Trump's Interview Disaster, The Kids Online Safety Act, and Governor Jared Polis

24:18Unless you run for office and then become president. Joe Biden, George Bush, stuff like that. Yeah, but I'm not sure, George, but has anyone been elected president in any of the top five reasons ever the VP? The VP is basically invisible. It just gets you well-known. It puts you at the top of the ticket. It puts you at the top of the list. I'm not talking about the VEEP. I'm talking about it's a great role for the VEEP because they're naturally they're the number one contender for the next election. But I'm just saying in terms of their ability to help the ticket, it feels to me like VPs are just all downside.

24:51You just hope they're okay. I think in Shapiro's case, I think he's... How old is he? I'm going to look it up. He's got to be in his 40s. He looks young. We're about the same age, I think. 51. Yeah, he's a little bit older than me. Wait a second. How old are you? I'm going to look it up. You're coming to my 50th birthday party. I'm not coming to your 50th birthday. I believe I'm coming to you. Call me Nancy Reagan and stop it. It's my birthday. 59, November 3rd, 1964. Wikipedia is wrong. All right, Zsa Zsa Gabor. Okay. Anyway. Zsa Zsa. Okay, let's get to our first big story.

25:31We've got more tech earnings to discuss. So much going on. Let's start with Meta, whose shares jumped in extended trading Wednesday after the company beat estimates for revenue and profit in the second quarter. Advertising revenue was 22 % from a year earlier. And the strength of that business seems to be offsetting concerns about heavy spending on AI, which I think is necessary for them. The AI spending will be increasing with Meta upping its expected 2024 capital expenditures to at least$37 billion. We're done with the metaverse. Now we're spending the money on AI. Meta shares did sink on AI spending news last quarter.

26:01The market seems more optimistic because they've got a really good business to get them there, I guess. There's still not a lot to show for these AI investments. And a lot of investors are worried about where the payoffs are. How long will investors wait to get a return from Meta? And I'll just go through Microsoft earnings really quickly. Microsoft was less, they're less enthusiastic about those, which were a bit of a mixed bag. Overall, sales and profit growth beat expectations in the latest quarter, but revenue for the company's cloud business rose slightly below the prior quarter. And analyst expectations, shares were down about 3 % on Tuesday after the earnings report, but rebounded for the most part the next day.

26:36So talk a little bit about the two companies' thoughts. There's just no denying it. Meta, I mean, meta, their earnings were up. Their earnings per share were up 73 % year on year. Their ad impressions and average price per ad both increased 10 % year on year. I mean, that's incredible. The average price and the number of impressions of 10%. Three and a quarter billion daily active users. So 40 % of the planet is on a meta platform every day. The only thing that's giving anyone any pause, and it depends how well they're positioned, is they said, they warned that CapEx growth for AI will grow significantly.

27:17And they've said that the amount of compute needed to train LAMA 4 will likely be almost 10 times more than what was used to train LAMA 3. And people are sort of, when they get a little insecure about this, they immediately go to, similar to what they did in 99 when they went to Cisco, they go to the infrastructure place. Because if you look at the CapEx for the software layer, Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon, their CapEx is up 31%, but their revenue is only up 19%. Whereas the hardware layer, you know, where you go first, NVIDIA, AMD, ARM, their CapEx is actually flat, even maybe down 8%, depending on how you calculate it.

27:55But their revenue is up 146%. So it feels like a safer play right now because since reporting their earnings, Microsoft and Google, the software stack or part of the stack, have declined 2 % and 6 % respectively. And NVIDIA, when AMD reported, it was up 8%. But the software layer, although, is that true? Meta was up, but Microsoft was down. But the thing that freaked everybody out on the Microsoft call was just their, I think it was like they announced something like a 78 % year-on-year increase in CapEx to$19 billion, which is a staggering increase. And get this, the entire tech industry is in such a spending streak.

28:40The capital expenditures of Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google this year will be about$200 billion. That's double what the U.S. government spends on Homeland Security. I mean, these numbers are just staggering. They are. They're staggering. Whether they're going to get the money back is a real question. I think pretty much OpenAI is making money, but who else is? You know, this irritating VC, I'm not even going to name them, was asking, I was having lunch with Sam Altman, was asking, like, is anyone going to make money here, essentially? And I think everyone's worried about that. Is this spending going to result in, you know, growth that meets the amount of money they're spending?

29:16I don't see they have another choice but to spend, correct? This is not the metaverse. This is a really critical shift in computing. I don't know how they can't. This is, I mean, all systems are go here. This is, I mean, as much excitement as there was about the web, even though the revenue is scant relative to the investment, it's dramatically greater than the revenue anyone was getting from the web in the 90s. So everybody is going all in. And also it plays to their strength in the sense that they already have a captive audience to roll out AI applications to. And also they've learned from the father that if you have the advantage of cheap capital, you leverage that advantage and you go hard at CapEx to try and pull away from everybody else.

