Big Technology Podcast - Under Biden, Bipartisan Vengeance On Social Media? A Conversation With Bradley Tusk

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

As Joe Biden takes office, big tech’s rough and tumble four years under Donald Trump will not come to an end. Democrats and Republicans, each for their own reasons, will now be looking to exact vengeance on the platforms. With some compromise, they may even get somewhere.  Bradley Tusk, a VC who works with startups facing regulatory hurdles, has a few thoughts about what regulation the tech giants may face. Tusk joins the Big Technology Podcast to break it all down, starting with a bold prediction and ending with some thoughts about Andrew Yang’s candidacy for New York Mayor, which he is advising.

Hello, Bradley. Am I supposed to respond to this? Yeah, you're supposed to respond to her. Hi, Alex. We're rolling. How are you doing? Good. How are you?

I'm good. I'm just going to read this sponsored message and we'll get right into it. Cool. The Big Technology podcast is sponsored by MediaOcean. Looking for a job in Big Tech, you might want to take a look at MediaOcean. They were just named the number one place to work in advertising technology by Adage. Go to MediaOcean.com slash Big Tech to learn more about the company and check out their careers

hub. MediaOcean is building the mission critical platform for omnichannel advertising. If that sounds cool, I'm sure it does. Hit up Mediaocean.com slash big tech and browse their job listings. And a big thanks to MediaOcean for supporting the big technology podcast

and the big technology newsletter, I might add. Hello and welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is Bradley Tusk. He's the founder and CEO of Tusk Ventures, which works with high-growth startups facing political and regulatory challenges, which we'll speak about a lot. He is also the host of Firewall Podcast. Bradley, welcome to the show. Thank you. A podcast that you have been a guest on, no less. That's right. It's a great show. You've had, we were just talking before this. Eric Newcomer is a recent guest. He's a fellow substacker. And I was also scrolling through your other recent guest and another friend of mine, Teddy Schleifer of Recode, came on talking about what a Biden-Harris administration might mean for Silicon Valley. So maybe we can close that thread today. Sure. Sure. Sounds great. So look, you're definitely exactly the guy I want to speak with this week, given that you were. on the regulatory challenge front. And while there's been a lot of discussion about the move from Facebook and Twitter to ban

Donald Trump, there's been less discussion talking about what it's going to mean for the big technology companies now that companies like Amazon and Apple have gone ahead and basically yanked a partisan social network like parlor off the internet. So I want to get into that in a moment, but just briefly. So you got into this work. You had worked in New York City government and then just saw how tech companies were struggling to cut through some of the red tape in government and said, hey, maybe I can help them do this. Yeah, it wasn't quite that linear. But I'd worked in politics for a while.

I was my Bloomberg campaign manager, worked for him in City Hall. I spent four years in Illinois as the state's deputy governor, a couple of years. in Washington on Capitol Hill as Chuck Schumer's Communications Director, and I started my first company a little over a decade ago. And, you know, more traditional political consulting, we ran, run big campaigns for companies with problems. And then randomly one day, I'm in a meeting and a friend of mine called and said, hey, there's a guy with a small transportation startup.

He's having some regulatory problems. Would you mind talking to him? Right. So I become Uber's first political advisor that day. I get really lucky when Travis calls you back and says, listen, I can't afford your fee, each take equity. I didn't know what equity meant, but for some reason, thank God, I said, yes, that was during the Series A. Spent the better part of the next few years, running campaigns all over the U.S. to legalize ride sharing. That worked. Kind of repeated the process with clear,

and then it dawned on me that maybe doing this in a more systematic way would make sense. So met my partner, Jordan Off. He had been running Blackstone's Internal Venture Fund at the time. And it took us two years, but we raised our first venture fund in 2016. and we invest in C and Series A companies in highly regulated industries, and where we're maybe a little different than most VC funds is we look for the same stuff that everyone does in terms of the TAM, the founder, the idea, the technology, but then we also ask ourselves two questions. First, is there a gating regulatory issue or opportunity that if it were solved

could really drive north and valuation? And then if so, can we solve it? And if the answer to both of those questions is yes, that's when we deploy capital. So it's investing in Fanduel and then running campaigns to legalize daily fantasy sports. Investing in lemonade, then running the campaigns getting their assurance licenses, investing in Byrd, then running campaigns to legalize electric scooters in different cities. So things like that. We're just about done investing out of fund two and about two-thirds of the way done raising fund three.

So so far, so good. Okay. And we actually worked in New York City government around the same time. I was at the very bottom of the org chart. the way, way bottom of New York City's Economic Development Corporation in 2010 and 2011. But I was doing the marketing for them. So I actually had a chance to, you know, be there in the strategic discussions of where the projects were going to go. And that was, that Spinski was running at the time. Yeah, Seth Pinsky was running it. But that was the whole, that was the whole Cornell Tech project,

right? Oh, yeah. And I have a story to tell about that. Maybe we can do it in the second half. You're working with Andrew Yang now. I don't think that's the main draw for people to, going to come to this show, but it is a draw and something I'm interested in, especially he's just kicked off his campaign for mayor of New York City. So let's save that for the second half and spend the first half talking about the world of hell that the big technology companies I believe are going to find themselves in now that they've stepped in politically. They're already in hot water. So also before we start, do you have any financial ties to the tech firms? Are you on the payroll of any of these big companies?

