Iran War Oil Shock, Anthropic Sues, and Market Wipeout Warning

18:31Kara Swisher:We've been dragged around by Israel here in a lot of ways, it looks like it. Let me see. I disagree. I think we're very tightly coordinated with Israel right now. I talked to Warner who's in the Gang of Eight. I'm going to go with him over you. I'm sorry to say that. But, you know, I think it was that they were the senator over Scott. Yes. I think they were going to attack and we decided to be the senior partner. Like that's rather than create something else. You mean Iran was going to attack Israel? Israel's attack. No, no, no. Israel was going to attack Iran. I mean, that's the implication he had.

18:57And Senator Warner feels like we did not have the power to say stop.

19:00Kara Swisher:Well, he doesn't know why we didn't. That was one of his questions. He's surprised. He seemed more worried. He's usually not a worrywart, but he seems worried about two things, how this was conducted, obviously, and what the real implications are, especially around drones and small boats that could do enormous damage to our battleships and everything else, and also election security. But one of the weirder parts is how the administration has behaved. Donald Trump was dancing last night or golfing and stuff like that, so the visuals aren't very good. The Defense Department has now barred press photographers from Iran briefings after publishing photos that Heggs says staff found, quote, unflattering, according to The Washington Post.

19:41Kara Swisher:Just Hags' vanity aside, they just look like, he looks like a fatuous poppin' J at all times. But in this case, the lack of seriousness about something that's very serious seems problematic. And it's also causing problems within their own group of mega. There's a real shift. There's a real, like, sort of Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, MTG on one side. And then, you know, Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, all this. It's a real ugliness. I wandered over to Twitter, which I shouldn't have done. And the nastiness between them is really quite something. It's really quite something to watch. Like imagery is so incredibly powerful.

20:23Basically, I think one photograph didn't bring an end to the Vietnam War, but expedited it. And it's that incredibly dramatic photo of the young girl running from a napalm bombing. And with the Iraq war, George Bush and the Pentagon, they banned photos of service member Coffins because he realized war is so ugly that it will lose support. And the notion that these guys can't handle the images of Pete Hegseth in an unflattering, I mean, it shows you're allocating your capital in the wrong places. That's not what you should be thinking about or worried about. And if you think you can control the imagery of Pete Hexath, well, okay, just wait till you see the images that are going to come out of Iran.

21:14And you can already see that the IRGC is, quite frankly, organizing again and going on an information campaign.

21:21Kara Swisher:They are, and they've been very good. Iran in general has been one of the stronger players in those spaces in terms of propaganda and everything else. Well, when you say good, you mean effective. Effective. They lie like there's no tomorrow. Of course, but hello, lots of people do. Lots of governments do. Oh, I don't know. I think Iran takes it to a new level. They do, but they are, when I say good, is they're good at it. They're very, they're all throughout all the various social networks. They're very, they did one the other day, which I was sort of fascinated by, where they put up your president as a pedophile, which was interesting.

21:58Kara Swisher:They just, they've been at it for a long, long time. And they have used, often when there's stuff that pops up online, it's either Russia or Iran. China to an extent, too. But really, Iran has used social media as one of the smaller, I mean, it is a smaller country than Russia or less powerful. And it has used social media to its advantage in ways that are really, of course, heinous because it's conspiracy theories. And you always find them somewhere in, they're at the top. Everyone I ever interview in cybersecurity are the top in cybersecurity issues, in propaganda, in conspiracy theories. And they have a very well-oiled machine throughout the world doing this kind of stuff.

22:41Well, when the actual audit of social media is done, I think we're going to find that somewhere between 10 and 40 percent of comments and posts on geopolitical accounts or accounts of influencers is going to have originated from either the CCP, the GRU, or the RGC. Yep, absolutely. And this is what you do. You see a piece of content and then you look at the comments to evaluate and shape your own view of that content.

23:07Kara Swisher:Mm-hmm. And when— It's all gamed. Yeah, and it has a huge impact. You don't even recognize how much impact it has on your views of stuff. Because if someone says, oh, the U.S. will be able to escort ships through the Straits of Hormuz. I'm just using an example. And then there's just a ton of stuff saying, that'll never happen. Oil prices are going to be at$200. All right, where's that comment coming from? And unfortunately, although they could put in places to verify accounts and get rid of fake accounts and fake comments, you know, I mean, just go on these really sensitive pages or sensitive opinions and click on who made the comment.

23:49And it's someone with three followers. Okay, that's not a person. And the question is, why would someone be making this comment or what entity would have an interest in these comments?

24:00Kara Swisher:We're going to talk about that in a little bit because there's a major report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate that's really interesting around chatbots. This story is going to continue in our reverberations, obviously. We're going to go on a quick break. And when we come back, Anthropics sues the Pentagon and Microsoft comes to Anthropics defense.

