Trump’s Putin Call, Inflation Rises, and Sam Altman Strikes Back at Elon Musk

25:01So they spent two years planning how to homeschool their kids on a boat, how to build a boat that could circumnavigate the globe. And they did it. They circumnavigated the globe. And there were some exceptionally scary moments involving pirates, rough seas, when you got like a seven-year-old on the boat. If the seven-year-old goes over, there's no getting him back. And what they said to me was, I said, would you do it again? I tried to talk them out of it. These are good friends. I'm like, I just don't think this is a good idea. I wouldn't do it. And there's certain bodies of water. I would just take a plane.

25:35You don't need bragging rights. You're both incredibly impressive people. And I said, would you do it again? And they said, not until our kids could give consent. because they said there were just some moments that were very scary. And I feel the same way about this. If you're the president and you have children, it's one thing to have those moments. But I don't know. Do you really take your kid to a concentration camp? Yeah, you focused on the kids. I'm focusing on Elon. I agree, this kid should not have been there. I thought the whole thing was so fucking weird. It was weird. It was just a weird thing.

26:04And I thought Trump did look aged. I don't think he looked powerful. I thought he looked like the kid and he were just over playing with blocks over here. and Elon was running the government. Anyway, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has some harsh thoughts about Elon Musk after his bid for the company. There's a lot of legal back and forth this week, by the way, about this. There's a lawsuit and then Musk made a bid, which seems like a fake bid. Either it's a fake lawsuit or a fake bid. I can't tell. But let's listen to Sam Altman. Do you think Musk's approach then is from a position of insecurity about XAI?

26:34Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I feel for the guy. You feel for him? I do, actually. I don't think he's like a happy person. I do feel for him. The backhanded compliment. Well done, Sam. In a court filing, OpenAI has said the bid contradicts legal claims. Musk made a lawsuit against the company last year. In fact, it does. Musk now says he's willing to drop the bid if OpenAI remains a nonprofit. By the way, there are emails where Musk indicates he wanted it to be a profit company. So he's just, whatever works for him, he says at the time. As of Tuesday, Altman told employees the board hadn't received an official offer from Musk, which is probably true.

27:10I'm going to believe Altman here over Musk. You know, he's just trying to slow him down. That's what it seems like. He'll say whatever it takes to slow open and drag it into controversy and take advantage of people either have left open AI or who have ill feelings towards Altman, et cetera, which is going to be many. Yeah, I think Sam has shown a great deal of discipline around his comms and his brand. I think he screwed up here. I think that whether it's true or not, it might've felt good to say, I feel for the guy and yes, he's insecure. I think he just sort of said, the offer isn't a serious offer and I have no idea what's going on with Elon Musk.

27:51Sam has taken so far the high road around this and he should continue to take the high road. He shouldn't take the bait and say, because that's basically saying he's insecure and it must've felt good and I get why he would do it. He's probably so sick of this guy that wants to deploy lawfare instead of actually competing against him and is like this poltergeist who will not go away. For all of us. That's absolutely fair. But Sam's brand is he's Sam comes across as the adult in the room and he's very restrained and he errs on the side of taking blows. And I don't think you should go there and say, I mean, that was a passive aggressive minus the passive part.

28:31Oh, no, that was like, What an asshole. Yeah, I watched how he did it. I've seen him do it before, you know, these sideways attacks, and they're funny. And he's like, oh, I feel sorry for him. He's such an asshole. I feel sorry that he's an asshole. Yeah, but I think the bright answer would have been, of course, we had our lawyers look at it. We don't think there's any merit on it. We're focused on building great products. So I'm not here to psychoanalyze them. So which one do you think, this is just about slowing down. Both of us think that. But it's just about slowing down OpenAI, not a real lawsuit and not a real bid.

