Trump's Truth Social Gamble, NBC's Ronna Revolt, and Guest Jim Sciutto

23:52They just don't. They just – they absolutely – in that case, I find that to be kind of a ridiculous argument. But that said, the App Store is certainly, I think both the Google App Store and the Apple App Store have to go over and above to make it easier for competitors and not to charge things because they're the only toll keeper. And they're going to have to do it whether they like it or not. So in that way, that to me seems very easy to remedy. And we'll see where it goes. But it's going to go on for years and years and years. But I think they overstep. And that's the privacy thing. Look, you can both use it as a marketing tool and also actually be quite committed to it.

24:28So I think they're both, right? That's why they're talking to Google about AI because they don't collect a lot of data. So I don't know. I think they are committed to privacy, but I think they use it as both a marketing thing and a cudgel for people. It all bubbles up, and I like to go meta on this stuff. The thing that ails our country is that for the first time, a younger generation is not doing as well as their parents. That's never happened before. And Jonathan Haidt just wrote this amazing book called The Anxious Generation. So they're not only not doing as well, but every day they're reminded of how they're not doing as well, with constant benchmarking from algorithms that convince them that everyone's making a shit ton of money vacationing at the Amund and dating someone much hotter.

25:13And so the question is, how do we solve this? Through a lot of things, tax policy, vocational program, but also we break these motherfuckers up. And it all rolls up to the same thing. Our country is angry. People don't believe in America. They're not mating because they don't have economic opportunity, because we are totally weaponized by big corporations and the wealthy and the incumbents. And I'm all of those things, and I see how terrible it is. All right, Teddy Roosevelt, thank you for that lovely speech. I agree with you. I agree. Anyway, we'll see where it goes. But we'll see. I think this case is going to be a long time, a long time.

25:47I don't think this one's going to work. Yeah, I'm not so sure. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk about true social going public and we'll speak to our friend Pivot, CNN's Jim Sciutto.

26:02There is a lot to talk about when we talk about Donald Trump and Jimmy Kimmel. One big question I've got is why in 2025 are late night TV shows like Jimmy Kimmel's show still on TV? Even in our diminished times, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, they're just some of the biggest faces of their networks. If you start taking the biggest faces off your networks, you might save some nickels and dimes. But what are you even anymore? What even is your brand anymore? I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels. And that was James Ponowozik, the TV critic for The New York Times. This week, we're talking about Trump and Kimmel, free speech, and a TV format that's remained surprisingly durable for now.

26:50That's This Week on Channels, wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

26:59Scott, we're back. He's being called Don Porleone on social media, but Donald Trump's finances are about to get a big boost. Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of True Social, will likely become a publicly traded company this week following Digital World Acquisition Corp's approval of a merger last Friday. As we record this, Trump just got a lifeline for that judgment in a civil fraud case. The bond was reduced from$454 million to$175 million by the New York Appeals Court. Trump now has 10 days to post that bond. I don't know why he gets a break, but what do you think about this deal?

27:32The Trump Media and Technology Group has a market value of around$5 billion. Based on a$37 share price at Digital World Acquisition Corp, Trump owns 60%. His overall net worth will increase by about$3 billion. That said, you know, this is a meme stock, no matter how you slice it. There's also a lockup provision in the merger agreement that would, in theory, prevent Trump from selling his shares for at least six months. He can, a lockup agreement could be waived by the board, which includes his son, Don Jr., Devin Nunes, a CEO, and Linda McMahon, who used to run WWE or whatever she did over there.

28:06They're all friends of. So, but if he sells, you know, the price will go down. If he sells, there's going to be lawsuits aplenty. I'll say the last thing, two last things. DWAC, the SPAC that merged with Trump's company, was already a meme stock to start with. As Fast Company put it, Donald Trump's true social could be the memiest meme stock that ever memed. And once again, Republican mega donor Jeff Yass was the biggest institutional shareholder of DWAC, according to a report in The New York Times. He's also a major investor in TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, as we discussed last week. I don't know.

28:41This is just a feels like a lawsuit, like a securities lawsuit waiting to happen. But your thoughts, Scott, this is your area of expertise. So say you were running for president and you needed a bond of half a billion dollars and you knew someone who was the largest shareholder in TikTok, and you said, if I become president, I'll make sure it isn't banned or whatever it is, you could get someone by virtue of the White House, you could get them billions of dollars in shareholder value. And you met with them on a golf course and you said, oh, and by the way, there's a very small float in this SPAC that I have a large interest in.

