On with Kara Swisher - America’s New Power Order: Kara in Conversation with Walter Isaacson

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Kara’s 2023 interview with journalist and biographer Walter Isaacson about his Elon Musk biography was one of her most contentious conversations ever — and one of the show’s most popular episodes. They’re still friends, though. And at this year’s New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University, Isaacson got his chance to put Kara in the hot seat. In this live conversation, recorded last month, Kara and Isaacson talk about the future of A.I., how power is shifting in the United States, and how those changes are reshaping American life. They also talk about Kara’s new CNN series, “Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever.”  Special thanks to the New Orleans Book Festival for hosting this event.  Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sam Altman, you know well, and you kind of liked them and you kind of don't. Well, I don't not like him. I don't really care about these people whatsoever. I have a family and friends. Like, I'm sorry. Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. We've got a special episode for you today. It's an interview I did with journalist and biographer Walter Isaacson, and technically I'm the guest. Walter interviewed me a few weeks ago in front of a live audience at the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University. The last time I spoke with Walter, I chewed him out over his hagiography of Elon Musk.

This time we had a lot more fun. We talked about a bunch of things, including AI, how power is shifting here in the United States, who has it, who's losing it, and how those shifts are reshaping American life. I'm still right about Elon Musk, and he asked me if I was going to give him a hard time with it on stage, and I said, I think we know who's right and who's wrong about what happened here. Anyway, I really like talking to Walter. He's a really interesting person. He's a great journalist, even if I don't agree with him about some things.

He's working on a really cool book about Marie Curie. Anyway, I like talking to him. He's really fun. He's done a lot of stuff, and he was very early to digital, as I was. And he's always thinking big thoughts, which is always a good thing. All right, let's get to my conversation with Walter Isaacson. Special thanks to the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University for hosting the event. It's one of my favorite events of the year.

It's really well done. And of course, I love New Orleans. So it's round three with Walter Isaacson. Stick around. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same.

I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of eater. We've just launched the new issue. and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City.

And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. Download the Eater app at Eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Good back, Kara. How are you doing? Thank you. Hi, everybody.

Here, pull it up close, or you got it. So let's start with AI. Sure. Anthropic. You've been doing a lot of reporting on it. What's happening with all the companies doing AI, and who should we fear the most and least? Wow, that's a rather broad question. Let's talk about oxygen.

What do you want to hear about what's going on with the Pentagon? Yeah, let's start with the Pentagon. You explain what it is. Pete Pegsad, who is a moron. I'm a terrible. Stan McChrystal said that last night, but he's much longer, more diplomatic. The bubble above his head, moron.

So he has gotten into his head. Well, I don't even want to pursue that person because he's a waste of our time, but although he's in charge of things that are very serious, Anthropic is an offshoot of open AI, as everybody knows, a group of people left, led by Dario, because they felt the safety issues around AI were so significant

they didn't like where it was going under Sam. And so they created Anthropic. It was funded by, among others, Amazon, and many, many others. They're all sort of doing cross investments in each other, Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft. Everybody's doing, it's sort of like a rondelay. Some might call it a Ponzi scheme, some do.

And so they're doing... Well, wait, let me interrupt. Is it a Ponzi scheme? Ponzi scheme the way they're investing in the early internet a Ponzi scheme in some cases yes and others no so is there a really big bubble that's about to burst i have no idea i mean it happened in the internet there's certainly a lot of spending and no revenue so that's always an issue but it didn't hurt the internet if you could say you know all these internet companies that died in the 2000 crash well they were all a Ponzi scheme but google but meta came later actually many years later so

it's a Ponzi scheme in that one of them is is going to survive one or two, and they're going to be enormous companies, or maybe several. In any case, it's an important business and also a Ponzi scheme, if that makes sense. And so Anthropic is backed by big people in Silicon Valley, and the money they need is so enormous

because of the cost of compute and data and energy and no revenue. I mean, there's revenue, but not compared to the costs. And so they got lucky because the Trump administration, you know, the coin-operated Trump administration, and never to miss an opportunity for corruption, understood that this is going to be an enormous spend, whether it's data centers, whatever,

because it's both physical and not. And so Anthropic is sort of the dark horse of this group and actually the best. And that's why the Pentagon was using a lot of their technology. They used it in Venezuela and elsewhere. And I think most people use it, understand. It's the apple of this group, essentially. And compared to OpenA, I was more.

like the Microsoft. And Microsoft actually, I think, has an investment. And Microsoft's CEO, Satchaned Adela, just backed Anthropic in this ridiculous fight, which is great for him. When they're deploying these things, they want to be able to do whatever they want. And Pete Higgstead, because he never met a metaphor,

he didn't mangle, was like, we buy a plane and we can do whatever we want with it. It's not quite the same thing with this technology. And so Anthropics says, okay, you can use our technology, but if you're going to surveil Americans, we don't want to be part of it. Or if you're going to do drone attacks,

which is going to be more and more prevalent in warfare going forward, they cannot be autonomous. They need to have a human interaction, which seems perfectly reasonable, and they should be allowed to use their products the way they want to use them. And it seemed to have chapped, Heggs-Sass, and he has declared them a supply chain risk.

Now, we have never done that in the history of the United States with an American company. Let's be clear. It's usually a foreign company. And so it's unprecedented to try to make an example of this company

to do so. Now, into the breach, as always, Sam Altman, unctuously flowed himself into and said, we'll do it, and we'll agree, you know, we'll get that, but it's not clear what he has agreed to, and of course there's a huge backlash.

