Biden Wins the Debt Deal, and AI Extinction

23:25It's an encouragement. It's an incentive. If you kill 50 ,000 people indirectly, you might have to give up half the$12 billion fortune you acquired by creating this damage. Yep. It's interesting comparison. I want to get your view on this. Do you think Elizabeth Holmes should go to jail for 11 years? I think she shouldn't be. 11 years was a surprise to me. I had forgotten it was 11 years and it is too long. You know, a couple of years, I suppose. It is interesting that, of course, of all the many hijinks in Silicon Valley, she's the one that gets it. The one with the ovaries gets put away. Yeah.

24:01And same thing with Martha Stewart and going to jail for insider trading. I was like, huh, I haven't heard many of those for high profile people like Martha Stewart. And maybe she did that, but boy, was that a real, and of course she's bounced back rather significantly, but it still is, I think it's too long, obviously. And the Sacklers, I think should be thrown down in a hole. I just don't know what else to say. They were clearly pushed this stuff out there and there has to be some liability that is more significant that they can't shield themselves from, but they did, that's what they've done.

24:31Let's move on. Elon Musk may have cut costs at Twitter, but he also cut something else. It's value again. Twitter is worth just one third of its$44 billion purchase price, according to Fidelity, which already cut that number, marked it down. And now they're marking down further. It's not even worth what they just marked it down to. So, you know, there you have it. It's continuing to lose value. Musk's stake is worth now eight, I guess. Not a surprise, of course. Marks are really interesting. And if you want to look at perverse behavior on a board and management team, you can almost always reverse engineer it to compensation.

25:06And I'm on these boards currently or have been. And that is, rather than get, you should always, when you're doing a next round of investing, you should always get a third-party lead. Because it's easy for us to smoke our own supply and say, oh, the company's doing better even though the market's shitty. And we've hit some bumps. We raised money at$3 billion. But now we're worth$4 billion. and you're not. And what you need is a third party to come in with fresh capital and say, this is what the company is worth. And then if your existing investors think that's too low, they can do their pro rata, but you need a third party mark.

25:42And what there has been an abundance of over the last decade is a lack of third party marks, because what happens is the following. The guy at Fidelity who made this investment gets compensated based on where the performance of his investments are relative to a benchmark. And it's based on with private companies, right, such as this one, the mark. And so the real mark on Twitter, Cara, is zero for the equity because they have$13 billion in debt. The company will do two or two and a half billion, unless it's worth more in terms of valuation metrics and meta or Google, the value of the company is less than 13 billion, meaning the equity value is zero.

26:25So the real mark should be zero. But the guy running that and the IR people that have to report that number don't want the mark to be zero. So back to private company boards, what you see a lot of times is an internal round, and this happened like the last two or three rounds at WeWork, where they keep investing at higher valuation so they can report a mark to their fund and their limiteds and maybe even fake out retail investors when it goes public. But marks are very dangerous because there's perverse incentives around them. They should just say zero, it's worth nothing. The equity is worth zero at Twitter.

27:01Yeah, yeah, yeah. How is this? Show me the math, the comparables, the EBITDA, the growth rate. Just because someone will pay for it. This is a company. No company in history without some sort of a legal act or forced de majeure has gone from$5 billion in revenue to$2 billion in about eight months. Yeah, that is interesting. That is a historic decline in revenue. $13 billion in debt. What's the multiple here? Two to three times? It's worth$6 to$8 billion. That means its equity is negative. Yeah, he's got to get a business. He's got to get Linda Yaccarino in there working. I'd heard that she's got some contract issues at NBC.

27:38It was a rumor at the party last night. Did one of your waiters tell you that? No, they were useless. It was interesting because, by the way, there were a lot of Twitter people at this party, and he's not paying them. He's not paying them. He's not paying anything. Not paying rent. Not paying. He owes lots of money. Severance. Yeah. His attitude is, sue me. There'll be some breakage. Yeah, sue me. That's right. He's like a health insurance company. Make it really hard to get reimbursed, and you'll just have a certain amount of breakage. Yeah. The whole thing is a financial meltdown. It was so interesting when I said, it's not even worth this.

