Offline with Jon Favreau - Authoritarians or A-holes? Kara Swisher on Tech's Biggest Egos

Episode Date: February 11, 2024

Kara Swisher, longtime tech reporter and author of the forthcoming memoir Burn Book, joins Offline to talk about the tech tycoons who think they’re qualified to run our country. She and Jon break down Silicon Valley’s ever growing self importance, whether its leaders are more or less fascist than we think, and how big tech ate the media industry alive. But first! Max and Jon explain why Apple’s Vision Pro headset is the company’s most impressive—and depressing—gadget to date, and how Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are saving  American monoculture. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

This grievance industrial complex is really quite deep in many of them personally. You know, Elon, of course, is the patron saint of that. Everybody's trying to get him. Everyone's trying to bring him down. Everybody sucks. Like this week, it's the immigrants. Next week, it's the gay people, the trans people. You know, just everybody sucks but them.

And the reason they don't suck is because they're rich. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Max Fisher. And a lot of you might recognize the voice you just heard as Kara Swishers, the award-winning journalist, Silicon Valley whisperer, and author of the soon to be released Burn Book. Kara's already got a long piece in New York Magazine that's adapted from her hotly anticipated memoir, and it's unsurprisingly about a lot of the tech overlords she's interviewed and terrified over the years, which is why I thought of her when I came across a recent Atlantic piece titled

The Rise of Techno-Authoritarianism and a recent Axios piece about the same topic that's more sympathetically titled The Rise of Techno-Optimism. Some call it authoritarianism, some call it optimism. Those are the two choices that we have. It's one of those two and maybe both. Both are about the reactionary political turn that a lot of Silicon Valley types have taken. Your Elons, your Peter Thiels, your Marc Andreessens.

Do they represent a dangerous new kind of authoritarianism? Or are they just misunderstood optimists? Maybe they're just rich jackasses. Wow, what an amazing set of choices. Well, anyway, if there's one person who would know, it's Kara Swisher. So we get into all of it. And of course, I try to get her to give us a few juicy tidbits from her memoir. But before we get to that, this week, Max, Apple released its most impressive

and possibly depressing piece of technology yet. Talk about optimistic authoritarianism. That's exactly right. The Apple Vision Pro. Apple describes the $3,500 device, that's the starting price, as a spatial computer, but it can best be described as a fancy

mixed reality headset. Users place the computer on their face and can then interact with apps layered over the real world around them. Max, let me play you a quick video of an Apple Vision Pro user using the device to watch the NBA. Hey guys, just want to show you real quick how I enjoy my breakfast with the Apple Vision Pro. As you can see here, I'm watching 33 different NBA games at the exact same time, just covering my entire wall. I mean, he's clearly joking. In case I'm not getting enough dopamine hits over here, I can look over here and I got X, I can scroll X and I can like posts. As you see, it's very easy to scroll X on the Apple Vision Pro. Over here, I'm looking at my different scores.

I'm checking out how much money I'm making off fantasy, off sports betting. So if I'm not going to have dopamine here, I'm not going to have dopamine here. I'm not liking what I'm seeing from Greg posting over here. I can get some more dopamine over here. And this is how I eat a bacon, egg, and cheese with ketchup and hot sauce. You know, my Apple Vision Pro there. So while you're watching YouTube while you eat on a tiny little iPhone 3GS, I'm here watching a hundred different things at the same time.

So enjoy your breakfast. Happy Saturday morning, everyone. We'll talk soon. That's actually Austin recorded that using the most annoying voice imaginable. So here's my question, Max. Is this the first Apple product designed specifically to troll this podcast? Because I think it is like the antithesis of everything we stand for. All of the culmination of our life's work just turned upside down with one. No, I have been saying for years, how can I spend $4,000 to duct tape my iPhone to my face? And then get in the car and go for a drive.

I've been begging Silicon Valley for this product for years. And finally, finally, Apple has gotten around to delivering on all of my dreams. Did you watch the guided tour that Apple does on the Apple website? I have been avoiding this product as hard as I possibly can. So I'm sorry to say you're going to have to. No, I read up on it a little bit. Yeah, my initial reaction was I hate this. Sure.

I hate it. Yeah. And then I'm learning about it. You said, I double hate it. Yeah, basically. So I was like, but I'm going to have, you know, I'm a real journalist. I'm going to have an open mind. We're going to be tough.

So I watched the nine-minute thing, and I was like, here's the challenge. I do believe that, and I haven't used it yet, but if Apple wants to send us one, which I'm sure they will after this, let me know. But I imagine that watching television movies is pretty cool. It seems pretty cool on that, right? It's like very immersive. Putting on Avatar 2, The Way of Water, and taking 17 edibles, that'll be kind of fun. That seems cool. That seems cool. And I also guess that for some people,

turning their workspace into this virtual workspace where you've got like five screens in front of you, perhaps that makes you more productive. That's the use case I've heard people describe for it, yeah. Right. But beyond that, it's basically, once again, it's giving you the illusion of connection by saying, okay, it's basically, once again, it's giving you the illusion of connection.

Right. By saying, okay, it's not just regular VR because you can see the world, you can see everything in front of you, but you also see a bunch of apps and screens. Right. So it's giving you the illusion of connection when really you're just sort of trapped in your headset. There's more distance between you and the outside world. And what's worse, I think the worst part is, everything we have discussed about social media and technology stealing

our attention and shortening our attention spans and not allowing us to focus on anything at one time and not allowing us to genuinely connect with other humans in the real world but to just be behind screens all the time. This just like takes that to the nth degree.