29:18If you were just to throw, say, 10, 20, 30 million, maybe 50 million at this thing and keep the stock price elevated, that would make me very happy. Because when you look at digital world acquisition company, the SPAC that's, I think, de-SPACing to take over Trump's True Social. True Social, the numbers I've seen, where the year to date, it's done three and a half million in revenue. The hottest AI companies' stocks in the world are trading it like 60 or 70 times revenue. But Donald Trump's True Social, which has five million active users, which is literally nothing, made$3.5 million. That's worth 600 times revenue.

30:00So something, maybe it's just a meme stock, but - Does it feel like a way to give them money? It just totally does. It's like, this is going to be so investigated, I can't even - Well, okay, let me be clear. There's corruption all over Washington. Nancy Pelosi, it ends up - I get it. Speaker Pelosi or former Speaker Pelosi has godlike stock picking capability, as do a bunch of other members of Congress. There is corruption on both sides of the aisle here. This one really stinks. He has the right to start a company as a private citizen. He has the right to merge it with a SPAC. He has the right to sell it after six months.

30:38I'm just speaking purely. I have never seen a company that feels like a better short. And this isn't financial advice because you have non-economic interest in this thing, and it could go to 100 if he's elected president. But this is a company with$3.5 million in revenue that's trading for billions of dollars in value. He has the right to start it. He has the right to sell that stock. It's not going to happen in time unless maybe he can borrow against it. I don't know. The whole thing stinks. Who's going to take it? I mean, it's got to be donors that take it. This is like so legal. I want to file a lawsuit right now.

31:15The president should be paid$10 million a year. Every senator should be paid$1 million a year, if not$2 million a year. And they can't take money. Every representative should be paid$1 million a year for the following. All of your stocks go into a blind trust and they're held there for five years after you leave office. And you cannot go to work for anyone, anyone that's going to benefit for a government contract. Pay these people a shit ton of money so they don't have to paint their fence while they're in office for when they get out of office. It's just the corruption here is just it's just too tempting.

31:51Yeah, I don't know if they I think I just again, when he sells, it'll drop the stock. I think it's a way of giving him money. This is what it feels like. It's like a back way to do it. And the fact that you're mixing social media, Donald Trump, TikTok, and meme stocks is just like literally, it's the peak 2024. It's peak 2024. This guy, as always, has found a way out. He's got to be the luckiest fuck in America. He really is. That said, I think this is just aching for litigators to come at this and investigators. And it'll be our, it's our next thing. Whatever happens here, whatever the emails they're trading.

32:29By the way, this company is also embroiled in all kinds of legal action with its current, with the people who started it and the DWAC guy. There's all kinds of he's now suing, he's now anti-Trump, and they are kind of anti-Trump also, the ones that love Trump. So within this, there's also more lawsuits. There was a good piece in The Washington Post about that, and they've been following it. So there's lawsuits inside of lawsuits inside of lawsuits, which is sort of the brand of Donald Trump. So we'll see what happens here. But I don't think you should necessarily rely on this. But it's a damn good way to get him money, you know.

33:06And, of course, it totally explains his flip-flop on TikTok. Give me a break. You just have to follow the money with this guy because he's for sale and he loves money. And so he'll do whatever it takes to hold on to it. He'll sell a steak or water or a piece of shit university to do so. So it's kind of grotesque in my feeling. I don't have anything to add except I want to know what Walt thinks. And Justin. And Justin's a row. Yeah, together. Maybe Walt, Justin, and I will have dinner together. You're so like, I just look at a guy and the next thing I know, you're sending me photos of you in a hot tub with them.

33:42Well, you chose to live in London. We'd like to invite you, but you're not around. I didn't choose. I'm an influencer, not a decision maker. I didn't choose to live here. Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

33:58Jim Sciutto is CNN's chief national security analyst and the author of The Return of Great Powers, Russia, China and the Next World War, which is really a happy title there, Jim. Welcome. But before we we're going to talk about the book in a second, but we have to talk about this attack of the concert hall in Moscow late last week that killed at least 137 people. A responsibility for the attack. And U.S. officials have confirmed that claim. The U.S. officials did warn about this, but warn Russia both publicly and privately about intelligence pointing to an impending attack. There's no indication that Ukraine was involved in any way, despite Putin trying to make that link in an address this weekend.