No. You've been accused, people have accused you of, like, you know, writing about how the DOJ case against Google is going to get dropped, but you're on the payroll. That's wrong. But I'm not right away. Yeah, yeah. Look, that would be a fair accusation if it were true. But actually, as an early stage investor, I support a lot of this antitrust,

uh, investigating activity in investigation because, you know, we never really, yeah, we don't really ever see any great seat. Series A companies in a lot of these spaces because the idea of competing is impossible. So I would love to see that change. Okay. So yeah. So I want to ask you how the events of the past few weeks talking about Amazon and Apple booting parlor off of, you know, sustainable cloud services and the app store.

And then Facebook suspending Trump and YouTube blocking him from uploading. So how does that change the antitrust action that the tech giants are going to face? because the Democrats are already on board. They were upset at these companies after 2016, and now it seems to me that the Republicans are going to be on board in a big way as well, moving into the next session. So you could see some bipartisan action against these companies. Where do you think it goes? Yeah, I mean, I think January 6th in many ways was the death knell for Section 230, the listeners

who don't know the abbreviation there. Section 230 is a provision in the Federal Communications Decency Act that protects platforms like Facebook and Twitter from liability based on what their users post. And that's effectively the shield that has allowed Twitter, for example, to let Donald Trump run wild without ever owning any fiscal responsibility or liability for it. There has been talk for a while about repealing Section 230. In fact, that's one of the few issues of both Biden and Trump agreed upon. And then I think that anyone who might have maybe been still holding out, you know,

some measure of support for the platforms that was extinguished when they got locked in their chambers and had to be rescued from people storming the capital. So, you know, they're basically in my mind three big tech regulatory issues that both Congress and the administration could take on. But Bradley, yeah, before we go into that, I want to talk about Section 230. I don't want to drop that. Yeah. So what Section 230 does is it allows people to operate Internet forums and not be responsible for what users, posts on their platforms. So if Facebook were to post something that could be liable, but if you were to post something

on Facebook, Facebook isn't liable for what you say. So revoking it would actually make Facebook liable for what people are saying and organizing and doing on that platform. So Section 230 will make sure that these companies are not going to be liable for what people say on the platforms. The Republicans have been talking a lot about, the Republicans have been talking a lot about revoking this as a way to game the system and a way to try to get the social media companies to not touch conservative content on the platforms? Yeah, that or I would argue maybe the

conservatives are actually being a little foolish in their calls for Business Section 230. They love to claim, and you're seeing this right now, that all the platforms are inherently biased against them. I think that's nonsense, right? the platforms are the only thing they're biased in favor or against or anything else is how do we make as much money as possible. They're not Republicans, they're not Democrats, they're not conservatives, they're not liberals, they're profit centers. And while they may believe, and maybe things like political giving reinforce this, that Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg or Cheryl Sandberg are more liberal than conservative, Facebook has been the greatest organizing tool the Republican Party has ever had.

it has made a huge difference for them and their ability. That's how the whole Tea Party movement started, and it's really how Trump got elected. So while I could see that they kind of get, feel wounded when there's some content on there they don't like, in reality, they should be careful what they wish for. Right. So I've never seen their opposition to 230 as a good faith move. Now, moving to the Democrats, you know, there's maybe a better chance that they'd want to run. revoke this act, but it will leave a pretty serious, you know, change in terms of the way that these companies do business. And can they find the majority of Congress that's willing to go write a

new law to amend it or revoke it? I don't really see a path for that happening. So what makes you convinced that that 230 is going to die? Well, I think that it might die. So we've got, you know, 222, I think, Democrats in the House, you need 218 to pass anything in 50 in the Senate. You still need Harris to come in to break any tie. So everything is going to be really hard. But I think that between the administrative powers that the FCC and other agencies could take, using their own authority to limit Section 230 and Congress. And you've got, you know, like you said, you know, bipartisan members on both sides.

So this may be one of those instances where you have people on the left and the right coming together, maybe even over the objections of people in the center. So we'll see. But, you know, if there are three that I was saying earlier kind of macro issues that Congress could take up to kind of regulate the tech, you know, it's Section 230, its privacy, and at the Antitrust, they all obviously kind of fit into each other. But of the three politically, I think we're peeling Section 230 is the easiest. Why is it something that Democrats would coalesce around? I think because two reasons. So the more, the less cynical reason would be that they see these platforms as having just monopolistic power. They don't treat their workers well.

I'm not sure that's actually true. And they really don't like companies being that big, especially kind of the socialist wing of the party. And therefore they like punitive action like, you know, putting them up and that work for antitrust or section 230 in different ways. However, the maybe the more cynical would be, as I said before, Facebook's been great for the right. It has really helped them organize because it used to be that organizing was a physical task. And it was knocking on doors, it was having meetings, it was canvassing, it was postering phone banks. And Democrats were traditionally better at that, in part because groups like organized labor,

who could really do it pretty well for generally Democratic supporters. The Internet changed all of that and really made it a lot easier for Republicans to do it too, and that's had a big role in the Republican success politically over the last 15th, 20 years. And so arguably, if you're a really savvy Democratic, which someone like Nancy Pelosi certainly is, you may say, look, I'll gladly use the AOC with Warren rhetoric about monopolistic power and companies too big and all those other stuff. But all I really want to do is help take away that organizing advantage. And so then how does a revocation of Section 230 then change companies like Facebook or Twitter?