So I think that gets to my major objection to the Apple Vision Pro, which to take it seriously, like it's incredibly impressive technology. This is technologically, it's even with the like, there's some reports of some jankiness and some of the curvature on the screen, but like, it's cool that they did. But I don't, for so many years when Apple made products, they were fulfilling some need. There was something that was hard to do that they were suddenly making easy to do, right? Carrying music around. CDs were so shitty.

And then the iPod was revolutionary because it really solves this problem. What they did with the iPhone really solved a lot of problems and fulfilled a lot of needs. And also, going back to the iPod, remember the tagline that Steve Jobs came up with, 1,000 songs in your pocket. Yeah.

And the fact that you could... Utility. You could have a sentence that describes exactly what it does and why you need it. It shows you why it was a product that was necessary. And the Apple Vision Pro really feels like it feels indicative of where we are now with technology, where so much of what is being designed is being designed because they could make it or because it's like an impressive use of technology or like you're saying, because it maximizes our addiction level to the stuff on our screen, which ads can be sold against

and not because it's fulfilling some kind of need. Like I was thinking the other day, I was talking to somebody about it, like how big of a deal it used to be when Apple launched a new product. Like 10 years ago, I was working at Vox, which is part of Vox Media. And so there's a big like The Verge was a big tech site was part of there.

And every time there was an Apple product launch every year, it was like the entire company would shut down because there was an expectation that like all of our lives are going to change because of this new thing that Apple will release. And it's not just Apple. There were other companies that were releasing things that were doing so much cool stuff, Google Docs Google Maps and it really feels like now we're in an era where they're just like hey we made something that's very technologically impressive and we're hoping that you will buy it because of that and not because it actually actually does something for you yeah it feels like more of a toy than it does like a utility right or something that's

going to like make your life easier. And that's why I do think I could see people who can afford it buying this product because it's fun and, you know, and maybe like I said, when you're sitting at work, maybe if you want 10 screens in front of you, that's fine. But, you know, a thousand songs in your pocket, like a million screens in your face. Like, is that what, like, you know, and songs in your pocket like a million screens in your face like is that what

like you know and then it's like well it's immersive and you can you can look out at the physical world that's the real physical world

that's in front of you or you can immerse yourself into any scene like you can be in the desert or in the mountains so it's like oh cool

I can transport myself to a screensaver I can be in the screensaver I think it's also oh cool i can i can transport myself to a screensaver i can i can be in the screensaver i think it's also like be in the desktop background as i'm part of the computer um it's also like when we think about like the role of tech in our lives now it's it's it's not something that's like the amazing things tech are doing for me tech is part of the problem now and i think that that's also something that we're seeing in the like so much of the reaction to this

is people laughing at these like goofy videos of people and it's like people being ridiculous to the Apple Vision Pro or like, you know, look at this jerk on the subway like flailing his arms around is I think also endemic of like our relationship to technology now is that it's like we see it as

part of the problem. We see it as addictive. We see it as radicalizing. We see it as distorting. And I think you see that in the reaction to this device that there's now a level of skepticism that we greet these new like unveilings from in Silicon Valley and these like new gadgets and toys where it's like, is this going to be a good thing? And it does seem crazy that at a moment when so much public reaction around tech, and I'm sure they know this at Apple, is like my screen is too addictive. I'm worried about what it's doing to me.

I'm worried about my screen time. That their answer to that is a product that doubles down on all of that. Well, no. Their answer is, I know the screen is too addicting. So you know what? We're going to let you see the person you're ignoring while you have a couple screens. While you're ignoring them. It's also, it's just, it's more, it's more isolating, right?

Like imagine a world where everyone's wearing one of these things and everyone's just sitting on the subway or just walking around town and they're all just got their, the glasses on. And it's like, yeah, you can see the people that you're walking by, but are you waving to them as you're watching 100 screens? It is funny that they heard everybody talk about how tech was distancing and alienating. They said, what if we turned that from metaphorical to made it literally alienating and distancing? There's this feature, right, where when you call someone who also is wearing an Apple Vision Pro, uh, instead of seeing their face, like you would

on FaceTime, a great product, you see their avatar that's like, looks like them, but it's like a ma it's like, so it's not quite a bit moji, but it's like, it's, it looks more like you, but still not like you. What the fuck is the purpose of that? Why are we doing that? Why don't you just talk to someone in person? You make a good point about FaceTime. That is something that is really cool. It's like really revolutionary and I use it all the time and I probably take it for granted. And I think I want to return to that because we're like, I think correct to rant about the Apple Vision Pro and what it says about where Apple specifically in Silicon Valley are generally. But I think it's important to remember that there is a world in which these companies can bring us things that, you know, even if I take them for granted personally, really do a lot for us and really do like move us forward and really do add to and enrich our lives. And, you know, I don't think that that era is necessarily over.

This feels to me emblematic of Silicon Valley losing touch with that. But I want to believe that they can find it again. I do. Did you see, you mentioned some of these videos. There are people also filming themselves

wearing the Apple Vision Pro while driving Tesla Cybertrucks with their hands off the wheel. So I think those might be fake. Well, no, they are. But that's okay. So they staged them. Sure.

Because they wanted to then go viral on TikTok, which is like. So they're using the hands-free technology that they're not really supposed to be using, using the Vision Pro, but all for the likes. Well, in fairness. All for the virality. So we can say that's. Which is perfect. That's the big value out of the Apple Vision Pro

is that you can go viral with it based on people thinking you're jackass for wearing it. And that's cool. And I want to say thank you to Steve Apple for that. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg had to put out a statement. Did he really? Yes, yes.

Reminder, all advanced driver assistance systems available today require the human driver to be in control and fully engaged. Just brutal. Just brutal. So as tech companies are busy giving us a preview of a future where we're all hooked up to the Matrix by ourselves, one of the last remaining events that bring us all together is finally here.