28:09What are you talking about? It's not worth anything? You went on Twitter to do that? And, of course, all his stands came out. And, like, you don't get what he's doing. He's making a super app. It's going to be this big business. I said, the only thing this is going to be is a meme stock, maybe? I was like, that seems to, like, he'll sell it to a bunch of imbeciles like yourselves. And he'll run away with the money. Like, are you kidding? And he won't go to jail, by the way, for doing that. He'll just have bought, you know, a ticket on the Dumb Dumb Express. Wealthiest man in the world as of today.

28:38Is he, again? Because of the increase in Tesla stock. took it back from Bernard Arnault. So there you go. It goes up and down. It's worth zero. Yes, that's correct. But he can afford it and it gives him influence. That's what he's buying in this case. What'll be really interesting is when the banks that underwrote the debt take the debt off their balance sheet and cure it and price it to see what the debt trades at. They seem to try not to be doing that. They protect him for sure. Well, I don't think it's them protecting him as much as they don't want to take the loss because right now, I bet they have it on their books.

29:09Again, back to this notion of marks and perverse incentives. When Morgan Stanley has, call it,$5 billion worth of Twitter bonds, if they have to sell them at$2.5 billion, they have to take a$2.5 billion loss and they have to talk about it in their next earnings call, which is not a good look. So they're probably keeping it on their books at 80 to 100 cents on the dollar. And if it goes out at less than 100 cents on the dollar, what that means is the equity is worth zero. The company is not worth the$13 billion in debt, which the debt will not go out at 100 cents on the dollar. So, again, the equity here is worthless.

29:48I think he's already tired of it. He wants out of Dodge. He's going to blame Linda Yaccarino for his failings. She's there a year or less. One very smart person said that to me at the beginning. It's not about money. He'll lose a ton of money. It's about influence and his profile. And it's probably worth it to him. That's true. That's what these guys do, right? I mean, they buy media companies. He could have bought like a lot of media companies. He could have bought a lot of things. For 44 billion? Yeah, that's a lot. What could he have bought? He could have bought CNN. He could have bought like, not that it's for sale, but the New York Times.

30:20He could have bought, you know, I think Bezos looks like a genius in comparison. Paying a couple, whatever he paid for the Post, almost nothing, much less than his yacht. Bezos paid 250 million for the Post. That means Musk could have purchased about, what is that? $44 billion,$88 billion. That's 176 Washington Post or Twitter. But he doesn't get to tweet and be crazy. There you go. He could have just tweeted for free, actually. He could have been crazy on Twitter. Anyway, all right, let's get to our first big story.

30:54The House of Representatives approved a deal to suspend the debt limit late on Wednesday. As we record this on Thursday, the deal is headed to the Senate. And even if approved, Wednesday night's vote has big implications for the future. An embarrassment to Speaker Kevin McCarthy, more Democrats voted for the bill than Republicans. 71 Republicans voted no. I think it was 149 Republicans voted yes. They were supposed to be 150, but that's what it was. And Republicans cited findings from the Congressional Budget Office, which said the changes to SNAP benefits wouldn't save any money, but would increase costs over 10 years.

31:25Republicans aren't the only ones voting no, but these are the losers in any case. 46 House Democrats voted against the bill. AOC was the first Democrat to come out against exciting cuts to social programs. In the Senate, Bernie Sanders has pledged to vote against the bill for similar reasons. He also opposes the approval of a pipeline in West Virginia that's folded in there for Joe Manchin, I think. I think it's going through. It looks like it's moving through and McCarthy and Biden did almost the impossible. It's amazing how doddering Biden is and managed to get this bill through. But okay, doddering.

31:55He's doing very well for a doddering old man who's eating applesauce. So what do you think? Work requirements here. Let me say what's in the bill. Work requirements for government benefits some. Rescinds IRS funding, caps spending for two years, approves the Mountain Valley pipeline, a priority for Joe Manchin, it said. Ends the freeze on student loan payments. A Times analysis said the bill reduced deficits by$1 trillion. Republicans wanted$4.8 trillion in cuts. Anyway, he's trying to also get rid of the debt limit. Jonathan Chait wrote at the New York Magazine, the deal makes financial hostage taking a normal accepted way to govern.