Because essentially what it means is if you don't have that protection, if someone organized, for instance, this recent organization of the capital storming, if it happened on Facebook and Twitter, then all of a sudden you can end up having, you know, people bring legal action against these companies for allowing this stuff to fester on their platforms. that could be some, and that's just one instance. This is, you know, 300 billion people in the case of Twitter, two billion people in the case of Facebook. You're held liable for everything that said. I don't really see a path forward to that business. So what do you think happens to these companies? I think should Section 230 be repealed or modified,

they're going to have to change the way that they police content. But right now, despite whatever they may say publicly, they love Trump. They love controversy. They love sand. They like anything that drives eyeballs and clicks because that lets them charge more for advertising, right? That's all this is about. And so they want as much controversy in their site as they could possibly get. The only reason that they ever take it off is they hit a point where they're getting enough heat from advertisers and customers and employees that all of a sudden the risk of having this outweighs the reward. But otherwise, you know, they would far, prefer to be able to do it. I mean, Twitter's market cap dropped by $5 billion the day after they banned Trump from the platform. So they want to have as much they possibly can. If they lose their legal protection against what their users post, then they've got to be much more conservative than what they allow to go up there, which ultimately means the platforms will just become more bland, more vanilla, less controversial, less exciting, which means fewer clicks and

viewer eyeballs and lower revenue. In fact, I would argue that when Facebook a couple of years ago introduced the concept of the payment system, Libra, it was because they saw Section 230 and privacy regulations and antitrust all coming at them and said, look, the way we make money right now is probably not going to be politically sustainable. Let's try to find some new way to do it. Should they? Should we revoke Section 230? I mean, to me, it seems like a fairly common sense law. If I'm going to build an internet forum, I shouldn't be held accountable for what people are saying on it. I mean, I know there's been stuff that has been said on the, on these platforms that has led to bad outcomes. But, you know, it's one thing to, to, you know, to point

that out. And it's another thing completely to say, we need to basically turn user generated content on the internet into this safe space, you know, where controversial opinions or borderline comments are out. Yeah, I mean, look, all of these things are an art, not a science, right? So I think before the events of January 6th, you know, I certainly would agree with you. I think a lot of people would certainly a lot of people listen to this podcast would. But then if you look at what happened on January 6th, so far at least five lives were lost as pretty much a direct result of the content posted on Twitter. So, you know, the question comes how do you look at it? If you look at it and just say, hey, this is,

purely a question of preserving speech, which is how the platforms have portrayed it so far, then you would say it's an important law and we should preserve it. If you look at it and say the government has a responsibility to protect the public and physical harm all of the time. That's why we have laws regulating. You know, you can't put toxic chemicals in food. You can't use lead paint or whatever it is. And simply, when a product becomes so dangerous that it physically endangers someone's health,

then it's the government's responsibility to step in and do something about it. And if you were to support the repeal of Section 230, that would be your perspective. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you worry at all? I mean, I wrote about this a little bit in the newsletter over the past couple of weeks. There are second order effects to these decisions. People can move from the more mainstream platforms to messaging groups with very little visibility. Either there's private groups or they are encrypted or both use disappearing messaging. And I wonder if people end up going from, you know, and obviously the outcomes that we've seen on Facebook and Twitter have been poor.

But do more people end up going from shit posting on those sites to actually starting to go into these groups, which are echo chambers, again, unaccountable, and then further radicalize and that leads to more violence. Probably that, my guess is you have some people will make that shift and it might even further radicalize them. But at the same time, it's kind of like saying, well, you know, there's really no point in humping down terrorists because there's always going to be young extremists who come up right behind them and take their place. So therefore, maybe the devil we know is better. And that's not what we do.

So in reality, if you were to sort of shuttle everything off the mainstream platforms and onto the more, you know, alternative or niche or bad or everywhere call it platforms, It probably will increase extremism on some level, but at the same time, it certainly limits the scale and scope, right? As you said, Facebook's got a couple of billion users, where it's got 300 million users. So being able to reach that audience is ultimately a lot more powerful than if you're limited to message boards of much more groups of people. Oh, yeah. And I'm just thinking through this stuff. I'm not advocating for us for Facebook and Twitter not to moderate themselves, but I think it has been lost. in the discussion sort of where people go.

But you're right, the scale of a company like Facebook, the recommendation engine that takes people from, you know, somewhat unobjectionable content to things like anti-vax or things like Stop the Steel is an issue. And I think that they've, you know, I've tried to give them, you know, if not the benefit of the doubt, at least a fair shake. But it's really difficult at this point because they've sort of proven and capable of using their or structuring their product in a way that doesn't lead to this

division. Yeah, and it would be interesting. I mean, this kind of gets back into maybe the innovation and competition question, but if you were to have platforms where they couldn't just get by by having the most salacious stuff on there at all times and being kind of a toxic waste dump, then they would have to be able to offer more of a value proposition to their customers, right? And that could mean that new platforms could be born that specialize in very differentiated things in niches and say, you know, we're really good for people who are interested in kombucha or quilting or whatever it is. And they can offer things that are much more specific and real and meaningful to the people in that community.