It's Super Bowl Sunday. Over 100 million Americans are expected to watch the Chiefs take on the 49ers, check out the commercials, catch a few cutaways of Taylor Swift. Max, here's how we know

the Super Bowl is still one of our few monocultural moments. The New York Times reports that for the second consecutive year, the average cost of a 30-second Super Bowl ad

is $7 million because, quote, in a time of fragmentation, advertising during the game's broadcast is still a reliable way to boost company revenue and familiarize viewers with a brand. Comforting, I guess? What do you think?

Man, Super Bowl ads, they really did used to be like a big monoculture thing. Like you remember coming back like the week after the Super Bowl, it'd be like, oh, what ads did you see? And like pre-YouTube, you would like try to catch it later on in the week because there Super Bowl, it'd be like, oh, what ads did you see? And like pre-YouTube, you would like try to catch it later on in the week

because there were really good ones. It was even better in the early years of YouTube because then the next day at work, everyone watched the ads again. You talk about them. Yeah. I hate to be like,

wow, Budweiser, the protector, guarantor of our culture. But I think there was something to the idea that like big corporate advertising firms are trying to entertain just to entertain because that's like part of the monocultural moment to it. I found those advertising numbers really striking. I think it was up by like almost double from a decade ago at a time when the advertising industry is not doing so well.

And I felt like what that really showed is that the demand for big monoculture moments from our culture is really high and the supply is really dwindling. So the fact that that's the one place you can go that people are willing to spend these insane amounts of money to advertise there because we all want that. I think we all really value monoculture moments. And this is why – and I am obviously a fan of Taylor Swift. Is that right? Yeah. You obviously a fan of Taylor Swift, but like... Is that right? Yeah. You're a fan of her music? I am not.

And not only am I not bothered by the Taylor-Travis hysteria, I love it because two of the last monocultural institutions, Taylor Swift and the NFL together, bringing Taylor fans together, bringing NFL fans together, which you get over 100 million people watching the Super Bowl. You're seeing ratings on cable news, movies, entertainment's having trouble, journalism's having trouble. We've talked about all this.

And people are like, you know, everything's fragmented and people are just watching their TikToks and they get their Apple Vision Pros on. And like we – I do think we need more things to bring people together. And it's clear that people want that. People really cherish it.

It's great. It's a wonderful experience to feel that communal sensation where you watch the episode of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, whatever. And then you know everybody in your life will have seen it. You can talk about it. You can share it. It's this, like, binding thing. Like, I know I sound like fucking David Brooks when I say this, but, like, at a time of high polarization and alienation, that's important that we have something we can share.

And it is very funny to me that at a time when, like, a lot of people are trying to recreate monoculture. Like, we talked the other week about these streamer companies spending you know quadrillions of dollars to try to get us back to monoculture and this like goofy ass couple taylor swift and travis kelsey just like did it by accident that's like that's fun i think that's kind of cute it is though i think one of the greatest ironies that like technology and especially social media, which was supposed to connect us all, has instead led to this, not just the division, but the fragmentation. Right. Right?

Well, it's funny. We do have on social media, we have these like monoculture micro moments now when something goes like super, super viral because it will all of a sudden become like you know where there was the uh tracy chapman performed that's another one where it was like a great moment everybody watched it but then what fucking happened is it went viral on social media and all of a sudden everything you're seeing on your feed is the just like most insane takes people can come up with because that's like the like people taking it to the crazy extremes or doing like weird dunks and other people for not liking tracy chapman enough is what dominates so we have even when we do have like actual monoculture like teeny tiny little moments they get hijacked by these social media algorithms and they become

terrible yeah that is so fucking annoying and like Twitter baity. And look, I'm sure that we have a lot more sort of mini monocultural moments within online communities. Right? And so like if you're a big TikTok user, but also you're a big TikTok user with like, you know, of a certain age and demographic, then you know certain trends that other people don't know. Same on Twitter, same on, like, so you have these everywhere. But I think that it is, there's clearly a longing, as the $7 million Super Bowl ad suggests, for more of these that sort of cross demographics, generations, etc. There was a great Rebecca Jennings piece in Vox

called Against Trend Bait that is about, I noticed it in my time on TikTok, this really annoying thing where everybody on TikTok is trying to coin something. They're trying to coin like girl dinner, goblin mode. There's one called loud budgeting, which the story didn't explain. I really wanted to know.

It's like Excel spreadsheets. I did go look it up. My understanding of loud budgeting is that you tell people about your financially responsible habits so that they will learn them. Seems like a stretch. But her point, which I thought was a good one, is that because the

algorithm so rewards you if you coin something, you know, polywork, whatever, that goes viral, that everybody is trying to force these like kind of dumbass monoculture things. A lot of them are really misogynist. It's like girl noun. What's that mean?

Girl dinner, girl math, girl hobby. I've heard the girl dinner, girl math thing before. We're just going to stop. We're going to sound old. We should try to coin one of these ourselves. We should have an offline purposely. We should have an offline thing that we... I thought it was goblin mode.

I thought, is that not us? Goblin mode, I know. I know goblin mode. Offline dinner? Offline math? Offline dinner. Offline math? Offline dinner. Offline math is when you think that you're doing a really good job being off your smartphone, and then you get that Sunday push alert, and your screen time says 30 hours a day.