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28:04Kara Swisher:Scott, we're back with more news. The White House is reportedly preparing an executive order to formally ban Anthropic across the federal government, which is likely illegal. The Defense Department CTO, Emile Michael, and let me just say I covered him and he's a toadying bully, just said on CNBC that Anthropic would, quote, pollute the agency's supply chain. We've only done this for foreign companies, just so you know, this kind of behavior. All this comes as Anthropic is officially suing the Pentagon for labeling a supply chain risk, effectively blacklisting the company from federal contracts.

28:36Kara Swisher:This has never been done to an American company. Anthropic argues the government overstepped its authority and violated the company's First Amendment rights. And now Microsoft is getting in the mix. The company threw its support behind Anthropic this week, urging the federal court to temporarily block the Pentagon's supply risk designation in an amicus brief. Microsoft warned that the unprecedented move would have, quote, broad negative ramifications for the U.S. tech industry, and they're damn right. Scott, before we go further, I want to play a prediction you made last week. Let's listen. My prediction is no.

29:09And that is Dario Amodi has given license and permission to CEOs to say no. And in the next 30 days, you are going to see a raft of CEOs find their testicles and start saying no to this administration.

29:24Kara Swisher:So you were right, Scott. So let's talk about them saying no. It's not just Microsoft, 37 AI researchers at OpenAI and Google, not the companies themselves, also filed a brief supporting Anthropic. You know, I'm going to just very quickly comment. What the government's doing here is really unprecedented. It's a disagreement with a company. And instead of just disagreeing and moving on, they are attacking them in the most ridiculous ways, trying to make an example of Anthropic and really hurt their business. And for you, I need you all to understand Emile Michael's role here, because these people all have other interests and agendas that have to do with their previous life in Silicon Valley and their future life in Silicon Valley.

30:06Kara Swisher:And Emile Michael's always, as I said, been a toting bully to powerful men. And this is what he's doing here. And he's not a player that is in any way neutral. He's not doing things for you and I in this government. He's doing things in his own self-interest, would be my guess. And so the attacks on Anthropic, right behind him is all manner of competitors of Anthropic that are using the federal government to hurt a company that decided not to want to do something. And I'm glad Microsoft stood up for them. I think this is the biggest story in tech. And so just a quick recap, Anthropic had basically two asses of the Pentagon and both pretty narrow.

30:48They didn't want cloud to be used for fully autonomous weapons, meaning AI, not humans, making final lethal targeting decisions, which seems reasonable. And the second one was no use of cloud for mass domestic surveillance of Americans. And the Pentagon responded that it does not intend to use Claude for those purposes, but refused to contractually commit to that, arguing that it can't lead tactical operations by exception and that legality is the Pentagon's responsibility. And then about two and a half weeks ago, Trump posted on True Social directing every federal agency to immediately seize all use of Anthropics technology.

31:31And then Hexat designated Anthropics as a supply chain risk. Okay, that's a label which has been reserved for foreign adversaries.

31:41Kara Swisher:Yeah, I just said that. And companies linked to the Chinese and Russian government. Well, I'm saying it again, Kara. All right, okay. The supply chain risk status, first off, this isn't just the government saying, okay, you don't want to work with us, we don't want to work with you. If they label them as a supply chain risk, then already 100 plus enterprise companies have reached out to Anthropic and said, we may not be able to use you. A financial services company posits negotiations regarding a$50 million contract. A pharmaceutical firm, financial technology company, I mean, they can't, this really is an exercise.

32:21When you're labeled sort of an enemy of state, this is the equivalent of like you're a corporate enemy of state or threat. I say threat. Anthropic has now filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon saying that Congress's procurement laws don't authorize blacklisting a U.S. company over protected speech. That's what this is. They get to work with or not work with who they want. And the supply chain designation is just not legal, and it sets a dangerous precedent for any American company.

32:50Kara Swisher:They will lose. Most people feel like— The government will lose, I think. But it will have an effect. Yes, yes. The government will lose, but it will still have the effect. This is a Trump thing. He creates a real problem, whether it's anthropics or— Yeah, and companies won't work with them until they figure it out. And then it causes damage, just like they've done at, you know, when they fire all of Voice of America. Now they've lost in court, and Carrie Lake is an idiot, but it's already caused damage and caused damage to it. And that's the goal is they're going to push it illegally as far as they can, and then they'll be stopped.

33:22Kara Swisher:But by the time they're stopped, Anthropic is badly affected. And if you all don't think this is a Silicon Valley rumble happening here, it's all in the self-interest of private companies who have an interest in slowing Anthropic down. And if you look at the links between Emil Michael and the rest of these clowns. So they have financial interest and competitors? Yes, they do. And so this is a way that Silicon Valley, the penny, Silicon Valley used to ignore government for the most part. And then the penny drop that they're easy to pay for and that they can do their competition with each other in the federal government by pretending they're working for us as people are getting spots, putting their putting their people in the various spots.