They are under enormous pressure given they're going to go public this year. They need more money, et cetera, et cetera. And so there's this sort of, all the beefs of Silicon Valley are all being played out with the government. And so Anthropic has sued the government. We'll win, but it will hurt its business in the meantime. Sam Altman, you know well, and you kind of like them,

and you kind of don't. Go ahead. Well, I don't not like him. I don't really care about these people whatsoever. I have a family and friends. Like, I'm sorry. I like like them. I don't think about them once I stop talking about them.

But, you know, I think I met him when he was 19, when he had a company called Looped, L-O-O-P-T. They always had these stupidly clever names for companies. And it failed. And then he went on to do a number of things. And he's a really interesting character. And I, I mean, compared to a lot of people I cover, he's well-educated. He has a sense of history. He reads, which is always a plus.

And so he's very, he's a very, he's a very. very complex guy, and some of it, as many people have chronicled, he can be very manipulative, he can be very unctious, he can be very tricky and mendacious to, but maybe not. And so there's a lot of like angling that he does all the time. And so I think that's the issue here with a lot of people and Sam. And, you know, you've read stories about people who have left. You know, and Dario's no perfection. He's got the arrogance of a technologist, as you can see from his type He writes a lot of manifestos every five minutes, which are pretty good, actually. And so, you know, you have all these personal things playing out in this very serious theater of war.

And it's not an excursion, by the way, which is Trump's latest word for this. I think he meant incursion. Excursion, yeah. Right. W. did it. No, he did. No, no. He said excursion. I know. Yes, but he meant incursion.

But he meant war. So anyway, so you have this happening. And so it's really, there's just, what's happening is all these massive, aggressive companies are fighting each other using the federal government as their latest battlefield. Let me take the core issue on Anthropic, one of the core issues, leave aside surveillance to the other core. Which is you can't use our AI to do autonomous warfare and drones without having a human in the loop. Seems reasonable. But believe aside whether they have the right to say that, because they're a private company, and clearly you can say, here's how you's the project.

Tell me why it seems reasonable to you if you were to see that 19-year-old jockeys doing fighter planes get it much worse than AI drones. Because it's a person who takes responsibility for it. That's why. We can't look at right now we're in the midst of another thing that's related, which is all these chatbots, which I think is a very sweet term for synthetic beings. We have to stop calling them chatbots, like they're adorable little plush toys, right? They can be malicious and malevolent, and they create these things. And I've been spending a lot of time over the past couple of years

interviewing all the parents of kids who have died using these chatbots and getting into these synthetic relationships. These people have started to become analysts, lawyers, doctors, these technologists, without the guardrails, the rest of us are, you know, as Scott says, they are not bound by the law, but they're protected by it, and we're bound by the law and not protected by it. And so one of the things that's really terrifying is, like, if you read these text exchanges between kids and these chatbots, you are going to want to find a tech person and strangle them,

putting this stuff out. I mean, as a parent, I have four kids. Even with this stuff with adults is even terrible, like this psychosis that happens. And so it's the same thing. It's like we are relying on this AI, and it's fine if you're making a decision and how to complete an email of another conference event,

I don't want to go to. Like, thank you so much. Like, they do a beautiful job declining for me. But it's not this one. I love you, Walter. But it's easier life and death decisions, and they may be better at, say, finding cancer or those are the good things. And we should try to find what,

we should take things that they do well and supersize them and find a way to mitigate against the dangers. But when there's a person involved, there's someone accountable. There's no one accountable. Right now, all these companies, whether it's Character AI, which is a Google-affiliated thing, Gemini, ChatGPT, nobody's home when you go to say, well, this person died. Couldn't it be pretty easily solved

if we make the real-world laws we have applied to the virtual world? Yes, it could be. And you could sue somebody for something to the flag? There is a big lawsuit going on right now in California around the impact of social media. But they've been largely protected by Section 230. Right, that's my point. And so you can't displace them or fire them

because they have monarchical control of their companies. Should we just get rid of 230 and explain it? I don't know. It's too complicated. It has to be reformed in an intelligent way, but they have captive of our Congress. They used to hate Washington, as you know. like, I don't care about Washington.

You know, Bill Gates, that was his famous thing. I don't care about lobbyists. They are running the government right now. And they were standing front and center of Trump's inauguration. And so they have complete control over our elected officials. They absolutely do. Someone like Amy Klobuchar has not been able to pass a privacy bill, an antitrust bill, you know, a transparent algorithm bill.

They don't let you. They're doing it right now in California. They've created this super PAC that's going to try. California has been the most aggressive about regulation. These rich people have just created another pack because they figured out. They hated the government. Oh, we're so smart.

We don't need the government. Except the problem is the government is full of ex-student body vice presidents with subpoena power, so that's a problem. And so they decided to buy it, and they went, oh, we can buy it. Oh, that's easy. And then they plant their people in these positions of power, like someone like Emil Michael, who's the one fighting with Anthropic. Or David Sacks?

David Sacks. I have a lot of experience. And of course, the reporters who cover this actually don't. I have experience with Amel Michael. I and other people at my website wrote the story that got him fired, which was there was a rape of a woman in India, and one of his minions took the medical files trying to prove she was lying. It was all illegal, and he got bounced out of there.

And I know these people. Well, wait, explain who he is now to this. He's the one who's the deputy director of whatever the fuck at the Pentagon, you know. But essentially, he's been writing tweets. This is a government official writing tweets about a company. They start, Sachs started it because they have beefs that have nothing to do with our safety. These are Silicon Valley beefs that they have decided to move to Washington, and they're pretending they're here to protect us.

They're here to protect themselves and their interests. Same thing with Jeff Bezos. Same thing. All of them. All of them. And, of course, your good friend, Elon Musk, who is the original OG of self. We had an over and under on how many minutes it would take before you accuse me of knowing Elon Musk. Might be acknowledged, might be acknowledged, I was right.