29:59So they're doing that. They're like, look, our advantage is we have access to cheaper capital because of our market cap and our PE. so we are going to turn on the spending jets. Here's a fun stat. 40 % of S &P 500 companies discussed AI in their earnings calls. I mean, you know, what is it? Only like 20 % are tech companies. So even non-tech companies are talking about AI in their earnings calls. That's up from 1 % of them five years ago. So this is a tidal wave that is just sort of, this is the tail wagging all dogs. So money well spent or we don't know yet or impossible not to spend? I think it's money very well spent for some players.

30:36Unfortunately, existing players who are running away with it. I do think there's a jump on the bandwagon. I don't think, I think a lot of analysts are going to say, and I don't know if Nestle is doing this, but I think a lot of analysts are going to say to some of these second tier or consumer companies, okay, rent AI, spend money on it, but you shouldn't be spending CapEx on it. Because I've heard about some companies are trying to develop their own LLMs and going very hard at this. But the stat I've seen that just absolutely blew me away, we tried to pull together some data on this, is that if you look at the actual amount of revenue that AI applications are generating right now, you know, OpenAI or ChatGPT, the subscription, things like that, it's about$20 billion.

31:20And it's inspired a market capitalization increase. And this includes the amount of money that companies are spending on GPUs. But it's inspired a$3 trillion increase in market capitalization. So right now, the industry notionally is trading at 150 times revenues. And that just does not feel sustainable. That means the revenues these applications are garnering has to, you know, double every year for the foreseeable future, which is, you know, that's a big ask. Yeah, which we've talked about. Yep. Yeah, it's an arms race. They have to do it. It's an arms race. Anyway, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

31:54When we come back, we'll discuss the Senate finally passing social media safety regulation. And we'll talk to a friend of Pivot, Colorado Governor Jared Polis.

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34:56Scott, we're back with our second big story. The Senate is finally taking action with online regulation for kids, passing a pair of bills to expand privacy and safety protections by an overwhelming margin this week. The Kids Online Safety Act, or COSA, requires platforms to take reasonable measures to prevent harm, including online bullying and sexual exploitation. The Children's Teen Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA II, would ban targeted advertising to minors and strengthened privacy protections. The bills now head to the House where they face an uncertain future. Probably will not be passing this year.

35:25There's also some others. I think it's called the Defiance Act around fakes. And then they introduced one about fakes, too. The idea that no fakes allowed or whatever. Something like that. That was Marsha Blackburn and Chris Coons, I think. So they're making some activity. It's just they're not passing them. And people are a little worried about COSAs being able to stand up to congressional scrutiny. The ACLU and tech industry groups have criticized the bill saying important conversations around gender equality and abortion rights could be censored. You know the companies will be more careful than not careful.

35:59That said, it's thinking about child safety. But there's a lot of controversy around this legislation. And most people think it won't hold up to scrutiny. That's too bad. I'm wondering how much of this is written by the companies themselves and they insert shit that it won't, they insert kind of booby traps such that it'll never get past muster. But we've been saying for a long time that elegant legislation or one thing that should happen is that 230 protections are removed for AI elevated content. And to me, this seems like a really clean, smart thing to do. So I'm a fan of this. The problem with, you know, I've said that I thought that the first real externality of AI would be deepfake and shallow fake videos as we lead up to the election.

36:41And the number of deepfake videos available online has surged by 900%. It's up 10x annually, according to KPMG. And then you would think that the kid stuff would, you know, that's kind of bipartisan. And the other part that's interesting about it is the Keep Entertainment Safe, the No Fakes Act, granting individuals a federal property right to approve the use of their voice, appearance, or likeness, exposing unauthorized creators to legal liability. And also, it feels like we've got to move in pretty swiftly to punish platforms or anyone who doesn't have the technology to somewhat police deepfake, not deepfake video, but deepfake audio.

37:21I mean, some of the things that people can do with deepfake audio is really frightening. Meanwhile, lawmakers in both houses of Congress are introducing bills this week to address some of the AI harms, which you just talked about, a bipartisan group of senators and build legislation that would permit the creation of AI replicas without the consent of a person being replicated. This is the no fakes bill. In the House, there's a proposed bill to carve out Section 230 immunity for tech companies that fail to remove intimate deepfakes from their platforms. This is largely around porn, porn fakes. you know Chris Coons said that legislation for AI replicas would correct celebrities like Scarlett Johansson as well as non-celebrities you know the 230 one is a little more complicated Chamber for Progress a center-left group just put out an open letter to Trump asking him to clarify his stance on Section 230 he's repeatedly tried to roll that back which is a problem I mean they're moving on a lot of this stuff but it doesn't mean they passed anything or that the only thing they've managed to pass is a TikTok bill essentially Yeah, but sometimes activity and motion don't translate to progress.

38:23That's correct, yeah. And there's a lot of arm waving here. I just want to see something's actually passed. And the digital, everyone should have the rights to their digital twin, their likeness, video likeness, deepfakes of them, their voice. But also, I generally believe that if they don't pass something that really gives downside incentive to the platforms to ensure that AI deepfake videos, we've seen this before, they're going to feel really bad after the election about all the videos showing violence at polling stations that were clearly deepfake videos. And they'll figure out a way to take it down after they've cashed everyone's check.

