Epic Games Wins Against Google, COP 28, and Guest Naomi Alderman

23:44Yeah, I didn't take it. Softball. Softball. Softball. Softball. Which one would you drink if you had to pick? Oh, I would. The idea of nacho cheese flavored spirit just sounds disgusting to me. So charged lemonade it is. Death lemonade for Scott. Yeah, I would do charged lemonade. I do limoncello after dinner. Do you? I'm finally, I'm confident enough in my masculinity where I order limoncellos. I used to be very self-conscious about it. It is kind of ladylike. That's very ladylike of you. And I order two skips of vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup. Like I'm literally a nine-year-old girl on her birthday.

24:20and a limoncello. A limoncello. Oh, my God. I got to say, that's very ladylike. Do they make that suit for a man? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, let's get to our first big story.

24:34Nearly 200 countries have approved the global pact that calls for transitioning away from fossil fuels. This pact was reached at COP28, the UN's global climate summit. After much debate, it's the first deal to explicitly curb fossil fuels in 30 years of these agreements. It's trying to say major cutbacks are needed to keep global temperatures rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. We've missed everything. There was a big argument over the wording. Instead of phasing out, they had to do transitioning from. They did use the word fossil fuel. It was in Dubai, and it was run by someone who runs the oil company.

25:09There was a lot of oil company people there doing their cosplaying, their virtue signaling. It includes a tripling the amount of renewable energy like wind and solar installed around the world, as well as pledges to restrict methane emissions and halt carbon emissions entirely by mid-century. Again, this person leading the summit, Sultan Al-Jabr, runs the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. They're also working on renewable energy, obviously. There's nothing legally binding about it or incentives to have these oil producers do anything. A lot of critics, including former Vice President Al Gore, said the deal had cavernous loopholes that allow some countries to get new oil exploration with room for transitional fuels like natural gas.

25:51You know, we are hurtling towards a real problem here if we don't get together on this. Of course, smaller, less developed countries are saying the people who actually caused all this, which is developed countries, have gotten the pass and now they have an energy poverty and can't keep up. And so they're stuck in their same thing. So I don't know. Any thoughts? Probably the biggest criticism we get, other than my dick jokes, is that we don't talk enough about the climate crisis. And I don't know about you. I don't speak to it because I feel like I have no domain expertise in it. Oh, I just interviewed Rajiv Shah, who runs the rocket.

26:27Well, then you're an expert. What's the answer? Well, he's an expert because they're doing a lot of focus on it. And they're doing all kinds of initiatives with IKEA, the foundation and the Bezos Earth Fund and everything else. I think he's really worried about the implications of these countries being asked to do things they can't afford, right? That they can't do it. That's right. And he calls it energy poverty. And I think one of the things that's difficult is that there's no binding here and the inability. I think he feels that individual billionaires deciding on these things is a problem, that we've got to get a global initiative.

27:04I think the mistrust in organizations is a problem, according to him. But that this is, you know, there'll be a mix of tech solutions here, but that's not going to be exclusively that there needs to be a much stronger ability of government to agree on these things. He did thought it was more bipartisan than I think it is. Obviously, he was talking a lot about nuclear energy, because renewables, most people agree, is not the way to get there completely. and finding ways to do like what we did in Europe after World War II with these developing countries to get them energy, not poor, right? That they can't develop anything.

27:44And he said a lot of things are moving faster and things are cheaper. Another thing he said, I'm just going through a range of things, all the battery stuff is being used to buy rich people cars, you know, electric vehicles, which could, you know, the battery is a good solution for a lot of these developing nations. And of course, there's China, always China. What are they going to do? Because they're obviously a great producer of this. EVs are growing slower, but inevitably we're going to head to EVs at some point. But these climate disasters are not fewer and far between now, as you know. Let me ask you, if we're not the experts on it, because 2023 is now officially the hottest year on record.

28:25We are hardling. Until next year, exactly. Everyone feels they can't do anything. I want you to talk about it from a marketing point of view. How do you get, you have to have these initiatives that everybody agrees on and not spend a lot of time on, which of course took forever, these words like transitioning away versus just getting rid of fossil fuels, which did finally get said, but it's a lot of posturing versus, and it takes 20 years to do so, to make that statement. I know it sounds crazy, but how do you get people to be motivated by this? Young people certainly are. I mean, there's two ways to go.

28:58You could try to appeal to people's fear and say that weather is going to be used as a weapon against us, that these coal-producing nations are trying to create mass migration. You could try and appeal to their nationalistic instincts. I don't think that's the way to go. You could do what insurance companies do and try to appeal to people's paternal and maternal instincts, and that is if you care about your kids, you get life insurance and you start thinking about climate change. I don't, the thing that I don't think is useful is that we have fallen into this cold comfort that's a direct adjunct of the idolatry of innovators where we believe that climate change will be fixed by two yet-to-be-named students at MIT in a dorm who are going to come up with some algae-eating technology.

29:44And we're not only going to solve climate change, but we're going to get rich. And here's the bottom line. Young people and developing nations are angry because through the 20th century, my generation and the generations before us, engaged in what was the most prosperous or most lucrative arbitrage in history. And that is fossil fuels being turned into hospitals and transportation and everything. And Vaseline requires petroleum. I mean, it's just, and fossil fuels have been the gift that has kept on giving. And we didn't take enough, We didn't tax basically everything enough such that we had the funds to help developing nations who haven't had a chance to recognize or engage in that ultimate arbitrage or to make the requisite investments in whatever it is, nuclear or wind or solar.