34:04Kara Swisher:Right. That will cause it. This is a Silicon Valley corporate beef happening. It's that is what's occurring here. The one that's been most outspoken, I'm trying to connect his financial interests, which I'm sure is driving his rhetoric, is David Sachs. David Sachs, Mark Andreessen, please understand there are shadow people behind these actions that you need to pay attention to. And Trump is, you know, sort of a useful idiot. I'm sure they make fun of Trump behind his back. But, you know, it's all in their economic self-interest to hurt this company. And they couldn't hurt them by being better.

34:38Kara Swisher:So this is how they're doing it. This is what they're doing. But it comes down, this is the fulcrum that determines if companies continue to show some backbone. And by the way, good for Satya Nadella showing some backbone here. At, again, risk.

34:58So, Calcio is saying that Anthropics, the likely that Anthropics wins the case is 72%. In the meantime, companies will say, hey, that site license we were about to sign with you, Anthropics, we're just going to wait. We apologize. This is terrible. We love you.

35:12Kara Swisher:We think your technology is great. You're great, but we can't sign this contract right now. Now, to your point, Microsoft and a group of 22 retired senior military officers have filed amicus briefs in support of Anthropic and its lawsuit. But what's interesting is that consumers are speaking. The enterprise is running, but consumers are running towards Anthropic. Downloads of the cloud app spiked more than 75 % after Trump prompted federal agencies to stop using Anthropic. And on the flip side, uninstalls of ChatGPT mobile apps spiked roughly 300 percent the day after Trump's proclamation. So the question is, who wins in the mind of Anthropics board here?

35:59The fear and the stasis that has been created in the enterprise market or consumers running towards a company they think is finally showing some backbone?

36:11Kara Swisher:I think it's damaging. I think this is such a Trump way to do this. Anthropics more enterprise, unfortunately. I know. Create chaos and damage, and it's legal, but do the punch, even if it's like, I'm not a boxer, but if you do like a kidney punch, you hurt the person. And then you're like, oh, did I do that? I didn't know I did that. And you use your minions. And I cannot underscore again what a minion Emil Michael is to do your dirty work and pretend you're working for the government. It's the whole thing is such a this is such a fixed fight. I can't even you need to. And I think reporters should really spend a lot of people don't know these characters.

36:54Kara Swisher:Again, this was an ex-Uber executive. He's been involved in a lot of stuff in Silicon Valley, but he had to leave Uber under, please go look at our reporting on him many years ago. He had to leave Uber under very difficult circumstances around the rape of a woman in India in an Uber. But just go Google the reporters who are covering this and stop acting like Amil Michael is this clean character. In any case, I'm sure he'll come after me, but it's true. So I'll win on that regard. Anyway, we're going to move on. Another thing that, again, Silicon Valley just can't stop stealing, essentially. Grammarly launched an expert review AI feature that gives editing suggestions supposedly inspired by well-known writers and journalists.

37:41Kara Swisher:Casey Newton discovered the tool was attributing advice to him and others, even though they never agreed to participate. The feature even generated advice under the name of a certain tech journalist, Kara Swisher. They've stopped that now. They've pulled back on it, apparently. But what an incredible bunch of information and identity thieves. I don't know what to say. Anytime these people can steal, they steal. They're such shoplifters. I don't know your thoughts. Well, it goes back to this mindset. And I thought one of the, I think there's looking glasses into people's souls, how they treat their pets, how they treat service staff.

38:17It's sort of a, you know, when is there guard down? There are certain tells, right? And one of the tells that was really frightening when Sam Altman was asked about the energy consumption of AI, he said, what people don't take into account is the amount of energy it takes and the amount of investment and resources it takes to get a human to a point where it can make logical decisions and engage in critical thinking. He said, if you look at how much energy and input and resources it takes to raise a child such that it can get to a point where it can make decisions, AI is better. I found that so nihilistic and so inhuman because what Silicon Valley, or at least some of the individuals we talk a lot about, don't realize is that we try and get ROI economically such that we can make low ROI investments in relationships and people we love.

39:10I am not getting an ROI back for my children on any sort of economic level. Well, you use a lot of energy.

39:16Kara Swisher:I'm wondering if we should use as much energy for you as we do, but go ahead. Well, but the whole point, the whole shooting match of an economy and relationships and satisfaction and purpose and some sort of spiritual sense of calm and like your life mattered is that you do engage in productive economic or domestic labor such that you can invest that in other people. And you may or may not get a return. But the point is the return you get is you're so invested in something that your life has meaning. The whole point is that you create value such that you can invest that value in relationships.

39:57And for most people, the most rewarding place of investment where quite frankly, they don't get anything resembling in economic ROI is in children. And to look at it on that level, it's like, okay, you don't understand what it is to be a mammal or a human. And also the notion that you can spend 50 years of your life professionally working your ass off, staying late, starting in the mailroom at the Washington Post as you did, such that you have a voice, a reputation, a twist of phrase, an ability to string words together that compels people to action or provides insight. And then they can come in and just adopt that 50 years or piggyback on it.