39:02So this needs, I mean, this really, and also I won't even go there because I don't want to give people ideas. Deep fake audio and video has so much extortion capability online. It does. There's been story after story about people calling, saying that your husband, they sound like you. I have your kid. Here's your kid's voice. I think the head of, but it was someone, the Porsche guy, the Porsche or the Ferrari guy, they were pretending it was the CEO. and he figured it out, but they were using a voice about a deal. It was really complicated and he of course caught them because he was smart, but they were using really deepfake voices of the CEO as if the CEO was calling him.

39:44And so he asked him something he knew only the CEO would know, which was a book he was reading and they weren't able to answer. And then they ran off. There's been a ton of stories recently about people deepfaking people out of money, out of all kinds of stuff. And it's going to just get worse and worse. Super, super important. But we'll see where Congress gets. I don't think they're going to pass any of this. And I doubt COSA's going to hold up to congressional, I mean, to constitutional scrutiny. That's what most people feel. Because it does, these companies will be more, will be more censorious than ever if they have, if they feel like they're even slight.

40:20So if kids are talking about being gay or things like that, they'll take that down. Because it'll vary state by state what is bad and what is not bad, right? So I don't know. It's going to be really hard. And this is all to the benefit of tech companies. Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot so we can talk about it, a tech guy and a legislator.

40:44Jared Polis is a Democratic governor of Colorado. He's also the chair of the National Governors Association. Governor Polis, welcome. It's great to see you again. Good to see you. So how's it going? How's this there? You just mentioned there are wildfires in Colorado. They're across the West. You know, yeah, one of the impacts of climate change is the West is hotter and drier, and we're experiencing a lot more. So Oregon's been in the news the last few weeks. We now have nine fires in Colorado. We have four that have elevated the state responsibility. We called out the National Guard. You know, unfortunately, for better or worse, we're getting pretty good at this drill.

41:22So we've evacuated everybody and tragically there's only one confirmed death, but we're doing everything we can and bringing it. We should do another show sometime on all the technology around fighting fires, by the way. It is really interesting to see some of the work around satellite imagery. And it's really evolved quite a bit over the last decade. That's amazing. So, you know, Scott's in Colorado right now, just so you know. He's an Aspen. Oh, are you, Scott? Where are you? I'm an Aspen governor. Yeah. So you're probably, you know, both the Front Range and the Western Slope are getting bad air quality as a result of this, too.

41:49So, I mean, you can quite literally smell it in the air. Yeah, that's why I have you here. It's really tough here in Aspen, and I need government to really step in and protect me. Well, from fires, that might be the appropriate role of government, honestly. That's, I think, something we can agree on. Can I segue to an actual question? First, I just want to say, Governor, I'm an enormous fan. I think you're one of the few of a dying breed of raging moderates, practical, reasonable. I'm just an enormous fan. I think Colorado with you and our senior senator, Michael Bennett, are just great examples of what good government can do.

42:24Anyways, enough of that. Let's bring this back to me. I'm in Aspen, and I bought a home here. And one of the things that struck me is it's nearly impossible to build. It's nearly impossible to renovate. The local review boards and the government have clearly decided to employ a strategy which I think infects the entire nation. and that is wealthy incumbents who already own homes weaponize their local governments to ensure new housing can be built. And the result is houses across America have gone from 290 to 410 ,000 from pre to post pandemic and young people just can't afford homes. It used to be two thirds of America could afford a home, now it's one third.

43:03I realize this is a broader national issue, but as governor of a state that's growing and is prosperous, what are your views on how we increase housing stock and what are you doing specifically to ensure that more housing gets built so a younger generation has the same access to buying a home as we had. Preach, preach. I couldn't agree more. That's exactly the nexus of a lot of the issues we're working on housing. So housing prices are a function of supply and demand, basic economics. Demand is high. Isn't Aspen wonderful? Isn't Boulder and Denver wonderful? There's lots of wonderful places in our country people want to live.

43:40Supply has been artificially constrained, artificially low supply because of local government regulations to prevent the construction of new housing. And so we are taking that head on and we've made some progress in Colorado. You'll be happy to know we added accessory dwelling units by right as an example. So if you have a single family lot, you can build an accessory dwelling unit. We did multifamily zoning near transit within half a mile of bus or rail. We're for all of it, Scott. I agree we need to do more. You know, and when people look at what is preventing housing from being built, it is effectively the zoning and local regulations that make it difficult or impossible, right?

44:24Sometimes you can fight City Hall if you have the tenacity and you need$50 ,000 in lawyers, and eventually you can build it two years later. But all too often, they don't even let you or you come in saying, hey, we're doing this 80-unit multifamily complex. By the time you're done, One, they get it down to 20 units, the exact opposite of what we need. So absolutely, the state is there. I'm for intervention at any level, you know, local, federal, federal state. We absolutely need to remove some of these artificial constraints to prevent housing that we need from being built where we need it. So I'm going to move you to politics, if you don't mind, because that's one of the things that Scott was just talking about was the idea of moderation.