And whereas Facebook is just this giant, you know, kind of blob of stuff, you know, they could be more successful. Right now, you know, it's really hard to compete with Facebook. But if all of a sudden Facebook is a hell of a lot more accountable, that's a question of who offers better value and more exciting content. That is meaningful and substantive to their customers. And that's where you can see new competition coming. Yeah, the interest-based social networks has always been something that people have been interested in. The only issue is that, and I think Eugene Way makes a great point.

when he wrote about how this great post about how people are status-hungry monkeys talking about how social networks will thrive when they can give people the most status. And there is much more status to be gained on a big social network than a small one, which is probably why some of these smaller social networks haven't taken off until they become home to ban content like a place like parlor. So with that in mind, do you think that this is actually possible? I do. I do because even if you take the sort of social monkey theory at face value, and I actually kind of do. But even if you do, I mean, what you ultimately want to do

or create communities where people feel like they're bestowed its prestige and status upon them to have some sort of role in it, right? You know, there's lots of things like when Gmail, if you remember a million years ago when it first came out, you had to. to be invited on the platform to use it. And that created an aura of exclusivity. And then all of a sudden, because you couldn't necessarily do it, everybody wanted it. And so, you know, the vastness of a platform is, you know, helpful to some people. And if you are an influencer of some kind, then that may be especially important to you

because it allows you to charge more money. But if there's a niche community that's really influential and it's really high end in a specific topic, right? It's just a substantive, you know, the car community or whatever it is. That could potentially work really, really while, right? So, you know, like, for example, we see streaming services that are extremely broad like a Netflix. And then there are things that are much more niche, but niche things can be very profitable. Like Quibi. Well, except Quibby. You have to be able to view it from both angles of the phone at the very least. I'm playing. I'm playing. Yeah, Quibi also wasn't niche.

They tried to be all things to all people. And, well, we could do another whole show about Quibi. But yeah, you're right. There's been Discord services, for instance, Discord servers where people talk only about sports or only about games or only about certain teams. And they've been very popular. There are slacks now that people on Substack are building

that are just for their subscribers. And they're very active communities. So it could be interesting to watch that energy move there. Yeah, without being sort of naive, the original vision of the internet, which is your building communities where like-minded people can come together, share content, build relationships, have human interaction in a positive way. The vision that you and I are talking about right now seems much more likely to make that happen than if the business model, which, you know, Twitter is, is just based on, you know, let's be as savage and negative as we can at all times.

Yeah, yell at each other for retweets. Yeah, I mean, I don't, you know, I, this year I quit two things. I quit drinking and I quit Twitter. Now, I'm not supposed to say I quit Twitter because I still have a Twitter account than my office does. But both of them to me were just things where I was like, you know what, this is just not adding to my life, it's taking away from it. Now, you're a journalist.

You can't quit Twitter, obviously. But for me, it felt like a much healthier thing to do. I will say that while I was writing always day one, I took maybe six months, not completely off, but I didn't tweet for something like five, six months. And I also spent much less time on the platform, remove the app from my phone, et cetera, et cetera. I don't think my head has felt clearer in my adult life than those five, than those five months. Do that. And stop tricking. Amazing.

Yeah. everybody needs advice bradley so i can't make all these big promises here but uh but how's it going for you pretty good i have to say you know you feel clarity i do i do you know i was never like a really heavy drinker um but uh but i don't think i've had a drink in close six months and my head feels really clear and and i feel like uh you know look i do a lot of different things in politics and tech and by definition a lot of controversial which means on a platform by Twitter at any given moment, someone's criticizing me.

That's okay. But that's fine. But me choosing to proactively read off that or even read some of it is totally masochistic, right? So an easy solution was just like, just don't fucking look at it. And then that really makes the problem go away. And it more or less does. It does.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm back on Twitter now. I haven't had a drink in about four weeks. Are you doing the dry January? Coming up. I started before Christmas.

Just had a tough end to the year, just a lot of work. Yeah. And used alcohol to get me through it. Yeah. And then Christmas week came and I was like, all right, take a break. So I do every now and again four weeks or so. I found forever's worth. And this was the only time I've ever even tried to stop drinking.

I thought the beginning was a little harder because There are so many social cues where in a situation you would normally have a drink, although the pandemic in some ways helps because you're not social. And then once I got past like a few months, like, and I kind of went out for dinner, you know, enough times, even if I was sitting outside in the cold, where I didn't order a drink, then all of a sudden I kind of broke that psychological association. Then all of a sudden, it really got a lot easier. So, look, you know, of course, you would tell anyone who has a drinking problem,

and that it'll get better, longer, you don't do it. But even if you're just sort of a casual drink and you're thinking about it, and it's amazing that we've changed the topic in this podcast, complete this. You can post this one like on a totally different channel, right? But I think that, you know, for me, at least, once that kind of broke past a couple of months, all of a sudden, it just got, it got really easy. In fact, I'll take it one level deeper, even, you can edit it out if you want. But where I thought was going to be the hardest stuff in.

What I thought was going to be the hardest were two things. One, being out socially, I'm 47s, I don't go to bars anymore. But being at a restaurant, everyone else is having a drink and I have one, that turned out not to be that hard. In large part because I'm an adult and it's not like my friends are giving me a hard time about it. They're like, okay, good for you, right? That's it. And the other would be, you know, you have a tough moment, a bad day and your natural instinct would be, okay, I'll get home and I'll have a drink. breaking both of those were easier than I expected on the former part again quarantine has sort of

also limited amount of socializing in general but even when there is some people are adults about it and they're basically their only answers usually good for you and then on the second part I find that there may be kind of a 10 minute stretch where it's like oh that would really be nice right now and then once I kind of ignore and going to something else by like 15 months later is just kind of gone. So those were much easier. The thing that ultimately was the hardest, and this was true also because about a year and a half ago,

I gave a cannabis, is always feeling the same all of the time, 100% of the time. On one hand, it is nice. Good, but still like the same, you know? And yeah, and to a certain extent, And the variety that substance abuse, I guess, or just substances provides on some level is enjoyable. So kind of getting used to that was actually for me the hardest part.