40:37Kara Swisher:That piggyback, steal it, really. It is like if I type in, give me five jokes on this or give me a view on the oil price and I put in my voice, it does a really good job because what it's doing is stealing from everything I have ever written, said, or done. Right. That is correct. And so the music industry did this correctly. It said, okay, if we're KROQ, which is awesome, the best radio station of the 90s in Los Angeles, and they play a bunch of English Beat or Tom Petty or Lloyd Cole and the Commotions or REM, they track how much they're playing and then they send them a royalty. And what these guys want to do is they want to leverage your years, decades of discipline, schooling, certification, risk-taking, time away from your family, but they don't want to pay you for it.

41:29And they see everything. I mean, that's, I think, a felony, but what is double homicide from a mentality standpoint is that these people really look at relationships and humans on an economic basis. I just when I saw that I thought I thought this guy is not he just had a kid well I'm not gonna I'm not gonna speak to his children but what he's gonna find out and this

41:56Kara Swisher:is a what I tell other dads it was a dark comment it was a dark I'm like don't make the mistake I made and think that right away your kids gonna be super into the shit you're into and you're gonna get all these hallmark moments despite what insurance commercials would tell you you're going to have to invest more in this child in every way. And that's the point, because at some point what you realize is that that overinvestment in other people gives you purpose and value. Let me just say, they think everything is for the taking and for them. I just, this is just another example. This, what was happening at the defense department.

42:28Kara Swisher:Oh, we have it up on Anthropic. Oh, anything they can take, they take. And they just continue to prove, you know, they They keep not meeting my low expectations for them already. And this is kind of an interesting thing. Researchers from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which has been attacked in all the time, and its founder, been attacked legally by Elon Musk and the federal government now in his, at his behest. They're keeping going, though. They don't care. Tested 10 major AI chatbots and found out eight out of 10 were willing to help plan a violent attacks like school shootings, bombings, or assassinations.

43:04Kara Swisher:Researchers posed as a 13-year-old boy, as 13-year-old boy, showing how easily miners could get guidance on weapons, locations, and strategies. Only Anthropics Claude and Snapchat's MyAI consistently refused to assist in planning attacks. And only Claude attempted to dissuade the users. DeepSeek wished the user happy and safe shooting. And on that note, a lot of you have been writing in about a story in Canada. Earlier this year, an 18-year-old gunman opened fire at a school in Tumblr Ridge, British Columbia, killing eight people. Let's listen to a clip from a listener. I am calling because it seems to be that there is a connection now between the shooter and ChatGPT.

43:45Kara Swisher:The shooter was flagged by ChatGPT several months ago regarding some of their behavior online. ChatGPT didn't report it, which is one of the reasons why I am leaving this message to see what your thoughts are on that. Open AI is now being sued by the parent of the child who was injured in the shooting. I, as you know, I've been at this for years, especially around kids, but it's jumped into people. The most recent, one of the most recent shootings, it was this suicide, an adult was changed by these chatbots. I cannot, let's stop calling them chatbots, what an adorable word for synthetic beings, who don't, who don't, we're not bound by legal, like if you're a lawyer and you did this, you'd go to jail.

44:34Kara Swisher:If you're an analyst, if you're a, you know, a psychologist and you did this, you'd go to jail. If you were a person and you did this, you would go to jail. Like all of the people go to jail. They're willing to assist in violent attacks and they're not doing anything to rein it in. And it's not just kids. It's everything. And again, the only one that is doing the right thing is Claude. And so, and this is Anthropoc, and this is the company. I'm not doing an ad for Claude here, but they have at least some, and I think they should be regulated too. But I can't tell you how incandescent I am about the way these people try to take every bit for themselves, and they do not care the damage they are creating.

45:17Kara Swisher:And I'm going to keep talking about this until Congress steps in and does something about it. You don't work for those rich people. You do not work for them. And I'm with Dan Tallarico. Enough with these people. So go ahead. I think it's important to draw a distinction between potentially creating some sort of psychosis that leads to self-harm or harm against others through overuse of AI or any other digital platform. I think that's a separate study that needs to be done and without the interference of the massive money and lies and owned bought research that these firms will do. I think this is different.

45:58I think this is whether the federal government needs to put in place laws and incentives such that if a private organization or corporation receives information that this person might be on the verge of committing an act of violence, if they have a responsibility to report it to the authorities immediately. And I think they do. I'm not a privacy person. I'm not suggesting we go to minority report where we arrest them before they've committed the crime. but at at my school or so my school in florida where my kids went at another school uh and we we all shared information when i was involved with the school about these very difficult situations a kid was drawing very um disturbing images of gun violence and so the school felt like it had an obligation to report it and then the fbi went to the house and the fbi said are there any guns in the house.