30:32But I think we're just going to have to. And by the way, let me come back to this thing. Davos is coming up. And people are very critical of Davos. I think it's really important that people get together and words matter and make statements like this. And for the Gulf nations who have a vested interest in the continued use of fossil fuels, but also a transition away from that, I think it's important that they get together, they talk about this, and even these kind of statements, regardless of how substantive or not substantive they are, I think they're important. The problem is that until you tax something based on its sustainability, whatever it is, its fair trade, its supply chain, and the carbon it produces at the source of production, companies will continue to engage in gymnastics where they offshore pollution, right?

31:21And I just don't think there's any getting around it. I think it requires leadership where you say, if you care about the future, it's going to be expensive. We have to start taxing carbon emissions. We have to start taxing these things. Which is more unlikely. Let's just say, you're right about the words, because it's the first time they agreed to move away from fossil fuels. It's the first time they used the word fossil fuels. It is something, and it's very sweeping. And I think the problem is a lot of people feel like, well, they make these sweeping states and nothing happens. That doesn't, that's not always the case.

31:56They decided to fix AIDS or, you know, to try to solve AIDS problems across the world. And for the, in a large part, they really did as they moved together, right? But it took a minute or two to get it going. I think what scientists are worried about is obviously the delays. Now, a lot of countries wanted it to be complete phase out of fossil fuels. And that was obviously a big pushback. But it's also not just from, say, the Saudi Arabias, but also vast-growing countries like India. So it's an accelerate the global shift away, and this is the word they use, in a just, orderly, and equitable manner.

32:31They did agree to quit adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere entirely by mid-century. Again, tripling renewable energy, methane emissions, which is a short-term solution, I think. You know, I agree with you. I think there's some, they had shied away from using even the word fossil fuels, which that fact that they're doing that is that it took 30 years. You know, there was a good quote from this guy and his name is Wopke Hoekstra, the European Commissioner for Climate Action, said, humanity has finally done what is long, long, long overdue. 30 years, 30 years we spent to arrive at the beginning of the end of fossil fuels.

33:14I'm not an environmentalist. I've always said that after the last human draws her last breath, the Earth is going to belch for 50 years and it's going to be as if we were never here. I don't, I think the Earth is going to be just fine. It's us that are going to have to deal with mass migration and super fires. And the problem is, the problem is we're not electing people who do their job and their job is to think long term because at the end of the day, people. Yes. These are political issues. 100, these will turn into political issues and societal. You know, people are going to, the voters act in their self-interest 364 days a year in the short term, but one day a year, they typically think long-term when they vote.

33:54And unless our elected representatives make these huge, sweeping, massive scale investments that we, the shade of which they will never, or we will never sit under, no one's going to do it. Not a tech innovator, not an individual. It's got to be government making coordinated cross-border massive investments and taxation and huge infrastructure investments to go after this. Otherwise, it's just going to get worse. It's also, it is a business opportunity. It's certainly a business opportunity for the next thing. This is a really interesting line from the Times' piece on it. Yet many politicians, environmentalists, and business leaders gathered in Dubai hoped it would send a message to investors and policymakers that the shift away from fossil fuels was unstoppable.

34:40This is how a lot of other things, global initiatives have happened. The problem is time is not on our side, right? It's just not on our side as we're seeing more and more climate. And a lot of people feel, a lot of scientists, if you're just reading on the stuff around the Arctic, which is just disturbing what's happening up in the Arctic. And that's just one area of the world, right? It's not coming back. So that means rising sea levels, coastal cities. I think that's the issue is that we can finally decide that fossil fuels aren't good, but it's already decided for us. Those islands that are disappearing.

35:13One of the things that I talked about with Rajesh Shah was fisheries. The fish that people depend on to eat is dying off really quickly. And that creates all kinds of social problems. You said something that really stuck with me, and that is the biggest danger here or one of the things that's gotten in the way of progress or a call to action is the incrementalism. And that is you said something that did register with me. You said humans are very adaptable. So if everything had been as it was in 2022, and then in 2023, and in the last 50 years, we had three superfires in California. And then in one year, we had 18 superfires and a third of the Arctic shelf broke off.

36:00Everyone would be like, what the fuck? All hands on deck. This is war. Go on a war footing. Double the taxes on gasoline. triple the investments in nuclear, put out a carbon metric footprint on every individual and publish it on every company. But because every year it's just gotten a little bit worse, we're the frog that wakes up in boiling water. And we're adapting. And it's not a good adaptation. No, it's not. And then we also, I think the idea you're talking about technologies is carbon capture and storage. It's just not, well, you might want to accelerate that. It just means We want to burn more fuel so that we can capture it.

36:44And so we have to move to alternatives, not just regular renewables that we know about solar, wind, et cetera, but nuclear. And that's where tech can really step up. Yeah, but a lot of it, I mean, again, so much of it just comes down to coal in a few markets. It's the two big puffs of carbon into the atmosphere were, one, the suburbanization of America, which was basically a lifestyle choice around the car to increase the quality of our life, and two, the industrialization of China, mostly fueled by coal. So even if you look at the fastest growing populations in the world, they have a lower per capita carbon emission footprint.