45:03Democrats like you or Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania having that imagery of more moderation, more helping consumers not being the same old Democratic Party. I'd love you to talk a little bit about where you think the Democratic Party is right now, especially with the candidacy of the vice president about to be he's about to get the become the candidate. And the DNC is meeting very soon in Chicago. Go. Talk a little bit about how you look at it across the landscape right now. Yeah. You know, I'm not always sure that moderate is the right word. There's a problem with the word moderate. The connotation of the word moderate is you somehow don't want to do anything or support the status quo or support the midpoint between what both parties want to do.

45:50I don't think that's the case. I think solutions oriented, meaning good solutions at work, whether they come from the left or the right, wherever they come from ideologically, you want to see deployed. And take this housing issue that we just talked about. You can find people on the left and the right that might oppose this. It doesn't mean it's a moderate solution. It's just a solution that works. There might also be allies on the left and right. It doesn't really align necessarily on an ideological map. In our state, we've got more support on the Democratic side for some of these land use reforms.

46:21But in Montana, the Republicans were supported some of these same land use reforms. So sometimes that's for political reasons. Look, I think both parties, and especially the Democratic Party, which I'm a member of, are very broad tense, very broad tense. It's different than a multi-party European system where each ideology has its own. The Democrats might be composed of three or four different parties. Republicans are composed of at least two or three, kind of the nationalist party, the traditional conservative party, the religious party. Democrats have consequences, but we're all here in one party.

46:56And, you know, that makes things a little bit different, a little bit tougher. We have to work out our differences beforehand. But I'm excited Kamala Harris is a much more forward-looking, future-looking face for our party. And I think the coalition is moving in a direction that's more pro-business, pro-tech. And that's something that excites me. So, Governor, Colorado punches above its weight class. It's 21st among states in terms of population, 15th when it comes to the size of its economy, and an even more impressive eighth in terms of how much personal income that it generates. Now, I don't know if that's education.

47:31I don't know if it's a business-friendly environment. I don't know if the kind of person you attract. But as sort of the CEO here, what is it you think are kind of the levers or the pillars of punching above your weight class economically? So, look, one of them is the great quality of life in the outdoors here. That's a competitive advantage we have, right? But it doesn't mean it's a given. We say, how do we enjoy the outdoors in a sustainable way? How do we do? We added some state parks. We reduced the cost of access. We're doing a lot around wildlife conservation. So that's one key attribute that we have.

48:05Beyond that, we've reduced the income tax three times in Colorado since I've been governor. When I came in, our income tax was 4.63%. We We reduced it at the ballot box to 4.5 and then 4.4. And now with the legislature, and it was near unanimous, by the way, we got almost every vote of every Democrat or Republican. We reduced it to 4.25%. So we reduced property tax percentages as well. And we're the 48th lowest property tax state. Again, many Coloradans who might hear complain because their properties went way up in value and the rates floated down, but they might still be paying more in absolute terms.

48:38But we, as a percentage of our property value, we're 48th lowest. And we're favorable towards innovation, you know, and while we, you know, education is so important. I can't say, and no governor can, that we have a terrific education every school across the board because it's locally controlled and there's a lot of differences. But we have a system that allows for innovation. We are second in percentage of charter schools, as an example, to Washington, D.C. Within districts and outside of districts, we have choice that allow parents to choose the option and the school that work best for their kid.

49:10We just implemented universal preschool. One of the things that I ran on, Colorado didn't have preschool before. Parents had to pay for it. Now we have universal preschool for every four-year-old. And it's the preschool of that parent's choice, right? Obviously subject to a lottery and waitlist and so forth. But you get everybody has equal access, and that's exciting. So talk a little bit about the impact of tech. Now, you're a tech guy going way back. We met back in Blue Mountain Art days, but you also founded an internet access company from your college dorm room. Your parents and you ran Blue Mountain Arts, which the best trade of the internet age back then.

49:43You managed to sell it at the peak and get out. And you had a lot of theses about politics in the information age that I remember we used to discuss. Yes. I'd love to, now the tech people are really involved in it, and sometimes for the negative. There's sort of a blue team and a red team right now, it seems like. Can you talk about the role of tech? And especially at this point, a lot of them are over there because of all kinds of reasons, but crypto is one of the issues, and you've been a big proponent of that. So can you talk a little bit? Sure. And I want to say, like, by the way, I'm not somebody, and obviously for, you know, conflict of interest reasons, I want to be clear, I don't own any crypto.

50:21But even if I wasn't in public office, it doesn't mean I necessarily would invest in crypto. I want to be clear. I'm not bullish on crypto per se, but I'm bullish on technology per se and removing barriers for disruptive technologies like crypto. Absolutely. And so we were right. But your Colorado became the first state to let residents pay state income tax with crypto. Absolutely. Crypto forward. You can you can you use it to buy your driver's license, different state fees you can pay in crypto. And very few people do, but we're excited that some do. And we also want to create some regulatory safe harbors to the extent we can for new developing technologies like crypto.