32:29I don't know. It felt like compromise here and less than that, but many people think that. So what do you think? There's no compromise here. I'm going to turn to our favorite pastime, and that is patting ourselves on the back. What was our prediction around this? Famous last words, because it hasn't been approved as of recording. Our prediction was the following. This deal is already done. They will take it right to the 11th hour. So Speaker McCarthy can claim to his crazies. He took them right to the limit and they will that Biden will throw some symbolic and meaningless gives. Yeah. And so let's be clear that people not getting food stamps or I'm sorry, a work requirement that that is real.

33:16But if you actually read the bill, it actually expands eligibility for food stamps, having to start restart student loan payments. And then what was the other one taking IRS funding, additional funding from 80 down to 60? Keep in mind the context here. The national debt is$32 trillion. Our economy is$25 trillion. I think our budget is$5.5 trillion. And we're talking about a few billion dollars here and there. This was the following. This was Biden saying to McCarthy, this blows up. You're going to be the shortest serving speaker in history. He still might be. what can we do that gives you your crazies something to nibble on but let's be honest boss i'm not giving you shit because you're gonna have to fold one way or another here and they didn't give them they gave they got nothing they got nothing and everyone did their performative voting like aoc etc and the people on the far left are upset the people on the far right and that's exactly what should happen is the reasonable people um the president the The president played this, in my view, played this perfectly and said, okay.

34:26So is he still a doddering old man? He shouldn't be running for president. He can do better than this. He's pretty good. He's pretty good at it. He's done some pretty good things in infrastructure. He's going to be 80. I get it. I don't even want to go here. I don't even want to go here. I'm just telling you. This is where we are. Grandpa's working. Grandpa's got a lot going on. America should be able to do better than a good man who's smart. Just throw him a fucking bone. I like the man. Every decision he makes, I would make. But at the same time, there has to be something resembling reality.

34:59I would agree with you. But nonetheless, he's not going to start. Anyone checked in with Senator Feinstein lately? I get it. But he's not senator. Come on. He's getting it. He's going to be close, Cara. Well, come on. He's going to be 86 in his last year of the presidency. I get it. I know lots of 80-year-olds who are in our 80s are perfectly fine. They can be the president of the United States? I don't love that a president. And all of our elected officials dissold you. No, I don't. But nonetheless, I'm going to say this was, once again, he managed to get to the middle. What happens if he dies?

35:28Yes, that's right. President Harris? Yeah, I know. That'll be bad for the Democrats, probably, as much as I think she's quite accomplished and competent. But nonetheless, and younger, by the way. She is younger. What do you think? Is my assessment here incorrect? What do you think? I think yours correctly is I think they managed to do a quite good job. And Kevin McCarthy probably might suffer. There are a lot of noisy Republicans like Chip Roy and that other Dan Bishop, I think, voting against the bill. That's a lot of people voting against it. I think he made that deal. The one House member to call for a no-confidence vote, they might do that.

36:03And then we spent a lot of time on that. Like, again, one of those, you know, when you were watching, like it was a TV show, whether Matt Gaetz would say yes or not or up or down, which is ridiculous that Lauren Boebert had any moment in any sun and hopefully should be taken out in the next election. She's the best thing that could have happened. Her and Marjorie Kellogg are the best thing that happened to Democrats. It's just a reminder. OK, yeah, it's crazy. You may think we're crazy, but yeah, just much crazier. Yeah, we have much crazier down over here. So, you know, it'll be interesting to think if he starts to really push back against these people and can have real power.

36:34There's a huge power in the speaker's job, obviously, but he certainly has some highly competent people around him. Massey, I think there were a couple even. I don't agree with him. There were some that really moved to get this done. And I think that you never know what the crazies are going to do. And so he's at risk at all times because of deals he made to get the job. And in Biden's case, you know, there was ideas that he may have, he may take, use the 14th Amendment in order to get it to court to get rid of these debt limits. Most other economies set debt limits at a percentage of GDP. If we adopted the EU model, 60 % of GDP, our debt ceiling would be lower than its current limit.