46:57And I think that was the right thing to do.

46:58Kara Swisher:You're right. That makes sense. And if you notice, there was a video that went viral on Snap. A teacher put out a snap saying that she wanted to kill these kids. And it immediately, the cops showed up and said, did you put, did you say this? Are you having any sort of mental issue right now? You need to go home and we need to understand what is going on with you. And if you have access to guns before we let you back into a school. And the same is true here, that if you are going to monetize this type of information and you understand it so, you can interpret it so well that you can create a prompt that keeps them on another second, another minute, or serves them the exactly right auto insurance ad, then in exchange for that economic benefit and what has clearly demonstrated ability to know what's going on with that person.

47:52If you see any evidence that that person might be capable of creating this type of crime, you have an obligation. Bartenders, the bar, if a bartender continues to serve people alcohol, observing that that person is really drunk, and then that person gets in a car and kills someone, the bar is liable.

48:16Kara Swisher:A very good analogy. So if they have such incredible targeting, such unbelievable information, they can clearly tell that, okay, this individual is getting maps and identification and information is basically digitally casing. This is worrisome. We should investigate is what you're saying. A school. Then immediately a message goes out to the local authorities saying, here is exactly what this person said. We have a judge involved. You get the order. And boom, they're in the house asking this person questions. I'm not saying they arrest them. They haven't done anything yet. They would argue this is surveillance.

48:52Kara Swisher:But, of course, they don't mind selling surveillance. They're surveilling us to serve us as. That's the thing. I'm just saying a human being in this situation would be arrested or liable, right? These people are giving, I agree, you should separate the two, but they're related, Scott. It's the same mentality of let us extract all the good stuff, let us not protect anybody, and we are not liable for what we're doing. You know, Mark Benioff once called them cigarette companies. It's worse. It's worse than a cigarette company. They were just selling cigarettes and using Joe Camel. That sucks. But this is something demented.

49:31Kara Swisher:Like, I think they're demented. I don't, that they think this is okay. And that they don't say to themselves, should we really, is this the way we want to make our money? We want to make our money by poisoning children's minds. We want to make our money by letting people who are mentally disabled become more so and then giving them plans. But again, that's a different issue. I agree, but they're giving people plans. And if you're going to give people plans on how to shoot a school, you have a responsibility to say, You might want to check this out, please. I get it, but for the purposes of remedies, I think you need to separate the two.

50:08Character AI may, in fact, be leading people into a state of psychosis where they believe the right thing to do is to find their stepfather's gun and kill themselves because they're going to get to hang out with Daenerys and in the afterlife. That is shifting their psychological state. My understanding of this, the shooter here, was that she was already in an awful psychological state and was using ChatGPT as a tool to execute violence. Both require some sort of regulation, responsibility, and action.

50:41Kara Swisher:You're right. Yeah. You've done a lot of good work interviewing parents around the rabbit hole and psychosis that the character AIs can lead people to, which, by the way, has an average usage time of 75 minutes versus AI at like 13 or 15. At the same time, if these organizations can very easily use the same technology to not only alert them at the right moment to serve them an ad for a dating app or for a cryptocurrency trading platform to say this person is clearly going through something and potentially a threat to the community and others, they have a responsibility to immediately notify the authorities.

51:19Kara Swisher:All right, we're going to finish this up. They don't have a community responsibility. One of the things that always struck me. When you say they don't have a community. They don't feel like they. No, I'm saying they should. They should. I think we're in agreement here. I think they never did is the point I was going to make. When they were building their headquarters, I remember Twitter building its headquarter, and they had the most beautiful cafeteria. I don't know if you've ever been there, but it was gorgeous. I haven't. I've never been invited to Twitter's cafeteria. This was pre-Elon. And I was thinking— Pre-Elon?

51:44Kara Swisher:Pre-Elon. I was thinking they don't care about all the businesses around. Like, you know what I mean? Like, they kept the people captive in this beautiful, everything is here, don't go anywhere. And I thought, they don't give a fuck about San Francisco. It's just like, they just want to be here. But they didn't care about the surrounding delis. They didn't care about people going out in the street and creating a street life. They didn't back the, you know, they don't have to back the opera. But they didn't back any civic organizations ever. And I was always like, huh, what a group of people. They don't really care about anything but themselves.

52:18Kara Swisher:Like, I remember being struck by that cafeteria and thinking, they really could give a fuck. And it's the same idea. They could give a fuck about our government. They could give a fuck about all these things except for what's in their interests. And so I could go. I'm speaking of psychosis. I'm moving into one. It comes down to one sort of basic algorithm, and that is all corporate. You could argue that big tech is worse than most. But generally speaking, it's safe to assume that all corporations care about is shareholder value and earnings. And getting to those earnings within the confines of the law.