37:24It's basically been the lifestyle and economic choices of the U.S. and China and also the impending choices of developing markets that went in on the same game. Two final things. They did, speaking of coal, they had an earlier draft of the agreement, urge nations to stop issuing permits for new coal fire plants, according to New York Times. China and India pushed back as they were too overly strict and the language was removed. The other part, the last part, is a lot of African nations said that it shouldn't be at the same pace. And then without financial help, they cannot. They want theirs. They want their, they needed to exploit their own gas and oil reserves in order to grow rich enough to fund clean energy transition.

38:02They've got to fund it. Or we have to pay for it for them, since we are the world's biggest, we're the wealthiest and we're the biggest emitters of these things. Anyway. I'm sorry, if we can pay Iran not to spend, you know, not to get heavy water or uranium, we should be able to figure out a way to pay these nations not to build coal-fired plants or at least offer them subsidies to go to. It's a big issue. And I think, well, OK, we talked about New Year's resolutions. We should probably make a more concerted effort to have more guests on Pivot, similar to the guess you just had on. Yes, I have.

38:33I have a lot of climate change people on that one. I actually, it's a big issue. Many years ago, because tech had talked about it for so much many years ago, I did a column where I said the world's first trillionaire is going to be a climate change technologist. I made it up, but I wanted to get people in that direction. We will do more in 2024 on climate change and we'll focus on the technology of it because that's an area we can talk about somewhat intelligently. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, We'll discuss the repercussions of Google's antitrust loss and talk to Naomi Alderman about her new book, The Future.

39:06It's a terrific book.

39:30Their plan designs give your members more choice, which gives your members more ways to get on, stay on, and manage their meds. And that helps your business control your costs, because healthier members are better for business. Go to cmk.co.access to learn more about helping your members stay adherent. That's cmk.co.access.

39:57Support for this show comes from Indeed. Indeed Sponsored Jobs help you stand out and hire fast. With Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. And listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Vox Business. Just go to Indeed.com slash Vox Business right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash Vox Business. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.

40:45Scott, we're back with our second big story. Google was dealt a major blow this week in the Epic Games case with a jury ruling the company violated antitrust laws with its Android App Store an in-app billing system. The unanimous verdict from a jury, as I said, was reached after three hours of deliberation following a four-week trial in San Francisco federal court. The judge in the case will decide the remedy next year, but Google says it will appeal the verdict. Obviously, it's opposite from what happened to Apple, which won a similar case. It's unusual to have a jury trial, so it was in the hands of actual consumers.

41:18Google might be forced to allow other companies to have competing app stores on Android phones and tablets. Developers could also potentially charge users without giving a cut to Google. That could be a remedy. You know, the big app stores, I think the time has passed. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said after the verdict, the dominoes are going to start falling here. The end of 30 % is in sight again, but Apple did prevail over Epic in a similar trial. It was appealed and upheld this past year, which I think is confusing to some people. So Google's also facing other antitrust issues with the Justice Department.

41:55In May is when they have the closing arguments about that. And then there's also another antitrust trial. So what do you think about all these? So just a disclosure, I'm an investor in Epic. But my editor-in-chief at Prop2Media, Jason Stavros, is a lawyer. And he said this was just pure malpractice from a legal standpoint. By whom? By Google. To choose a jury trial, he said, was just idiotic. and also that the reason that Google lost and Apple won is because Apple is much more professionally run. And that is when you conduct discovery against Apple, you don't find them shitposting or speaking casually about them getting away with shit or saying fuck regulators.

42:35Like that kind of language and that kind of behavior, those kinds of emails at Apple are severely frowned upon. And at Google, it's just sort of the wild west, like, oh, the romper room children just having at it on their Slack channel. Supposedly, the zeitgeist or the culture at Google is just a plainest attorney's dream. Yeah, it had been. I remember years ago thinking, why are they putting all this stuff in emails? There was an issue around the destruction of emails too, not keeping them, but anyway. And Apple is just much more buttoned up and much more professional. I would imagine that they get, I mean, think about it.

43:13Apple doesn't have leaks. You know, I'm pretty sure that Apple has this basically orientation, which I would affectionately call a re-education camp that says, imagine everything you write, do or say here is going to be in court. And just think about it because the level of discovery on Apple versus Google was just night and day. And also Apple was decided by a judge on its legal merits and Google, the Google trial was decided by a jury. I actually think this is the most significant business story of the week that wasn't really discussed because this will embolden and give a lot of confidence to judges to start ruling against these companies around antitrust issues as it relates to.

43:56Yeah, because juries. Juries. Yeah, I was surprised it was a jury trial. I'd be interested to know what would happen if Apple had a jury trial. And it will have real impact. I just, I had to bug out for a minute just a couple of minutes ago because my 13-year-old is home. And I can tell you with 110 % certainty, he is right now within about seven seconds of walking through the door on Epic's Fortnite, I think it's called Chapter 5, and they buy stuff. And the fact that now 30, 50, 80 % of the commission that used to go to Apple or the Google Play Store will now be held by the, I mean. Well, not yet.

44:41There's going to be a P.L.F. Yeah, but you know the remedy. Where the remedy ends up is that that fee is going to go down. Yeah. Whatever the remedy is, whatever that tax was, whether it was 15 % or 30%, you know it's coming down. Yeah. Apple should act proactively right now. They are kind of, haven't they? It's not fully 30 % for everybody or everything, but it's that you don't have a choice, right? Let me be accurate. it. It's sometimes 30, sometimes it's 15. Sometimes it's not at all. It's very haphazard. I think that's been pointed out by lots of app developers. Yeah, but this is the definition of anti-competitive.

