Regulating AI, Culture Wars at the School Play, and Guest Anne Applebaum on Ukraine

23:18They don't have any, Fox doesn't have any ethics around this stuff. Anyway, let's get to our first big story.

23:28The leaders of top AI companies are headed to the White House. As we record this, see what I'm saying? There's much more activity. That's Sacha Nadella, Asundar Pichai, Sam Altman, and Dario Amodi, CEOs of Alphabet, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI are set to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior officials. The meeting comes a day after the New York Times op-ed from FTC Chair Lena Kahn, who I saw this weekend, where she argued that AI must be regulated. Khan's biggest concerns are companies who misuse AI to perpetuate discrimination, fraud, and scams. She wrote, although these tools are novel, they are not exempt from existing rules.

24:05She's arguing that the FTC has authority under current laws to crack down on companies who misuse AI in these ways. The White House meeting is supposed to build on a blueprint for the AI Bill of Rights. I think it was created by a previous person who just left, Alondra Nelson, and other conversations they've had. What do you think about this? I hope we move to the action part of all of this and that it's not just former people who've made millions and then get a conscience and decide, stop me before I kill again and I'm worried about all of this. I don't find that productive. And I would like to see the government as soon as possible announce some sort of new regulatory body similar to the FTC, the AITC, whatever it is, the Artificial Intelligence Ruling Commission that has teeth and is immediately charged with a set of guidelines.

24:49lines and very early sends flares across the bowels. If all of a sudden it ends up that there is a janitor of AI that is producing a lot of content that is wreaking havoc, what is, you know, bring in communications and First Amendment lawyers and say, all right, when does it become, you know, yelling fire in a crowded theater and start outlining, you know, some laws and regulation here. But the first thing they need to do, in my view, I don't think the existing agencies, Let me back up. On an international basis, I'd like to see a new division of NATO around AI, because I think this has real defense implications.

25:24NATO has newfound life. It is out of its brain coma because Europe is finally a union. NATO has new purpose because of this murderous autocrat trying to invade in a land war, an invasion of Europe. So I think this is a great time for NATO to establish similar to, you know, they have all sorts of different divisions or task forces that keep an eye on bioweapons. I think they should start something around AI. Domestically, we need an entirely new regulatory body. Which is what Senator Bennett said. Yeah. Instead of starting from a position of, oh, we're going to take so-and-so from the FCC because they're on Twitter, which means they understand technology.

25:59They're going to have to build it from the ground up and bring the gentleman who we had on the podcast a few weeks ago, Dimitri. Alperovich. I just also saw him this weekend, but go ahead. But ground up from filled with people like that. So instead of having 4 % of the people have a background in engineering or technology, 4 % of the people don't. But I think it needs to be a new body. And Washington hates that because they think of it as bureaucracy and cost. But AI will generate a ton of additional tax revenue if it's handled well. So I'd like to move to the kind of action part of this. I think they are acting.

26:31I know you said they don't do anything. I think in this case, It has to be global. And this is something Altman did talk about, that the reason why he was going to all these countries is because he doesn't think you can do it in any way but a global authority on this stuff. He was comparing it more to sort of the nuclear groups that are all around the world. And I think he's right. It's got to be a global kind of thing. among, he's not going to China and Russia, though. I asked him specifically. But all the ones, the countries that don't want to use this for nefarious means to sort of get together and make a decision on things like killer robots, like we talked about, or whatever it happens to be.

27:06Not everybody's worried about AI. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg he expects to replace 30 % of the company's back office roles with AI over the next five years, 30%. You know, who else isn't worried more than two-thirds of Americans. Only 28 % believe the use of AI will have a major impact on them personally. According to Pew Research, they're incorrect. All of them will be impacted. Why do you think, some scientists who work on AI are very concerned, as we saw Jeffrey Hinton last week from who had left Google. Why do you think there's this disconnect? Well, I don't think people look at their job and can immediately reverse engineer it.

27:44I don't most people really understand AI. And also, I think there's some truth to the notion that we continually catastrophize and talk about the worst possible, go to the worst possible place with any new technology. And again, the cycle repeats itself, some short-term job destruction, and then it ends up creating more jobs. But there's some interesting things there. So for example, a company called Chegg, which I believe is online ed, they announced, they said, they acknowledged in the earnings call, they said that ChatGPT was hurting their business and the stock dropped 40%. And the investor relations department could have done a pretty interesting jujitsu move and said, this is how we're using AI to increase our business.