29:01Possibly could be, though. Yeah, but the only thing is, if you're a public company and someone makes a bid for a certain class of shares is the way I would describe this, then you have a duty share obligation to put together a special committee and look at. And I don't know if they have debt, if that changes anything. It's not clear because it's a nonprofit if they have a special responsibility, but go ahead. But when you're basically a private company and everyone's making so much money, I just, unless there's someone on the board of the nonprofit that also hates Altman, which might be the case and wants to create trouble.

29:31No, we sort of stacked it with friends of us. And they can pretty much do whatever they want. They don't, a public company has an obligation. The board has an obligation to get the highest offer and look at everything. A private company is basically a private company, and they can kind of do, you know, the shareholders as represented by the board can kind of do whatever the fuck they want. And I can't imagine any of them are going to go, yeah, let's bring Elon in. Well, in the case of Twitter, there was a really good – there's been very good reporting when the CEO at the time, Agrawal, said, we have to look at this offer.

30:04It's an offer. It's a huge offer. I'm sorry to say we don't have a choice even if he's an asshole, essentially. And then they had to take it because it was so good and ridiculous and so above their thing. In this case, they can do whatever they want. And it's not that far above it. And maybe the nonprofit gets more money or something like that. But they'll be lost. He'll just keep throwing. Listen, Elon Musk has two moves. I'll buy it or I'll sue you. These are his two big moves. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. He doesn't have the money to buy. Because if he were to buy it, he would have to.

30:35Look, the more interesting kind of thing that no one wants. I actually read or looked at, which is Latin for I had one of my analysts read, the earnings call from SoftBank. And a bunch of people asked questions about this anticipated investment in OpenAI at a$300 billion pre-money valuation. And basically in so many words, they said, what the fuck are you thinking? Can you please explain this and what will be the structure of the investment? So I'm now beginning to think that that investment might be at risk because a lot of the analysts on the call were, what are you doing? This makes no sense.

31:11So for the first time, I'm now wondering if SoftBank actually reduces their commitment to that realm. Right, right. That's exactly what Musk wants to happen, right? That's exactly what he wants to do. He wants to cut them off at the knees. He's very clever that way. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. How DeepSeek is threatening Teslas next.

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33:47Scott, we're back. Chinese electric car company BYD is bringing DeepSeek technology to its vehicles, of course. The EV maker has added advanced driver assistance systems in most of its vehicles, including a model that costs under$10 ,000. They also continue to be adorable. The cheapest Tesla model on the market is$30 ,000. Tesla stock is down 17 % in the last month because people are actually doing math and not thinking that Musk's ascendance will benefit Tesla necessarily. You know, he's a CEO, but he's focused on a lot of other things. Scott, this week you talked to Alice Han, Chinese economist and director at Green Mantle, about this very thing.

34:26Let's listen. How is our player, Tesla, domestically, who has its own manufacturing in China, faring against BYD domestically in China? Not well at all. I mean, the fact that Tesla is still there surprises me somewhat, given its price point. and the fact that all these companies, including Tesla, have had to cut prices over the last few years because of the extremely competitive price wall landscape. I think it's only a matter of time before that share starts to diminish even further. It's going to be an open-ended question, and now this is going to be based on the politics of it all, whether or not Elon Musk gets these autonomous vehicle licenses.

35:06Explain what she was saying there. And by the way, her accent is fantastic. Oh, I cannot tell you how impressed I am with Alice Hahn. She's my find. Occasionally you find somebody and you think this person is a genius and I want to give them more sunlight. She's one of those people. Anyways, she's essentially said that, I mean, if you look at what's happened to Tesla in Europe, it's not much better in China. In January, retail sales of Tesla in China were 16 % lower year on year. Why wouldn't you buy a BYD? They're great cars. And get this, 60 % lower than in December. So, I mean, BYD, and BYD is now the number one EV car manufacturer in the world.