And I don't know that this is forever or not. But yeah, the whole thing feels like you said. It feels really good. Yeah. How have you made it up for that high in other ways like running or? Yeah. Listening to classical music. Exercise a decent amount already.

Yeah, I definitely am not listening classical music. But, you know, I exercised. You know, I've been working on a novel now for a little while. And so some of that. Here we are, breaking news. Well, not just that, but it very much, it is literally, it's a parody about a campaign to legalize flying cars in New York, Austin, and L.A. So if there's ever anyone who would want to read the novel who gets published,

it's probably people who listen to this podcast. So, yeah, that's been some of it. And then, you know, I think a lot of people who are probably listeners here, you know, I'll throw myself into work, but we couldn't use the opportunity to launch a new stuff. So I raised this back a couple months ago. I kind of have this idea of bringing gaming into a new era that really focuses on Millennial and Gen Z, gaming being a new visitor for gambling in this case. I'm trying to open up a bookstore and podcast.

So I've got some other stuff that I'm working on with more than Phyllisovoy. That's cool. All right. I want to take a quick break. And then I want to talk to you about two more things, antitrust briefly and then Andrew Yank. We will be right back after this here on the big technology podcast. Hey, everyone. Let me tell you about the Hustle Daily show, a podcast filled with business, tech news, and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's

trending. More than 2 million professionals read the hustle's daily email for its irreverent and informative takes on business and tech news. Now they have a daily podcast called The Hustle Daily Show where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less and explain why you should care about them. So search for the Hustle Daily Show and your favorite podcast app like the one you're using right now. And we're back here for the second half on the big technology podcast here with Bradley Tusk, head of of Tusk Ventures, also the host of Firewall, which is a good podcast, which I've appeared on, and you should go listen to it.

Bradley has worked with companies like Uber to help them navigate regulatory challenges. We spoke a little bit about Section 230 in the first half. We spoke about abstaining from Twitter and drinking. Those are two good topics that weren't on the agenda. Most people go from 230 straight to abstaining from Twitter. Yeah. Well, it's usually the opposite, actually. Once you spend enough time on 2.30, you talk about what you're drinking.

But let's talk a little bit about antitrust. The Facebook and Google are being sued under an old act, the Sherman Antitrust Act that was used to put antitrust regulatory pressure on the railroads. It doesn't do a very good job regulating their marketplaces. It focuses narrowly on monopoly maintenance. Like we spoke about at the top, the Democrats have actually done some research. really legitimate work looking at the market and competition dynamics of these big technology companies. Do you foresee some real challenges here that might come? You know, we know the regulators are looking into Amazon and Apple, but there could also be new laws that give regulators like

the DOJ, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, the opportunity to bring new cases on new elements of these companies, businesses. So what do you think? Yeah. I mean, I think that definitely could happen. And to the point we were discussing earlier, for different reasons, the big platforms in different ways, including Amazon and Apple, have managed to antagonize members of both parties. And so that's what creates potentially the bipartisan support to actually pass something. Look, overall, while I have no problem with the current prosecutions of Google and Facebook on antitrust grounds, and I think we'd feel just fine if Amazon and Apple face the same thing, I also at the same time, you know, don't think that you want government being overly prescripted

with how companies should be run because it doesn't work either. And I'm not even saying this is some sort of Silicon Valley libertarian dialogue. You know, I was the deputy governor of Illinois for four years. And I ran the state's operations, policy, budget, legislation, and communications. I kind of ran the state of Illinois. So I feel like I have an appreciation for what government is good at and what government is not good at. You know, I think there are certain roles of government plays that are really essential. only government can do. And even sometimes it's done pretty efficiently and well. And there are other

things that really are way beyond the capability of government. So ultimately, you know, while I wouldn't want to have an incredibly overbearing antitrust program that was busting into every single company and trying to brighten them up, I think the way it's been used right now is totally appropriate. And, you know, Klobuchar, for example, throughout an idea of kind of shifting the burden of proof on antitrust grounds from government to companies. I'm not sure that will actually pass. But, you know, I think it will be good if there's a bunch of ideas that are debated and then, you know, maybe some of the best ones actually happen.

Do you – so obviously when you think about these big technology companies, they on any given day, can make up between 20 and 25 percent or more of the S&P 500. They're a very important part of the U.S. economy. And if they start to tank, the economy will tank. At one point during the pandemic, almost all of the growth in the U.S. economy was coming through these five companies. So is there a worry that the government, I mean, you kind of touched on it already, but is there a worry that the government will come in and enact rules that aren't smart and end up harming the economy overall as opposed to making it more competitive? Yeah. I mean, look, there's definitely a worry.

but there's also worry that if the companies are behaving in monopolistic ways, you not only see, you know, new innovation and new companies not being born and not succeeding. But ultimately, you know, while these companies all still feel very aggressive in being innovative and doing R&D, you know, eventually companies do get stagnant when they've got a market position for too long. And then all of a sudden they're actually doing in some ways more harm than good because, there's less innovation happening, right? So at one point, you know, the big three in Detroit were kind of like Fang right now and people were thinking all the same things about them and eventually. And that's the automakers. Yeah, it's the automakers. And they got so big and so powerful that they kind of got bureaucratic and stagnant and lazy. And then they ended up kind of losing their position as the dominant automakers in the world. And so, you know, that could,

you run that risk if you do nothing. And you also run the risk of, over-engineering and limiting economic growth that you do too much. And so it's a pretty tricky balance. I will say if you look at most of the Biden appointees so far, it seems like people who generally seem to understand that balance. I think Janet Yellen, especially, Treasury, you know, feels like she gets it really well. So how would you, if you had, I mean, if you want to try to preserve that balance, you've spent time in government so we will accept no cop-out answers on this one. Okay.