45:19If Tesla, I'm making up this analogy, so it might not be the right one. But if Tesla, if you said, all right, my seats are old and I'm replacing my seats, but I'm going to replace them with non-Tesla part seats. And automobile Automobile companies make all of their money on repairs and parts. They charge onerous fees on maintenance and parts. They make no money selling the car. And so if Tesla said, okay, we know if you use non-Tesla high margin products for repairs, and if we find out, if you do this and we find out 100 % of the time, we shut off the car. And that's basically what they've done here.

45:57They said, okay, this person may have paid for the product, but if you want to give them an alternative platform to buy additional products within the product, we're turning off the game because we have total control of it. Yeah, yeah. And I think the bigger point you're making that, you know, there are 11 antitrust claims in this case that Epic Games had. And again, they make Fortnite, as Scott just pointed out. But Google's found fault on all of them by this jury. So it is, people could say it could preview what's going to happen in the other significant cases and will have a huge impact on Google's business.

46:35That is the worry, I think, in terms of profit making and everything else. So it definitely is a, it's a real shot across the bow for this company, because this is where like, whether it's ads where they have a foot up or it's the app store where they have a foot up. And that's not even its biggest, but the ad business antitrust trial is coming. The search one is with the Justice Department. the ad businesses in federal court in Virginia. These are significant, significant legal cases. I've got those numbers. It's 97 points of margin. I mean, and let me use a worse analogy. You use Delta Air. Delta is the only airline to get to Europe.

47:20The only airline. And if you go on Delta, if you want to go to Europe, it's the only airline. You have to use the Delta credit card, and then you have to use the credit card while you're there, and they take a 30 % surcharge on everything you buy while you're in Europe. I mean, they literally control, they have total domain over you while you are on another game or another platform because they're providing the underlying. And they say they will claim it's safety and with cybersecurity and all this stuff. Sure, and Barry Diller had the right analogy. It's like a credit card and credit cards take between one and a half and 3%.

47:55Yeah, well, we'll see what happens. The search trial with the Justice Department and also dozens of states are involved in that is by a judge in the U.S. District Court, as I said. He has not said, he said he didn't know how he was going to decide. But if he sides with the government, he could do a lot of things. Spinoffs, all kinds. There's going to be significant changes. I do not think they're going to win any of these cases, as I've said. The AdTech case, same thing, same kind of area. The Justice Department is saying it has to divest itself. another big case. And of course, there's the European cases.

48:29Google's in for a world of hurt. Apple's a little more protected, but Apple will have its time at the docket at the same time. Apple just hit an all-time high, by the way, the stock. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Anyway, they're much more protected. Okay, Scott, let's go to our friend of Pivot.

48:49Naomi Alderman is a bestselling author as well as a video game designer and a creative writing professor. So she hits all knocks with all we talked about today. Her newest book is titled The Future, and it tells the story of a trio of tech billionaires preparing for the impending apocalypse. It's a climate apocalypse. The Guardian called it a complex novel of ideas, slightly hidden inside a satirical dystopian tech thriller. Welcome, Naomi. So I've already done a book talk with you, which I really enjoyed. I think we had a great time because we're on the same page about tech CEOs, et cetera. But I want you to, Scott is not as familiar, and the things you've been talking about on this show of climate change and apocalypse, essentially, the power of tech billionaires, including the case against Google and Epic Games, so something you know about, and the overpower of tech and how they're going to be reined in.

49:38So you've created a world that's similar to ours in this book, but taken it to extremes. Talk about why you wanted to write about these people. Well, it occurs to me, actually, one of the reasons that I wanted to write about them was because I sold my previous book to Amazon for a TV show. And, you know, that's a great experience. But at the same time, I... The Power. The Power. The Power. My previous novel was The Power. It's a TV show on Amazon Prime. And you have to consider what you're becoming implicated in when you do that sort of thing. And the more that I considered it, the more I thought, oh.

50:17So I've worked in technology for many years now. I I create a video game called Zombies Run. I've been in a bunch of tech startups. I have seen how tech people think and operate, mostly great people. And at the start of 2017, I read that piece in The New Yorker that I think maybe we all read about the tech billionaires and their survival bunkers, where they were going to blast out the apocalypse. And I think if you've worked in tech, you read that and went, oh, yeah, I 100 % believe it. There's not even a question. That is exactly the thought process. And having read that and having gone, I think they're a bit evil.

51:03I think this is something that is so profoundly wrong that things have to make me pretty angry, Cara, for me to end up writing a novel about it. So the premise is they know about this apocalypse coming and they're preparing for it even as the rest of the world isn't. And people are trying to stop them. Talk about what the general premise is. Right. So, yeah. So the novel opens with three tech billionaires getting a little notification from their predictive software saying the apocalypse is coming, trying to get into the PJ private jet and to fly off to your bunkers to escape. Meanwhile, we flashback to find out that some people close to them, soon to be ex-wife, one of their children, one of their assistants has been watching them doing what they're doing and have been trying to work out how to stop them.

51:55So the novel is a sort of race between can this group of misfits stop them before the world collapses? So there's the line in the book about the impact where you wrote, the mental health of humanity continued to be strip-mined. And it's interesting because it has climate implications of coal and everything else. Is there a specific person in big tech that exists that you base this on you find particularly fascinating or horrifying? I mean, you know, the tech journalist Rebecca Eisenberg just did a very lovely review of this book on Goodreads where she goes through and she says, I think this one could be Larry Page or Sergey Brin.