52:52What unfortunately is different nowadays, I don't think that's changed. I think General Motors would still be pouring mercury into the river if there wasn't an EPA. The failure of the glitch in the matrix is that we used to have checks and balance in the form of leadership that prevented a tragedy of the commons. But because of Citizens United now, the only thing that elected officials care about is getting reelected. And the only thing you need to get reelected is more money than the next person. and Silicon Valley has connected the dots here. And it said, we can compromise inch by inch their ability to regulate us and prevent a tragedy of the commons by throwing money at them.

53:32And now billionaires, the 900 billionaires in the United States are responsible for 19 % of the PAC giving.

53:39Kara Swisher:I know, was that number? So I think you should ask Tallarico about this. I'm sorry, you should let him talk about this issue. I mean, ultimately, this is not a good situation for all of us. And someone came up to me the other day who had been critical of my book being too hard on Silicon Valley, Burn Book. And they said, I have to apologize. You weren't hard enough. And I was like, you're absolutely right. But anyway, all right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, what Barry Diller is saying about CNN.

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56:15Kara Swisher:Scott, we're back with more news. Barry Diller is speaking out about wanting to buy CNN and what he would do with it. In a new interview, Diller says CNN hasn't been managed optimally and has enormous potential to influence. He says he told Warner Brothers CEO David Zasloff all this. Let's listen. Where I said to him, I don't think you're programming, I don't think it's being optimally programmed. I don't think it's competitive. Now, by the way, the facts support that. meaning that its ratings have declined, its revenue has declined. Still is quite profitable, but... How would you alter it? Oh, in every way.

56:52Look, feel, and see. Every way.

56:57Kara Swisher:And, I mean, I hope I get the chance. I don't think I will, but I hope I do. I'm not sure when this was, but I texted him. He said it's not happening. He said, now that the Ellisons have it, and he quite correctly, and I happen to know this, they're going to combine CNN and CBS. He doesn't think he has a chance. I would love to work for Barry Dill. He's much more conservative than I am, but I would certainly love, he's such a good programmer. He's such an interesting man. He does love journalism, even if he gets mad at it sometimes. He's someone I appreciate in that regard. And it would, I wrote him, I said, can you please?

57:36Kara Swisher:And he said, there's no way. so I can knock this one out of the water. I can't do it unless, please, Ellison, sell it to Barry Diller. Please, that would be great. So any thoughts? I mean, I would love to see Barry Diller partner with Jeff Zucker and a private equity firm. And I think there's more, a greater likelihood than people believe that the Ellisons might say, this is too big a headache. We might just sell a combined CBS and CNN to someone else. Because I think that, I'm not sure, and maybe I'm being naive here, I'm not sure they're as Machiavellian as people think about trying to control the world.

58:14I don't know, but maybe they have some grand vision for how they integrated into TikTok. But I can't imagine Larry Ellison, as smart as he is, isn't going to say, this is going to be more headache than it's worth.

58:24Kara Swisher:Yeah, they wanted the studios. I agree. They're not quite as Machiavellian. They're just opportunistic, I would say. David Ellison was democratic. You're the third richest man in the world. by focusing on economics. And I think that, anyways, I think there's a shot here. CNN makes a lot of money. Diller is correct. It makes a lot of money. It's high margins. But I did some analysis here because I just wanted to show you, like, one, talk about some numbers of cable news. I spent a decent amount of time last night on AI looking at ratings and viewership. And essentially what I did was, just to give you a sense for the ecosystem, and also I never miss a chance to make Pivot look good.

59:06It is good. I looked at gross viewership. That is the number, or listenership. That's the number of people who watch a program and then see it on YouTube or on social or download the audio and listen to it. Actually, listens are more valuable than views because it's a more intimate experience. That's why you get higher CPMs on podcasts right now than you get on cable TV. CPM is the cost per 1 ,000 viewers and advertisers willing to pay. Let's look at gross viewership. The number of people that watch the program, see it on YouTube or somewhere else, or listen to the podcast version of it. Fox News averages during primetime.

59:45Fox. Fox News during primetime averages 2.1 million in gross viewership. This is staggering. CNN, 660 ,000. Fox is kicking the shit out of CNN. Pivot's gross viewership is$375 ,000. CNBC is$252 ,000. Now, that's a bit of a misnomer. It's important. But what advertisers care about, they don't care about kids. They don't care about seniors. They care about people aged 25 to 54 who are buying kids, houses, and cars, and in their mating years.

1:00:22Kara Swisher:This is a single pivot, not two together of the week, right? This is one show. One show. Not because we do two a week, but go ahead. All right. This is one show. So in the core demo, that's adults 25 to 54. Let me start here, which will explain that number. Let's look at the median viewer age. Fox News, the median is 69. CNN at 67. CNBC at 63. Pivot, the median age is 42. 42. So, which leads you to believe, as you should, that the number, the percentage of viewers in the core demographic for these institutions or for the cable guys in CNBC is somewhere between 20 and 30%. For Pivot, it's 70%, meaning the number of people listening or watching these programs, listening to or watching these programs in the core demo that advertisers care about, CNBC gets 63 ,000 people on average watching their programming who are in the core demo.