35:50Going to a much broader point here, I think that the most important relationship that could evolve hopefully in the next three years, let's assume that Trump, supposedly he desperately wants a Nobel Prize. And so let me go to advising the president in a hopeful way. The most obvious way would be to solve the civil war in Sudan. Threaten both sides, work with both sides. The other way would be if China and the U.S. kissed and made up, I mean, have you seen these cars? These cars are$10 ,000 EVs and really good. They're adorable. As long as they're safe, they're going to raise questions. I've had people write me about whether they're safe or not.

36:33Okay. I'm just saying. They have to be if they're here. For another$2 ,000 or$3 ,000, you can install a lot of airbags and a lot of safety features. And in addition, I would even go further than that. I would create a bilateral AI commission where we, I mean, supposedly 38 % of AI engineers are Chinese in the U.S. And when we don't cooperate with them, they develop their own chips. They have incentive to do things kind of in and around us. I would have a bilateral AI similar to what Oppenheimer's vision was for nuclear, where we share everything with each other, but we also commit to ensuring that AI is not used to create bioweapons by third parties or bad actors.

37:13Because all we're doing is motivating the other to figure out workarounds to attack the other. The most important relationship in terms of a thawing right now would be the first and second largest economy. Talk about these autonomous vehicle licenses. He needs them in China, right, if he can get these from the Chinese. Yeah, but here's the Chinese playbook, and it's happening to Tesla. The Chinese playbook is very simple. Oh, Google, oh, Meta, come on in. And then they watch, listen and learn, and then they steal their IP and prop up a local entrepreneur and capture the most of the value for the domestic market.

37:47And I think the same thing is happening to Tesla. I can't imagine a lot of that IP from Tesla didn't end up at BYD. I don't know about that. I do think that I am of the field. I agree with you about sort of the fast follower, right? The planes are covered, the bodies of pioneers, that kind of thing. That said, I do think there's a ton of innovation. I think you can see it through TikTok. I think what Alibaba has done, there's a lot of innovation there, too, of their own. But they definitely weight watch and then innovate. And battery, too. Yeah, I don't think they necessarily steal every minute of the day, but there is that.

38:21But these cars are very different than anything I've seen. So it's not like they're copying, right? They're sort of copying. But there's also innovations around it that I have never wanted to buy a car more than a BYD car. And I love my Ford. I love my Bolt, as you know. And I think it's adorable, too. BYD sales plummet. Day after a podcast. You have the worst taste in cars. I know, but have you seen them? I like their inexpensive. They're super cool. They're beautiful. And they're cool. And if you're a young person, you'd want one. 100%. In a second, they look like, I don't mean they're kind of like the.

38:54It's like the new VW Bug, but with technology. It's a Uniqlo of cars. Great analogy. You know, like when I've ever got a Uniqlo, I buy 10 shirts. Like, they love them. And I have to say, I love them. I don't think I'm using them as just throw them out. They're just inexpensive and adorable. I just, I mean, I look adorable, by the way. It's the car equivalent of fast fashion. It is. We have figured out supply chain to just bring you something for dramatically less money. And as long as they figure out the safety, which they'd have to in this country. I agree. I think he's just, here's the deal.

39:24Musk does not make cars that are interesting anymore. That's all. It's an interesting car. It was an innovation. He hasn't, you have to update these things for consumers. And he's, he does, I don't think he cares about the cars anymore. That's my feeling. Some better news for Tesla and Marco Rubio in a totally normal deal that had no strings attached. The State Department procurement forecast for 2025 includes$400 million in armored Tesla vehicles. At least someone is buying them besides douche nozzle men. They tried to hide it. They had Tesla on there. They changed it to armored vehicles and their cyber trucks.

39:59Nobody else wants to buy them. Consumers don't seem, a small group of consumers do, of course, as there would be, but it seems like it's one of those things people buy because It's weird and interesting. But nobody is buying them, and there are very few people who are buying them, and now the government is buying them. Another gimme for Elon Musk. The grift keeps grifting, I feel. Yeah, that's exactly right. The only thing propping up Tesla stock right now and his wealth is this basic, the market has said this is now a kleptocracy, and your proximity to power is more important than your innovation.