37:11Most people think that the debt limit crisis every couple of years is ridiculous. It's fucking ridiculous. And it creates a hostage situation. And I've read some very smart columns about it. And I think this ridiculous, this is not something people should be politicking over. There should be spending cuts. They should do it in the old-fashioned way, which is through bills and everything else, not to link it to something so important. So it shouldn't be there to allow them to do it. It's a gun. It's on the table. They'll shoot it. at some point. I think a good move for Biden coming out of this once it's done is to get very serious about some sort of fiscal responsibility and say, we need to cut spending, folks.

37:49And also, we need to do away with loopholes and raise revenues. Yeah. Well, that's a non-starter with the Republicans' taxes or anything else. Every fiat currency in history has failed and gone away. Because the dangerous part about a democracy, a representative democracy, is that when you can vote yourself money, you have a tough time you do yeah exactly bingo you do and you and you start inflating and you end up with debt you can't support countries don't go out of business because they're invaded they go out of business because they go broke yeah and yeah i agree it's just this gonna be really hard just look at this short thing to do something that was obviously they had to fix um but we'll see there's definitely spending cuts need to be made and uh we'll see if they have the stomach to do it.

38:34I do think Biden's been a very deft president on lots of issues that they thought he couldn't pass. So maybe he definitely has a left wing that's really up in arms about some of these cuts. And McCarthy has the right wing who's up in arms about not making enough cuts. And some of the cuts are ridiculous. Some of them are stupid. You know, they're not truly committed to really balancing the budget. By the way, did you see his first campaign ad? Who's Biden's? You know, at the very beginning, they have to disclose. It says, My name is Joe Biden, and I forget this message. Oh, stop it. You know what?

39:04Again, give him a moment. You could not pull this shit off. And by the way, one of the people who've gotten a lot of the credit for this, besides Steve Reschetti, who's his advisor, is Shandala Young, who's the head of the OMB. Very important. And even McCarthy was like, this lady really helped us get to the right place. Anyway, it was interesting. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about a dire warning about AI, and we'll take a question about guns in other people's homes. Ooh, that's scary. That happened to me once. Anyway, Scott, we'll be back in a minute.

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41:58Scott, we're back with our second big story. AI could kill us all again. That's the warning from the Center for AI Safety. In a short statement, the group said that mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war. That's the whole statement. We're doomed. It was endorsed by notable scientists and entrepreneurs, including Sam Altman, Jeffrey Hinton, the godfather, the alleged godfather of AI, one of many, I'm going to say that, and several researchers from Google's DeepMind team. The market doesn't seem too worried.

42:31This week, the market cap of chipmaker NVIDIA briefly pushed past a trillion dollars, largely based on its role in creating hardware use for AI. Meanwhile, on an earnings call, Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff claimed that, quote, we are about to enter an unbelievable super cycle for tech. It sounds like a storm we're not going to want to be in. So this was the group of people who are behind this, whether these warnings are helpful or accurate, or they just try to make people say, we warned you. Merith Whitaker, who I've interviewed many times, a former Google AI researcher, called the letter, quote, theater and said, we'll know it's real when they quit their jobs, unplug the data centers and actually stop AI development, which is not happening.

43:09Should we be focused on the short-term harms of AI? Critics like Kate Crawford, whom we had on Pivot last month, talked about bias, discrimination, and job displacement as near-term risks, which are important. And Sam, of course, Sam Altman, who's sort of at the lead of this parade, said, regulate us. What do you think about this? Is it theater? Is it what? And let me just, I don't know, footnote this or caveat out of the fine print is that so many really smart people who I think their heart is in the right place and we're at the center of the development here are sufficiently worried that I just want to acknowledge I don't know what I don't know.