1:01:22CNN gets$135 ,000. Fox gets$197 ,000. And Pivot gets$233 ,000. So we beat them in the demo. So we're getting more people in the core demo. And then, which leads to the following. Our average CPM, according to Ray Chow, ultimate nice guy and new father from Vox, we get a CPM of$45. dollars. The word I've heard from CNN is they get between 13 and 17 dollars. I don't know what Fox gets. So just to give you a sense. Oh, and let's talk about median household income and cost of

1:02:01Kara Swisher:doing business. But go ahead. Yeah. You want to reach wealthy people. Wealthy people are now responsible for 50 percent of consumer spending. They have more discretionary income, right? Fox News, the average household, the median household income is$60 ,000. CNN, 65. CNBC, 85. Pivot, 150. Because we get a very tech heavy, high paid audience. So it's pretty obvious why cable news, Fox is actually doing pretty well, but cable news as a whole is dying. It's literally dying. So Barry Diller saying he wants a new look and a new feel. What I would suggest is unless you can pick it up at distressed pricing and consolidate it with a bunch of other stuff, I think Barry's falling into the same trap that a lot of people fall into, and that is nostalgia is not a strategy.

1:02:55I don't think there's any coming back.

1:02:58Kara Swisher:Really? Interesting. They're too expensive. I mean, you didn't even figure in costs, our costs, or basement compared to all their costs. Oh, the gross margins? Yeah. I mean, then it goes from ugly to worse. Yeah. Yeah. What's interesting is it's still a great brand. And I agree with you about the romanticism. And he happens to be, even today, he's much older, is still the best programmer around. Yeah, he's a legend in the world of media. But not just that. I've never seen him think like, oh, I didn't. Yeah, but so has John Malone. And he hasn't been able to figure it out. I agree. I agree. But I'm just saying, I wouldn't just say, oh, he's just being romantic.

1:03:38Kara Swisher:I've had discussions with him. He's got some great ideas. And I agree, it's a real problem. I would spin it off and see what Zucker and Diller could do. Because both of them, very good. They have a lot of ideas and bring in people who have great ideas. And what would you do with it? If they said, here is this, this is what you have, Scott, what would you do with it? I know you have just an anathema to television. I know that. But I it's an interesting, I think it's what he knows best. And it would be interesting. I think he would be an interesting owner. He says it's not happening. But it's nice that he's bringing it up, I think.

1:04:14Kara Swisher:And by the way, speaking of our demo, of our young demo, 42 means there's a lot of people on the very young side. A lovely young man named Evan last night. I was going into this party for Hank Paulson. He was like, I love Pivot. Say hi to Scott. And I was like, and Amanda was like, that is a very young person. I get stopped by very young people, very old people, most much in the middle and very different people. And Evan, I really appreciate all the nice things you said about the show. because we like all our different fans. But you're right, an age thing is important, all kinds of stuff. Anyway, Barry, good luck.

1:04:48Kara Swisher:All right, we're not going to be buying it. I won't go off on my craziness like I did with the post. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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1:06:20Kara Swisher:Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. Oh, one thing. I predict we're going to have a great time at South by Southwest. All right. That's my prediction. That's what you're predicting. As always. All right. So my prediction is essentially I think the markets this year are going to go down. I think we're on the precipice of like a$10 trillion wipeout. Wow. Really? Oh, yeah. Tell all. Well, not – and by the way, I get this wrong all the time. This is not financial advice. But I don't think it's from Iran. It's from what comes after Iran. And this is the chain reaction here. I don't think oil is going to – I think oil is not going to be at$150, bucks, but it's going to be sustainably higher.

1:07:12It's going to be elevated through the rest of the year. And inflation in some markets reignites. The Fed can't cut rates. They're trapped to inspire the economy because they're worried about inflation. I think corporate earnings are really impaired as consumers stop spending because some of them will be paying five bucks a gallon for gas and their 401k will start to decline and Q2 earnings season becomes bad. And then what CEOs do when things are sort of bad is they throw in the kitchen sink and they'll make it look like a bloodbath just to get all the bad shit out. But the real contagion here is going to be from emerging markets.