How would you actually go about trying to regulate these big tech companies? Like, would you pass new laws or what would you do? Yeah, I mean, here's how I would do it if I were still working in government. And let's say this was a government where people genuinely, constructively want to try to accomplish things and not just, you know, play politics. If I were, say, working on the Senate, you know, Commerce Committee or whatever the Relevant Committee might be there, I would go to the FTC and DOJ's antitrust people and say, look, where do you feel like the current law is not sufficiently evolved to give you the tools to do your job properly? And, you know, my guess is they would list rattle off 10 different things and you would go back and look and say, okay, some of these things, I understand how it would help you.

but quite frankly, that's too much power and the risk of even if you, this particular regulator is really smart and wise and judicious overall, you know, you can't risk giving people this much authority. But then another five, say, you know, these are reasonable changes that we can make and then you would craft legislation and go through the process and try to do it. Now, obviously, I just described in theory how policy should work and that's not very close to the reality of how it usually does work. But that's how I would go about it. And I'm not even close.

I'm not even close to pretend to know like that there are these three specific tweaks that need to be made to legislation that would really make it a lot easier for antitrust regulators to do their job. But we have smart people working in government. They know what those changes would be. And in a perfect world, you know, we would be able to get a list of them, think about which ones make the most sense. sense and moving forward.

So, and look, maybe there's now enough bipartisan frustration towards big tech that there's some willingness to actually do that. Yeah, I think there is. But in terms of actual policy prescriptions, I think you talk about a process. That's good. Yeah. Do you have any policies that you've been thinking about or? I don't know.

I mean, yeah, I don't know. I mean, look, the Klobuchar notion of shifting the burden of proof is interesting. And I understand how in a actual legal prosecution, you know, whoever bears the burden of proof, you know, has a harder job inherently. And so if you shifted it from the government to the companies, then you would if you'll increase the odds of success in an eighth-to-charge prosecution, which then means the threat of it will become a lot more potent, which would then manage to have a lot more return effect. you know with that sad i don't know i haven't sort of studied enough to say that this is you know i'm kind of i'm the worst kind of lawyer because like i went to law school i took the bar i technically have a law license and yet i've never practiced for a day in my life so uh i know just enough to be dangerous here yeah there are worst kinds of lawyers i'll tell you that much work kind of lawyers

that's a fair point like 80% of practicing lawyers probably um yeah okay well i want to just uh so so So with that being said, let me direct it here, the argument that every single tech company and every single big tech company is going to make this argument is that harming us is going to empower China. And you look at TikTok and you look at the way that the internet seems to be bifurcating across the world. And I'm curious, because clearly the U.S. government is going to think about that. I'm curious how that plays out. Yeah, I don't think it kind of gets back to the point earlier when we were talking about with the example of like, you know, do you take out terrorists? Do you kind of go after the bad actors, even if the devil you don't know might be worse? I think you can't use the fear of China to handcuff yourself from doing what you think is necessary and right.

And I think that, you know, look at Joe McCarthy, right? he was able to use the fear of Russia to do all kinds of things that were pretty horrific to American citizens, right? And really subvert and pervert who we are. And in fact, there's direct line from McCarthy to Roy Cohn to Donald Trump. So I think we're still paying the price for that today. So I would be reluctant to say that just because you raise a competitive threat of China, therefore you can argue not to do anything in form of regulation or improvement.

And look, let me give you a corollary out of my foundation to us philanthropies for funding and running the effort around the U.S. to create mobile voting. What I learned in politics, and I spent in total, you know, a good 15 years between federal, state, and local government, is that every policy output is the result of the political input. Politicians by nature are generally desperately insecure, self-volving people that can't have got the validation of holding office. And they are never, ever, ever going to do anything to risk their ability to stay in office. is because it fills a hole in their psyche and filling.

And this is a guy who works with politicians for a living. Lots of them. Yeah, exactly. I'm saying it on the record. So you're not. And it fills this hole in their psyche. So they can't live without it. So expecting them to do something that's not in their interest is unrealistic.

And the problem is because of gerrymandering, 99% of the districts in this country at all levels of government are really the only election that are not competitive. And the election only matters in the primary. And turn out in most U.S. primaries, right, 10 to 15 percent. So as a result, if you are, whether you're Democrat or Republican, you know, hey, all I have to do is win the next primary to keep my seat. You've got to keep that 10 to 15

percent happy. And they tend to be the most ideological and the most rigid on either side. Right. So, like, for example, the topic that you cover a lot, you know, when, when Amazon tried to come to New York City and build their second headquarters in Queens, a couple of local elected officials from the district where the site would have been, objected to it, were able to kill the deal. And while they certainly weren't reflecting the will of their districts as a whole or the city as a whole based on all the polling, they were right. If you look at the 10, 12 percent of the people in the district who voted in their elections, those people genuinely hated Amazon and therefore the smart political move was to opposing. In fact, all those people got reelected last

June, each with over 70 percent of the vote. And that's true on both sides. But If you think about most issues, take guns. 70% of this country would agree with this. One, you shouldn't walk into every household and confiscate every gun. Two, you shouldn't be able to walk in off the street and buy an assault weapon. 70% of people in the country would agree with this on immigration. You shouldn't deport every single person who might be here illegally, nor should you have wide open doors when they're just walking whenever they want.