28:28And I don't think the stock would have gone down 40%. So, comms has to be more around, all right, how are we, just as everyone in the late 90s was saying, oh, we're not Williams-Sonoma. We're Williams-Sonoma.com. Yeah, right, right. Howard Lester and Denny. Remember, we have a website. We have a website. That's right. Add the term.com to everything and your stock goes up 10 or 20%. So much of this is about storytelling communications. If, or what I am advising CEOs is like, okay, to what extent can we say, we need to talk about how we are leveraging AI, not being a victim of it. Otherwise, because this is what's going to happen.

29:06Stock market analysts are going to go industry by industry, decide who's vulnerable, look for any evidence that it's hurting that business, and take the stock down 30 or 50%. And these companies need to say, no, we're leveraging AI, use the appreciation of their stock price to go get cheaper capital, and actually make that future, pull that future forward. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of them, though, are going to be affected, so it's going to be hard to do like a fan dance about it, correct? I think there's a lot of opportunity. I mean, we talked about how Airbnb could use AI. I think that a lot of these generative AI companies are probably open to partnerships, I would think, that create different niche applications.

29:45I mean, what we just talked about with your brother. Your brother could start a small consulting firm saying, are you going into a surgery or would you like a report every time for every major surgery that says, have you thought about the following 11 things and here are some ideas? Right. They have to be very careful legally. Like, look, if you take these, just make sure you know what you're doing. They have to be super, everyone's got to be super careful about when they start to give advice like this. I agree with you. But so far, the tests show that the advice coming back from generative AI is more empathetic and sometimes more correct than second opinions from actual doctors.

30:22Of course. But I'm just saying, you know, it's like when an autonomous car crashes, everyone goes crazy. Meanwhile, there's 53 crashes on your block the other day, right? You know, people. But, and I'm already like developing the business plan in my head for Jeffrey. It would have to be, this is a piece of information and input that you're the arbiter here and you have to take responsibility for the decision, ultimately what you do here. But I think the argument you made, and I think it's a genuine and honest argument, is going to be made much louder and in a much more hysterical fashion to try and block a generator of AI by lobbying bodies from insurance companies and medical professions who will claim that they know best and they don't want anyone to fuck with what is probably the most obscene, profitable business in the world.

31:04and then it's a medical industrial complex where everyone has their hands in this pod called U.S. healthcare where one out of five people are actually happy with their healthcare. Yeah, because no one is, right? Yeah, well, 20%. 20 % of Americans are happy with their healthcare. Yeah, so this is gonna be an interesting time, 100 % about where we're gonna go. And I think people will go back and forth. You know, I think they've got to submit to some regulation and government has to be involved. And, you know, it doesn't have to turn out the same way that the internet did, right? And on the whole, as we talk about, from a net point of view, it's been positive, but it really, the damage has been massive.

31:42And so it has to, they have to be doing this in a smart way. It's really, there's an opportunity here for government. There's an opportunity for companies. There's an opportunity for regular people. There's also problems that we can absolutely even anticipate in ways that we should have anticipated before, but let's see. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, The culture wars are coming for your kids' school play, and we'll speak with friend of Pivot, Ann Applebaum. It's a very good or, I would say, bad day to talk to her about what's happening in Russia and Ukraine.

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34:38Scott, we're back. I wanted to make sure we talk about how culture wars are playing out in schools because first they came for the books, but now they're coming for the theater department. I saw an article in the Washington Post on Tuesday about the trend of schools canceling student shows with LGBTQ characters. Let me give you some examples. This January, A school district in Ohio canceled a high school performance of the 25th annual Putnam County Spelling Bee over objections to profanity, a song about erections, the portrayal of Jesus, and the fact that one character has two gay fathers. That's almost the exact description of an episode of Pivot, except with gay mothers instead.

35:16The district later agreed to allow a lightly edited version of the musical. The musical director of the show actually got help on those edits from volunteer Rachel Scheinkin, the woman who won a Tony for writing the play. I can't believe an update school board got a Tony-winning artist to defend her work. Another example, a school district in Texas canceled elementary school field trips to see the musical James and the Giant Peach. In one case, one parent complained to school board members because actors are playing roles are both male and female, which is very common. And again, this feels like an episode of Pivot.

35:53She felt it was the same as a drag performance. One mom ruined the entire school trip. An example I find personally egregious, well, I find them all egregious, administrators in Wisconsin elementary school tried to cancel Dolly Parton in March. Some first graders were going to sing the Miley Cyrus Dolly duet, Rainbowland, in concert. We are rainbows in you. Every color, every hue, not shining.

36:20Together we can start living in a rainbow land. It was deemed controversial because it allegedly promotes LGBTQ acceptance and references rainbows. The song was removed from the lineup and the teacher was placed on administrative leave. I mean, I don't know what to say. Yeah, look, book burnings or banning offensive material is just right out. It's the first page of the playbook of fascists and extremist religious leaders when they take over a modern society. It's kind of the go-to for an autocrat and a fascist, so it's very disappointing. The whole point, let's talk about schools, the whole point of learning, you can't learn when everyone barks up the same tree.