43:45And it strikes me that we absolutely need immediately to assemble a group of very thoughtful people who have the teeth and the power to start communicating across border. we have weapons. We've already decided like we don't want bioweapons are a bad idea. And immediately we began talking to even our adversaries and said, okay, it's just a good idea if we limit the use of bioweapons. And people came to an agreement and there hasn't been full scale, like, you know, all green lights on the development of bioweapons. And that's been a good thing. I'm an optimist around this stuff. And I find it a little bit frustrating when Dr.

44:23Frankenstein comes out and says, I'm worried about Frank. It's like, well, okay, he's in town now, and he's roaming around, and now you're worried about him. So, and there is something to the fact that after they made their millions, after they vested their shares, we've talked about this, they're all of a sudden very concerned. And there does appear, and the media loves to run with this stuff, because the end of the world, smart people predicting the end of the world is always great clickbait. I don't see why we wouldn't be able to establish LLM and generative AI that it can play defense as well as offense.

44:57I think the idea of a pause is ridiculous when you can't monitor. It's not like underground nuclear testing. You can't monitor it. And you really think Iran and North Korea are going to push pause. I thought the metaverse was stupid. Web3, I never understood. I got bullied into being indifferent about it because I thought I was worried about aging and that it made me look old by not embracing something. I thought that Internet of Things, I mean, this shit, I think this Google, I think Apple's VR thing is going to be the biggest tech disaster since the metaverse. AI, I'm playing with this thing every night.

45:36I think it's going to turn a group of young people, mostly young people, with the right skills, curiosity, into just information warriors. And I think we're going to push out preventive health care to pockets of people who weren't able to access it because they don't have the money or they were intimidated. I think it's going to be fantastic for the world. There's certainly been more warnings about this compared to any other. I mean, crypto, everyone was like, woohoo. You know, social media, fantastic. The early internet, wow. And in this case, there is more discussion of the problems early on.

46:14Now, the question is, will there be a global body like you talked about? Probably not, but there should be. Will it be, you know, adequate regulation or will it be this push-pull, like that threatening thing that Facebook is doing? Like, that shouldn't be the way this is. This should be everybody coming together to discuss this. And obviously, the business people have their business interests, which usually trump everything else because that's what they do. and there's going to be a lot of money. Look at just NVIDIA, for example, but all these companies that are going to be created. And so there's ways to deal with this in a lot of ways because it's not going away.

46:47And how do you, like, what do you deal with that? Of course, we know nuclear will kill us, right? It could kill us, but it could also help us. So what are we going to do? It's here. How are we going to cope with it? And I think that it would be really great if there was some global body that had not just, they're never going to have teeth, I guess, But it has high profile to begin to talk about these issues. But, you know, they did it with pandemics. It didn't work out so well. Nuclear worked out better. The short-term risks are ones we should be addressing right away and not to be like so enthralled with the long-term risks that we don't deal with the short-term risks.

47:26And then look at it as an investment opportunity too. I think making it one or the other is really useless in some way. Yeah, there's no doubt. I'm sure there'll be any time you have this sort of transition of one substance or material to another, there's externalities as there will be here. But I'm still trying to figure out how the blockchain is going to change my life. I've never understood virtual reality. Every night I'm totally blown away by what AI can do. Yeah, you love that AI. And not only that, I generally find when the experts are all saying one thing, it usually means they're wrong.

48:04Oh. Especially around the economy and maybe around, I don't know. It's so strange to be the optimist. Yeah. But all the catastrophizing. Well, mitigating the risk of extinction. Mitigating the risk. Oh, extinction. Yeah, mitigating the risk. But it should be on the level of that, of pandemics, nuclear war, and at least on the same. Social media should have been there, too, where people were. I think we would have had a lot better legislation. And this will definitely spur people to hopefully write good legislation and not wacky legislation. So, you know, go too far. But we'll see. But people are definitely talking about it.

48:38And they're scared. The public that pays attention to stuff, and it's not just the elite, lots of people. I get asked about this all the time by everybody. And so non-tech people especially, they're like, what is this? Like they're very – and they're not – they're worried. They're definitely worried in a way that they hadn't been with other technologies. You know, with cyber, with cryptocurrency, they're like, how do I get in? I was like, don't. Don't. Please don't. Like, please don't yet. Like, don't. That kind of thing versus this, which I think they're dipping their toe in, as you are. You're dipping your whole body in, actually.