52:36I think this now, obviously, I don't want to get sued by the richest people in the world. They're definitely not based on specific people. However, I mean, we're all looking at Elon, I think, and going, oh, we thought 15 years ago that you were actually incredible and you had a brilliant mind and you were working on some of the big problems. And now you seem to have gone crazy from power toxicity somehow. So I am interested by how somebody ends up calling some cave rescue people in Thailand paedophiles. I am very interested in how that happens, which is a real thing. I'm sure listeners to this know that.

53:18But I'm also interested in how power affects people and how the more power you get and the more people you have around you telling you that everything that you say is brilliant, the more insane you're actually likely to become. Sort of tease it up for Scott. It's nice to meet you, Naomi. So if you agree that this cohort of tech billionaires over-indexes in terms of neuroses or a lack of concern for the Commonwealth or mental illness or whatever you want to call it, I guess the question is, why? Is it their youth? Is it they're surrounded by so much idolatry of innovators that power corrupts them?

53:58Is it that the kind of person who's drawn to technology is more vulnerable? Is it their use of ketamine? I mean, why? Because there are very powerful people in Washington, D.C. There are very powerful people in other industries. But there's definitely seems to be a specific type of neuroses or, you know, I don't know what the term would be for it. Crazy. It's a brand of crazy. There's a certain kind of crazy. What do you think underpins it? And having worked in tech, because you've seen it, right, as have I, as has Scott. Oh, I love this question. Having been around these people and also having, you know, conducted some like in private interviews in order to research the book.

54:48I think these are great questions and I don't think we have to pick any one of those answers. I mean, are you guys familiar with the book The Power Broker by Robert Caro? Yes, of course. about the great builder of New York City. Right, right. I think Americans are familiar with this. Americans who are interested in politics are familiar with it. And maybe British people are not necessarily. So obviously that is a book that charts a guy going from being the kind of idealistic architect who wants to put baby changing stations in Central Park to becoming the kind of corrupt power monger who directs a road so that it goes round his friend's house.

55:32So how does this happen? Well, one thing is, if you're in a position where you've done something great to start off with, and everybody has gone, oh my God, you're amazing. So in the case of Robert Moses, he built Jones Beach. And everyone in New York City went, oh my God, this guy, he's a visionary, he's bright, he's energetic, he's young, he's capable. Why does he have to have term limits? Why does he have to have budget constraints? Just let this public-spirited civil servant free. And at the point that you do away with all of those term limits, checks and balances, at the point that you say to even founders of companies, well, there's no way you can be got rid of, then they start to go a bit crazy.

56:17A part of that is that a lot of people are then attracted to them who want them to use that totally inviolable power that they now have. for their benefit, they start getting offered quid pro quos. You know, they come a long way from the certainties that they used to have morally. I mean, something that I get into in the book as well is, you know, and I think we've seen this with Sam Bankman-Fried and the effect of altruism, that even if you think about the robber barons of the 18th, 19th century, they had a sort of basic feeling about what it meant to leave a legacy, which is based in a religious worldview.

57:01Now, I'm not saying we should go back to the religious worldview that they had, but we haven't then replaced that with any values other than the effect of altruism thing where you long-termism make up some imaginary people in the future, make up what they want, and then go and achieve that for them, which just seems like pretending you're in a science fiction story. One of the things that was interesting about this book is you started writing it in 2017. It was pre-COVID, pre-Chat GPT, pre-ELON, reading levels of crazy, and you anticipated a lot of it, of where it was going. Yes, that is correct.

57:34And I will try and use my powers for good in the future. Right. But when you think about the answer is, and I think you're right, they don't have, what you're talking about is principles, right? They don't have basic, and whatever you think of these rubberins, they had religious principles or they had values, I guess is a better word. And what are the values that in this book and also today for these people that they don't have any? It's just random. It's random. And effective altruism, which I think a lot of people are calling ineffective altruism, it seems kind of nonsense. It's nonsense. It's nonsense.

58:07It's nonsense. It's not even ineffective altruism, ineffective solipsism, because it ends up being a way of saying, you know, there's to give. It's like, no, it's very good for you to try and earn as much money as possible. So what are they left with? They're left with, well, I have to deliver shareholder value and individual choice and liberty is great. And actually, you know, those are kind of, they're not terrible as, you know, two of your 40 key guiding principles. But if they're the only two that you have, that is going to lead you into some deep trouble. So one of the things that I talk about in the book, so the novel has sections which are a sort of forum where people discuss what they think is going to be coming in terms of the apocalypse.

58:55And I have a character there who comes from a cult background. Now, I should say, the reason I did this is because when I talk to people who know the executive assistants for tech billionaires, one of the things I found out is a lot of those women, and they are all women, grew up in cults. That's a separate conversation. Anyway, so I have my character talking about, yeah, it's interesting, right? At the moment that you know that they grew up in cults, you go, oh, yeah, I see the links between that and a tech startup. So I have her talking about, she's on this forum and she talks about the golden rule, which is also, it's not going to take you all the way, but it's a great place to start, which is to say, if you don't like it, when someone does something to you, don't do it to anybody else.