50:53Much of that is federal. So there's only limited ability of states to do that. And I can just say as a member of the Democratic Party and, you know, having won primaries for Congress, for governor, I'd never had any issues with my fellow Democrats about being pro-technology, pro-crypto. And, you know, is that what you run on? No, because that's not the top issue on people's minds. I mean, you run on preschool and environmental protections and the things you're doing. But whenever it comes up, that's always been my position and why. And by the way, Colorado is well positioned now in the quantum technology sector, too.

51:26And that's another exciting. Right. So people don't know Colorado's designated tech hub for quantum commuting by the Biden-Harris administration last year. You won a$40 million grant from the government this month to jumpstart that growth. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, that's right. And in many ways, that was a recognition of where we are. It wasn't like they were giving that to us to become the leader in quantum. It was the recognition by the feds that we are the national play on quantum tech is here. Over 3 ,000 jobs in quantum tech already, which is far more than any other region of the country. We have five Nobel Prize winners.

51:56So, I mean, we want to bet on the future in Colorado. We're a very forward-looking, innovative state, and America is a very forward-looking, innovative nation. I mean, you look at most major innovations, both in the online world and the offline world, the disproportionate share come from America. So you talked about Colorado punching above our weight. I'm proud that our country very much punches above our weight. And with the right tech forward, innovative policies, we'll continue to do so. So what do you make of so many tech people? I've never thought they were politically liberal myself for years and years.

52:23I didn't think they had any politics. But many of them become Trump supporters. So how do you look at that? And then, of course, there's the ones that are not, obviously, like Reid Hoffman, Reid Hastings, Vinod Khosla, et cetera. So, I mean, look, I grew up in this culture and I'm part of it. Right. So, I mean, I think and you do, too, Cara. I mean, so you get Elon Musk. Right. I mean, look, I, you know, 4chan, Reddit. I mean, this is, you know, I get this stuff. You know, it's like people are, you know, trolls and trash talk and all the fun stuff along with it. The wonder is just a great, you know, beauty of the Internet and what it brings out.

52:57But look, there's an ideological diversity there. And you just saw there were a bunch of venture capitalists, you know, VCs for Kamala Harris. I think most people that are professionally involved with tech value the stability that Kamala Harris would bring. I mean, Donald Trump is about chaos, right? And there's a beautiful side to chaos on the Internet, but there's not as much of a beautiful side to chaos as the chief executive of the largest, most important country in the world, both on the international stage and the domestic stage. It's hard to figure out what the core beliefs are with regard to tech and Donald Trump.

53:32I mean, he tends to like it if it talks about how great he is, and he doesn't like tech if it denigrates him. He shifts really dramatically. I don't think he has any opinions, honestly. He's narcissistic. I mean, that's a personality he has, and that's his lens that he views tech through. So let me ask you, to follow up to that, how would you make the case for people to support Vice President Harris in tech? What is if you had to you were in front of some of these guys that are like, she's against crypto or I'm not getting, you know, woke mind virus, whatever the nonsense they're spewing at any one moment.

54:06Yeah. I mean, you know, first of all, she's not Joe Biden and and she's different, different person. And Joe Biden is who he is. I happen to like Joe Biden, but you'll like him for who he is. He's, you know, an old time Irish poll. I mean, you know, he's I think what the country needed at the time. I certainly supported him last time around. I don't think we were making the case. This is the guy for the tech and the future, right? This is the guy to save democracy, hopefully to bring us together. He's the elder statesman we needed, you know, a safe hand when we need it through difficult times.

54:36I think Kamala Harris can be more indifferent in a lot of different ways. She hails from California, strong ties to Silicon Valley. She has a lot of friends and associates that are themselves entrepreneurs. I think she understands the value of disruption, the entrepreneurial economy. And you'll see that manifest itself in policy. She's already done outreach to the crypto world. She's already doing extensive outreach to the venture capital world. I think she gets value and capital formation. And is she going to be perfect on every issue? Of course not. Nobody is. And by the way, many Republican states are taking a hard turn, anti-internet, anti-free expression, restricting the, you know, access and so forth.

55:15So look, it's not a partisan thing, but I think Kamala Harris will be a great leader for innovation and for the future. Scott? Governor, you were on a bunch of people's shortlist for a potential VP pick, which connotes the notion that you're at some point a viable candidate to be president. When you look out across either foreign policy or tax policy or social policy, are there any one or two issues that you're especially passionate about that if for whatever reason you were to end up in federal office, you would want to pursue that you think are especially important in America right now? Well, you know, one that I highlight that I'm hopeful that Kamala Harris will be better on because we had kind of two mediocre, we had a bad choice with Donald Trump, mediocre with Joe Biden was trade and expanding markets overseas, bringing down tariffs and trade barriers.

56:05Trump is absolutely the worst, right? 10 % universal tariff on everything that's inflationary, increased costs, not to mention the retaliatory tariffs other countries would launch that would, you know, destroy American manufacturing and hurt American agriculture. I think we have huge potential to grow stronger trade ties with our allies, right? I'm not even talking about the geopolitics of China now, and I have, you know, opinions about that. But I'm just saying with Europe, with the Americas, our Senator Bennett, who you mentioned earlier, has the Americas Act in Congress, which would expand the Mexico, Canada, U.S.