34:40It underscored vulnerabilities in Russia and Putin himself. And at the time the U.S. warned him, he called the warning blackmail. Can you just talk about this? Because obviously, Russia is a big character in your book. For sure. Well, first of all, let's take Ukraine off the table. This is not a Ukraine-style attack. They have no incentive to carry out an attack like this. So let's set that. And that's the U.S. intelligence assessment. Ukraine had nothing to do with this. This group, ISIS-Horosan, as it's known, or ISIS-K, as it's shortened, is a highly capable group. And we think of ISIS having disappeared as a threat, and it was greatly reduced following this US-led campaign in Syria going back several years.

35:25But ISIS-K is an offshoot of it based in Central Asia, so kind of away from Syria. And they're still able to generate plots, including plots overseas. It's ISIS-K that the US believes is behind this terror attack that took place in Iran a number of months ago, which interestingly, the U.S. warned Iran about that attack prior, much like it did with this attack, which shows you a couple of things. One, the U.S. intel has a pretty decent handle on the activities of this group. But two, also, it shows you that even in the midst of this worsening standoff between the U.S. and Russia, China, but also these kind of middle powers that are situating themselves.

36:06The proxies. The proxies, well, and the friends, like the sort of like middle power capos, right, in the larger kind of organization in Iran or North Korea, that even as that's happening, there is communication between those sides, right? And here you have an example of the US reaching out, making a positive step, saying, hey, guys, Russia, watch out for your southern flank here. You know, this is planning. Iran, watch out. These guys are planning something. And in each case, it kind of looks like Russia and Iran were like, I don't want to listen to you. And it didn't end up well for them. So what's the what's the implications right now?

36:42Because I want to get I want to use it to get into your book. What are the implications for Putin? Because he's had a lot of he's had the guy he ended up killing in the airplane accident, but got pretty close to Moscow. He's got, you know, he's got all kinds of issues. He's obviously just won the election, so to speak. So where is he now? Because being safe in Russia was, as I recall when I was there, the prime directive of keeping people safe by instilling fear in them and protecting them. This is his whole basis of legitimacy, right? Is I'm the strong man, I'm going to keep you safe. From the various boogeymen, you know, terrorists certainly, but the U.S., NATO, the Ukrainians, you know, the Nazis in Ukraine, all this kind of stuff that he creates as his enemies.

37:24I mean, oddly enough, the real one is this terrorist group. The other ones are exaggerated to his own benefit. And I think it's also important to add this to our larger picture of Putin because there's this impression of him as being 10 feet tall, right? That he's, and you remember this leading up to the invasion of Ukraine, you had a lot of folks, including in this country who said, he's too smart. He's too wise to invade Ukraine. He would never do that. He's playing three-dimensional chess. Lo and behold, he made a dumb move, right? And here you have him again, making what appears to be a dumb move.

37:55He had a warning from the U.S. He didn't heed that warning. And we should not invest him with any more brilliance or, you know, wisdom than he actually has or has demonstrated. And so it is, as you say, you had a guy that drove halfway to Moscow in Purgosin. You know, Putin later took him out, but it's not like everybody was standing in the way of Purgosin when he was, you know, when he was doing that. So he's got weaknesses. He is not bulletproof. bulletproof. So speaking of that, in your book, you write that the current world structure, you say, for U.S. and its allies, this is a 1939 moment.

38:28What do you mean by that? I do truly believe that. And I'll tell you, the idea for this book came to me while I was in Ukraine in February 2022, as the invasion was underway, as the tanks were coming across the border and the cruise missiles were falling on Ukrainian cities. It just struck me that while relations between the U.S. and Russia and the U.S. and China have been deteriorating for a number of years, and while we had had warning signs, you know, major shots across the bow, like Russia's partial invasion of Georgia in 2008, its partial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, other steps that China has taken, for instance, in the South China Sea, that a full-scale invasion of the largest country in Europe.

39:10An attempt to redraw the borders of Europe by force of arms presents many of the ingredients that we saw in 1939. You know, you have an aggressive leader who views himself as an historic leader, righting the wrongs of the past by force of arms, and really is insatiable. He takes a piece, and then if the resistance isn't so great, he takes another piece and he keeps going. I speak, Kaya Kalas, the Estonian prime minister, who I speak to a great deal in this book, she likes to quote Churchill on Putin. That quote, and I'm paraphrasing, but that an appeaser is someone who feeds the crocodile expecting that he or she will be its last meal.