59:49And this feels like a rule that is sadly missing from the modern internet. You know, sadly missing from both discourse and the wider way in which these companies are set up. Just like you read about people who run social media sites who won't let their children use them. And then you go, oh, what you've done there is violated the golden rule. And it's actually a very simple, nice little, you might say, mental heuristics. just go, is what I'm doing totally wrong? If it fails to pass this test, then it's totally wrong. But I think we've sort of thrown that out somehow. Scott? So how would you respond to the thesis that it's our fault, that if you tell a 30-something-year-old guy, and I would argue now a woman, that they're Jesus Christ, they're inclined to believe you, and that because we as voters and citizens don't put up the same guardrails for these individuals, if we had the same lack of guardrails or the same idolatry of any industry, they too would abuse that.

1:00:54And then it's really kind of our fault that we're absentee parents. I mean, I have a lot of sympathy with that, which is why obviously I'm writing about it, because if it's our fault, then we can change our minds. And then we can say, actually, we think that these industries and these platforms are so important now to humanity that you should not ever be able to be in the position where you can just buy one, just like you can't buy all the roads in the United States. Maybe that needs to have at least public oversight. I mean, this is something that Cara and I talked about when we did that event in Washington, D.C., is we need some laws now.

1:01:33You know, we've sort of, I feel maybe one of the things that's happened is we've been sidetracked into thinking that we can do activism by like putting a little badge on our Twitter profile or whatever, or, you know, doing a rant on threads. Can I interject then? Google just lost its jury case in San Francisco and you're in the video game industry and you understand the app stores, et cetera, et cetera. Do you think that's the movement towards it? This jury immediately, 11 counts, that they're predatory, essentially. I mean, that's exciting, isn't it? Am I allowed to be a bit excited about that without, I should say, having read The Judgment?

1:02:14I haven't read that yet. So, yeah, I feel like, I mean, I'm hopeful that there is a slow but steady movement towards saying, oh, no, we the people need to be regulating these things much more fiercely. Because, I mean, for me, the fact of the amount of misinformation about the current terrible war in the Middle East on Twitter, the fact that it's easier to find lies about it than truth, feels like, okay, at this point, this industry has shown that it is incapable of self-regulating. You know, they don't have journalistic... Right. But as an entrepreneur, the business model with 30 % cut, for example, creates a bad situation for creators like you.

1:02:59Right, it does. It's extremely difficult, actually. Yes. And, you know, you wouldn't, that is more of a cut than you pay to anybody else, even if you're, you know, writing a novel. There's no single organization out there that is taking 30%. And particularly not if you're handing it to them, ready to go, they haven't done anything. So, yeah, I like it. I think that will make it easier. If there was one remedy to help us rein in or, I don't know, modulate or whatever you want to call this, what would you like to see happen? All right. I'm afraid I'm going to give you an answer that is a bit more complicated than a magic wand, but I think it's important.

1:03:42We are living through what I have called the information crisis. This is not the first information crisis the human race has ever lived through. We had one after the Gutenberg printing revolution as well. we are now able to access every day all of us right we've we've been through it before the lot when we had the gutenberg revolution you know you must know the book um technopoly by neil postman he talks about how um after the gutenberg revolution one of the things that was needed was the invention of universal schooling like it's that serious and i think the magic wand if there is such a thing, is to take what we're currently living through extremely seriously in terms of, yes, there are laws that are needed.

1:04:32Yes, we need as a community to take action. We need to change social norms. But actually, I think if I were a young person today thinking, what can I work in that is going to make a difference? There are two things. One is working on not destroying our planet and helping to save it. And the second one is, how can we get through this information crisis as quickly and cleanly as possible without burning people at the stake, which is what happened in Europe for about 350 years after Gutenberg. So we needed schools, we needed indexes, we needed textbooks, we needed the invention of curriculums, ways for people to navigate through this sea of information without becoming mentally and emotionally destroyed.

1:05:18So that's short-term legislation, yes. Long-term. Last very quick question. If you had to be stuck in a bunker with a tech billionaire right now, which one would you pick? With a tech billionaire? I think I'd pick Bill Gates. It's Bill Gates. Why? Bill Gates. I'm telling you why. Because he said that he liked my novel. So that feels like we would get off to a fairly okay start. All right. That's not my choice. Why would you pick, Cara? Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban. He'd be a lot of fun. Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban. How about you, Scott? How about you, Scott? Who would he be with in a bunker?

1:05:57I think Larry and Sergey would have the best drugs, but probably Bill Gates. I think Bill Gates is the most interesting. And I think he's very smart and reasonable and nice. And I don't know. I've always been a fan of Bill Gates. I don't know. I think you'd talk your ear off. Anyway, last thing I want to ask you is that someday I would like to have power in my hand so I can zap Scott. I've thought of it all the time since I read your book and watched the show. So someday, hopefully, women will have zapping power and it would be great. I can do that for you. Okay, good. Naomi, this book is fantastic.

1:06:31Everybody should read it. It's a very thoughtful book and not just because a lesbian is one of the heroes. I really appreciate it. Again, the book is the future and the author is Naomi Alderman. Thanks, Naomi. Thank you so much. It's been great. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

1:07:15No generic answers. No frustration. Visit sierra.ai to learn more.

1:07:24Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin? Or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today.