49:15You're jumping in. I'm swimming. You're swimming. You know, you saw that lawyer thing where he put all the things and AI made it up. Yeah, I love that. I love those stories. More stories like that. Yeah, more stories. That's going to happen all the time. Anyway, I don't think that was the end of civilization. It was the end of that guy's career, but still. Anyway, let's pivot to a listener question. This is something much more immediate and dangerous. You've got, you've got. I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. Hi, Kara and Scott slash Scott and Kara. I have a question. I have two young kids, and while I'm not planning on asking their potential play dates, whether they're going to be going to any drag shows, I would like to ask parents whether they have any firearms in their home and whether they're locked up appropriately.

50:04What's a good way to broach that topic that won't make people uncomfortable or alienate my kids? Thanks. God, that's an interesting question. I would ask people, if you live in somewhere where you think people have a lot of firearms, I would say, listen, do you have firearms in your home, and are they locked up appropriately? That's okay. I don't think people would be offended. People who are good gun owners are not offended by things like that. In my experience, people who aren't the lunatics who just think you should be able to wander around with firearms all the time, and just not take good safety care.

50:37Many gun owners are safety conscious, extremely safety conscious. So I would just ask them, and don't worry about your kids. You're trying to protect them and you're not being overly, I think you should ask. I had that happen to me once in San Francisco. There was a guy who had just joined the FBI and I went out of the room and he had his gun out showing the kids the gun and the safety was not on and I wanted to kill him. I was like, I'm going to call the FBI on you. Like, what the fuck? It didn't ask me if it was okay. That's so inappropriate. Totally inappropriate. And I was like, he's like, oh, you just don't like guns?

51:12I'm like, no, not necessarily. I just think you should ask a parent if you want them to see a gun or have it around them. It's like, these things go off. She has to do. That's all. I don't think this is about her kids. I think this is about her. And that's important. Okay. Explain. Well, I have a lot of fears around my kids and guns. Yeah. And it causes a lot of stress in my life. And that's important. And if I can do things to relieve that stress, that should be taken into account. If you look at the actual stats, the likelihood a kid is going to get killed by a handgun at a play date, the drive to the play date is much more dangerous.

51:50Yeah, of course. 60%, I think, of deaths from handguns are someone in the house has a depressive event, suicidal ideation, and thinks, I know how to end this all. There's a gun upstairs, and they go upstairs, and they kill themselves. Yeah, the availability. And just the fact that people have kids and are having playdates probably means they're fairly responsible people. So I want to be clear, the data shows your fears are probably not what I'd call, there are bigger dangers than kids, your kid being killed at a play date by a gun. Now, having said that, if it causes you a lot of stress, you have to decide you're going to be known as that mom.

52:34I mean, I don't I'm sorry, but when you call me and say, do you have firearms and are they locked up before you let your kid come over for a play date? I understand. I'm a progressive. I get it. I say, no, we do not. You do not need to be worried. And then I'm like, that's that mom. So but that might be worth it to you. You might say, I don't care. It gives me a sense of comfort and relief. I think this is a very personal issue. Yeah, it is. I think it's fine. I wouldn't be offended if I was a gun owner. If someone asked me, I'd be fine. They're fine. I'm not offended that, oh, that's that mom.

53:11No, I think it's fine. I mean, I think it's fine. I would not be mad about someone asking about that at all. I would not. If they thought I had a gun, and I would not. I wouldn't say that mom. Usually it's over like snacks. like I'm giving my kids Ritz crackers that's just the way it's going or you know I mean I would be more like the danger is to the kids that live in that house the danger around firearms is that the kid is bored looking around, finds a shoebox finds a gun, starts playing with it and something, you know, tragedy occurs anyway but see this is the kind of conversation that's uniquely American Yeah.