56:41trade agreement to other countries in Central and South America. So this is something we should embrace. It's something that Donald Trump is the worst in and Joe Biden was mediocre. And I'm hopeful Kamala Harris will be more like President Obama and leading the way in trade. We used to have the way ISIS, we used to have one and a half good parties on trade. The Republican Party could be counted on in half the Democratic Party. Now you're down to half a party who's pro-trade. The Democrats, the half of us that are pro-trade are still here. Republicans took a hard turn towards nationalism, towards isolationism, and against trade.

57:14And that is the detriment of innovation and the detriment of our economy. So you perfectly deflected Scott's question, but go ahead, Scott. Yeah, I was going to say, let's talk specifics. So, well, that's an issue that I, yeah, that's an issue that I specifically would, you know, do want to help bring to the national stage for sure. But let's talk specifically about China. There's real tension. There's been sort of a, there's like a cold peace right now. The Trump administration and the Biden administration are becoming kind of tariff crazy as it relates to China, the second largest economy. And before you answer that question, just a fun fact, Colorado has the same size economy as Thailand with a 12th of the population.

57:58So anyways, back to China-US trade. Would you lower tariffs? Would you try to re-embrace China? What would be your trade policy as it relates to China? Well, I have spoken out against the recent tariffs that President Biden imposed on solar and electric vehicles to a lesser extent. I'm not as concerned about that, but certainly on solar panels. Now, is there a legitimate national security nexus around sensitive technology when you're talking about, you know, CHIPS Act and on-shoring or friend-shoring of key technologies that include applications in the defense sector. I would put that in a different category, and I would make sure that we consult with national security experts on our sufficiency in those areas to prepare for all contingencies.

58:41But when it comes to things like the clothing on our back, 98 % of it is imported, much of it from China. A 10 % tariff would be a tax on the middle class. It's back to school time. Everybody's shopping for their kids' clothes, paying 10 % more. On solar panels, we want to power the low-cost clean energy revolution. If China is producing them at a level where they're losing money, I mean, that's their problem. It's our opportunity. Let's buy as many solar panels as we can to create low-cost energy for the American people. Electric vehicles, too, not part of critical defense infrastructure. I don't think we should be levying tariffs on them.

59:18And then again, you get to the sensitive national security things and I'm much more sympathetic towards on-shoring and friend-shoring of technology. Yeah, a lot of it is hand-waving. A lot of it is hand-waving about everything. You did just deflect his idea of running for office and you and I have talked about this. And you had a very funny rejoinder when anyone asked if you were a vice presidential candidate, which was if they're looking for a Jewish gay guy, fantastic, here I am, like sitting in Colorado. But why wouldn't they pick you? I was sort of like, he's wrong. Why wouldn't you be acceptable to a vast majority of people.

59:51Well, you know, I was making more of a commentary on like how they do the crosstabs and the polling is down to a T. Obviously, you know, somebody from a swing state would be at a premium and somebody who wants to elect Kamala Harris. I do like people like Mark Kelly and Josh Shapiro because they do bring people along in their state. And, you know, it's been modeled mathematically. It might be half a percent. It might be ever. But we don't want to be sitting there after Election Day saying we lost Pennsylvania by 0.2 percent. If only we had Josh Shapiro on the ticket, we would have won if that was a tipping point.

1:00:20But no, I mean, that being said, you know, I focus on kind of bringing an audience, you know, to younger people, to tech savvy people. It's a forward looking face of the party. I have kind of fun social media. I try to stay positive with it as opposed to negative, but we kind of do quirky stuff on there. But no, I really love the job I have, Cara, to be brief. You know, I don't think there's a better job than governor of Colorado. How often, how much more can you be governor of Colorado. You're sort of like Whitmer. I have two and a half more years. Two and a half, same thing with Governor Whitmer, right?

1:00:50And very popular governors. We have a lot of great governors across the Democratic Party. It's really quite amazing. The states are at this point, in any assessment, they're just more functional than the federal government. I mean, they're just, we're able to get stuff done, you know, whether it's preschool, whether it's innovation policy, you know, we made first two years of college free for everybody earning under 90 ,000. So just, just boom, boom, boom. And federal government is very frustrating at this point. frustrating okay um last question for me do you have a pick for vice president do you have any what would who would you pick if you were her yeah present company not included of course yes um but you can pick yourself right you know in terms of winning right i i ascribe to the data that shows that there's a small but noticeable effect for the hometown home state person so i mean arizona mark kelly's great right i mean astronaut science tech i mean he's great josh Shapiro, I've gotten to know over the last two years, haven't known him as long as I know him Mark Kelly, but great.

1:01:48Very popular in Pennsylvania, very forward-looking. I think those are your top two, right? I mean, if you go away from the competitive states, you're losing that advantage. There's plenty of wonderful people with different appeal. But, you know, somebody who wants to win it, I just don't want to wake up after election day and say, my God, we could have had it with one more state. Yeah. Scott, last question. So, Governor, you're the father of two. What advice would you have for fathers with, or mothers for that matter, with very high pressure jobs, important jobs, in terms of what you've learned about, you know, or what surprised you?