37:05And by the way, let's make the argument on the other side. But Jonathan Haidt made a very compelling argument that when all or when a disproportionate number of academics started signing up to this narrative that seemed especially progressive, that when everybody signs up to one narrative, you become stupid. The whole point of education is to let ideas collide with each other such that we can form better ideas. And at an early age, you start saying, okay, books about coming of age, books about alternative viewpoints, books about people who are not in the mainstream or what we hope is the mainstream, you immediately stop learning.

37:43You start turning your kids stupid, regardless of the morality of it or who it offends. The whole point of education is to bring in different viewpoints. And when you talk about comforting kids, I remember books in high school that talked about that at the time seemed shocking. I mean, what's next? Are we going to ban psychology books? Probably. They would like to. Listen, Scott, in 10 states, this proposed legislation would force administrators to list every book reading and activity teachers use in their lessons so parents can review them, which parents may not have. And it's all being pushed by Moms for Liberty.

38:17They're known for their opposition to critical race theory, which is not taught in these schools, by the way. They put out a list of 150 books they're challenging in libraries nationwide, including Gone Girl, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Kite Runner. They're national. There's about 260 chapters. They've said they've helped install 275 of their favorite candidates on school boards in 2022 alone. They've got PACS in Florida and South Carolina. DeSantis went to their national summit and denounced woke gender ideology. You know, it's very much like Phyllis Schlafly, if you remember her. You know, it's a very, these people pop up almost constantly in American history, but they're very powerful.

38:55Well, let me piss off everyone. I think schools, and I think most schools do this, and this problem or, you know, so on the right, they said, okay, you're spending too much time on social justice issues. I just want my kid to read and write. There was a kernel of truth in that. For the school that one of my kids is at here in London, the headmistress was, I think, ultimately let go because she passed out something called a privilege chart that helped you identify how privileged you were to very young kids and said, all right, if you're this background, this background, you're really privileged.

39:26And that, I think correctly, upset a lot of parents. So I think we, in some ways, on the left around schools, stuck our chin out. But that was an attempt to move kids to more social justice issues. the intent was well-meaning. And then on the far right, they've taken advantage of this. They have exaggerated what has taken place in schools. And they have gone the other way with a series of really mean-spirited, borderline, not even borderline, but just hateful recommendations and guidelines that feel fascist. And it's like, okay, everyone on the far left needs to recognize a lot of people aren't comfortable with a certain viewpoint and political narrative below a certain age.

40:09But at the same time, have we lost our minds regarding banning books? I mean, if you want to understand where this goes, you know, understand that. It does not go to good places. No one ever looks back and says, it was such a good idea to burn and ban those books. Nobody goes back to, nobody looks back and says that was a good idea at the moment. Well, I think it also creates a situation where part of the country is educated in a certain way And the other part is ignorant of all kinds of things. I mean, but honestly, what they're going after, James and the Giant Peach, because of people dressing, it's not a drag show.

40:46There's a long history of men dressing as women in plays and vice versa. You know, lots of Shakespeare. Hello. You know, I think it's As You Like It is cross-dressing, right? Is that going to be a problem? It just, it's so non-controversial until they make it seem sorted, right? It's really just a play, a kind of thing. And it doesn't promote drag, being a drag person. By the way, there's nothing wrong with that. But it certainly creates a situation from a, you know, the media that kids get is so critically important of how they do it and the ability to be part of that. I just don't know where it ends.

41:27It doesn't end at Shakespeare. I could name 20 things that could be seen as what these people would put on a list. and you know they would do it because they're demented. This Moms for Liberty is a very, I find to be a very dangerous group. If you want to talk about a threat to your kid, if you want to talk about on the ground what is actually influencing them, you would ban TikTok, not Judy Blume. Yeah, yeah. We are just so focused on the wrong thing. And again, in our nation, we suffer from so many examples of minority rule. In Florida, 70 % of people support the right to choose. They support choice, but that's, you know, they pass on the cover of dark, one of the most restrictive abortion bans.

42:05I also believe that the majority of people who are really passionate about what is happening in schools don't have kids in schools. And they're nowhere near a school. I generally believe a lot of people think we let them show up at school and day one go, okay, oppressors over here, oppressed over here. It's just not true. There's some of that. Did some of it go too far in certain liberal school districts or liberal or very progressive? Yeah, maybe. But it's not what you think. The majority of the time in these schools, they're just trying to figure out how to get a kid food because he can't learn when he shows up hungry.