Everybody was right. I'm not going to, I'm going to officially, the moratorium on giving Walter a hard time for Elon. Musk. It's done today. How long does it last? Another 44 and a half minutes? Unless you write another book where you say he's a genius. I'm writing on Marie Curie. Oh, yay, a dead person. Going back to the fact that you have... And I like which I like her work. I thought it was... Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited for that book. Radioactivity is one of your favorite sports. I will have you on my podcast. We will only talk about radio activity. Yes. Going back to you, you have kids. Yes. Four of them. Yeah. One of them almost went to Tulane. So it's that old. And one of them's about

a year old, right? No, no, no, Walter, you're not keeping up with a Swisher family. No, one is four. Okay. One is 23. So I have a 23-year-old, a 20-year-old, a 20-year-old, a six-year-old, and a girl. And how has your allowing them or their use of social media and you're dealing with that? How has that been and how has it changed?

Oh, I love the word allowing. Yeah, I didn't know how to say. Doing a lot of work there. I my son's actually kind of missed a little bit of the social media age they're a little older 20 and 23 but they both of my sons have taken social media it's a real trend among young people I think off their off their phones they use because they find it my son took like the dating stuff he's a they both have girlfriends my son's living in san francisco now with his girlfriend um but he's a great kid um he took it off and i remember him telling me i was like why'd you take it off and he goes it makes me feel bad and i was like excellent reason, you know, just what Salman Rushdie just said. You feel so much better when you remove it. My other son, I mean, I think they both use YouTube as television. I think that's, YouTube is television now. But they're not that engaged in social media and not that engaged in their phones. They're very, they're not.

My son just went ice climbing. The other was hiking in Berkeley yesterday. So they find it very debilitating to use that stuff. And they'll use it for work and YouTube definitely for television. They stream. And the little kids, all they do is watch K-pop Demon Hunters on repeat. I just interviewed the creators. They just got it season two for the parents in the room. Yay. But the next movie, the sequel. And actually Netflix sent me a box with two backpacks in them,

and I'm going to accept them. I don't care if it seems corrupt. In the age of Trump. I became the best parent in America the other day when they arrived. along with, did you see Hillary Clinton's merch move? No, what? Oh, she has a thing, you can hold me in contempt till the cows come home, t-shirts.

Oh, okay. I love that, Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton has run out of fucks. So you've created a media empire. Empire, yes. Totally an empire. You have both two podcasts, a series, longevity. Yeah.

There's the audacity, which is not yours, but you were a character in and it's coming out. I was talking, we were talking about Simon Schuster, your publisher. Yeah, hi. Nice to meet you. That book is sure coming. I bet I'll do it. She owed you a book, she said, but instead of owing them a book,

we were talking last night about how publishing companies to try to get into this space where Vox is and you are, and I don't even know what the word is for, because podcast minimalizes it too much. What type of media will be the next thing that you're on to? You know, I think about a lot, because Walt Mosberg, who is actually,

I try to do a lot of different things, and I don't usually take people's word for, like, media is dying. I don't believe it. It's just not true. I just think the way it was was dying, and then something else always takes its place. That's historical, right?

As you know, with most, you've written about innovation so many times, things supplant each other. And there's nothing new under the sun, which is an old phrase. But 2002, we started the All Things De-Conference. And the only reason we started the conference first was because the Wall Street Journal wouldn't let us invest in what they called a blog at the time. I said, you know, kids are using the Internet. I was a young person then. And I was like, you know, the youngs kind of like the Internet. So you might want to stop printing public.

They wanted to do a Saturday journal, and I was like, fine, but give me a million dollars to do this, and they wouldn't. And so we did the conference, which was instantly profitable, which was the famous conference, where you had gates and jobs and stuff like that. And they didn't give me money for doing the site,

the All Things D-Sight, for five years. And it was just one of these struggles with these old media institutions. And so Walt and I spun off, you know, even after making millions. And one of the things that happened there is they didn't give us any money initially for making the millions of dollars in profit. But then they gave us a percentage of the business, which was stupid on their behalf.

One executive came up to me as like, I wish we had given that salary raise to you. And I'm like, I'm thrilled that you didn't. But you've moved on to something. We moved on to get our own money. Not just the business model, but to a new type of media. Yes, which everybody is doing. Podcasts, audio books, visual. Yes, you know, Martha Stewart called it omnis.

and they made fun of her many years ago. That's exactly what it is. I don't know if you want to use the word Omni, but one of the things I think about, like when I did my last book, Burn book, which did very well as a book, but what I did on the book tour was instead of doing the regular book tour, I had people in the book interviewing me at every single venue, and we sold out.

They were crazy, like popular. And I thought, I missed an opportunity to get a sponsor for this, but I did put everything on my podcast, all the interviews, because they were all different, whether Sam Altman did one, Ted Sarandos did one, Lorraine Powell Jobs did one. I should have thought strongly about that it was more than that, and I should have done more in the video space on that at the time.

And so when you're making a book, or I just announced a series called Caroswisher Wants to Live Forever on CNN, everyone's like, why are you doing cable? I'm like, I'm not doing cable. I'm doing something else. You don't understand that it's going to live online. It's going to be a podcast. There's going to be a podcast.

I may do an event. there's going to be a book. I'm sure I'll deliver it soon, Simon and Schuster. But there's going to be, I think about everything and not necessarily all of them, but just depending on what the product happens to be. Like, it may be a podcast, it may be this. Well, let's take the long-capping.