Yeah. We don't have enough time, thank God, but mine's been going up, so that's bad things. All right. We're done here before we just do our yell at the lawn, old man yelling on the lawn thing. Before we get to break, some quick housekeeping. Vote Save America's brand new anxiety relief program just added 500 new recurring donors who've signed up for the program and trusted VSA

to make their dollar go further. That's awesome. But we still have a long way to go. Here's how the new program works. You set up a recurring monthly donation at the level that feels right for you, and Vote Save America will send 100% of it to the grassroots organizations and down-ballot races that need it most. Then at the end of each month, they'll tell you where your dollars went. It's that easy. Sign up today at votesaveamerica.com. Paid for by

Vote Save America, votesaveamerica.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. And you can catch me on Pod Save the World this Wednesday, where I'll be guest hosting with Tommy Vitor to catch up on the latest world news. Make sure to turn into Pod Save the World every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Exciting. All right, after the break, my conversation with Kara Swisher

about Silicon Valley's ever-growing self-importance, what the Valley's founders actually believe politically, and how big tech ate the media industry alive. Kara Swisher, welcome back to Offline. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Of course. So here's the lead of an Axios piece you're quoted in that caught my eye last week. A new, powerful, well-funded political movement is rising fast in America, the techno-optimists. This group, mostly rich, white, middle-aged men with tech jobs, companies, or investment funds, is building impressive, if unorganized, political muscle through social media podcasts,

new journalism projects, and political donations and activism. Axios calls them techno optimists. Adrienne LaFrance wrote a piece in The Atlantic calling them techno authoritarians. You go deep on a lot of these guys in your memoir, Burn Book, which is out in a few weeks. What do you call them? Oh, just jerks mostly. You know, this is not a new fresh thing. This is what they are like. You just are now seeing them because they've decided to bypass the media and be public with their much of much of some of it's interesting, some of it's nonsense. There's other things in San Francisco that are that have been successful about changing the political scheme there and funding all kinds of candidates that are more right leaning in that city, which is perfectly within their bounds. They just use a lot of money. And before, they kind of hid in the shadows. Now they've kind of just decided they like the attention.

You know, the Axios piece, I don't have a lot to say about. I thought it was a typed PR release for those people. But I thought Adrian's piece, oh, come on. It was ridiculous. And also there was an event here that they've declined to note that Marc Andreessen was running to try to kiss up. He never leaves. He never comes to Washington, and then he did because he wants political capital, which is fine. He has every right to do so.

And he – but the Adrian one was sort of going over what we've all been paying attention to from the beginning of Facebook with, you know, Mark's famous the dumb fucks quote that he had when he was at Harvard, which sort of revealed what his real personality was like. Now, I think he's changed. I don't think he's quite that much of a teenage jackass right now. And he's older and he has kids and things like that. You certainly let people change. But I do think they have this idea of you're either with us or against us, which I've been enduring for years and years. But now they're just saying it out loud, essentially. Yeah, I mean, my take on it is most of these guys have been rich, powerful, and high on their own supply for quite a while now. As you point out, that's not new.

What seems relatively new is this political term, and Ezra Klein called it, it's not necessarily conservative but reactionary. Yes, it's always been reactionary. I call it libertarian light because I think when you actually press them for any knowledge of any kind of government, they sort of give you the First Amendment for dummies and don't really – companies can't do that. I'm like, they can. Did you read it? It's a real short amendment. It's the first one. Try hard.

It's not very many words. And, you know, they declare things at you all the time, which shows a startling lack of historical knowledge or any reading, I mean, in a lot of ways. And so what they're trying to do is, to me, you know, this book I wrote, the first line really pretty much says it all to me, you know, this book I wrote, the first line really pretty much says it all to me, which is, so it was capitalism after all. You know, that's what this is. And they just happen to, some of them happen to be peacocks, and they like the attention they get and the fanboyness of it. And because the press, which used to be incredibly slavish in terms of kissing

them up and down, they don't get that. They want to create fan bases because they want to bypass it. They've tried to do their own media things, like I think Andreessen Horowitz did the, whatever the thing they did, it failed. Future, I guess, whatever. They try that, and then they try investing. It's not a very lucrative thing, media. And now they're just, you know, going on Twitter like Bill Ackman

or anybody just trying to create their own profile, or they all in podcast or whatever. You know, this is their way of communicating. I mean, I first thought about this whole topic when I read about Andreessen's techno-optimist manifesto, and I know you're quite familiar with Mark and have read the thing. For people who haven't, it basically says, you know, all technology rules, all regulation sucks,

and society's going to hell because of enemies that include, and he lists the ivory tower, bureaucracy, sustainability, ESG, social responsibility, trust and safety, tech ethics, and know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, to name a few. What on earth is he going on about? Well, this is his worldview. You know, he's a very dark and dystopian person. And he's, I hate to say this about him, but I talked to him a lot over the many years. He's just not a happy person. I don't know what else to say. I mean, he pretends he is. I'm real happy. But everything

that comes out of his mouth is usually a dunk or some sort of why someone sucks. I was looking at our text over the many, many years, and every one of them is about how someone sucks, right? Which I think he thinks, I think is an attractive trait in someone. And so, you know, I think this is his idea that everything we do is right. We make no mistakes. And you're for us or against us kind of trope, which I think they've been pulling out for years and years, this idea that they could do no wrong. And they don't want to take responsibility for the, even a small amount of responsibility for the things they've done. And it's not even that you don't think tech is great and has made things, but a lot of their success was based off the backs of the U.S. government, for example. And they tend to think it's because of their own innovation.

And they were the ones, they are ready player one in every single thing, and therefore they know best. And they don't know best. They have a lot of money, and they have a lot of means. That's what they know. And that don't know best. They have a lot of money and they have a lot of means. That's what they know. And that's where we are. We have to like sit and listen to them. I don't really listen to them. That piece he wrote was ridiculous, was ridiculous.

I know where he's coming from. I do know where he's coming from. Where do you think he's coming from? Just he feels beleaguered and victimized. One of the things I write about in the book is this. I've never seen some, when they go, we're going to get the man. You remember during the tech, the meme stock thing? Let's get the man.