42:41You know, how do we deal with a kid who's been out of school for a lot of two years and has fallen behind in math? Do you see the history? They're behind in history now, which they never were, that kind of thing. They're behind in math and reading, and now they're behind in history in eighth graders. I'm going to start a group. What should I call it? Moms for what? Moms for - Loving lady machine. Well, just, I can't stop thinking MILF, but that's not going to work. Moms, Moms, MAF, Moms Against Fascism. Oh, that's interesting. What about Moms for Liberty from Moms from Liberty? Moms from Liberty for mom, what?

43:19I don't get it. Moms for Liberty from Moms for Liberty. We'll have to workshop it. Moving on from banned books to the war in Ukraine, Let's bring in our friend of Pivot, Anne Applebaum.

43:34Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic. She is the co-author, along with editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, of The Atlantic's June cover story about Ukraine. The situation seems to be escalating today, with Russian forces launching drones and missiles into Ukraine overnight. This seems to be a retaliation for an ostensible drone attack over the Kremlin, which Russia blamed on Ukraine and later the U.S. Anne, does this escalation take us straight right into the spring counteroffensive, or how do you assess what's happening today? I'm not sure I would describe it necessarily as an escalation.

44:06It looks like the Russians have used this weird drone attack over the Kremlin, which could have been anything and certainly couldn't have ever been planned to kill Vladimir Putin because he doesn't live at the Kremlin, and it happened in the middle of the night. So it looks like they're using this as an excuse to do propaganda and to launch a new series of missiles. But really, they've been doing this almost every day. Just a couple of days ago, they hit civilian targets in Kherson, which is where Jeff Goldberg and I were a month ago. This is actually an ongoing, constant onslaught on civilian infrastructure.

44:43And it's just a continuation. I mean, the rhetoric has moved several notches up. And yes, that may be a kind of preface to the counteroffensive or a propaganda preface in any case to the counteroffensive, which from the Ukrainian side may also be now beginning as the Ukrainians are beginning to probe up and down the line to see where the Russians are weak. And so President Zelensky addressed The Hague on Thursday in a renewed push to establish a special tribunal to prosecute war crimes. Talk a little bit about the strategy behind that at this point in the war. It's usually typically toward the end.

45:19I think that it's part of the Ukrainians' raison d 'etre. I mean, this is why they're fighting. They're not just fighting for territory. It's not about, you know, exactly where the borders of Ukraine are and that they need this acre of land as opposed to that one. Their argument is that we have been attacked by a power that is seeking to wipe us off the map. There has been genocide. There have been the kidnap and deportation of Ukrainian children and then the attempt to Russify them in Russia. on occupied territory. Ukrainians are forced to speak Russian, their identity is destroyed. They're trying to establish, I think, in advance of the end of the war or in advance of negotiations, whichever happens first, why they were fighting and what it was for.

46:06And so this is really part of their, in a way, their national argument, why you should help us, why we deserve to win, and why the Russians deserve to lose. So I don't think it's incidental to the war. I think it's a central piece of what they're trying to say and project. When I first read about this, I thought about the Doolittle Raid, where American forces bombed Tokyo just to try and raise morale in the U.S. and also make sure that the Japanese understood that they weren't out of reach. Do you think that this has any sort of psychological impact on both Russians and Ukrainians as the war moves forward?

46:46Well, I mean, the complicated piece of this is we don't know who launched that little tiny drone, actually, over the Kremlin. And it may well have been a Russian self-provocation. It might have been a Russian group. There are a lot of people in Moscow who don't like the war and who wouldn't mind Putin being embarrassed in some way. And so, you know, whether it's the, you know, it's hard to make a narrative out of the fact that the Ukrainians are trying to raise morale by attacking the Kremlin. But I suppose you could look at it the other way around. I mean, yes, the Russians may also be trying to raise morale at home.

47:23As they know, support for the war is falling. I mean, it's very hard to measure in the general population, and we can only measure it anecdotally in the Russian elite, but there have been a few things in the past few weeks to indicate that, you know, not everyone's happy. There was a leaked conversation between two very senior Russian figures of businessmen and a kind of cultural figure in which they were cursing the president and saying what a waste the war was. We've had some open criticism from the leader of the mercenary group, the Wagner mercenary group, which is also fighting in the war.

47:57And so there's clearly some cracks in Russia. And yeah, you're right. Maybe this is a kind of attempt on the Russian part to raise morale and say, a lot of what Putin says is also about scaring people at home. You know, we're really serious. You know, we're going to crack down on traitors. So yeah, that may be a part of the story. So the White House announced a spike in Russian combat deaths, 200 ,000 since December. That's part of that, right? To keep pushing at the soft speed. tissue of Russia, of their nervousness of what's happening here, the Russian people. Yeah, I mean, you know, the Russians, of course, don't know how many people have died.