The problem is that 70% don't vote in primaries. So while they may have a view that's logical and could produce some compromise and actually get something done, their views don't actually matter. So the only way, if you want more consensus and more progress and a more mainstream approach, is to radically increase turnout. And my view is the only way to do that is through mobile voting. And I learned that lesson. We talked earlier about Uber, when I ran all those campaigns to legalize ride sharing,

the way that we took on taxi, which at a time was a really powerful cartel, the way we beat them, that we mobilize our customers. And through the app, they were able to advocate politically and tell their city councilmen the mayor or the state center, whoever the relevant person was, hey, I want to be able to use this thing. And enough people did it. I can't wait for you to tie this back to the China stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's coming. It's coming. Enough people did it that we won in every single jurisdiction. And so at the time, I remember thinking, you know, this would be an amazing way to vote, but the tech is not there yet. But over time, blockchain and the cloud both progressed.

In the last two and a half years, we've funded elections down 18 different jurisdictions across the U.S. We're either deployed military or people with disabilities have voted on their phones. All 18 elections have been audited independently by the National Cybersecurity Center and come back clean. Turnout on average has more than doubled. So everything seems to be working the way that it should. But we have a lot of critics. And those critics say, well, something could go wrong if we had an online election. Someone could try to hack it, and the risk of that is so great that even though the system we have is totally broken, it doesn't make sense to improve it because the risk is even higher than that.

And to me, that's nonsense and that's a lot like the arguments that companies would use to try to stop themselves from being regulated, which is say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we may be, you know, committing all kinds of monopolistic violations. we may be, you know, totally violating people's privacy. We may be, you know, platforms to incite violent. But China's even worse. And if you try to limit us in any way, you're only going to empower that. So you have to let us do whatever we want. And to me, it's how I feel when our critics say you can't do mobile voting because while the system is completely broken and politics are polarized and dysfunctional and

no one trusts or believes in them. At the same time, maybe something even worse. could happen so therefore we can't even try. So to me, they're very similar. So I think I did bring that back around. You tied that knot. You tied that knot. I'm interested. Once you started going China and Uber, I was like, Bradley is not taking us back. But you did. So I appreciate that. You know what? If I didn't have the clarity of not drinking or cannabis, who knows that I could have pulled that out? Yeah, you would be somewhere else completely. Yeah. And the whole China argument from the big tech companies isn't working very well.

given the fact that the people that have been making it most strongly, Google and Facebook are now facing serious antitrust action from the FTC and DOJ and dozens of state attorney generals. Yeah. So I think it's all but three or four at this point. Yeah. Right. And who knows what's going to happen with those holdouts.

So it's easy to make a settlement with one government agency. It's much more difficult to appease 48 state attorney generals. Yeah. The mobile voting thing, I mean, I won't get into it. because I feel like that's a whole new episode for us. Separate episodes. Yeah, I'll come back a few more. Yeah. I want to end with Andrew Yang. Sure.

He's off to the races in New York City. He's had in his first week more controversies than I've ever seen a local politician get into in like five days. Yeah. One was that he doesn't spend a lot of time in New York and had this line saying, you know, how could anybody imagine, you know, doing what I'm doing, like having a job in a two-bedroom apartment with kids running around and New Yorkers were all like, well, we could certainly imagine that. Then he filmed a video in a nice grocery store and called it a bodega.

And everyone was like, Andrew, that's not a bodega. So what's going on with this guy? And what's his path to victory? Yeah. So I think there's sort of three things. Let me answer the very specific. and then we'll talk about kind of why I'm doing this and then why I think we're going to win. So, you know, there's always this very tricky balance in politics, which voters clearly want a candidate who is genuine or authentic.

They have shown that time and time again. They don't want someone who just delivers the best sound bite and has the longest list of bullet points and the longest white paper from the most people worked on who went to Yale. if that were the case, Al Gore would have beaten George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton would have succeeded Gore, and next Wednesday we'd be inaugurating Elizabeth Warren to her second turn. So that's clearly not what the voters want. But when you are genuine or authentic, that means you're human and you say things. And if you recorded anything that all of us said over the course of the day, we're all going to say things that later were like, oh, that doesn't sound great in retrospect. And so the risk and reward are kind of both there and apparent. And at least my strategy and philosophy is, I got to let Andrew be Andrew. You know, he's an incredibly charismatic guy. People really, really like him. And they like him because of who he is, not because of who he pretends to be.

And that means he'll make some stupid mistakes. And my hope is that we'll learn from those. I think he understands in that time story what he said and why it was politically problematic. And so he'll get better and better. But that's sort of the inherent risk you have when the candidate is someone with that kind of talent. and is that kind of a common class. So now the question is, why do this and then, you know, how do we win? So, you know, as we discussed, I spent a lot of time working in city government.

I was in the New York City Parks Department for four years. Bradley, before you get into it, I just want to say, I think there's a lot of potential for him. And I'm not writing them off after this. Oh, we're going to win. You know, as we mentioned at the top, a New Yorker. You know, even though I live in San Francisco, I'm always going to be a New Yorker. And I think the city's been poorly served. by the leadership, who have been more interested in an image and appearances than actual

doing what's right for people. And I'm speaking about Bill de Blasio. I think he's done a terrible job with the city. More familiar history. Inside the agencies who talk about how corrupt everything feels. I won't say it is, but it feels corrupt. It feels like it's being done in service of, you know, de Blasio and his friends and not for the people in New York. And I think the city deserve a leader, whose head is in the right place and who's going to do it, not for themselves, but for the people. And I think Yang has the possibility to do that. Yeah. And in fact, so what's interesting, Alex, is, so I, you know, I, because of my work, I know

most of the candidates for a run, right? And I asked myself, what made Mike Bloomberg successful mayor? And I all ended up with three answers. And the first one actually is funny because it pertains to you personally, which is Mike said, I am going to hire the most talented people that I can get. I don't care about politics. I don't care where they're from. I don't care who they know.