I was like, you are the fucking man. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's a lot of grievance. There's a lot of grievance. I call it the grievance industrial complex, which I think does or the contrarian for cont's sake, without any kind of why everybody sucks, you know, that kind of thing. And so this grievance industrial complex is really quite deep in many of them personally. You know, Elon, of course, is the patron saint of that. Everybody's trying to get him. Everyone's trying to bring him down. Everybody sucks. Like this week, it's the immigrants. Next week, it's the gay people, the trans people.

You know, just everybody sucks but them. And the reason they don't suck is because they're rich. I'm like, okay, I guess. I guess what I've been trying to figure out is like back when I was in the White House and, you know. Where you hung out with them? The Obamas were a little close to those people. Well, there were. So there was the Obama Silicon Valley Love Fest, right?

Yeah, which was somewhat untoward. And I would describe their politics then as definitely more libertarian, but socially, culturally more progressive, and definitely never liked regulation, right? They wanted their tax cuts and all that kind of stuff. So financially not so, economically not so liberal, but socially and culturally progressive generally and just wanted sort of people to leave them alone

and thought that they were great. Yeah, it was a Bill Gates-ian kind of thing. When I met Bill Gates, that was his big thing. What do I need a lobbyist for? I was like, because you're going to be sued. I don't know what to tell you. But now, and Elon, of course, is the worst example of this, but now it's— You mean the guy who got a loan from the government?

Right. But it's like to turn against immigrants and immigration, which has always been huge to Silicon Valley, right? That going after DEI and sustainability and environment. Like what is—what do you describe the turn to? Well, in Elon's case, it's a little bit of the family business, isn't it? Right? Like his grandfather was a famous, just read about him. Just look him up.

If you read his, you know, Protocols of Zion kind of fella. And then, you know, his own father had those issues. And so, you know, I don't know where it's coming from. I had not seen that in him for many, many years and there's flashes of it and mostly it's dyspeptic personality. That's what you used to see but now after COVID

and you're reading in the journal about his drug use, it took a turn. It took a turn and I think a lot of these things, once you become, you know, Kevin Roos did a really good series, The Rabbit Hole. People go down these rabbit holes and they don't return. And so I always thought, you know, years ago when everyone was like, oh, but they're liberal, I was like, they aren't.

They really aren't. Mostly they're selfish. Mostly they're selfish pricks, right? I don't, you know, they want things of their convenience when they want it. And they're mostly, you know, I used to call them adult toddlers, but adult is even too much. Actually, toddlers is insulting to toddlers. It just was, I want what I want when I want it. Like, you know, Veruca Salt or whatever. I think that's the person in Willy Wonka who's like that give you know I want it now kind of thing and so I never thought they cared for anybody but themselves I never did I never thought they were you know they didn't feel like they didn't want to necessarily go after the gays but they didn't care for them either right they didn't necessarily dislike people of color but they didn't really help them you know what I mean like it it wasn't, it was just more, they were had sort of zeroed in on making money,

which is what they did. Yeah, and anything that stands in the way of their success or somehow makes them feel like they're not the greatest people in the world. That's right. Being licked up and down all day. That's one of their favorite things. I mean, I know that you studied history.

You've studied Nazi history. Not that these guys are Nazis. Let's not go to Nazis right away. But go ahead. I wouldn't. To the techno-authoritarianism point, do you notice like authoritarian tendencies in some of the way that they are and run these companies? Not all of them. No, not at all.

I don't think so. I wouldn't have said this about Steve Jobs, oddly enough, because he was certainly bossy. But he had a lot of people. I disagreed with him until the day he died. Well, I didn't talk to him the day he died, but you know what I mean? He was up for a debate. If you see our last interview, me and Walton, he'd go back and forth. He was willing to have a debate.

Tim Cook's willing to have a debate. Mark Cuban clearly is willing to have, you know, he's over there over on Twitter. You know, basically he makes all these really good arguments and then Elon responds, you're a moron. Like, what? Okay, sure, sir. But, you know, there's a lot of them who are very thoughtful. I think Sam Altman's very thoughtful. I've had some very thoughtful, interesting discussions with him. You know, it's not, but there's a group of them and

a strain of them that is, I sometimes think, you know, and I hate to bring the person onto it, but it's like, did you get hugged enough as a child? What happened? Like, I would love to understand. And in some of their cases, I do know their family background and it's not nice, right? It's not, it's a lack of empathy for regular people in any way. And so, I don't think they much care about anybody. I don't think they necessarily target them as, you know, say the religious right does or Moms for Liberty. They're targeting. There's some real hate there. I don't even think that's it. I think it's just more disgruntlement with people who don't love them to death, right? Or don't – and it didn't used to be like that.

Well, that's what – yeah. I don't know what happened. You become a truth – when you're either an asset that you tell them the truth or you're an enemy that you tell them the truth. And you're telling the same truth to them. And it's just – it's a testy, petty personality disorder. And it's weird. And it's definitely not all of them, for sure, by no means. And there's all sorts of thoughtful people in tech that I've encountered. Now, the people I'm thinking about are Elon, Peter Thiel. Peter's less so. Peter's willing to debate. I'll be honest with you. I would take Peter Thiel any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

They're most of these guys. It's less about the willingness to debate, though, and more about sort of like the philosophy and seeming political ideology that they have now, which is it's like I say, it's not it's not traditional Republican or conservative. It feels more Trumpy, actually. Yes, it's very much so. And now they're attracted to like, they liked DeSantis for a while, and they liked Vivek, and now they flirt with RFK Jr., right? They don't flirt with him.