Maybe merch. I haven't gone into merch yet. No, you know, yeah. We don't need T-shirts with all your... Yes, you kind of do. I'm going to make a lot of money at it. Yeah. If I have Scott saying, you know, it's good, it'll work. We have plans.

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Smsara, operate smarter. This episode is brought to you by Tell Us Online Security. Oh, tag season is the worst. You mean hack season? Sorry, what? Yeah, cybercriminals love tax forms. But I've got Telos online security. It helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud

so I can stress less during tax season or any season. Plan started just $12 a month. Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply. Hi, everyone. It's Kara Swisher. I'm excited to put something new on your radar from the Vox Media Podcast Network. It's called Project Swagger with the one.

and only Robin Arzon, and it's all about helping you trust yourself, level up your mindset, and actually make the changes you've been thinking about. Robin is Peloton's vice president of fitness programming and head instructor. She's also a 27-time marathon and ultra-marathon runner, founder of Swagger Society Media Company, and a two-time New York Times best-selling author. In under 30 minutes, Robin shares the rituals, routines, and mental shifts that fuel her hustle and show you how to apply them in your own life. In the very first episode, she opens up about the moment that forced her to transform her inner voice

and the strategies that helped her become what she calls a self-talk ninja. You can find Project Swagger with Robin Arzon on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Let's take the longevity thing you're planning, which is about people in Silicon Valley and particularly want to live forever.

Yeah. How are you going to make it? It'll be a book. Will it be a 10-part series? Will it be? It's already done. The CNN series is done. And the original title,

before all this happened, was Peter Atte as a schmuck. And that was in my... It turned out to be right. Yes, it did. Once again. You need to pay attention to what I'm telling you. What I was irritated with

was one, Silicon Valley people lecturing me on all manner of things they didn't know about, including health. And because they are godlike, they think they should live forever, or they should hack death. And I think it's just nonsensical. And what I was referencing was this amazing speech that you know about with Steve Jobs,

which Steve Jobs had a very good sense of death and understood that mortality is what creates innovation. And he gave this amazing speech, I recommend it, which really inspired me about, you know, live your everyday, like it's the last. This is the Stanford commencement speech. But you could find online. He was sick, and then he wasn't sick for a little bit, and then he was sick again.

In that period, he did this amazing, astonishing speech. And so that was my inspiration, the Steve Job mentality versus, say, a Brian Johnson or an Elon Musk idea of, like, we should let, we're so amazing, godlike creatures. We should live forever. And so part and parcel to this is my obsession with the conspiracy theories all over the Internet politically and otherwise. But in the health care area, it's really awful. like all this nonsensical bullshit that's there. And so the charlatans bothered me, especially online, because they had weaponized health.

And then at the same time, there's this astonishing blossoming of science happening right now, whether it's someone you wrote about Jennifer Dowden at CRISPR, the cancer research, MRI vaccines. They're going to have a vaccine for cancer. All this incredible use of AI to detect illnesses, that GLP-1s, there's all this astonishing stuff happening.

and then there's all these charlatans. And so I go and try all the charlatan stuff and try to blow it up. And then I try to focus in on people that are doing the real work. So it's substantive and silly at the same time. And then I'm going to do podcasts around it. Then I might do an event. You know, there's going to be a book.

You know, I'm going to try to like focus in on the non-char-the people that are doing the amazing work, but also slap the charlatans. wherever I can slap them out of the picture. All right. And tell me about the audacity. Oh, I didn't work with these people, but it's a series that...

It's interesting. The Times heard about this yesterday, but the shift of tech people from very silly and you kind of root for them, and they end up, at the end of Silicon Valley, they do the right thing. They have a technology that could really hurt people. To today, you have Mountain Head and this,

where the technologists are the very well. and really ridiculous, drug-taking, sex-having villains, essentially. How did the techies become both villains and right-wing? Oh, I don't know if they're right-wing. I don't think they have any... Well, I guess I shouldn't say that. Go ahead. Yeah, I think they're not right-wing. I think they're just people, as I joke with you,

there are people who weren't hugged enough as children that now are taking it out on the rest of us. I think whatever is in their financial self-interest is what they do, or even down to Tim Cook, who I happen alike, bringing that golden statue to Trump. I mean, what an embarrassment. To me, there's a level of, if you have that much fuck you money

and not saying fuck you seems kind of ridiculous, like, on some level. Now, he can do damage to them. That is 100 percent true, but for how long and not much longer, I suspect. And so I think some of them, very much real, very real. I think, like, David Sacks was conservative. He was conservative-ish.

And I think they tried. Libertarian-Tele-like? I would call it libert- Peter Thiel, honestly, is the only one who was always like this and deserves, you know, his ridiculous stuff is something he is, he's consistently heinous, essentially. But he's consistently, and very smart person, you know, has consistently sort of espoused this idea

that democracy doesn't work, and that the Uber men should be running everything. You know, you've read all their stuff, is that the unitary executive theory and, oh, these women are so irritating, and when they got the vote, that sucked, that kind of stuff. And then you have people who have come along to it

and sort of entered the picture. I never knew, Elon was somewhat liberal, as I remember him called me when they were going to do this anti-trans an anti-gay thing in the first Trump administration. What can I do, Kara? And now today, couldn't be worse on the topic, you know, and really terrible.

I don't, lots of things happened with him, including ketamine. But among other things, he just morphed, I think, because the woke mind virus, it's actually not a woke mind virus that affected him. It's a Twitter mine. It's an ex-mind virus. You know, this Nazi porn bar, he's been hanging in it too much, and therefore he's become Talk about that a little, because we had Salman Rushdie sitting there a moment ago, and he said his life and mind has been liberated now that he's taking social media of his phone,

because you're living, let's call it Twitter or actually, but if you're living in that world, you think the world is more dystopian than it. It is. I made the mistake of going on it the other day for a second, and I was like, oh, God, this place again. I love Twitter. I did. I did. I was one of the first people. I had one, I still have 1.6 million. followers on there, and I'm not on it. Like, that would be good for my marketing. But I just can't.