40:37Right, so they're buying them from him. Yeah, and also firing people who are investigating the company and getting rid of them. And yeah, it's— I guess that's a plus. Yeah, it's even—unfortunately, it's even—and this isn't in the script, but I'm just curious to get your quick reaction. Have you been following what's going on with Mayor Adams? Yes. Jesus. Yes, please do. I mean, just paper fillet. He's not going to be mayor soon. That's the thing. He's out. Don't you think? I feel like he's not going to be— Oh, God, I hope so. I mean— Oh, come on. Nobody in New York likes him. I agree. No, I said I hope so.

41:12I mean, essentially, what's effectively happened is he's instructed the DOJ to drop all prosecution efforts against Mayor Adams. And in exchange, Mayor Adams has agreed to comply with all efforts by ICE to capture or retain or detain and deport. So what you have is, I'll make sure that you are not subject to the same laws that every other citizen is subject to if you agree to go against your constituents and let our ICE people into, who knows, churches or schools. I mean, this is really fucking ugly. Oh, no, it's utter pain. You know what, Eric Adams, you're a crook. Like, you're a crook. You're a shitty crook, by the way.

41:55You only want tickets to Istanbul. Like, what a loser. You know, I know you're backing a particular candidate in New York. I forget who it was. Who was it? Whitney Tilson. Yes. But there's a bunch of people running. You know, there's a bunch of people. The guy who will probably win is when Andrew Cuomo actually announces that he's in the race. But there's a bunch of very good candidates who are not going to be criminals. It's a bunch of out-of-control progressives. One pragmatist named Whitney Tilson. Whitney, who is a pragmatist, would be a great mayor, but probably doesn't have the name recognition.

42:29Governor Cuomo is going to come in and probably just lock it. But Kathy Hochul has, I believe, the power to remove Mayor Adams, and she should. She should. This is corruption at the highest level. Yeah, they should make an example of him. This is really – and by the way, I was a supporter of Mayor Adams. I was not. I thought the case against him was, quite frankly, overdone. And I, you know, I don't, I did not think what he did rose to the level of, I don't know how the media was portraying it. I know. I think he's grifty McGrift from the start, from the go. He wasn't living there. Everything came out of his mouth was a lie, this guy.

43:10And he's such a ridiculous peacock and surrounded himself with such, I get New York mayor has to be like a little bit grifty. But this guy was like. Grifty-ish. Grifty-ish. You know, they all are. I mean, come on. I mean, but, you know, like, he's just, he's an embarrassment for a great city. He won a little greatness out of a mayor of, you know, even back in the day, Rudy was not actually, you know what, I didn't support Rudy. He was the thug to a lot of people. This is, but this is, it's so damaging to the Democratic brand because the Democratic brand, unfortunately, has been tarred with a broad but fairly fair brush of every democratically run city on the West Coast is a fucking shit show.

43:48They ignored drugs, they ignored crime, and the quality of life is awful. I said two years ago, if I were Fox, I would just broadcast live from downtown San Francisco every day. And so the center of democratic branding for politics moved to New York, which is actually performing quite well, and still offers, is still the best place in the world to go in terms of a crush of opportunity, culture, nightlife. New York really still is the best city in the world and represents the best of America. and thereby the best of the Democratic Party. And now we have this bullshit. So it's really damaging on a lot of levels.

44:25I think Governor Hochul should move in and say, do a press release and say, I'm removing him as mayor. Who would you put in place? No, you know who I would ask? That's a good question. I just thought of it. I would ask Mayor Bloomberg to step back in. Oh, good idea. I love it. Six to 18 months until there's a special election. Great idea. Love it. All right, Kathy, get on it. All right, last thing. The Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America, at least on Google and Apple Maps in the U.S., apparently are consequences for not using the new name. Associated Press reporters have now been barred from multiple White House events after AP continues to use Gulf of Mexico in its reporting.