They're not flirting. It's full on. It's full on. But they're just, they're swimming in the conspiracy theories and the sort of anti-establishment, weird populism, and I don't – Well, it's attractive to people who can do anything they want.

That's not enough to be the richest people in the world. They want everybody to bend to their will, right? And anybody who disrupts them or says just a second is an enemy. Like, literally. I had interviewed Yoel Roth, who was at Trust and Safety at Twitter. He stayed there after Elon came on. And I've interviewed him many times. And I put him on stage at one of the recent co-conferences, and it was right near or not. She had plenty of time to respond, Linda Yaccarino.

Remember, she had that meltdown on stage. Oh, yeah. Which I'm like, you're a CEO. Suck it up, sister. So, you know, he was not, he said exactly what he's always said, which is, and he's a very calm and clear person. But when he left Twitter after agreeing to stay because he cared about trust and safety and he was assured by Elon that he cared about trust and safety

and, of course, it became immediately obvious he didn't. He called him a pedophile essentially, right? He made the insinuation that he was a pedophile. And then Yoel had death threats. He had to leave his house. He had to do, you know, there were a lot of repercussions. And then still after this stage appearance, he said that Yoel was

evil. I've never seen pure evil like this. I was like, I don't know. I got a list of pure evil. I'm pretty sure this guy's not on it. And my heart was seething with hate. And I was like, oh, honestly, what is wrong? That's where we go. I disagree with you, sir, and my heart's not seething with hate. I just think you're a jackass. It's weird. My view on Elon is that I feel like his brain has been poisoned by the platform he bought. I think that he has become this. And like you said, I'm sure that the flashes of it were always there.

They were. He's gone down this rabbit hole, and I was just like, I saw some of the tweets over even last weekend. And now he's just like full replacement theory and, you know, voter fraud in the last election. Like it's just. You know, if he was a guy at a bar, you just go, you just move a seat down. Right. That's the thing. Or, you know, just someone on the street.

You just ignore them. He has the advantage of being the world's richest man or not. I don't think he's the richest man anymore after that recent lawsuit that he lost. But, you know, I just think the only reason you pay attention to him is he makes a spectacle of himself on a platform he had to buy in order to get attention. And, of course, all the stories of him, there's a really good book out by Zoe Schiffer, and the beginning of it is him forcing the tech people to make it so that everybody got him in their feed. You know, talk about a desperate need for love, like, or something.

I don't know what he needs. I think he needs therapy. He does, clearly. The reason I care about this is, my fear is that a reactionary movement that brings together Donald Trump's base and some of the richest men in the world who own everything from social networks to now artificial intelligence

is just not going to end well for any of us. Well, it's Rupert Murdoch on steroids, right? It's a lot of Rupert Murdochs. On some level, Murdoch had certainly a huge amount of influence, but it was limited because it was just him and a very productive villain. A very productive villain he was. A Bond villain he was.

But that's the issue is it's on steroids and then it's joined by new technologies that allow it to happen, right? But I got to say, I don't think it's anything new. I think we've been plagued by the Henry Fords of, you know, the anti-Semite, Charles Lindbergh. Like, this is not a fresh new take on American men. Again, there's a few women.

And it is a very male-driven phenomenon. No, Marjorie Taylor Greene's doing her best to keep up with him. And Lauren Barber, if she wasn't so not smart, would be probably more problematic. But, you know, you've got that mom, that Liberty mom who likes to do threesomes, you know, they have enough women involved, which is the only thing I like about her. I'm like, oh, finally, something we can agree on. But, you know, I just, I agree. It supersizes what has been happening in our society for a long time.

I want to talk about Mark Zuckerberg for a second just because he— He's the nice one. Well, in your book, you call him the most carelessly dangerous person in the history of tech. Yes. Tell me what you mean by that. Because it's so big. You know, Elon can do whatever he wants on Twitter, but it's an echo chamber. It's not that big. It's not used that much by that many people. It just gets a lot of press and media and political attention. But in reality, the real business here, the really good business is just look at the last earnings. I mean, and it's a profitable way and just invaded into every part of people's world. In most of the world, Facebook is news, right?

Facebook or Instagram is news. TikTok is their competitor. Great. Owned by the Chinese – not owned by – the Chinese Communist Party is involved in that company in some fashion. And so that's our choice. Great. Fantastic. So, okay.

Wow. Manipulators and rich manipulators. Well, Mark sort of strikes me as the example of someone who is, who got us all into a lot of trouble but somehow doesn't, isn't always aware of that. That's why I said carelessly. Yeah. You know, it's interesting because I hate to say this because people always whack at me when I say it, but he's actually a very nice fella. He would never behave like this.

You know, I'm so glad he didn't do that fight because he genuinely likes that MMA fighting. He genuinely, genuinely enjoys the sport. He's very intense in his sporting. Whatever he does, whether he's doing remember when he went across the country and met cows and stuff? Remember that? He's like that.

I have a picture of me with the buffalo he shot. Just the head, not the dead buffalo. He's an intense fella, but I think he's a very good father from what I understand. I think he's a very good father from what I understand. I think he's a very good husband.

You know, he has a lot of qualities that you would hope that will anchor him in place. He's got a very nice family, let me say. His mother is delightful. His father is delightful. I think he's the friendly dentist of Chappaqua, I forget. But I like to pay attention to their personal lives because it makes a difference. When you meet their parents, you learn an awful lot about them, I think. Even with someone like Mark, though, you make this point in your book that he, in a profile way back when, he told Evan Osnos that his hero is Caesar Augustus, you know, partly because he established 200 years of world peace, even though he used a pretty harsh approach.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which strikes me as like this, a good example of the kind of like ideology, whether it's conscious or not, that a lot of these tech founders sort of bring to bear on their, on the way they run their business. Yeah, I think, you know, he, Augustus Caesar is my favorite thing. It's like, you know, of course, you're literally like, did you read the other part of the history? Or, you know, and of course, the idea that this is his hero, right, is interesting to me. I found that interesting. You know, he's, he's one of the first art columns I wrote for the New York Times was about, I called it the expensive education of Mark Zuckerberg. And it was pretty tough. And what I was talking about is how we are paying for his education.