48:38That's not, you know, public information in Russia. It's not widely circulated. So yes, I think the U.S. discussion of casualty figures is also important for that. I mean, remember this, there's a military war going on, but there's also a political war. This is what Jeff and I wrote about in our in our piece, that the, you know, the point of fighting is, as I said, it's to take back territory and so on, but it's also to create a kind of political change in Russia, by which I do not mean regime change, and I don't even mean that Putin has to fall out of a window. I just mean that there has to be a moment when the Russians say the war was a mistake and we need to end it, the way in 1962 the French said the war in Algeria is a mistake and we need to end it.

49:23And so some of what you're seeing is an attempt to push the Russian ruling class, if you will, in that direction. Is that a hard push that they have to do it? Is this a difficult thing from your perspective at this moment? I mean, I don't know that it's difficult to convince, as I said, most people who live in Moscow and are paying attention, which is a pretty small group. But yes, it is difficult to convince Putin because this is his war. You know, he started it. He didn't tell anybody he was going to start it. He didn't warn some of his closest allies in Moscow. He didn't tell his close friends in Beijing.

49:59You know, he really took this war on his own. You know, it was absolutely his personal decision based on his understanding of the nature of modern Ukraine, which was completely wrong. Completely wrong. Is there now this massive intel leak on Discord? It's been a few, it's been a month since this happened. Can you give some assessment of its impact still? And I know President Silicely told the Washington Post that the White House had said nothing to him about the Discord leak. So I can't really speak to the entire range of stuff that was leaked, and some of it's very embarrassing for the U.S. and its allies around the world.

50:40I didn't find the material that was leaked about Ukraine to be especially revelatory or interesting. I mean, the estimate, for example, that was cited a lot about the Defense Department, you know, not being sure whether the Ukrainian counteroffensive this spring would be successful. I mean, that was said to me in the Pentagon in December. And so it wasn't really a secret that the Americans feel some doubt about how much land the Ukrainians can take back, how the counteroffensive can work. So it was more the casual way in which this kind of stuff is thrown around and in which this kind of stuff is made available that it's not just Ukraine that's irritated, almost everybody is.

51:22I didn't think that in the context of the war, it was fantastically significant. I see that you already knew that. You already knew the U.S. thought that and that it just was on. It was just printed. It was just that it was on a piece of paper and it was printed and it was embarrassing. But I'm sure the Ukrainians know that the Americans think that. And I'm sure that lots of people in Washington already knew that the Pentagon thinks that. And so I didn't think it was it didn't strike me as a major. Actually, by the way, I'm sure the Russians know the Pentagon thinks that. I mean, some of it has been very close to what senior officials have said out loud.

52:01Anne, how would you, or it'd be interesting just to go, what do you think the state of the play is? Everyone's talking about them bulking up for a counteroffensive, they being Ukraine. What is it about the narrative maybe in the U.S. that we have gotten wrong or the wrong impression from the media about the state of the war right now? So first of all, I think people don't really understand the nature of the Ukrainian army, which is very, very hard to kind of rate and to understand exactly how it operates. It really operates almost like a partisan army with a kind of Silicon Valley branch. You know, it's very embedded in the society.

52:44I think when the war began, as the defense minister said to us, people thought this was going to be a big Soviet army fighting a little Soviet army. But actually, this is, they fight like a partisan army. You know, their bases and headquarters are in suburban towns and farmyards. You know, some of their equipment is Soviet junk from the 1980s. And then they are also using the most modern military software anybody has ever invented. And they have this drone operation, which is also like nothing anybody has done before. And there's manufacturing drones in underground workshops all over the country.

53:18This was a technology-proficient country, very much so. It turned out to have been. I mean, we didn't think of it that way, but it was. Well, they use it a lot. A lot of Silicon Valley uses Ukraine quite a bit before this all started. Well, exactly. But that wasn't widely understood in the general public. But then what happened when the war started is a lot of those people went home, you know, to help. Plus, some of the U.S. tech, you know, stars are there as well. They're often working pro bono, which is interesting. But they, you know, so they have software that can connect all these drones and connect all these ancient guns and new guns with one another.

53:58And therefore, it's hard to measure really what it is that the Ukrainians will be able to achieve. As I said, I think that the counteroffensive might not look like what we think it would look like. I mean, it may not be kind of brigades of tanks, you know, streaming across the countryside. It may come in fits and starts. So there may be, as I said, I think the Ukrainians are going to be probing up and down the line. They're going to be looking for political opportunities as well as military opportunities. their part of their goal is to kind of destabilize the Kremlin, as we've already discussed, and create a sense in Russia that, you know, just that the war is a waste of time and a waste of energy and it should be stopped.