It's like a real... By the way, you're on Blue Sky and I'm on Blue Sky. How come those didn't work? They didn't catch over. Threats is bigger than Twitter right now. Mark Zuckerberg's run right over that. So... Never then... Instagram is massive. But Instagram and threads

is bigger than X right now. Okay. And growing... When you post on threads, do you get the same... Oh, absolutely. Actually, you know, listen, I'm a fan of Mark Zuckerberg, but it's a nice product, I have to tell you. Like, it doesn't, like one of the, I shouldn't, I'm not going to say the word, they always call me on Twitter, but it starts with C and ends with T almost regularly. It's a really good place.

It's a really interesting, you know, sometimes it's not great, but it's sort of a version of what Twitter used to be for me. And actually, I'm doing a lot of news discovery on it. Again, I'm not one who loves to compliment Mark Zuckerberg, but it's a good product. And there's all kinds of issues. with it, like a lot of things. I think Blue Sky has reached this founding CEO just stepped down. They need to do more, that kind of stuff. But it's, I have, both of them, I have half a million people on each of them. That's pretty good. And they, I'll tell you, the response rate is great. But X is so polluted with bots and malignant figures that it's useless.

Since you talked about Section 230, I want to make sure people know what it is, which is, it's just the section of the law that says, if somebody posts something on social media, the company, X or Facebook, can't be sued. It was for chat groups. Right. It was way back at the beginning of the internet. But on X, you can say anything you want, including the words that are used about you. Why is it you have no recourse to even sue the person who said it? I don't care of any stupid.

But leave you aside. I don't care if an in-cell calls me that name. Good luck. but enjoy your whatever you're doing. That doesn't bother me at all. I think it's not a recourse. It's what kind of place do you want to create as a gathering place online? That's really the idea.

What kind of business do you want to run? And again, if Elon wants to do this, he should be able to, right? I do think it has a deleterious effect on society. I think what it creates is this sort of hateful toxicity. It's a death cult. I don't know what else is, you know, having just done this, there's a really interesting scientific studies

that people who avoid death and try to get away from it create polarized societies of hatefulness. Those who accept it and make it part of their world, to me, it's suicidal. Is that partly responsible for the type of politics we have now? Yes, I think it is. I think it's really an interesting moment where dunking on people.

Nobody's talking about, like, what do we want to solve? And it's sort of a basic hatred of humanity. Like, these people, like, how dare they be different? and how dare they be. You know, and you can have a good argument about DEI program. Fine, whatever. But it's really not our biggest issue, is it? I mean, I remember sitting with someone in media

where they were like, you know, you can't say what you want anymore. This was a rich white guy. Like, I can't say what you want anymore. I go, it seems like you can. All your direct reports are other white guys. So it seems like you'd do whatever you want. And he's like, yeah, but I get shit for it. I'm like, oh, sorry, sweetheart.

Like, I think I called him. sweetheart. I was like, so sorry you can do it. And he goes, well, I think it's one of the biggest issues of our time. And I go, oh, I think poverty and child abuse would be my choices. But, you know. I don't know if you're proud of this. You actually should be, but if I remember correctly, because I've followed you forever, you were the first person saying, you know what, Trump can win. This is way back in 20. It was. You remember we had that discussion? Because here's why. I watched The Apprentice. I was, I watched all, I love that show. I thought it was a terrible show, but it was a great show.

I like that kind of thing. I also like anything Gerard Butler is in, so this is my taste. Greenland, too. Everyone's like, go see one battle off another. I'm like, Greenland, too, is where I'm going. So it's really good. So I was watching The Apprentice, and I knew how popular he was,

with Jeff Zucker created there, even though it was sort of false. And you could see sort of what was happening online with this fake personas, these personas, but people who were genuine, and I had just done an interview with Kim Kardashian, who was enormously popular online, not just in the reality TV business,

but she had numbers, and I had done an interview with her. She is genuine to who she is, right, online, sort of erupting beyond media companies, politics and things like that. And so I thought he was really good online. Like he's our first internet troll president, right? And so was Barack Obama. but to a much more sort of hands-off, right? You know, you know, like, everything is like that with him.

He's gotten a lot better, I can tell you that. But AOC is the, I did a comparison in New York Times between AOC and Trump, and they're sort of doing a, they're not the same thing, but a similar. And Mom Donnie? Mom Donnie's up there. Frigan, like, Olympic level, online stuff. But, and very sweet, too.

He's got a very sweet, but pointed kind of thing. Everyone's different to themselves, but Trump was really good at that. And I remember Ariana Huffington's like, we're putting Trump in the entertainment section. I was like, no, no. And I was with a bunch of political people in Washington reporters. They're like, oh, he's so ridiculous. I'm like, no, he's not.

He's a poor person's version of a rich person, at least that I can tell. Like, you know, actually in this audacity, this one of the characters said, you're a dumb person's version of a genius, which I thought was a great line. It's so true for so many people. It was also self-deprecating. to be. Now he's sort of, something's occurred in his cognitively disabled brain. But he understood the joke. He was using old. I studied Roy Cohen quite a lot because he was speaking of the original conspiracy theorist and a manipulator of media, who was his mentor.