44:58The AP is calling this a violation of the First Amendment, but Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt, also known as Tracy Flick, says we reserve the right to decide who gets to go into the Oval Office. Oh, my God. It's so stupid. Distraction, distraction, distraction. I'm going to call it the Gulf of Scott. I don't give a fuck what people do to me if I do that. You saw my thread or whatever it is. I can't keep track. I just put out Gulf of Distraction. That's all this is. I don't, you know, who cares? I don't, fine, call it that. I just don't. It's so stupid. It's so stupid. It's so manifestly stupid.

45:31And I'm sure, I don't even think like, oh, yay, we're calling it the Gulf of America. Whatever. Yeah, we'll show them. We'll show them. I got to tell you, I'm loving the new president of Mexico so much. She's such a badass. I'm going to try to interview her. Yeah. Scheinbaum. Scheinbaum Clio. She's like, fuck you. You know, but at the same time, she deals. She's a dealer, too. Anyway, it's a distraction. Googie, you look like wimps, but whatever. And nobody looks good. I'm going to call it the Gulf of Scott. That's the end of it. All right, everybody? I appreciate that. Gulf of Dog. Gulf of Dog.

46:02Doggy. No, Dog. Gulf of Dog. No, I like Gulf of Scott. No, Gulf of Galloway sounds good. Right. Gulf of Galloway. It feels like real. Make America Scottish again. It feels like Ponce de Leon would have named it that. Gulf of Galloway. Anyway. All right. It's time for this week's Threads poll. This one's open-ended. What do you wish Democrats would do in response to the Trump administration's actions? What do you wish? We've had our opinions on that. Something besides standing in front of a building and yelling. That's for sure. Visit us on Threads at Pivot Podcast Official to answer. By the way, have you noticed AOC is not outside of the buildings?

46:38She's not. Have you noticed that? She's very calculating. She does great online stuff, I'll tell you that. She and Pete are killing it. She's not going to be on the go-to-the-alumni cheerleading day where they have all these very cute 95-year-olds dressed up in pom-poms. She's an actual cheerleader. She's a gangster. She and Pete Buttigieg, I have to say, are very appealing. They're in the background managing their brand really strongly with an eye on 28. and they're not going to like go down in some sort of like angry near zombie apocalypse movie. Yeah, they're too smart. Yeah. Well, we would love our listeners to write in what do you think they should do.

47:19And no violence, please, if you don't mind. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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49:27Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. So, you know, a broken clock can be right. I was a prediction machine last night. I wrote a bunch down. You did? What happened? What were you taking? No, I was actually sober, which was kind of frightening. Interesting. When I was talking about, when you said that fuck, marry, kill thing, and I was talking about making sweet, sweet love to Mark Zuckerberg, and I thought I grabbed. You're still thinking about it, aren't you? Oh, my God, I can't get off it. I'm grabbing that chain, riding him like a dog and singing, And who's self-harming now, you wanton bitch?

49:59Oh, my God. My nipples are getting hard. And at that moment, at that moment, I thought, maybe I don't need drugs. Maybe I don't need drugs. Anyways, this is all going to come crashing down, Kara. Anyways, last night - I'm getting notes from Lara saying, no, no, no. But I say, yes, yes, yes. And therefore - Oh, if that's wrong, we don't want to be right. Oh, you don't. All right. Go ahead. Prediction. I think Tesla is about to experience its real first major existential crisis. Sales off. Oh, gosh. Here you go again. Here I go again. I can't help it. I'm an addict. They're off 20 to 60 percent across European countries.

50:37They're off 50 percent in China. EV demand appears to be plateauing. They are getting the shit kicked out of them by BYD. BYD, they haven't really released a new mass adoption product in about seven years. Have I been saying that? I have been saying that. And they have what is right now the worst brand ambassador in the world. Or the people that want to buy those cars. Yeah. And then my more boring one is I really think Google is going to – you're about to hear a lot of stories about Google search share falling below 90 % at the hand. of perplexity, ChatGPT, and also Reddit. And I was even thinking just as YouTube has become the ultimate distribution platform in 2025, I think in 26, it's going to be Reddit.