54:44Remember, they don't need to occupy Moscow or conquer Moscow or take Russian territory. They have no ambitions like that. All they have to do is convince the Russians, you know, to go home. And really, the moment when the Russians withdraw their troops, the war is over. You know, so there's no complicated, you know, territorial negotiation. There's nothing complex that needs to be done. They just need to leave and then it's over. But they're not going to leave, right? They're not going to leave. I mean, they have left Kherson, they left Kharkiv, and they left, you know, the northern part of Ukraine that they conquered at the beginning of the war.

55:19So there is some precedent for thinking they could leave. But on that, do you think that's going to happen, Anne? Sitting here right now, based on the fact that you know as much as anyone about the cadence of this war and what is actually happening on the ground, sitting here in a year, recognizing nobody knows, how would you handicap this conflict right now or this war? I would say it's possible. I'd say that the Ukrainians have been consistently underrated. One friend of mine said to me when I was there last month, he said, you know, the Americans never think we can do anything until we've done it.

55:54And so I wouldn't underrate them. I wouldn't declare it as impossibly. There are heavy odds. Russia is a much bigger country. They have many more people. They have, you know, just a lot more stuff. They have airplanes. But this isn't just, it just, you know, for the third time now, I think I'm saying it's not just a military conflict. For the Russians, this is a war of choice, and the Ukrainians are trying to convince them to make a different choice. And I think that's not impossible. Why hasn't the Russian technology been better? Obviously, Russia was also a big place where Silicon Valley went and had lots of, there's lots of coders, lots of famous Russians who are deep into technology.

56:33It's really amazing how much the Ukrainians have used that and deployed it since they're smaller versus Russia. And obviously, you know, the Russian army is famously incompetent, but they do have strong, not necessarily the army, but the country has strong technological skills. Yeah, and actually, I don't want to underrate that. I mean, you know, the Ukrainians said to me, you know, this is kind of like an arms race. You know, once we get an advantage in whatever it is, drone warfare, you know, then we find the Russians figure out how to shoot down our drones or, you know, and so there is a, it's not as if the Russians have no technological competence at all.

57:06That's the wrong way to look at it. I think the problem is more to do with kind of incentive structures. You know, the very, very best Russian tech people working in Silicon Valley are not rushing home to fight in the war, whereas the Ukrainians are. And the way the army itself works in Russia, it's thought to be really quite profoundly corrupt. So every time money is spent on whatever it is, new guns or new software or new whatever, a certain amount of it disappears, you know, to buy houses in the south of France. And that happens all the way up the line. You know, at every level, money is stolen and material is stolen.

57:43And so that was one of the things that became clear the very first part of the war is how unprepared soldiers were, how, you know, the stuff that was supposed to be there that was on a list saying, you know, this brigade has this much equipment, a lot of it just wasn't there because somebody never bought it. And so it's really, this is really more a reflection of Russian society rather than, you know, the skills of Russian hackers, which are still probably pretty good, or Russian software designers, which are also pretty good. You know, it's just that, you know, remember also that several hundred thousand Russians have left the country since the war started.

58:23And many of those people were tech people. So many of them are now in Georgia or Turkey or whatever. You describe Ukrainian society as, quote, both stronger at the grassroots level and more deeply integrated with Washington, Brussels and Silicon Valley than anyone realized. Yeah, I mean, they turned out to be, you know, Ukraine has always been a country, it's hard, that is, it's a kind of grassroots up country. You know, it's very good at networked civil society struggles, for example. And maybe that's because it was a colony for so long. You know, so they've always been good at organizing themselves to create a nationwide protest movement.

59:01They've always been rather less good at creating state institutions, which are notoriously weak and still and in some cases still are. You know, but it's that kind of networked, you know, the volunteer groups who call their cousins in America and say, you know, could you help us with this project? and their ability to motivate people inside and outside the country to help them that has given them this completely unquantifiable advantage that the Russians don't have. It's not like the Russians can call on, you know, Sergey Brin and say, come home and work for us because he's not going. And that turns out, as I said, to have been a big advantage.

59:44I mean, certainly it explains, even if it doesn't explain, even if it doesn't help them win or take back all their territory, you know, in the next six months, It certainly explains why the country still exists today. How would you assess the West's support for Ukraine? And what are your views on it? Do you have a message for the West? So it's really impressive what we've done so far. And it's a lot more than anybody had ever expected. And that's also a reflection of the fact that the Ukrainians just impressed people. Zelensky was good at communicating, but it wasn't just him. It was the Ukrainians fought back.