53:53In a bad way. Yeah. And we just shouldn't be having these conversations in this type of listener mail. It's just so insane that we've let it come this far, that this is now something a mom needs to worry about, whether she should prophylactically be asking questions around where her kids play. I don't know where she lives, but if she's in a red state, it is a good question. It is like lots of people have guns in their homes and lots of guns. I did walk into one Silicon Valley house and it was a someone, a venture capitalist woman. And I brought my sons a beautiful house and it was some crazy party they were having.

54:32There was like a camel there. It was that kind of party. And I was like, I'm taking my kids to see a camel. So, and I walked into the, her husband's office. They've since gotten divorced and he had guns everywhere, all like out and everywhere on a wall. Like antique guns or a farm? That and all kinds. He loved a gun. He loved a lot of beautiful antique firearms. And my kids were immediately riveted. And I had to spend the whole party keeping him out of that room. I was like, you're not going to that room. They just wanted to see and touch these things. And I was like, oh, for fuck's sake. There were so many guns.

55:06It was crazy. And I didn't know if they were safe or not. I couldn't tell because they were right there. And I always feel like if there's a gun, it's going to go off. I'm assuming it's going to go off at some point. My godfather, just to take this really to a depressing place, my godfather killed himself with an antique gun. Charlie Evans, this wonderful, very successful man, you know, kind of a baller, lived in the Hollywood Hills, beautiful wife, like had the life, right? And lost his business. Wife told him she was leaving him and went into the garage, pulled out some very expensive antique gun, put it to his chest.

55:42I'm so sorry. Oh, a long time ago. Well, this is gone. This is taking a direction. Really, really rocked my mother. Ask the parents. Be that mother, mother. And thank you for saying, Karen Scott and Scott and Kara. But don't worry about how you act. But don't ask about Ritz crackers, okay? Just don't do it. All right. If you've got a question of your own you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions, your favorite part.

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58:24Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. So my prediction comes back to AI. I do think we're going to see, I think the first realization of all the catastrophizing that's going around at NAI is going to come to light in the next 12 to 18 months, or it's going to happen in the next 12 to 18 months. We just don't know if it's, we might not find out about it till after. But essentially you have an invasion of Europe and you have an individual, Putin, who horribly miscalculated and is losing thousands of soldiers a week. His popularity is going down. And this war is literally life or death for him. if he if this ends up in a stalemate slowly but surely that means a loss for russia because we have more resources i believe and more staying power the russian economy will start to go down if he has if he loses if he picks up and leaves i think he'll either be murdered by his own people or it's just not there are a lot he has to there are a lot of bad options here for him He horribly miscalculated the Ukrainian army and the support of the West.

59:35There is one thing. The shortest distance between him and victory there is what? How does he win this war theoretically overnight? What would need to happen? Any thoughts? A bomb. A bomb. It's not really winning either. I think that's where most people would go, and it's a correct response. But I think he would be singular and isolated. Even China and India would turn against him if he used a bomb. It'd be over for him. I think he would have already used one if he didn't realize that he would be – I think his own people would kill him if he decided to – I mean, the fallout starts spreading across China.

1:00:10I mean, I don't think he can use a bomb. I think the shortest distance between him and victory is if Trump is reelected. If Trump is reelected, he wins the war. and so what I think you're going to see, so if I'm Putin and I have very smart people and I also think he's very intelligent, have done the game theory here, they think this war's not going well, we can't win it conventionally or through kinetic power, our fastest path to a victory in Ukraine is the following and that is if Trump gets reelected. So we need our best and brightest, we need our assets overseas to use generative AI and every tool possible to come up with misinformation that results in a Trump victory.

1:00:55And I think you're going to see the mother of all and where they're going to take advantage of porous social media platforms and people who are not immoral but amoral and will delay and obfuscate and want to take the money that they'll get from these campaigns as opposed to, you want to know where we need a pause. For 90 days before the election, social media should have a pause on anything political. Yeah, that's true. That's where we need a fucking pause. You know, I've been hearing from a lot of, I live in Washington. I run into a lot of lawyers and just type death department type people. They're like, this case that the government has is quite dangerous for Trump.