39:53And I think there's wisdom in that when you look at Putin, particularly today when you have the accommodationalists who say, let's just give him Ukraine, man, it's not our war. It's going to be fine. Actually, based on recent history, that's not the way he operates. He takes some and he's like, ah, I'm going to take the next piece and see what you do about it. Jim, it's nice to meet you. I really appreciate and enjoy your work. So with respect to Ukraine, and then I have a broader question, even if it were to be a stalemate and end up in sort of a North and South Korea situation where unfortunately had to redraw the map.

40:30But we agreed, all right, you have this, we have this. Hasn't this been an enormous victory for the West? Unified Europe's a union for the first time. NATO's out of a brain coma. Putin looks terrible. I can't think this has been good for his economy. Isn't this a rallying point and something that at the end of the day has burnished the brand and the power of the West? I think it's a great point, Scott. And I think it's, you know, to what I was saying earlier, we should not imagine that they, Russian, China are 10 feet tall or invested with this special wisdom, or that we are falling to pieces, right?

41:07Right. For, you know, to just a straight up military point from, say, the U.S. perspective, 5 % of the U.S. defense budget in supporting Ukraine without any boots on the ground. Well, you know, at least acknowledge boots on the ground, but no U.S. soldiers who've been killed in this conflict has effectively neutered Russia's entire ground force capability. It can keep churning up, you know, sending cannon fodder to the Eastern Front, but it has brought that paper tiger down, right, in effect for a very small investment, at least from the outside. Of course, the Ukrainians have made an enormous investment in blood and treasure and losses.

41:49But from a purely military perspective, enormous victory, but also a diplomatic one and an economic one. The thinking going in, and this was Putin's miscalculation, but even folks here in the West was like, oh, NATO is going to break under this pressure. It didn't break. It's been unified. Yes, you have Viktor Orban. It's expanded, right? Finland. And it's expanded by two countries that resisted NATO membership for decades. They had said, we're going to be the ones in the middle, particularly Finland, right? It sort of said, you know, this, you know, with our history, yes, we've been invaded before, but we're going to find a way to kind of balance out.

42:22They've now added 800 miles to the frontier between NATO and Russia, which Russia has to defend. And economically, too, you know, Russia lost its entire energy market in Europe. China and India are happy to buy cheap Russian gas at a discount. But Germany just said it went cold turkey off of Russian energy. I mean, from that perspective, I think we have to step back and say, you know, we're not doing bad. So what is the biggest danger, though, out there for the U.S.? And talk about specifically about the relation between Russia and China, which you read about in this book. U.S. officials told you about the, quote, nightmare scenario with Russia and China both deciding to make moves at the same time to regain territory.

43:00But talk about their relationship. And because I think China probably looks down upon Russia in that regard, just as a useful idiot in that regard. But maybe I'm wrong about that. Well, you're not wrong. Bill Burns agrees with you. I interviewed him, the CIA director for this book. And he said that, you know, Russia has to be careful over time that it is not the junior partner in this no limits partnership that Russia and China unveiled. notably just weeks before the Ukraine invasion, Xi and Putin hand in hand. It's interesting, because that relationship has developed and become closer over a number of years.

43:36I wrote a book a few years ago called The Shadow War, which is talking about this conflict between the great powers taking place below the surface. And now I would argue it's very much above the surface. But at the time, that relationship was largely a relationship of convenience. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours here and there, but they're definitely tighter now. It's not a love match, right? Because they have their own disagreements, but they see benefit being together in terms of undermining the US and the international system that they see is aligned against them to some degree. And it's pretty tight.

44:13The one step that China has not taken, that the US was very worried about and it still is, is that providing direct weapons to Russia for its war in Ukraine. but it's done a lot. It's providing a lot of dual use technology, a lot of things that the war wouldn't be allowed to continue. It wouldn't be able to sustain it without that Chinese support as well as buying a lot of Russian oil and so on. So it's getting closer. But over time, look at that. Russia needs China more than China needs Russia. And Putin, probably aware of that, but he kind of needs them now. And China's looking to take advantage where it can.