1:07:52Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. I was trying to decide between two. I did my predictions event, which you did not ask about. Yeah, I did ask about, didn't I? Oh, I asked about it on the S-Tare thing, didn't I? Yeah, in our therapy session. How was your predictions event, Scott? Yeah, 20 ,000 people. Yeah? How many people? people registered. I think about 8 ,000 people showed up. Anyways. Wow. Okay. All right. Good. Do they pay you for that? No. No, I do it because I think it's interesting. And no, it's not paid. I don't know. Interesting. 8 ,000 is a big audience, Scott Galloway. Can I ask you one more question?

1:08:28How many predictions did you make? How many predictions? I think I ended up with like 15 or 16, something like that. So my two relevant to this show or tech that I made. One, I always make a tech stock pick and I got it right last year. I picked Meta. I just thought Meta was so ridiculously undervalued. When I made the prediction, it was at 80 bucks, cash volcano, anyways. And it had been over punished because of the metaverse. And this year, my tech, big tech stock pick is Alphabet. And I just think, I've been looking at Gemini and my thesis is that the actual LLMs will be somewhat commoditized and that the generative AI that wins will be the one with one, not even the one with the most compute, because that's sort of table stakes.

1:09:16They're all going to have to have massive compute. But the one that has the greatest fodder or coal to shove into the furnace, specifically writes to crawl information. And it just sort of got me thinking about the proprietary access that Gemini will have. And I started thinking about, Now, you can turn on access to your Gmail and it will be able to go into your email and go, Scott, we see that you have 11 speaking gigs lined up. We see where they are. Here is exactly, we're going to send you alerts on when you should book the airfare. And we know that you always eat at Casa Dona in Miami when you're there.

1:09:52Do you want us to make reservations because we see you're there? It just, it strikes me. It looks, it could look at your YouTube viewing patterns. It could look at all of the text of your emails. It could, it strikes me, it's gonna have such an extraordinary amount of information that it'll be to be able to proactively, I'm going to Florida. I get my teeth cleaned when I'm in Florida. It has taken me an hour or an hour and a half to figure it out. And at some point, Dr. Craig Spodak in Delray Beach will be Gemini compatible and the AIs will just speak to each other. And the AI will go, Scott, whenever he's in Florida, gets his teeth cleaned, when is your next available appointment?

1:10:31And it'll look at my calendar and give Dr. Spodak's AI, Gemini-capable AI, the windows, and they'll do it in a microsecond. And I'll get an alert saying, before we confirm, we want to confirm your teeth cleaning. And I'll go. Yeah. So you're, now I think they're in a world, if they don't get, if they lose these ad and they're going to have to replace some big businesses. That's all, you know what I mean? Ads and search. They'll be able to push off the remedies. They'll do the big tech, thousands of lawyers, delay and obfuscation. It'll be years before the remedy actually takes effect. YouTube, and I've learned this from you and I started looking into it.

1:11:08YouTube, unlike many of the, YouTube's actually the fastest. If you think of YouTube's cable, it's the fastest growing cable company in the world. It is, indeed. I've said this a number of times. And so when I look at their, what still is the largest toll booth in the history of mankind, specifically search, which is still growing low double digits. It's when I look at YouTube being the fastest growing, one of the fastest growing media companies in the world, and I look at the amount of what I'll call data capital they have or data coal they have to feed into Gemini that other people won't have access to.

1:11:41I think this is the year of Google. Just so you know, meta platforms went up. Just it started December 13th, 14th of last year. 2022 is$121. And now it is$332. dollars. That's a good choice. Yeah, it's basically in November when I made the prediction, it's basically tripled since then. I made three stock picks, Airbnb, Meta, and Chinese internet stocks. And I got Airbnb and Meta both outperformed the NASDAQ substantially. Chinese internet stocks substantially underperformed the NASDAQ. Anyways, and the other one, and I've come - Alphabet's not up much in a year. Well, also part of my prediction, and I didn't mention this, is on a relative valuation basis, while Alphabet has had a good year, it looks not cheap, but reasonably valued relative to the rest of big tech right now because they look flat-footed.

1:12:33It's up 35 % over the past year. The second prediction is, I think by, and I get the timing wrong, by the end of 24, the end of 25, Musk is going to lose control of Twitter. He's either going to sell it or be forced to sell it. I think there's so many existential risks he's created for himself. One, and I actually said this on my predictions, Doug, But I think there's a non-zero probability now that he's violated the terms of service of the App Store of Apple. And that would, in my view, probably be, if not the final nail, a pretty big spike in the coffin of Twitter. It's a big call from Tim Cook.

1:13:08That's a big call. Yeah, but this would be, think about this, this would be so quintessentially Tim Cook. He waits. He's thoughtful. and I really do think that putting Alex Jones back on the platform has really upset a lot of people. I think there's sort of like, is this guy really? Just into that void, guess who floated the idea of working with him? Kevin McCarthy. Floated the idea of working with who? With Elon Musk. He wants to work on AI and he was floating. He's looking for money. He's looking for a job. I get it. But of course, Kevin McCarthy would go for Musk of all the many people he has choices of in California.

1:13:47That's what he - But there's that. There's also an existential risk of, keep in mind what he's done here around the new X.AI, the structure he's trying to basically, it's thievery. He's essentially said, okay, everyone, they handle the media well. We're going to give 25 % to Twitter shareholders. No, what he's doing is taking 75 % of the assets they own for himself. Yeah. That's what he's doing. And by the way, some of those investors are like Sequoia and Andrew. I think he's going to have shareholder lawsuits from investors at Twitter. I think they're going to say, what the fuck are you doing?