1:01:30This espionage, this essentially the documents case. They are like, this is like serious. And so it may derail him. I'd never heard them say that. They're always like, oh, he'll get out of this this way. Well, I hope you're right. But if history is any indicator, he's going to get to run for president. Guess who's in prison, Elizabeth Holmes. Like, it does ultimately get you. I know it doesn't, but go ahead. My prediction is the following, is that there are a group of very smart, I mean, they're going to spend, if we're spending, if just the U.S. is spending$60 or$70 billion a year on this war, imagine what Russia's spending, and it's got an economy one-twelfth of size.

1:02:07So if you're Putin, don't you think, why don't we take$5 billion and get the smartest scientists and rally all of our assets, all of our spies in the United States, and the best and brightest, psychologists, linguists, and start testing the shit around, out of misinformation, that depositions Biden and elevates Trump. That's what I would be doing. Because the shortest path to victory in Ukraine for Russia is very simple. If Trump is elected, they win the war. If Trump is not elected, they're going to lose this war. It's that simple. I don't know. I think Trump's got a lot of problems with his own party.

1:02:44Look, Lindsey Graham, well, he turns all the time, doesn't he but he seems pretty uh stuck on uh on uh on ukraine like in defending them there's a lot of republicans who i'm not the prediction is whether trump will win or not if you look at the map and issues trump looks really weak trump right right now it looks like unless something weird happens it looks like biden handily beats him yeah but the odds of ending this war are the the best odds they have is to get trump back in office so you're about to see the mother of all AI-generated misinformation around this election. Well, they could just have to get Ron DeSantis in.

1:03:22He's another one. You know what I mean? Like, he's been questioning it. That's a good point. They just have to get him, and then they'll take him over. And Trump is harder to get in. So if I were the Russians, I'd back Ron DeSantis. That's actually a wrinkle I hadn't thought about. That's interesting. Why would you back Trump? He's trouble. Like, you never know what he's going to do, and DeSantis, you kind of do. Yeah, but he's definitely, because he's the ultimate useful idiot. I mean, he really is. Yeah, but DeSantis feels the same. I just feel like he's the same. And we'll see. We'll see. You know, he's got so much money back in him, DeSantis.

1:03:50It's kind of, at least here in the Valley, he's definitely got. So did Hillary. I get it, but I don't know. People do think he's got to come back in. I think he actually has a lot to run on. Yeah. I mean, we were on opposite sides of this last one. You said he brightens up a room by leaving it, and you're right. He's not very charming. No, I agree. He's got$100 million, I think, already raised. and he has a strong case to make to people who are going to be receptive about his track record. If you've noticed, it's like, well, we love Trump, but he's going to jail. That's essentially his message.

1:04:22So I think a lot of people are making that calculation, which is why they're giving him money versus Trump. And I get that Trump's super popular and may get to it, but I don't know. I just feel like maybe DeSantis might be the one or someone else. If you think about who are the beneficiaries of this tsunami of AI-generated misinformation, is it Trump or is it DeSantis? The answer might be yes. Yeah, right, exactly. They might just do it for both. Or they'll just go the other way and start circulating just a ton of misinformation around Trump. Yeah, well, he's already doing that to DeSantis about his wife with cancer, whether she had cancer or not, and another thing.

1:05:00They've been doing a lot of it just explicitly. And you know who's going to get a lot of attention? Oh, wow. Who? You know, it's going to get a lot of attention is Vice President Harris. Yes. Well, so far, not yet, but they will. Speaking of vice presidents, another thing someone was talking about, which I hadn't thought about, is Trump's pick of a VP will be critically important. If he goes the carry leg crazy route, it's problematic. If he goes to a more Tim Scott kind of pick, that's a better, you know, it moves him closer to the center. And so anyway, it's an interesting situation politically.

1:05:34We'll see. We'll see. But right now, the debt ceiling looks like it's on its way to being passed. So old Joe Biden, old Joe Biden seems to have been doing pretty well for a doddering old man. Anyway, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Scott, read us out. Today's show is produced by Laura Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Dertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Miel Saverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

1:06:08Cara, have a wonderful weekend. Thanks. You too.

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1:08:03Thank you.