You know, I could see that it would work on people. And the Democrats had such a flaccid, after post-Obama, did not have the same kind of idea and was very much not. And I don't mean listening to people, like, I have this encounter when they were trying to do Silicon. Remember they were doing Silicon Hallers, Silicon Beach? They were going to make the Silicon area in Kentucky. I traveled there. And they were promising all these software jobs. They did all these tours where they would go on,

and Trump was promising, I'm going to bring back coal and bring back whatever. And I went there also to speak in front of these people. and they got up and made all these ridiculous. We're going to make you software and digital and this and that. And I got up, I go, listen, everybody. First of all, coal is not coming back, and when it comes back, it's going to be robotics. You know why?

Because you get black lung and a machine don't. And they work 24-7. So, FYI, this guy right here, the owner, he can't wait to replace you. So they were doing that. And one of the things, and I said, you are not, this is not going to happen to you, but one of the people came up to it. And I was scared I was going to get hit by these people. But they came up and said, thank you for telling us the truth about this.

I said, no problem. And they said, it's nice for you to come visit real Americans. And I looked at this guy. He was a big gold miner, and I said, I'm a fucking real American. I don't know what you're talking about. Why don't you come to San Francisco and hang out with me in the Castro? Like, why do you get to be the real American and I don't? Like, I was like, such bullshit.

And he liked that. He was like, oh, I'll come. I said, well, make sure you get your thong, and it'll be great. And we laughed. Careful of it. My family's more. so I kind of know these people, but with AI, yes, it's going to supplant all kinds of jobs, and it's going to happen at a speed.

We've had it happen before. Farmers were the original entrepreneurs. There are 90 percent of people were farmers. That's an entrepreneurial job in the back of the day, figuring out what to do. Now it's 2 percent. It's something like that. It's some number that's really low. Manufacturing underwent that.

Of course, we had the Luddites and everything else, as you know, and then now we have this. And the Internet, that did some. But in the previous two revolutions, there were more jobs after they happened than fewer jobs. There became more jobs, but there was also, which we forget, because we have a deficit of memory about history,

incredibly socially problematic revolutions and fights. This is happening as such a speed that people don't understand. And so companies are doing layoffs. They did too many hiring during COVID. Now they're doing layoffs, and they're using AI as the excuse. But the fact of the matter is, you aren't going to need, like someone,

here's a good example, Barry Dillard, I had lunch a couple years ago, I mean a year ago, I think, or two years ago. And he said, you know, he had 6,000 programmers. He's like, I bet I have 2,000. So a lot fewer people can do a lot more using AI tools. It's just not clear. But that increase in productivity could end up creating.

Yes, but will it create more jobs or less jobs? And what are the other people going to do? If you're a plumber or an electrician, that doesn't really, which is what the Palantir, did you see that? Palantir. That guy needs to stop talking, like seriously. Alex Carp?

He really needs to stop talking. He's soon he's going to pontificate on Salman Rushdie, which then I'm going to tackle him, and we're going to please stop talking about things you know nothing about. And so, or Bill Ackman, the other one. I think I'll start talking about hedge fund. investing because I know this much. I know more about hedge fund investing

than he knows about almost anything except hedge fund investing. He has an IPO coming up, by the way. Personally, I wouldn't buy it. How do you personally use AI? What do I know? How do you use AI? I try to use it every day, and I think everyone here should do that and understand

where it fits in with your life. You know, I think it's critically important. It's back when the Internet first started, Walter was around at CNN at the time. Oh, Time Magazine? Time Magazine. Time Magazine. I think you have to see. I'm going to give a shout out to Jim Barksdale came in.

What? He and Tim Berners-Lee. Is Jim here? Both here. There's Jim. Waved your hand or whatever. But Jim was the one who came in 1992. He'll correct me if I'm wrong.

Let's tell you, quality person of the people. I really don't like Silicon Valley people, and he's amazing. Ethics, quality, great business, knew what he was talking about. Sadly, did not rain in. Mark Andreessen, but you tried. I really appreciate. He was an amazing guy. Amazing leader.

And when he came, he said, all right, 1992, web browsers, they were just creating a maze. Difficult situation. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that Jim said, and he knows this, he had a bunch of minds. And I found, Jim, I found this the other day in a box when you left. They did a party for him, and they had a book of his sayings.

And one of his sayings was, it's important to keep the main thing, the main thing, which I loved. such a great idea. But he was trying to bring financial discipline to a business that really was under siege because of Microsoft at the time and tried his best and sold it off correctly to AOL eventually. You wrote a book about that. I did. He was in it. Yeah, he was in it. But one of the things that was important was just because AOL sort of missed a bow, it doesn't mean it wasn't important. And that's what I think about, like which are the ones coming forward are going to be.

Getting back to using AI, you've got to figure out, if you're an insurance, what does it help you do better? There was a great book by the guy who just died, Daniel Kahneman, marvelous book about there were 20 insurance adjusters versus AI. AI was more accurate. Something like that. They got 20 different decisions from 20 different people, depending on if they had a bad coffee that day or something or bad.

But you keep saying we have to keep humans in the loop. Yes, so what does it do? It's sort of like, how did the car help us? The car doesn't run everything. The car changed this country, right? Absolutely, so did the plane. I was just at the Air and Space Museum with three of my kids, and there was a bunch of quotes.

Nobody ever reads what's on the wall there about when Orville Wright, and there was a sister involved that was very critical, FYI. There was a Wright brother's sister, who's a Wright sister. And the mother was also critically involved. very interesting family. There was a bunch of quotes of the day. This is going to ruin everything.