44:49So the title of your book, The Return of Great Powers, Russia, China, and the Next World War. First off, I do want to know how you see the next world war unfolding. And no one knows this, but what your scenario is there. And two, in the last 10 years, I mean, we're now spending a lower percentage of our GDP on the military than we have typically historically, and yet we spend more than the top 10 powers combined. AI is all encapsulated or being captured here. We're now the largest energy producer in the world, food independent. I mean, isn't the last decade, if you look at the data, GDP growth, inflation, isn't the data kind of reflected the return of the great power, singular, and that great power is the US?

45:36We have a lot of advantages, no question. Economic among them, military, technological advance. We're still, you guys both know this much better than me, but we develop technology enormously well across the board, although China's competitive in a lot of spaces. The weaknesses, right, are that China, first of all, Russia, while it is that, to quote John McCain, the gas station masquerading as a nation, it's got more nuclear weapons than anybody. And it's proven a willingness to disrupt to a degree we just haven't seen for decades, including invading the largest country in Europe, and including, as I talk about in one of the chapters of the book, coming very close to using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, to breaking that seal on nuclear conflict for the first time in 80 years.

46:25So while their economy is decrepit and their population is shrinking and all the wealth for what it is is concentrated in Moscow, and if you go to the hinterlands, it's a mess, they still have enormous capability to disrupt. And China, China, of course, This has become an internationally formidable economy. Again, not 10 feet tall and that economic growth, as you know, is flattening out and their population is getting older, et cetera. But its nuclear arsenal has been doubling, tripling over time. It has created a blue water navy to project power around the world. We may have, and we certainly do have advantages over them, but individually and together, They have enormous both capability and willingness to disrupt what we hold dear to a degree that we haven't seen.

47:14Yeah, disrupts the only. And speaking of disruption, looking ahead to the election, you described Donald Trump as a geopolitical wildcard. I think that's a kind way of putting in it. But what could you see him doing if he's reelected besides ranting on true social? Concrete moves, right? And in that chapter, I speak to the folks who served him at the most senior level in the last administration. Who will not be there. Who will not be there. They will not be there because they've said that he would be a disastrous president. John Kelly, his former chief of staff, quote unquote in the book, it would be fundamentally a catastrophe for the country.

47:49John Bolton, former national security advisor, says in the book that Trump doesn't have a brain to contemplate national security policy around the world. So they say a few things they expect in another term. One, they say Ukraine aid ends. I think that's kind of to be expected based on what we've heard the president say, the former president. They believe he would take the US out of NATO. And if congressional legislation, which we know has passed recently, that would require congressional approval to do so, he would neuter it effectively if he can't do it formally. And all the commander in chief would have to do to neuter NATO is say, I'm not going to defend.

48:29I'm not going to go to war for the Baltics. You know, not my problem. Too far away. Talk about it the way that he talks about Ukraine. And a similar view of U.S. defense partnerships with South Korea. Trump, you'll remember in his last administration, already talked about reducing the U.S. military presence there, stopping, you know, joint military exercises. Same with Japan. And with Taiwan, across the board, his former advisors say, I would be very nervous if I were Taiwan because John Bolton tells a story in the book where Trump, when he was president, would sit in the Oval, hold a Sharpie in his hand and point to the tip of the Sharpie and say, see that?

49:07That's Taiwan. Then he'd point to the Resolute Desk and say, that's China to make the point that Taiwan has no chance against China and therefore we have no business defending them. So that's a big deal. It's a big deal. So disastrous, in other words, disastrous. And Israel? Israel. So he's, you know, it's interesting. I was in Israel in post-October 7th and October, November, and my manuscript was largely done, but I started reaching out to context to see how is this war another battlefield if they were seeing it for, you know, in the larger conflict. and they were absolutely seeing it. One sort of hard example of that was that Russia took it upon itself to send a SAM missile system to Hezbollah in the midst of it, calculating, it seemed, that, hey, if there's a northern front in this war, I want to make it more difficult for Israel, America's ally.

50:01Just to make it, to some degree, they just like to throw fuel on the fire of the conflict, right? That kind of thing, because it occupies the US. It weakens a US ally. And by the way, it's not just secret stuff. He invited the leaders of Hamas to Moscow, you know, repeatedly, Putin did. So, you know, these are not, they're not good actors. He does like to get his filthy fingers into everything. He really does. What a thug. Scott, last question. If there was a threat that you didn't think we were paying enough attention to, What would it be? Is it AI or anything else like that? Well, on the AI point, I talk for instance to Richard Moore, the head of MI6 on this in the book.

