn't serve. I thought about going in the CIA or the State Department, mostly intelligence. And it was limited. If you, you know, there's a really great show called Fellow Travelers on, I think it's Hulu, about that, about, you know, gay, say, department officials, etc.

7:46And I just, it was too much. And so I moved to reporting. I don't think it's unsimilar. What you're doing is, I really was going to be an analyst. I was going to collect information and then render an opinion about something. You know, like this is, here's all the data I've brought in. I know these people. This is what I think is going to happen. This is a recommendation I make. I think I do that as a reporter quite a bit. Same thing. You know, at Georgetown, you're extremely focused on Nazi propaganda. Yeah. You talk about the book of how fear, this is something that Joseph Goebbels said, right?

8:21The big lies, but also finding scapegoats, but then exaggerating fear. Absolutely. Okay. We have a quote unquote crisis at the border. A lot of my white, very rich friends are super upset with it, but how has it really affected them? Not at all. They can't tell you, but this is something that you focused on at Georgetown. Tell us why you did that, but then also tell us why it's so apropos to the world that we're living in today. Oh, I mean, propaganda is, and there could be good propaganda, by the way. It's been used to get citizens going in a war, whatever, typically in a war. There can be good propaganda in some fashion, but a lot of it's used in a negative way, which is to try to demonize people, try to create to reduce what is like the board is a complex situation, but it being complex is not what people, you know, that's not what makes people vote.

9:13They need a reductive answer. They need a, this is a crisis and it's often born in fear. You know, this is coming for you. Antifa's coming. There was one town in Illinois or Indiana, I think it was who on Facebook that was convinced that this Antifa was coming for this shitty little town. And Indiana, I was like, you know, So anything that will make people fearful works really well. And you have to exaggerate it. You don't just have to exaggerate it. You have to repeat it over and over again, because it's very simple and black and white. People can take a side, a team or whatever, which I think people are used to.

9:46If it's nuanced, it gets confusing. And it also means there's no really good answers. And people seek answers, especially from their elected officials, when in fact there aren't any. There's some problems that are going to be there for quite a little poverty is a good example of that. So it is a complex, it's a bad situation at the border. But when often I do like, there's a lot of people who are like, oh, cities are so dangerous. And I was like, when have you ever been mugged? And they're like, no. I said, so in your life, you've never been mugged in a city? So is it, you know, it's dangerous if you're in the wrong place at the right time or the right place at the wrong time or whatever.

10:19But people have a sense of it that's much more and they take incidents and they think it will affect them because people are basically narcissistic in general. And so I think into these breaches, politicians, lying politicians, mendacious politicians like to slip. You know, I mean, of course, Trump is the greatest example of that. What a propaganda master. No, no, no. He's he's he's very, very good at it. And he's very, very dangerous. And we'll talk about it. I think so. In a second. So, you know, your book is great. And I'm not just saying that because we're friends. I learned so much in the book.

10:53But you write like a a fiction writer. I'm explaining why. Good fiction writers are able to explain to other human beings themselves, and they can explain the human condition quite well. And I'm going to read something to you, and I want you to react to it. Okay? Okay. And so you were talking about your stepdad. He took the house my dad was so proud of and sell it. He also gave away my father's dog, a Bassadown named Prudence. Erasing all those parts of my father seemed a weird flex on my mother, whose own life had gone off the rails so abruptly, did not resist. He provided a very comfortable upper middle class environment and then ruined it with a cavalcade of casual cruelties.

11:38Yeah. Okay. So another remarkably honest, very, very refreshing by the way, because we've all had various traumas in our upbringings that have challenged us and maybe even shaped us and been a strong bow for the arc of our arrow. But describe that upbringing if you don't mind, because I think I think it's beneficial for people to hear it. The key moment of my life was my dad dying when I was five. He was just out of the Navy. He had gotten a great job at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, first big thing. So he used the money, big salary. You know, he had a Navy salary for most of his life. And he didn't come, he came from very modest background.

12:12His mom was a school teacher. His dad was a surveyor. So it wasn't poor, but it wasn't like, you know, here's all the money. Grew up in West Virginia. and the Navy paid his way through college and medical school. And then he served and he got out, got this great job and died. Like he had three kids and then just died from a cerebral hemorrhage. And, you know, that was a huge, jarring moment in my life and my lives of my brothers and my mom. And my mom quickly got married about a year or so after he died. And I get it. I get it. And the person she married was, I don't know what else to say. sadistic, I guess, because or jealous of my dad's memory.

12:53I think that's it's not it's not that hard to figure out. Obviously, insecure, deeply insecure, and and took it out on us. And it wasn't hitting, you know, there's lots of ways to to to do things like that. And I think what he did is we lived in very nice surroundings. He was an entrepreneur, by the way, taught me a lot about entrepreneurship, created his own companies, which was, I guess, laudable, but was very always seemed to want to do the cruel thing. And it was, when I say casually cruel, it was things like the dog, which I think is very cruel, or selling the house. I moved so much as a kid.