Like, this is going to society is now doomed. And then others who said, no, it's going to change everything. Well, it did both those things, right? And so will AI. So will AI. And so what can we do to stress the things that are good about it? And what can we do to mitigate the obvious dangers, the ability to do autonomous drones,

the ability to make decisions. In the early days of AI, I was at a dinner with a bunch of very well-known people, and they were debating this, and they were truly terrified at the possibility. I mean, I hadn't seen them. Usually, they're frequently wrong, but never in doubt, but they were very much worried about where it was going.

And one of them said to me, you know, if you tell it to solve world hunger, which it probably could pull from all sorts of disparate sources, the number one answer would be kill 100 million people. But that's the best answer if you want to solve world hunger, but it's not the best answer. It's a bad answer. But from a logical perspective,

it's sort of like Spock's running all over the place. The logical answer is to kill people. The same thing when they just tested nuclear, what should we do in the Mideast, most of these things said nuclear bomb would work. Well, yes, it would, but it would be bad. Speaking of drones. Yeah.

But, and then the other thing, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a group that Elon is trying to put out of business and has been unsuccessful, they just showed that, you know, when they were showing different things of building bombs, causing harm, violence, attacks, all of them recommend the worst thing to do. How would you regulate it? You could start with just based, first of all, we haven't done privacy regulation around, on our data, you're being used. You've seen The Matrix? That's all of you,

just so you know. They're using your data. Like yesterday, Grammarly, you ever heard of it? It's another AI thing. They took all of my information and were giving advice as Kara Swisher. They were saying they were Caras. No, they were taking all. I have said a lot of things and have done a lot of interviews. They were bringing it all together,

and then they were offering people advice from Caras Swisher without asking Kara Swisher or paying Kara Swisher or anything else. And Matthew McConaughey has talked about this, lots of people. They are rapacious information thieves, and they will take what... Sam Alman talked about this, is we're going to take all of intelligence and sell it back to you.

Well, it's our intelligence. It's not there. So basic data, we should have a federal privacy law. We do not have one 20 years in to this day. Algorithmic transparency. What is in there? What is in your little black box? How does it go in?

What happens? How do you decide? You know, they pretend they're like, they think they're like Kentucky fried fucking chicken. Like, it's not a secret. You can actually, by the way, you can figure that recipe out today using AI. But we need to know what's in there.

What is going in? What are the inputs? What is the data you're having? Garbage in, garbage out is one of the famous tech phrases. We need to have an abyss. to sue these people. And by the way, if they win, go for them. If they lose,

great for us. Like, so we should... So in other words, if an algorithm amplifies hatred and causes a problem, you should be able to sue the company that created that algorithm. And you can't do that now. Not for the, not in many ways. And by the way,

let's have that debate. They don't want to have that debate with us. They don't want to, like, privacy. Right now, you know, we should be debating. tax system. Now, I'm not for that California billionaire billionaire's tax, but there's a new one they're proposing that's pretty good, like makes sense, makes it much more fair. The idea, like, rich people don't pay, the numbers are just there, the math is there. They haven't been paying as many taxes. There's a way to do it that doesn't create class warfare, although maybe a little

class warfare is not a bad thing sometimes, right? That these people are advantaging themselves through every single possible means, and everybody else gets to pay the bill, whether it's through, and they take, you know who paid for the Internet, everybody? You did. The American taxpayer paid for the Internet. And guess what? Our government did that.

The government paid for research around these amazing MRI vaccines around space travel. Guess who's benefiting? Not us. They are. And so, to me, we should get a piece of that. We'll be back in a minute. When WestJet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different.

People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. After 19 years, they're back. Frankie Munis, Brian Cranston, and the rest of the family reunite.

and Malcolm in the middle, life's still unfair. After 10 years avoiding them, how and lowest demand Malcolm be at their anniversary party, pulling him straight back into their chaos. Malcolm in the middle, life's still unfair. A special four-part event, streaming April 10th on Hulu on Disney Plus. Hi, I'm Bray Brown.

And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never do. disagree, and we're always learning.

That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. Tell me about the politicians now, get you out a bit out of your tech comfort zone. No, I live in Washington now. I spend a lot of time with politicians.

Tell me which ones you think get it. From Tala Rico to Rokana, who do your life? I just did a long interview with Mark Warner that's great about Iran and cybersecurity and election security and a number of things. I think he's a former venture capitalist,

really sharp, especially on cybersecurity issues. I think he's terrific. Amy Klobuchar, even though her legislation has not made it, I think she's trying really hard to do the right thing. She wrote an amazing book on antitrust that is so big. I used to joke with her, you could throw it in a poodle and kill it. It's like this thing.

I read the entire thing. I know a lot about antitrust now. Should we be using the anti-trust? Of course, in new ways. Of course, in new ways. We need to innovate the antitrust rules. They're written for an era of 100 years ago, you know. They're written for the guild, like, not quite the golden.

Although they still say if you have a dominance in a field and you leverage it in another field, then we're letting that happen. It changes. It's not the same thing. It's like, what is antitrust today? We need a wholesale rethinking because it doesn't work. Like, correctly, I know the judge in the case that Facebook just won, because it's just one, because things have changed, right?