Now, he eventually gets to the right place sometimes, you know, as with the apology kind of that he just did. Or he and I had an interview where I asked him about Alex Jones. He shifted it over to Holocaust deniers then made a terrible faux pas by saying Holocaust deniers don't mean to lie. That's essentially what he said. I said, yes, they do. He said, no, they don't.

I said, yes, they do. They're lying and anti-Semitism is a real problem in real life. And, you know, he was doing the, I'm a Jewish person, so that I'm letting them on the platform says, I'm like, it says you're an idiot because they're terrible. And you can take them off. You absolutely fucking can take them off. They're dangerous. You know, it's not the same as people just free-speeching it. It's really quite problematic at scale and manipulative when they use it for manipulative ways. And so, you know, he just said,

I'll not, you know, I'm going to keep them on. They don't mean to lie. I was like, okay. And two years later, he did exactly what I suggested. But in those two years, rivers of anti-Semitic stuff got through to people and infected people's brains. That's what we paid for. We have paid for his education, slow, slow, slow education. I would have preferred he go to college, finish college and like get some history stuff. And so that's why I said he's carelessly. I think he – what my hope is for someone like him, and I have no idea if it will work, sort of what's happened to Bill Gates who used to be the Darth Vader of tech right and I'm gonna leave Epstein is off very bad judgment

spending time with him I understand I don't know precisely what happened but I I bad judgment like bad judgment for going to things with him I think it's a little more complex in his case, but I don't know. That said, he has moved someone who was considered aggressive and really aggressive in a really, you know, illegal way with the antitrust stuff that happened to him. He changed and more often became someone I think was contributory towards human rights, right, with a lot of his stuff and did it in a thoughtful way. That's my hope for Mark Zuckerberg. It really is. I think he's capable of it. Someone like Elon, I think he's gone. I never

thought he cared for people. Anyway, I do think Mark has the capacity to change, at least. He tries. You can see it. You can watch the, you can see it in him, you know, that he has the, he probably has the ability to become a better man. Well, hopefully we don't have to pay for too much more education on that. We're going to pay a lot. We pay for all of them. Don't you realize we paid for the internet, they benefited from it, and now we're paying for the messes they create. Big messes.

Whether it's young women, whether it's the panoply. It's not just the political stuff, it's the societal, you know, self-esteem of girls, loneliness, addiction, everything like that. Reading your book, I was struck by the many examples of your predictive talents. Yeah, pretty good. What's something in tech right now that you don't think enough people are paying attention to or see coming? You know, it's so funny about that.

I had talked to one. I had to deal with a lot of that. I'm not trying to insult men. I have three sons. But, like, one, if someone you read is like, hmm, you think you're right. And I'm like, but I was. And he's like, well, you shouldn't say it. I'm like, but I was.

Like, I don't know what to tell you, but I was actually right. So I'm going to get that out of the way right there. I was. So I'm not going to back down from that. What do I think is going to happen now in what area? What area? Just like tech trends. What worries you the most? Interestingly, this morning I was in Charleston, South Carolina, and I was interviewing Maria Ressa, who won the Nobel Prize, and she was in Rappler in the Philippines. And she was the one, and I note this in the book, who warned me about a lot of this very early in the early 2010s

or something like that, somewhere in that area, and asked me to talk to the Facebook people because she couldn't get through to them. They ignored me. They ignored her. She was warning them about the use of misinformation, and she actually had data. She's not like they're being mean to me. She's like, here's how they're being mean to me, and here's how they're manipulating things. And I was sort of struck. She's a very sunny person

in an odd way, given how much shit that's been rained down on her by Duterte. But she's very worried. I mean, I think the nature of the medium is, and a genre of AI means that power is coalescing in the hands of fewer and fewer people. They have no interest in the body politic or society or fixing it or helping it. And it's all generating itself, right? That it's not, that it can be used by malevolent players. They're getting more and more tools to be able to manipulate the public. And propaganda, we use words like misinformation, disinformation, all this stuff. It's just propaganda is what it is writ large. And that's what it is.

And I think people are very easily manipulated whether they think that or not. They don't think they're being manipulated, but that's indeed what's happening to them. You write a lot about how tech changed your profession, journalism. I just had Peter Hamby on last week to talk about the future of journalism, and we were both pretty dark. What do you think the media industry looks like five or ten years from now? Smaller. It's like Broadway theater, right? You know, it's a really good show, but it doesn't make that much money. I think, you know, what I said in good show, but it doesn't make that much money. I think, you know, what I said in this piece, they did a section, I added a lot of stuff at the end. I do think these tools can be very helpful to media.

Some of them can be incredibly helpful in terms of efficiency and getting the business models in line. As you know from doing a startup, you have to really keep your costs in line with the stuff you're making. And I think a lot of media companies still operate as if it's the 1980s and when they were making money hand over fist. And so I do think there's going to be a lot of smaller outfits, little outfits that are quite good and quite lucrative. You look at whether it's Jessica Lesson's thing or people who make business like Heather Cox Richardson. These are individual players that do rather well, right?