I just want talent. And they said to all of his commissioners, you have to hire the same way. And then on top of that, we're going to give these people the freedom to come up with big ideas, take risks, sometimes even fail, and that's okay,

because that's who we're going to have great ideas and that's how we're going to get things done. If you look at, say, the 100 best things that happen in the Bloomberg administration, I don't know that Mike personally thought of any of those hundred things, but he created the environment where really talented people could come to someone like you who would never have worked in a de Blasio administration, you know, was recruited and came into EDC and did really great work, I'm pretty sure. And that was very emblematic of the Bloomberg administration because Mike created a world and a culture and an approach to hiring that made that happen, right? So one is you need a mayor who really believes in that. de Blasio has been the opposite.

All patronage, all hacks, and he can't attract or retain talent simply because he's so terrible to work for. The second thing is you need a mayor who won, you know, will go for really big visionary ideas, but the job just can't be, you know, throwing out these giant concepts. It's picking up the trash, like literally. And the mayor has to understand that their job is to make sure the streetlight turns from red to green, the water comes out of the tap cleanly, the snow gets removed, And they've got to take that stuff seriously.

And third, they've got to really love the job, right? Part of DeBlaz's problem is he hates being mayor. And as a result, being around him and just doing it with him is a bummer. And, you know, with you want a candidate who's excited about it, who's enthusiastic, who's coming every day, who wants to work day and day out, weekdays, weekends, all of that. And by the way, it has like a core appreciation for sort of ethics. morality, which again, our current mayor does not. And so I took those three standards and I met with

almost all the candidates running. And by the other, there's some nice people who are running and I like some of them. I've known someone for a long time. And a lot of them would be a lot better. There's like 20 people already in the field. 12. Yeah. But maybe all 12 would be better than probably the case. But no one was really quite. It's a low bar. Yes. But no one was quite doing it for me either. And I had met Andrew Yang because when Mike Bloomberg ran for president, I wasn't like super involved in the campaign, but I was helping where I could. And Yang had dropped out and I got tasked to try to convince Yang to endorse Mike. And I wasn't able to do that. But I started building a relationship as a result,

stayed in touch with him and the team. And through that, started talking about, okay, you know, here's what New York City government would really look like. And here's the situation we're facing right now. And the more and more and more talk to Andrew, the more like, you know what, This guy will attract incredible talent, and people will come here to work for him. And because he's not of the political system, he's not going to have this long list of hacks that he has to hire. And he is someone who's incredibly enthusiastic and energetic. He's someone that will obviously generate really big ideas like UBI, but at the same time seems to really get them. Most of the job is a severe, relentless focus on day-to-day operations.

And so for all those reasons, I ultimately decided we're going to support him and we're going to work with him. And we've been doing that now for a little while. And we watched the campaign yesterday. So here's how we win. And again, if I didn't think Andrew could win. Wait, Bradley, quickly, the work that you're doing with him is you're just like consulting with him or are you taking a more official? Yeah.

So we're running, well, my firm is kind of running a lot of the campaign. We're ever seeing media policy, politics, endorsements, you know, a lot of operations. you know, a lot of operations, scheduling, you know, field, ads. So that basically is the campaign. A lot of it. You know, Andrew's got a great team of people. Yeah, I love there was a New York Times profile of the Bloomberg campaign back when you were on it.

And people were like, oh, yeah, Bradley Tusk, he likes to keep lists. He's very organized. Yes, I still keep lots of lists. You know, any campaign could use that. That's what we do. You can talk about how he wins, but we're running up over time. All right, we'll do it in like 90 seconds or less. Yeah.

Candidate with the most, the highest name ID, the most energy and enthusiasm in a ranked choice voting system for the first time, which really rewards the candidates that people know and like in a climate where, A, everyone will have the same amount of money because of the city campaign finance system. And B, we're running this whole thing in a pandemic. which means the campaign will be much more digital than physical and the Yank Desert Operation's head and shoulders better than our world. Yeah, he has an advantage there.

Okay, Bradley, thank you for joining us. Let everyone know where they can follow you and your podcast. Yeah, sure. Sure. So the podcast is called Firewall, and you can find it on any single platform. You can follow me on Twitter, although I've already admitted that I'm not the one doing the tweets, but it's at Bradley Tusk. or if you go to bradleytust.com, you can sign up for,

I write a column monthly for Fast Company, so you can sign up and get those sent to you and anything else that I write it's right. Great. Well, Bradley, it's been a true pleasure. It's always great to talk. This is really fun. We cover a lot of ground today.

I know. You covered the Section 230 and antitrust. I'm going to skip therapy next week. Yeah. Drinking and Twitter. That's how we know an interview has gone well. And Andrew Yang's candidacy. Thanks, everybody, for listening.

we are back every Wednesday with a new episode of the big technology podcast. So subscribe if you're here for the first time, if you've listened for a while and are enjoying it. All we ask is that you add a rating to your podcast app of choice if you're able to. And thanks as always for coming back week and week out. We've seen the audience growing recently and it means a lot and hope you stick around. So we'll be back next Wednesday. Thanks again and we will see you then. Thank you.