50:42I think he describes it in a good way. The AI is a force multiplier, right? For every weapon system you're talking about, you talk about drone warfare, which we're seeing play out before our eyes in Ukraine. When those drones can be controlled by AI more so than you're talking about swarms as opposed to individuals that can overwhelm, say, the defenses of a US aircraft carrier, can turbocharge cyber attacks, which are already consequential and already show weaknesses in our system. So AI is certainly one of them, but I suppose it's, what strikes me is that this is a multi-front conflict technologically in a way we've never seen before.

51:22Nuclear weapons, three nuclear armed powers, and by the way, no treaties with China that govern nuclear weapons and fewer treaties with Russia, everybody has tremendous cyber capabilities that could impact not just our military, but our civilian technologies that we depend on every day. You know, GPS and train signals, et cetera. Space weapons, because we depend on space technology, our military certainly does. Smart bombs aren't smart without GPS, but you and I do. We just know it. Our communications and so on, which is deliberate, right? These space weapons can impact both the military and the civilian population so that, as we were reporting a few weeks ago, when Russia talks about putting a nuke in space to zap our satellites, we take that seriously.

52:12We better take that seriously. So I suppose to answer your question, Scott, is that we've never faced a multi-front war like this before with so many different technologies, both old school technologies, just the largest land war in Europe in 80 years, but superpower technologies like nuclear, cyber, and space weapons that would all be used together and create a whole spectrum conflict that would inflict pain, not just on our military, but you and me. So this impression that we could retreat behind the ramparts and say, Taiwan's not my problem. Ukraine's not my problem. The Baltics, yeah, they're nice, but I'm not going to go to war to defend them.

52:53We can't really think in those terms because very quickly, any conflict like this would impact you and me. I would say that's the threat that we need to be aware of. What a happy thing to do. Do you have anything happy to say? Anything? Well, to Scott's point, we, writ large, have done a pretty good job in the last couple years, right? And I spend the whole last chapter of the book talking to folks involved every day in responding to this conflict for ways forward. And communications are important. Redline communications, sharing information about, say, pending terror attacks, you know, this kind of thing, deconflicting.

53:30That stuff matters. Treaties matter, negotiations. But also standing up and defending what we think is important, you know. and clear red lines and defending those red lines. And just to be clear, I'm not a warmonger. I got a 15-year-old and a 13-year-old, right? They're not many years away from draft age if we go to war. So from a personal standpoint, I want to communicate as best I can what smart people are saying about avoiding conflict. In any case, thank you, Jim Shudo. And again, the book is The Return of Great Powers, Russia, China, and the Next World War. And I'm going to put a parentheses that we all hope to avoid.

54:06Anyway, thank you so much. Truly enjoyed it. Thank you, Karen, Scott. Nice meeting you, Jim. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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55:50okay scott why don't you do your win and fail well i mean this sincerely i thought you were fantastic on mars so that's my quick my quick win i thought it was a great show i thought and Also, the show was good. I thought Beto was good. I thought, I forget her name. I thought she was quite good. Sarah Isker. I thought she was quite good, and I thought he was on point. Anyway, I thought it was a great show, and I thought you were especially strong. My win is my colleague, Jonathan Haidt. I think right now Jonathan is arguably one of the most influential scholars in the world. In his new book, The Anxious Generation, the thing I just love about it is he went after cancel culture, and now he's going after phones.

56:28and it's really actionable. He's basically saying that four reforms or new norms to build a healthier childhood in the digital age. And he has four things, no smartphones before high school, no social media before 16, phone-free schools, and more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world. And these sound like simple things, but they're things that are actionable. They're things schools can do. I've been getting more involved in my kids' school to just say, how do we promote these four things? But we've talked a lot about this age gating. There's no reason anyone should be on social media before the age of 16.

57:07Schools, there's a big problem. And anyone with kids knows this. People without kids say, well, it's your fault. Just don't give them the phone. Kids are ostracized if they don't have these devices and are on those platforms because everybody's on them. So the only way to solve this problem is to get everyone universally off of them. And you do that through age gating and taking their phones away. I don't, I've really, my son going to boarding school has been, quite frankly, it's been awful for me. I really don't, and it's not about me, but of course I'm not about me, but it's wonderful for him because they're too busy and they're too programmed and they have too many sports and too much studying and too much socialization to be on their phones and they hand their phones in and he doesn't miss it.