1:02:25What are you better at in terms of being a dad than maybe you were a few years ago? What advice do you have for young fathers? You know, our kids are very different, like most people with multiple kids. So our daughter is very athletic, going to go to her baseball games, and our son is more cerebral and, you know, computery and all that sort of stuff. But, you know, embrace each kid. Look at him smiling as he describes his kids. Look at him smile. You got to love this guy. Anyway, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Well, they're great. You know, everybody, you just sort of, you know, you love them where they're at and you enjoy the time with them.

1:02:57Our kids are 10 and 12. So, you know, we just try to enjoy every moment where we can with them. And they're a lot of fun. I'm home for dinner pretty much every day. You know, sometimes we have dinner a little late side, 730 if I'm late, early, if I'm I'm back by 630. But we have dinner every day and have good discussions. Just one quick follow-up. What about being a good partner? Well, you know, Marlon is a great guy himself. He's the first gentleman of Colorado. His focus is animal welfare issues, so adopting cats and dogs and protecting wildlife. And he's very involved with that, and I support him in that.

1:03:35And we have a great home life. We do gaming at home. You know, we play League of Legends most nights and sometimes watch TV, but we love computer games and hanging out. Interesting. So he's a cat lady. Interesting. No, I'm teasing. That's my last question. What do you make of the efforts by the Republican Party to, like, weaponize parenting? It's, you know, I have four kids. I don't talk about anyone lesser or more than. I don't, like, judge people for having kids or not. Does this backfire from your perspective? Well, absolutely. It's just strange, first of all. And again, we talked about Donald Trump not having any core beliefs, but Republicans saying we want the government to parent your kids is very opposite of where they've traditionally been.

1:04:21Also very off-putting, I think, to many in the tech community. But that's basically what they're saying. I mean, what the mainstream message is that many Democrats, myself included, embraces, yeah, look, there's different value sets among different parents. You raise your kids different ways. That's great. you know we're not saying I'm not for or against how you raise your kids like even the relationship with tech is a very personal one some parents don't want their kids using any tech till they're 16 others introduce it at age six I mean this is not for the government to decide this is for parents to decide in their in their families and in their homes and do I think that's a winning message absolutely but is it the right thing of course and so that's a contrast that I'm you know willing to raise every day of the week.

1:05:04And I think the Republicans keep burying themselves deeper with trying to take over parenting when most parents just want to raise their kids and be left alone. Right. 100 percent. Anyway, we really appreciate it. Governor Jared Polis from Colorado. And you're a real star. Your journey has been so fascinating to me, where you've been and where you're going. So I'll really be eager to see what's next. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Thanks, Governor. All right, Scott. Isn't he a good guy? He's a really good guy. Could I have been more sycophantic? I was literally like Kara interviewing a lesbian journalist from The Atlantic.

1:05:40My questions were like, how can you be this awesome? He is awesome. He was very funny back in the day. He had like a little briefcase. He was like, I used to call him Michael J. Fox because his parents were hippies and he was like wearing a suit all the time. He's a funny guy. He's really, I'm glad he's really come into his own. I really enjoy him quite a bit. But anyway, it shows you how good government officials can be, right? I agree. He has a lot of choices, and he took this one. It's a really well-governed state. They have great elected officials there. He does have the benefit of money to be able to do that.

1:06:11Like, so he doesn't, you know, he's doing it for himself and for the people of Colorado. Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for Predictions.

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1:08:58Okay, Scott, before we get to predictions, Don Lemon just texted me. He's suing Elon Musk for refusing to pay him after the canceled X deal. X executives used Don to prop up their advertising sales pitch then canceled their partnership and dragged Don's name through the mud. Lemon's lawyer said in a statement, just so you know, good for you, Don. I wrote him back, yay, because I don't think he's getting his money back. But nonetheless, it's yet another lawsuit for Elon. And Linda Yatrino looks like an idiot once again. OK, now tell me your predictions. Well, so I thought the prediction was going to be around VP and I'm picking Shapiro.

1:09:33The other prediction I'm making, I'm just thinking about it because we didn't get to it, is I think we've hit sort of peak tweeting of or peak the founder tweeting of funds. So the dream of every fund manager is captive capital, because the way you go out of business as an alternative investment manager is mismatched durations. And that is, you invest long and you raise money short. And that is, you aggregate a series of positions that are not that liquid, and then your investors put in a redemption, and you either have to sell so desperately that it takes the value of the fund down, or you can't even sell.

1:10:05Right, so you can't keep going with your investments, yeah. So you have to put up gates saying your investors can't withdraw their money, which is effectively the end of your fund, because once you put your gates down, everyone redeems. Anyway, so captive capital is the dream of every hedge fund manager. And Berkshire Hathaway and Apollo have both been very smart, and that is they have insurance companies, so they have captive capital. Another way you get capped up capital is you do an IPO and you raise capital from shareholders who own a stake and the returns on your investments. And Bill Ackman's Pershing Square planned to do a$25 billion IPO.