13:27That's such a hard thing to do when you're a kid. He was constantly redoing houses, just a constant state of restlessness that then we had to live with. Also, you know, he did things, he did all kinds of things. You know, I don't want to go into a lot of them, but they were all like aimed at us. And I don't know, I think it wasn't aimed at us. I think it was aimed at just like testing you. You'd leave a light on upstairs and you'd get downstairs and he'd wait until you were downstairs and said, your light's on upstairs and you have to go upstairs. And I get lesson learning. I get, you know, I have four kids.

14:01I try to teach them to say, please and thank you and turn off lights and things like that. But instead of being raising you, it was testing you. And I don't think you should test kids. I just don't. I think it's a wrong way to raise children. I mean, listen, I had my trials. My dad was a rough guy, blue collar worker, and he was very rough and very traditional old school Italian. So I'm not bringing it up to revisit pain. I'm bringing it up because the way you write about it is so real, which enforces the authenticity, frankly, of the later chapters in this book about how you deal with people.

14:35Everybody has trauma. And I think the reason it's, I think it relates is like a lot of these tech people have trauma. Obviously, Elon Musk's talked about it extensively. I don't think it's an excuse for behavior, you know? No, no, no. Definitely not. That's what I'm saying. If you have anything, you have to get over it and you can't blame anybody. You have to be accountable, particularly as an adult. Right. So this is something I've learned. Somebody, my sons, actually, I have two adult sons. I have five children, four boys and a beautiful girl. and my two adult sons asked me a question on my 60th birthday that I'm going to ask you.

15:09They said, well, what have you learned in the 60 years? And I said, well, I got to tell you, money is very crazy for people. It's almost like that drug commercial when we were kids, the egg. They say, here's the egg and they open the egg and then they put the egg in the frying pan. This is your brain on drugs. That's your brain on money. These people, for some reason, and they didn't grow up right where they think they're better than you because they have more money than you. Hey, PayPal, you got born a certain way. A lot of luck is involved in this. You know that as an entrepreneur, you're an entrepreneurial journalist.

15:42If I go left, right, left, I'm worth a billion dollars. If I go left, left, left, I'm worth no dollars. A lot of things happen in life that are serendipitous. So why don't you take a chill and get your ego down to the size that it deserves as a result of your mortality, which is equal to everybody else on the planet. Right. And so what's your view of that? You agree with that? Yeah, I do. Death is a very, it streams through this book. Obviously, it starts when I was young. Yeah, of course, it's fun bringing it up. Yeah, I think my awareness of death was learned very early, like the ephemerality of things.

16:19And I think that also made me still like, I got to say what I think because I don't got a lot of time. And I think, you know, and it was stressed by, you know, my grandmother who, when I didn't, she was a full Italian. When she, when I wouldn't, when I'd say, oh, I'm busy, she's like, the graveyards are full of busy people. Like she'd always, and that was a good lesson. It was like, you know, I'm coming up there. You're right. Like with this ridiculous, you know, the idea that you, that you have unlimited time was not something I had the luxury of feeling. And, and I, so it, it, it was stressed in me, including, you know, when I had a stroke, you know, I just, it's a constant reminder.

16:53I'm not particularly religious, but there's someone reminding me constantly of the time frame I have. And I think probably it's why I have so many kids. I think it's why I work so hard. I think I know I'm very aware of time and I think many people are not. Now with the wealth thing, again, it doesn't really matter because you're, you know, there's also a quote by Woody Guthrie, no matter how you struggle and strive, you never get out of this life alive, you know? And so I'm very aware, like you don't better because you've assembled a giant pile of money. There are, you're better for other things, perhaps maybe you solve cancer or you built, you know, I was just in Grand Central Station and, you know, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was really the critical.

17:33She saved it. She saved it. And I thought, what a legacy. It's so, it was so beautiful. All these people bustling through. And I said to the person I was with, I was like, that's a real legacy. She's, she's gone, but here she is. Right. And I thought that's the kind of legacy you want to leave, not a pile of money. She used all of her power and influence over the city and the politicians to save that and look at it today. It's beautiful. Now in the landmark, thank God. I want to get to these billionaires. You talk to all of them, okay? Bob Iger, Satya Nutella, Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg. But you have fallen out as you write about with Elon Musk.

18:08Yeah. What do you think has happened to him? And I feel like when I'm reading your book, and I don't know Elon, and I'm not here to pick on Elon or anything like that. I feel like he's his own worst enemy for some reason. He's like, there's almost like a kill switch in there where he's trying to shoot his own foot off. I would agree. He wakes up in the morning and says, let me see if I can fire the shot. I think he's deeply insecure. I think he's deeply narcissistic. I think he's troubled and never got fixes for her. I mean, I think he had a troubled childhood, but so did I. I mean, I think he's never gotten real help for his traumas and also his mental challenges, which he's talked about.