1:00:21you know, at Mariupol, for example, at the very, you know, early part of the war and in Kiev. And because of that, you've had this galvanizing effect on Europe, on America, you know, and our willingness to give them weapons and help them is extraordinary. I would say one thing, which is that we always seem to be kind of three or four beats behind the situation. You know, eventually we will give them, you know, we said we wouldn't give them HIMARS, these long-range missiles, and long-range artillery, you know, and then we did. You know, we've said we wouldn't give them airplanes, and now actually they're beginning to get some airplanes from European countries, and we may eventually do that too.

1:00:58And it would help if we would give them more immediately, because then we could maybe end the war more quickly. I mean, the danger of this war, obviously, is that it drags on, which is not good for them, not good for us, not good for anybody. And having a decisive plan to end it, you know, soon isn't something I'm feeling from Washington. I mean, Washington remains, in Washington, meaning the White House, the Pentagon, lots of different people, remains nervous about the idea that the Ukrainians could win. In other words, could push the Russians out of at least their territory since February 22, taken since February 2022, but in more than that territory taken since 2014.

1:01:41And there seems to be, there's still a lot of nervousness. And I think that that's been a kind of drag on the war. And there's a danger that that nervousness could extend the war. So they don't want them to win too much. They just want them to take. They seem to not. Nobody says it quite like that. And nobody will ever say that on the record. You know, even off the record, they don't really say that. But yeah, it's pretty clear that they're nervous about what that would mean. And I think that's wrong because, again, now I think I've said this another time, It's a political struggle as well as a military one.

1:02:14And the Russians have to be convinced that they can't win and that there's no opportunity for them to win. To your point, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I'll make a statement and you tell me if you validate or nullify it. The best way to end a war is to win it. And we keep saying no tanks, then tanks. I mean, shouldn't we just skip to the part where we do what's required to end slash win this war? Well, that's what I'm arguing. Yes. I mean, I think that's exactly right. If those are the words you want to put in my mouth, those are fine. Thanks, Anne. So, Anne, last question. When does that happen?

1:02:47What is the time from your being there and assessing this counteroffensive in your article? When does the counteroffensive start? No, when does this end for Russia? Do you see, is there a path? You know, the U.S. has given the Ukrainians, you know, training and preparation for the counteroffensive. counteroffensive. I just read this morning there's new shipments of ammunition are going over right now from Europe as well as the US, and we're, I think, collecting old Soviet Thai-style ammunition from around the world. So that's happening. The question is whether it's enough, and we really won't know that until the counteroffensive or whatever fighting there's going to be over the summer plays itself out.

1:03:26I think by the end of the summer, by next autumn, the situation will be a lot more clear. I'm hoping it will be clear in the sense that, you know, the war will be over. But obviously, obviously, I can't promise that. Right. Well, in any case, it's a terrific article. It does. You leave me more hopeful because these drones over the Kremlin make everybody nervous and the blame on the U.S. And, you know, just the escalation of tensions is not something we need right now, I suspect. Thank you, Anne Applebaum. Again, the title of the article is The Counter Offensive. It's the cover story of the June issue of The Atlantic.

1:04:01You can read it online now or you can actually buy it. Thanks, Anne. All right, Anne, thank you so much. It was a great article. Thank you. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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1:06:20Okay, Scott, let's hear some predictions. My prediction, what about Moms for Kids Liberty? Get it? Do you like my name? Oh, by the way, while we were talking, I went on ChatGBT and I said, give me six names for a group of moms who are against books being banned. And this is what it came back with. Mama Bears Against Book Bans, Mothers for Free Speech, Parental Book Defenders, Mommy Bookworm Brigade, Protect Our Children's Literature, and Book Loving Mom Squad. And this is entirely representative of Chad GPT in the sense that they're all adequate, but you probably wouldn't pick any one. Not bad.

1:06:57I don't mind Book Loving Mom Squad. Send those to me. But what is interesting is that there is probably no greater force in America that moves stuff than moms. I agree. It was moms around drunk driving. It's basically when something happens to our kids, that's when we get incensed. Let's hope the same thing happens with guns. But it's when moms move in and because a lot of moms are kind of tend to be swing voters or key to elections. So anyways, I'm all for it. All right. So prediction, please. I got a couple of predictions. The first is, I think we're going to see the banking crisis continues.

1:07:41And I think we're going to see a couple of things. One, I think FDIC insurance, is it going to be raised to like a million bucks? So there's going to be a cap taken off of it. Or the Fed is basically, and the Treasury is basically deciding that regional banks should go away. Because there's just very little reason to keep your money in a bank above$250 ,000 that's not insured when there are now a series of banks that effectively have the full faith and credit backing of the US government. So I think we're going to see a massive increase or even a removal of the cap of FDIC insurance, because what it comes right down to is these bank runs aren't about, I mean, the increasing interest rates is what catalyzed it.