1:10:38And just this week, they announced that they're pulling the IPO. And it's pretty obvious that the reasoning is that he took a calculated risk that awareness is everything. And there's some evidence of that. when guys like Chamath or Cathie Wood basically offer just terrible returns. Or Warren Buffett. Or Warren Buffett. It's folksy. But go ahead. Yeah, but Warren has performance on his side. Warren is both a good brand and has underlying performance. That is, you know, so far, Chamath and Cathie Wood have one of those things. They have awareness. And their performance has been abysmal to worse.

1:11:17And Ackman, to his credit, has actually been, is, A lot of people would argue a brilliant investor. But when he's out there with these tweets circulating conspiracy theory, weighing in on higher ed and DEI, it appears that institutional investors have said, you know what, we're just not, we see that as a bug, not a feature. And he had to pull his IPO. And I think it's going to give pause to a lot of these fund managers who's decided that they're celebrities or Internet celebrities and that the world needs to know what they're thinking about stuff. And the most ridiculous tweet of the year from a person that manages billions of dollars was from Kathy Wood of ARK.

1:11:55And the tweet read as follows. This is from Kathy. As a result, our trading-related capital tax losses should offset trading, related capital tax gains for years, and underappreciated asset associated with our strategies. What she's saying is, our returns have been so shitty, we have lost so much of your money, that those losses we've aggregated are going to be so valuable to offset future gains that this is an underappreciated asset. Oh, we suck, but let me turn it to something else. Yeah. So my incompetence as a fiduciary for your capital, I've lost so much capital that these losses are an underappreciated asset.

1:12:40Yeah. What a surprise. These people are such grifters, honestly. The PR person saying, wait, how do we turn a negative into a positive? And you're sick of fans on Twitter might even buy this. And by the way, she deleted the tweet because I'm sure about a million people wait and it said, what? Let me get this. Okay, my incompetence is your advantage. Anyways, I think that these very iconic investors, the day of them being bored at night and tweeting out shit, I think a lot of their institutional investors are going to go, put the fucking phone down. Yeah, and do your job. Do your fucking job. Focus on returns.

1:13:23Bill Afton has become such a horse's patoot. And he was before, by the way, but he had results and he kept his mouth shut. Right. There's all the stories of him being a jerk to people. But whatever. He did a good job. He had some wins. He had some losses, but a very good investor. Right. Good at his job. So this era of him has got to be, it's just been so depressing to watch in a lot of ways because he's an interesting fella, right? Like he really is. And what's happened here is that he thinks he mistakes who his audience is and he thinks his investors are all these dumbasses who are going to just be a meme stock when actually they're institutional investors who just don't want this nonsense and sloppiness.

1:14:02He apparently released a letter he shouldn't have released. He told people who his investors were. he's just like you know what you live in the investing world and that's your audience and if you think you're going to sort of trick someone into buying into your IPO it's not happening for you it's just not and that's that's what I thought they sort of misjudged his audience completely or the power of his audience and they're just a bunch of people that like to troll they're not real investors they're just you know either they could be dumb money but they're not even that for you So, you know, whatever.

1:14:31Good luck with that. But it's, you know, I find it just him going on and on about DEI. I feel like I should do a whole thing about hedge fund investing, about which I know nothing, and I would like to tweet about it endlessly. That's what I kind of compare it to. You're correct. So it's over. Yeah, he spoke before me at TED. And I'm mixed on Bill, because I think he's actually an interesting guy. And I think in some ways, I do think his heart's in the right place. He's philanthropic. Anyway, but he said something on stage, which really struck me that this is what happens when you become powerful and you surround yourself with yes people.

1:15:08the person interviewing him said you know you're you throw your weight around around DEI essentially because you're a billionaire and he said no my my fame around DEI is because my ideas it has nothing to do and it's like are you really that tone deaf you really think that your ideas around DEI not being a great idea are so Ukraine let's hear what you think about Ukraine like whatever these people have so many hairs up their ass they just can't stop itching it was like wow you really you really don't get it. Anyways, but he is a big handsome man. I'll give him that. I sat next to him. I sat next to him or stand next to him at the urinal and he looked over and he said, circumcise?

1:15:50I'm like, no, that's just the wear and tear, Bill. Thank you for talking about Bill Atkins' penis. Boom! I was closing the show with a dick joke. You were sitting at the, I didn't want to go into this. We did sit next to each other at the urinal though. Or stand, I'm sorry, stand next to each other. Oh, right. Okay. We're on the penis of Bill Atkins. How lovely. It was that kind of convention. Anyway, Bill, just get back to your job and stop yammering away. Honestly, you know, I'm sure your wife loves that you dragged her through the mud, by the way. That was a nice job for doing that. Anyway, we want to hear from you.

1:16:21Send 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. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Please read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertide entered into this episode. Thanks also to Jabros and Emil Severio. Nishad Karua is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

1:16:52We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara, have a great weekend.

1:17:05Thank you.