18:50He's obviously had some depression. He's talked about it. He's certainly, he's also talked about his use of drugs. I think he's probably medicating himself in a way that's probably not helpful. I think COVID did something to his brain. It did something to a lot of people's brains, right? There was a couple of people who emerged from COVID. Quite conspiracy theory minded, moved to the right. Not that there's anything wrong with being conservative, but it's just it's beyond that. It's something else. It's an expression of constant aggrievement, a constant victimization. And also that someone's out to get you.

19:25It's deep paranoia like the man or they're trying to get me. It's a witch hunt. All that stuff is all language of someone who doesn't live in the real world. Right. I not only agree, I'll just add this story. I was with an African-American woman this morning. She's a very accomplished hedge fund manager, and she's been in the industry in asset management for years. And she said to me, I don't like Elon Musk. I said, have you met Elon Musk? She said, no, I've never met Elon Musk. But just the stuff that he says about the DEI and the things that he said about Boeing, I'm an African-American woman.

19:59that is literally, I'm 55 years old, I have worked my ass off on Wall Street. Yeah, he's ill-informed. I've had to be four times better than the white males to get to where I am. And for him to say that, well, maybe I got the job because I was black. Oh, he's making it up. He pushes racist tropes. He pushes anti-Semitic tropes. I don't know why he's doing that, though. So why is he doing that? I don't know. I don't know. He uses excuses of being, you know, his demons. And it's like bullshit. Stop. You're just a bad person. I think, you know, why do you think Donald Trump's doing? He's just a bad person.

20:36Like we at some point we have to stop trying to figure out and just say this is a bad and toxic person and we need to limit their influence on our our body politic. That's really it. I don't know what's wrong with Donald Trump. I don't know. Maybe his father was an asshole. It seems like it. Maybe his mother was retiring. I don't know. He can't get over the lack of attention that his father delivered to him, a result of which he's going to take it out on the rest of us. Well, yeah, except that guess what? We all have our various problems in life. No, I know, but I mean, there's a malevolence. I don't know, but what I know is that it's toxic and it's impactful.

21:08And so, because he controls some space stuff, he's got, you know, the cars are going to be more problematic for him on time because there's more competitors, but he's got an enormous amount of wealth. And so, you know, it's often like that with really rich people. they just decide they know better. You know, look, I don't know if you're friends with Bill Ackman, but I know he's not an expert on DEI and that he's just a rich guy who gave money to Harvard, right? I think that's what he did. And he just gets to talk about it. Listen, I know Bill and I do like Bill, but what happens is you get a lot of money and then you think you're a genius in every category.

21:40This is why a lot of these billionaire sports owners, they don't do well with these teams. You know, Dave Tepper is one in 15 with the Panthers and every decision that he wants to make, he's making it. He's not allowing the football people to make it juxtaposed that to Bob Kraft. You said, okay, you know what? I'm going to focus on the real estate and things I'm good at. You pick the football players. Let's see if we win a Super Bowl. It's hard because you have all these enablers. You've seen it. Enablers around people that say, yes, sir, or whatever. And they're just, I don't know. I was joking that at some point, I was going to write a 90 part series on Twitter about hedge fund investing, about which I know nothing.

22:14The same amount he knows nothing about DEI. And so I just, you know, I don't mind debate. I don't mind people bringing things up. It's just that when you get to a certain level of wealth, you have enablers around you, for one, that is very deleterious and you never get challenged, right? And then you think you know things that have nothing to do with what got you there. But, you know, that's classic. It's classic. So let's go to TikTok for a second. Okay. Do you have a view? Yes, of course. I've written about it quite a lot. Years ago, I wrote a piece in the New York Times that I thought it was the best app that existed.

22:47It had just gotten popular. But I used it on a burner phone because of the Chinese Communist Party. And I didn't have proof, but I'm like, why wouldn't they do it? Of course they'll do it. This makes perfect sense to me. And even for the safety effects, if they have access, they couldn't buy CNN. This Chinese company couldn't buy CNN and it's decidedly smaller, right? Like by a factor of a lot. They couldn't buy CBS. They couldn't buy, like, it's a broadcast company. And so let's assume they're spying. Let's not. And I've talked to a lot of intelligence people. I believe they are. And they are obviously doing it elsewhere all over our country, you know, within all kinds of systems.

23:26I don't know why they wouldn't do it here. Now, you know, the company has denied it and I get it. But every Chinese company I've covered has had meddlesome situation with the Chinese government. It's what they do. And I just don't believe this is the exception. Why would it be? It's so good. But it's also part of the culture. They feel they have to catch up with the West. And they also remember things like the Boxer Rebellion and the Opium Wars. And they feel justified in doing it. I guess. Whatever. They're just a power. I don't know why. Should it be sold? I don't know what to do with it because they're not going to give us the algorithm because the algorithm will prove what they've done.