I guess it's free agents if I was using a sports metaphor. But all those sports teams are great to own right now. It's a great thing to own. That and cruise ships, it turns out. So I think that you're going to see a lot of smaller, really innovative things where the costs and economics are good, are quite good, actually. But not huge by any means. And then you'll see a number of bigger players that will, you know, in entertainment, you'll have the Disneys consolidating.

You know, and they'll need to because they're fighting very deep-pocketed competitors with technological chops they don't have. And so they have to, you know, become stronger in that regard. And then, you know, just consolidate and bring costs in line. That's what you have to do. And then you'll have, you know, a number of important influential publications. People always look at the New York Times as one. But which I always point out is they make very little money. They make, you know, they have $2 billion, $2.4 billion last year.

I forget, it's a couple hundred million they make, right, in profits. Okay, Facebook made $40 billion in profits. Come on. And that's where everybody gets their news. And now we can't rely on them to get people? They have hijacked the content universe without ever making one bit of content. They just are the distribution system. And so it doesn't matter how good your content is if you don't, people have to find it. And so that's why small things

tend to do well. People do find them and have a, you know, have a fan base. People, a lot of people do well have a fan base. You guys have certainly pioneered that. You did. You did. Think about it. You guys really were one of the forefronts of that. Oh, yeah. We're the smaller players you were talking about there.

Small. You're a big small player, right? But it's still hard. You know that. Oh, yeah. I was really struck by something that George Lucas said you had in your book about YouTube, which is like throwing puppies on the highway. Yeah. And so people just – but I was thinking about that. That's not only true for – he meant it in the context of storytelling, right?

That's right. Movies. You're going to ruin the video experience Awful people. But I kind of think that applies to news and journalism as well, because a lot of the stuff that's out there that people are watching and consuming is just shit. It's just takes and bad takes at that. Well, it's like bad nutrition. Yeah. Doritos taste better than a carrot, don't they? Right. I mean, unless you really like carrots, but for most people, it's very addictive. It's really interesting. You could spend hours just scrolling away. You understand.

It's both addictive and it's also necessary. You can't not do it for your job, right? Most people have to be online for their job now and increasingly so. And the pandemic kind of accelerated those trends rather significantly. I wrote a column saying at the beginning of the pandemic, I'm like, if you think they're powerful now, they're going to be really powerful at the close of this because you'll need to use all their tools. Now, it worked in remote work, commercial real estate, very troubled because of what happened because people are now not going back to work. Good or bad, it is what it is, right? This is the trend. But commerce, healthcare, everything has

been shifted dramatically in favor of technological tools and technological companies who have, you know, Amazon owns One Medical. They're working on cars. Apple's working on cars. They're now in entertainment. Amazon's also in entertainment. Google is doing this. AI is going to really suck up a lot of content and spit it back. They're going to take your things and spit it back at you and then charge you for the privilege of doing it. Fun times. They're shoplifters. They're shoplifters. You know, they're shoplifters. I always call them. They get mad when I say that, but that's what they are. Last question. You think this book will make you any new enemies or at least get you any new complaints?

Yes, they always complain. Always like, oh, you're so mean. Like, you know, I thought you liked me. I'm like, I don't like any of you. Like, I like my children. Like, I don't dislike you. I don't, you know, the minute I close my door at night, I could give a fuck that you exist on the planet. Like, it's not like I'm spending any kind of emotional – any of my emotional lucre upon it. I think I actually – it's interesting. This book is two years late. I really got – I just didn't have time to do it.

I was having children instead. And I think it's actually at the perfect time because everybody sees it for what it is. Now everybody is getting a taste of these people that I've had to deal with for a long time, some of whom are great, some of whom aren't. And there's been a few books that have been a little bit nice to these people, right? A little bit like typing. And I think mine is saying, maybe not so nice. Let me just tell you what I think. And let me just tell you, it's my opinion and you don't have to agree with it, but I was there when they weren't rich and I was there after they're rich and I've been a pretty fair to most of them. And if you don't

like my take, you don't have to like it. Don't. But I do definitely get under their skin for some reason. You know why? Because I'm telling them the truth. And they don't like the truth. I feel like, you know, that A Few Good Men, the guy who did the Facebook movie with his name Aaron Sorkin, where he goes, you can't handle the truth. That's what I feel like. I feel like Jack Nicholson. You can't handle the truth.

Except then he, of course, got convicted. I thought it was fair. Like, I know how tough you are are but I thought that the book was fair you say complimentary things about a lot of them and some you clearly like more than others or at least respect more than others and so that's

I think I really love tech I think tech can be a savior in many ways I think the heart of the book is that Paul Virilio quote that I quote which is when you invent the ship you invent the shipwreck. When you invent electricity, you invent electrocution. And you have to understand that. And so I really was trying to get that through, is that there are so many amazing things that tech could bring us and has brought us, but could really bring us going forward. And that's what I'd like them to lean

into. So that's why the subhead is a tech love story because it's a love. I still love it. I just don't like some of what they've done to the house. I don't like what they've done to the house. Yeah, agree. It's called Burn Book. It's out February 27th, I believe.

Yes. Yeah, it's funny too. Did you think it was funny? I thought it was very funny. Funny, yeah. The Google boob, the diaper, the Google people wearing diapers, yeah. Also, by the way, Gavin Newsom comes out great in that.

He does. That was a very funny thing that he said to me. Yeah, I called him to make sure that it's exactly as I, because I didn't take notes at that time. But he's like, oh, my God, I can't believe we were there at this ridiculous party. Another person who was very friendly with the techies, but he handled that well. He sort of gets it. Kara, thanks for coming on Offline. Thank you.

Hope to see you soon. Thanks. Bye. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau, along with Max Fisher. It's produced by Austin Fisher. Emma Illick-Frank is our associate producer. Andrew Chadwick is our sound editor.

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