51:31There's just a bunch of, like there's so many moons lining up right now. I'm really, anyways, I think that Tesla is about to have, I can't help it. I'm just going to say it now. Tesla stock is going to be below 200 in the next six months. Go in there. You're fine. You're going there again. I love you. Once more into the breach, Scott Galloway. At some point, I'll be right. Well, the numbers are the math. The math is math, right? Look, before they were on the upswing in terms of like the quality of cars, what they were releasing. Instead, they're forced to sell things to Marco Rubio, who has to do whatever everybody says because he's such a beta.

52:07Just so you know, on that thing about search, Atlantic, Politico, Vox, Jim Bankoff sent me this. Another major publisher is suing AI startup Cohear for copyright and trademark infringement, escalating the news battle's legal battle over the technology. That's from the Wall Street Journal. It's a Canadian company. It's valued at$5 billion, and they're using thousands of copyrighted works to train its large language model. Anyway, they're suing. Jim Bankoff on the attack. Atlantic, Politico. Oh, they must have coordinated it all together. All right. So those are your two, that searches. Those are good.

52:42Those are big ones. Those are big ideas. We'll see, right? Yeah. We'll see. Someday you're going to be right. Anyway, you are right. You were right before in terms of the numbers. It just didn't matter. In this case, we'll see. We'll see what happens. Do you have any thoughts? Any predictions? Predictions? I predict I will buy yet another EV this year. I will. The key is getting a little long in the tooth. And I'm trying to debate whether to get the hybrid, which I think is really, hybrids are growing like crazy. Oh, you know what we should do? What? And I'm serious about this. Alice, who I really respect, I would even call her a friend, the China analyst, Alice Han.

53:17She said, Scott, you should really, I haven't been to China since 2019. And I was saying, I was so excited about China and I went there probably two, three times a year and I haven't been back since 2019. And she said, I'll take you. It'll be a ton of fun. And you'll meet with some mainstream people. You and I should go to China and you should pick up your BYD and see if you can get it back to the US. Oh, interesting. And pay the import. Pay the tariff and bring it back. Let's go to China. I bet we're popular in Hong Kong. You know, we did one of my conferences. I had a stroke there, as you know.

53:43Last time I was there, I had a stroke. Yeah, the International Tourism Board, that's not going to be on any billboards. Want a stroke? Come to Shenzhen. No, let's go to China. Let's do it. That would be really interesting. We should do an event in China. We want to come visit you. And we're going to drive a BYD. We're going to drive it across the ocean. Reach out to us. Reach out to us. We're coming to China. We'll do an event, whatever you want. And I've heard that the CCP is actually a good organization because I can't find anyone who would say anything else. Bring us to China. Bring us to China.

54:12They're so good. All right, let's do it. Let's do it in 2025. After we see Wicked. After we see, we're going to see Wicked, my friend. We could see Wicked in Beijing. That'd be interesting. Or they let people. It's all about a surveillance economy. I wonder how big it is. I have no idea. Do you know what, what are you doing this weekend? Anything interesting? What am I? Oh, yeah, I'm going to, it's funny. I pause there because I feel like I rub my wealth in people's face. I'm going to Zermatt. I'm going to Zermatt on Saturday. All right. That's not very far from where you are. Supposedly, we have this ridiculously hot ski instructor.

54:43Okay. You know where I'm going? I'm going to SNL's 50th concert. Really? Is it a concert or a showing? No, there's going to be a show on Saturday. I'm just going to the concert the night before. It's a Radio City musical. That sounds really cool. Anyway, we want to hear from you. 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. We'll be back next week with more Pivot. Please read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin.

55:12Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Broos, Ms. Saverio, and Dan Shulon. Nishak Kroos, Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. Have a great weekend.