1:07:51I think there's a decent chance that Pakistan and Egypt default and as well as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, dollar denominated debt, very energy dependent, very fragile economies. Because there's this domino effect in those markets because they can't afford oil imports and their dollar denominated debt just becomes unpayable. And then the real downward spiral starts. European banks holding that emerging market debt start announcing write downs. foreign banks Deutsche Bank BNP Paribas all hugely exposed credit spreads blow out and we get sort of a not this to the same extent but we get an 08 style which bank is next moment except this time it's happening while the US is fighting a war we started for no reason

1:08:42Kara Swisher:it's an excursion Scott it's an excursion well I'm teasing well that's the mistake here it should have been a special It should have been a military combat operation. Instead, they've turned it into a war with no objectives. But anyways, by August, the narrative shifts from transitory war shock to holy shit. We may have broken the global financial system. The S &P is off 20 % to 40 % from its peak. Bitcoin goes to like$30 ,000. And quite frankly, the only thing that probably goes up is canned goods and ammunition. and Chevron. Well, that's a scenario. Happy South by Southwest. But it's going to start, the prediction is following, it's going to start, the contagion is going to start in emerging markets that can't afford oil and their debt is dollar denominated.

1:09:36It's just a toxic cocktail.

1:09:37Kara Swisher:I think this is a very accurate prediction, I have to say. So, and the problem is we've shot so many bullets with our debt and printing money that the ECB and the Federal Reserve doesn't have the same firepower to try and lift us out of this. So in other words, it could be like an 08 shock, but the problem is we have less ammunition for a bailout. Yeah, with the tariffs, with the debt, with everything. I mean, you know, one of the things that, did you hear James Carville saying, I don't have enough Trump derangement syndrome. I want more. I should, you know, I'm so furious at this fucker. He was screaming.

1:10:14Kara Swisher:This, what he has done here with this Iran, And it all, as you have noted many times, links back to Epstein again, right? It links back to this guy. He's the guy in every room. In every room. I think you're absolutely right that this, everything is motivated by either people want to get before, while the getting's good or for themselves, or an unhealthy need to hold on to power in a demented way. Like, I remember when Elon said that one time, if Democrats, it's an existential crisis for the world if Democrats win. Actually, as I always say, every accusation is a confession. We're in an existential crisis because of these greedy fucks and because of the need to hold on to power over everything.

1:11:00Kara Swisher:And it's going to it has reverberations around the world. There's some really interesting tax proposals. Senator Booker proposed basically a tax holiday for young people, which I love. Not that expensive because young people don't make that much money. We need to level up young people who are 24 % less wealthy than they were 40 years ago versus old people who are 72 % wealthier. And then for the first time, I saw a wealth tax that could potentially make sense. But instead of going after billionaires, they should be going after anybody or everybody that, say, has a wealth, you know, more than call it$100 million.

1:11:38You get no happiness. Your kids don't get no incremental happiness from inheriting that much money.

1:11:42Kara Swisher:Yeah, we're helping you. Billionaires, we're helping you lift your wallets. And it should be annual and it should be small enough such that people don't have to liquidate assets. Or move to Florida. Yeah, it has to be federal. Starbucks is just going. It has to be federal. It has to be federal. You're absolutely right. That's great. Okay. All right. We're going to talk about that. That's going to be one of our big topics at South by Southwest. Anyway, because you will have just interviewed Baby Jesus. Anyway. Call him Baby Jesus. I dare you. Penis hugs, Baby Jesus. The problem is in Austin, you can't find three wise men and a virgin.

1:12:16Kara Swisher:Oh, very good. You knew it was coming. You knew it was coming. We just heard from the Tallarico team that he has a scheduling conflict. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Stop with the jokes. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for this show or call 855-51-PIVOT elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe. I'm going to get serious for a second. Monday, I published a story that I think I'm the most proud of of anything I've done in a very long time. I sat down with three Epstein survivors who've been pushing for more transparency on On With Kara Swisher.

1:12:50Kara Swisher:Survivor Liz Stein, who's also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, said her desire to help her younger self fuels her advocacy work. Let's listen to a clip. It would be irresponsible of me to have this position and to not use it so that others did not feel alone in this. Because if I could go back and tell myself anything, it would be to tell someone. And if they don't listen, tell someone else and just keep telling until people listen to you. And even if you feel like they don't, be proud of yourself because you at least were able to sit in your uncomfortable truth when other people weren't.

1:13:31Kara Swisher:And that's really what fuels me doing this advocacy, being the person that I wish was there for me when I needed them most. This was a great show. They actually got to talk a lot about it. Often you get these shorter interviews. It was really very moving. I dare just listen to it. I know everyone goes, oh, good goodness. Yeah, you can hear the emotion in the voice. Such dignity, such incredible strength, such heroic behavior in the face of adversity. And, you know, I've gotten a lot of feedback that's been I really appreciate, but it was all these women. They were astonishing. It's nothing to do with me, but I let them talk and you should listen to what they have to say, as she said.

1:14:12Kara Swisher:Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and her Todd Andrew knew this episode. Manolo Moreno edited the video. Thanks also to Drew Bros, Mia Savera, and Dan Chalon. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you 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.

1:14:44We will see you all in the great state of Texas.

1:14:52midfamily Thank you.