1:14:18You wipe out our equity because you can't control. You have no impulse control. And now you want to take 75 % of the assets here for your own AI purposes. I think he has lawsuits. I think he has de-platforming risk. I think the feds are fed up with this guy. And also the people who - Flying over at Neuralink. He's starting a university. Quite frankly, I'm a fan of that. I think we need more innovation and more pressure on universities. But so anyways, but. I don't think it'll ever happen. I do think by the end of the year, I think he might even just throw up his arms. And when it starts, when the virus jumps the lab of Twitter and starts infecting SpaceX, which is becoming the new or the next golden goose or Tesla, I think he and his, I guess he doesn't have a border ambassador, so you know what?

1:15:09It's not your adventures in media should come to a quick end. I think he'll declare victory and leave. Yeah, he lost a Scandinavian Tesla suit, union suit, just so you know. He's that. Of course, there's the dokes around the incel car, the cyber truck, see how good it is. You know, he's got a lot of federal people on his ass. I just think this is going to be a rough Q1 and Q2. He's got a lot. He's got a lot. He's got a lot. But then again, can I just push back on one thing? SpaceX just got valued at$180 billion. He's as rich as ever, if not richer. Yeah, and I used to say, people say, well, he won't be able to make interest payments.

1:15:50No, it won't be a function of interest payments. Someone told me he's not very liquid. Well, he's already pledged 60 % of his Tesla shares. I just think at some point, even a guy like that goes, this just isn't worth it. I think that Twitter is about to become just a constant source. It's like death by a thousand, not even cuts, but death by a thousand shivs. I think the next couple quarters are going to be, what happens when everyone starts leaving because they realize their equity value and their options are worth nothing? And maybe, who knows, maybe some people at Twitter who actually have kids of their own go, you know what, I'm just not down for this Alex Jones stuff.

1:16:28I do think it's going to get worse. I think he's got, you know, I know everyone was focused on his mother thing. If his mother's not speaking to him honestly, instead of being this kind of feral cheerleader who's on the payroll like everyone who works for him, I just don't think he has anyone. If my son behaved like this, there would be hell to pay. And then pretending, you know, he wants to save humanity. He needs some guardrails and he doesn't – he don't got none. He don't got none. That's the biggest problem. Anyway, so I think Alphabet is the best big tech performer in 2024. Revenger, the Empire Strikes Back at the Hands of Gemini, YouTube.

1:17:08And I think that by the end of 24, maybe 25, Musk is going to decide that Juice is just not worth the squeeze here. That's two years. You're not getting 25 end of 25. You don't get to say someday he's not going to be in it. Just all right, thanks, Jim. Someday, yeah. I guess technically that's not, yeah. At some point he won't own it. That's not much of a prediction, yeah. Yeah, I think it's going to spiral even worse. There's no guardrails. But we'll see. But he's got a lot of money. So anyway, Scott, I have to say, it's been another fantastic. We've grown. We've grown individually and together.

1:17:41I've shrunk. I used to be 6 '3", now I'm 6 '2". True story. We've grown in size of the podcast. We've grown personally, except for your penis jokes, which continue to be terrible. I'd like you to improve on those next year. Make them funnier. I'm going to hire you a comedy writer, I think. I'm thinking of it. Did you know your ears, your nose, and your penis are the only things that keep growing? No joke in there. That's actually a fact. Okay. Okay. On that note, we want to hear from you, especially about how you need Scott to have better penis jokes. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

1:18:16Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. I also want to throw it out to our fans. I get stopped. Oh, I got stopped a lot this week for some reason. We love when you come up to us. It's the nicest feeling. Someone saying, hey, it's you. I love your show. It means a lot to us. And not just because we're narcissistic fucks. But that too. That too. But we like it and we love your feedback. You know, you don't have to agree with us, but we're trying our best to be as genuine as we are. And we will correct ourselves when we're wrong. At least I will. Anyway, that's the show.

1:18:53Happy 2023. Welcome to 2024. Scott, have a beautiful, beautiful holiday season. Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, whatever you happen to celebrate. Read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and her taught, engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Miel Severio, and Gaddy McBang. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

1:19:25Kara, my New Year's wish is that reincarnation is a thing because that means statistically there's a really good probability I'm coming back with a much bigger penis. That's good. That's good. Oh, God. Ah, 2025. Same old dog. Same old, wait, 2024. Where are we? What year is it? Fuck. Happy New Year, everybody.

1:19:55Support for this show comes from Airbus. It took 100 years for electric vehicles to catch on. Modern solar panels? Half a century. Lithium batteries? Decades to go from their debut to daily use. It's a pattern. Energy tech breaks through, stalls, and then something tips the scales. But for every success, there are even more almosts. So what if there was a breakthrough sitting at this crossroads right now? SAF, or sustainable aviation fuel, could forever change the future of flight. Learn more about how Airbus is contributing to accelerate this journey at fly.airbus.com slash theflightpath.

1:20:41Thanks to Smartsheet for their support. What would you do if you had more time in the day, even just one hour more? In reality, we actually all do have more time than we think, but that extra time is sucked up by distraction. Jumping from window to window and application to application to get a simple task done creates endless pockets for distractions to slip in. That's why Smartsheet lets your team manage all your workflows in one seamless platform, so you can clear the clutter and find that elusive extra time every single day. Smartsheet. Work with Flow. Learn more at smartsheet.com.