1:08:18But the real problem here, the real issue in terms of outflows from one bank to another is that cap, it's that$250 ,000 cap. And unless they raise that cap, you can kiss regional banks goodbye. So, for example, Charles Schwab, which has, I think,$300 billion in assets, is totally fine because their average deposit is$20 ,000. So, probably 90 plus to 98 plus percent of their deposits are fully covered by FDIC insurance. But there are a lot of regional banks where 60, 80, 90 percent of their deposits by dollar volume are deposits over a quarter of a million dollars. And that's just all going to go away because there's no downside to shifting it to a too big to fail bank.

1:08:58The only thing they can do to address this, you know, they're kind of hoping this is all going to go away. It doesn't appear to be. I thought it was going to, but there's now two or three new names. So here comes FDIC, cap raise or increase or take the cap off. The other thing that I think people aren't focused enough on is that this isn't about interest rates as much as the thing they aren't talking about is social media. And that is what happens when you can weaponize media and media has no fact checking. and there's also incentives around catastrophizing and weaponizing media. And if I were a short seller, I would take large short positions in regional banks and then I would deploy my army of 1 ,000, 10 ,000, 100 ,000 bots on Twitter and LinkedIn to go out and start creating insecurity that this is the next bank, this is the next domino to fall.

1:09:47And I think we're going to find out in three months, 36 months, is there were a lot of short sellers who created, who could weaponize media, given new media platforms in the speed and the circulation of catastrophizing media that weaponize these platforms for financial incentive to take these. Because the moment a name comes up, it's done. It's kind of done. The moment there's enough trending on Twitter, it ends up in a story on Business Insider, and anyone with over$250 ,000 goes, what's the downside to transferring out, which effectively spells doom for the bank? So that's we're going to see one, a lot of conversation around the weaponization of media and its social media age as it relates to financial institutions, a raise of the cap.

1:10:33And then my final prediction is I think Senator Feinstein is going to resign in the next couple of weeks. Really? Why? The Daily did this fantastic rundown of the issue and what it reminded people of that people aren't focused on and forget is that Senator Feinstein has been a lion in the Senate. She passed hallmark assault weapon ban. No one else was able to do that. She did it. She was a senator who took a real leadership position around releasing a report that shed America in a very bad light about how we were torturing enemy combatants. And it was absolutely the right thing to do. And she demonstrated real leadership in the face of opposition from our military, the White House.

1:11:15But she said it's important people understand what is actually going on here. And they also forget, and I know you were there and I was living in California. This is someone who was thrust into politics by a murder. And she was the one that actually came out and informed people that Supervisor Milk and Mayor Moscone had been shot. I mean, this is. She's amazing. Oh, no, she was. She has had such a storied career. And I think that I think the reason she is going to resign is I think Senator Feinstein has always kind of long term gotten it right. Like if I could build a senator from parts of lesser senators, it would look something like Senator Feinstein.

1:11:48A Democrat who faces adult realities and is pragmatic, and I would describe as a moderate, of which is becoming a species that is increasingly extinct in D.C. But now, unfortunately, her legacy isn't going to be around. This continues much longer. It's been a little while she's been making some mistakes. You know, remember she's yelling at those kids that one time. Well, OK, but that's my point. Her legacy is evolving or devolving into something pretty negative. And that is, this is now having a real impact on what is probably the sole place of affirmative agenda from the Democrats, and that is to finally restore the courts to a more balanced position after Trump literally stuffed courts top to bottom with very conservative judges.

1:12:34And we have an opportunity to get some of that back, and it's not happening. And I think someone's just going to say to her, what do you want your legacy to be? Because it's changing fast day by day. Yeah, I know. But who's telling her that? That's my issue is who's actually telling her. That's the correct question. But I think I'm aware of the people around her and I don't think they have. She I think she's not at a place. She's listening. You don't think she's listening. That's the issue. But Senator Feinstein, I feel like she's just always over the medium term gotten it right. I don't think she's necessarily capable of it.

1:13:06That's my impression. That she can make those sorts of decisions. Yeah. And therefore and there's nobody around her. She's not quite incapable enough for someone else to make the decision. I think it's a real difficult situation, but let's hope. Let's hope. Yeah, we'll see. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Those are good predictions, Scott. We want to hear from you about them and anything else you think about us. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, Scott, that's the show.

1:13:34It's action-packed show this week. We'll be back next week for more. Today's show was produced by Lara Neyman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Endertod engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mils Leverio. 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. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. The best way to end a war is to win it.

1:14:06Support for the show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odoo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload.

1:14:35No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

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