57:54Anyways, his book is, I think it's going to have a real impact on the way we approach or think about new ways of approaching this incredible uptick in teen depression and anxiety at the hands of not only just social media, but handhelds. Apple plays a role here. The platforms play a role. Parents play a role. Schools play a role. But anyways, my win is Jonathan Haidt's new book and his very actionable strategies here. My fail is I don't think that people are taking seriously enough or just along the lines of Jim Sciutto. I think the biggest threat to our national security is not, and I've talked about this before, is not Russia, it's not ISIS, it's not an invasion of Taiwan by China.

58:45I think our biggest threat is a series of factors that have come together to create the loneliest generation of young people in history. And I think lonely people, specifically lonely young men, specifically lonely young men who serve in our military and at our soft tissue of our ports and our infrastructure, I think they're going to become especially prone and vulnerable to bad actors. And I think there's not only a moral obligation to get more involved in their lives, but I think it's a defense threat. I think these young men can be weaponized very easily with AI bots and disinformation when they don't have the guardrails of relationships, friends, family.

59:22You've spoken of this many times. You've spoken of this. I think it's a huge threat. There are a lot of things we can do to fix that, whether it's economic opportunity, after school programs, national service. I think if we're not going to do it for moral reasons, I think we should do it just out of what Jim was talking about as a defense threat. All right. Well, okay. My fail, I think, is pretty clear, is Rona McDaniel. I mean, this is just, we talked about this earlier. I just am like, come on, like, stop it. Like, there's, you know, you could go on about cancel culture. This woman deserved to be canceled in some fashion.

59:59And actually, you know what? I didn't even blame her. She wants to make money. She got, like, zeroed out by Trump. She served him loyally. And, of course, he screwed her, which is what he does, Rona, Ronna, whatever, however you pronounce it. I don't care. You should change your name back to Romney, by the way, which it was. She was the niece of Mitt Romney. You should spend more time with your uncle, who has a lot more backbone than you do, and ask for forgiveness from him. I just literally, but I blame the executives at NBC for this. I'm so glad I got rid of my contract with them. Now, look, CNN's made a lot of dumb choices, too, in its history.

1:00:35But I would be embarrassed to be there, and I would have to quit, I guess. I don't know. It's just something. Do you think they should pull her off her? Do you think they should say we screwed up? I don't know. I don't know if they can. Like, the damage is already done. I don't think they should have her on. And I think no host should have to have her on. This woman has no credibility. She is literally changing her tune every five seconds, like drastically changing her tune. It's not even subtle. And then, so anyway, just in this case, it's at some point, like with Donald Trump, I'm like, I'm not even blaming him anymore because we know who he is, right?

1:01:08It's just, It's the people who support him that know better and they're repulsive. And she is repulsive to me in that regard. Not physically, just repulsive as a character and a liar. She's a liar and she's a mendacious fuck. She wins the mendacious fuck award of the week. And then my win is all the fantastic stuff around the movies that made me cry, which you still haven't gotten me on. Hoosiers. No, I'm sorry, people. I didn't cry at Hoosiers. But speaking of which, I'm doing this thing in Washington, and I wish Scott would do it sometimes, where you pick a movie and then discuss it at this event.

1:01:42It's a movie night kind of thing. And I was trying to decide what to do. And they're like, oh, broadcast news, which I also love, or the net, something to do with net. But I am going to stick with the ones I want to, which is Roadhouse, which made me cry because Patrick Swayze is a genius, or Gladiator. And now I may have to do Omen, the original Omen movie, which I love because the first Omen. You have to nanny hanging herself? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the Omen. That didn't make me cry. I loved it. I love all the Omens as bad as they are. But there's a new one coming out called The First Omen where we find out how it got to the Omen.

1:02:15It looks terrible and I'm going to see it. So there you have it. Anyway, I thank you for all your things. Keep them coming. I'll try to cry at something. And before we go, I just want to flag a new piece in New York Magazine called Andrew Huberman's Mechanisms of Control, The Private and Public Seductions of the World's Biggest Pop Neuroscientist. Very popular podcast. I find it to be a smart Joe Rogan kind of thing. It looks fascinating. We can't wait to read it. If you do, let us know what you think. We'll read it this week and perhaps discuss it next week. We do want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind.

1:02:46Go 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 Friday with more. Please read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Emil Saverio. Nishat Kurwa is 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 to Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech.

1:03:20and business care. Have a great rest of the week.