And so now Facebook has plenty of competitors. Things change really quickly, and government doesn't keep up with law. So a redo of the antitrust bills. To me, the only way is litigation. Like, because our government is not going to respond because of the deleterious effects of Citizens United. I did an amazing interview with Larry Lessig about this other case that is going to possibly knock the stuffing out of super PACs,

which will go a lot way. But that'll never pass the Supreme Court. No, no, it looks like it will, actually. It looks like it might. And so we just have to stop having this dark money stuff is really problematic because the tech people are taking advantage of it and causing all manner of nefarious things. And years ago, when the Tea Party was sort of going around,

I got a call on the phone from, I like to stay on the line with these callers, right? And they go, you know, our government has never, you know, done anything. It's the people, give it back to the people. And I just said, oh, how did World War II? work out for you. I was like, because if not, we'd be goose stepping down, you know, Pennsylvania Avenue if we didn't have the government who fought the Nazis. I was like, that worked out pretty fucking well. How do you like the road you're on? Guess who built that? The national highway system. Get off the fucking roads if you don't like the government. Don't like, you know, I'm not,

I agree there's too much regulation in certain areas, but the deli on my corner should not have more regulations than Elon Musk. It just seems like. What about? What about? Palantir and Alex Carr. Yeah, I've said he talks too much. He's insane to me. I mean, it's interesting, because everyone who refuses to talk to me, I realize, you know, they all

refuse now because I'll do it, I won't lick them up and down anymore. But I think it's fine to do that business. He's in the defense business, and that's been a, you know, Lockheed or whatever. I think they have demented ideas about our society

that perhaps they shouldn't be involved in. But let me talk about the Defense Department, which can't build anything. It can't get the fight. Sure. The 15, it can't get a rocket in orbit. It's great to work with U.S. companies to do that. There's nothing wrong with it. Right.

So should there be, I think Palmer Locky is doing Anderill and Palantir, obviously, Musk. Should we have these private tech billionaires be taking over our defense? I think we should have competent people in the government buying this stuff. just like a good vendor might. I don't think they should be pontificating and involved in. I don't think they should install their minions in positions of power. Look, I'm not naive. This has happened.

You don't think Lockheed and Boeing did that? Of course they did. But did you know what their personal politics with? Did you know they were tweeting about, like, white supremacists? The last time we had this problem, it was Henry Ford. And by the way, rest did not peace, Henry Ford. even thanks for the car, but fuck you, essentially. But, you know, that's what that's...

He did, that's correct. That was the last time. If I recommend anything, Rachel Maddow did an amazing series of podcasts called Ultra where you get a sense of what happened here, and she just did one on the Japanese internment. It has so many echoes of today, of misinformation, of lies,

of the government manipulating things, of business getting weird billionaires, There was a weird Texas billionaire wandering around doing something terrible. Hughie Long, all this stuff. This is something that's happened again and again in our history, but we've never had such wealth. I mean, he's going to be a trillionaire, if the SpaceX thing goes off as it's supposed to.

He's going to be a trillionaire. There's nothing is unprecedented in terms of wealth and power and the ability to overwhelm government. And when you have, again, a moron, like Pete Hegseth in there, who just today said, this is incredible, this is astonishing. CNN had a Chiron,

and who reads the Chirons, except this narcissistic prick, said, war intensifies. That's a neutral world. It is intensifying. The more service members were killed. It's not going away.

Like, we're not stupid. He doesn't like the word intensifies. He goes, the Chiron should have been Iran on its last legs. You know, and then he said, swear to God, he goes, I can't wait until David Ellison gets in charge. He's arguing with the word intensifies. If this doesn't remind you of brave new world and the rest of it, you really should start reading that. Speaking of David Ellison and the media and stuff, you've been working with CNN on for long.

What should happen to CNN? I don't think he should own it. I don't die. Barry Dillard? I'd love Barry Dillard on it. That'd be a lot of fun. He's a really smart programmer. I don't agree with Barry on Lott's.

of stuff, but at least he likes journalists. I just don't think he's qualified. I don't think because you're born to a rich person, you should mortificate on media. You're talking about Barry Diller or Alistair? No, Barry Diller is a pro. No, David Ellison, he's a nice guy. He's a very nice guy. I did a podcast with him.

But the fact of the matter is, he was born on third base and hit a home run. Thinks he hits a home run. And that's great, but I don't know why we're, this is a lot of media properties in one person's hand. Now, I think some of them are declining media properties, so I'm not as worried. But he has shown a proclivity to suck up to Trump. He happens.

I knew him as pretty democratic, but I don't really care. But he's shown a proclivity to suck up to Trump, and Trump is very aggressive. What is that keeping? I mean, what is Trump's power to get people all over? You said Tim Cook at the beginning, you got Ellis and now. Tariffs. He wants to get out of tariffs. Everyone has a difference. Everybody's just doing it for money, you said?

Money, yes. Like I say, they're so poor. All they have is money. They're so poor. They don't have a sense of civic duty and about a bigger picture. So they want shareholder. And I appreciate that.

I'm a capitalist. I like making money. I make a lot of money. But, you know, I also can make decisions. And so, depending on what they do at CNN, I'll leave. I don't make that much money from them and I can wander over somewhere else.

And so we all have to make our decisions. And I've said I'll leave, and I've spoken to some of their executives, and they're like, will you really leave? I go, I'll really leave and really loudly, and there'll be a lot of fuck you. So I don't know what to tell you. But I can, I do that, right? And I can't, I have the choice to do that because I have choices. A lot of people don't in those situations. Well, when none of the people who are talking about lack choices, Tim Cook doesn't lack choices.

But I get his argument. I do get his argument. I get why they all have to do it. But again, they also have, there's a, like, Dario said no. Yeah. You know, and then. Then he's been banned. But you know what?

You know who then said no? Satchan Adele said no. Guess what? There's going to be a lot more no. Lisa Murkowski just said no to this stupid save act, you know? It's a really good word. You should all use it, and we can all say it. And by the way, there's going to be a price.

You know what? Maybe I won't have season two if Geras Wisher wants to live forever, but guess what? I'm going to do something called Kara Swisher wants to not die. I don't know. I'll call it something else. I don't care.

It's like... Since we're at a book festival, talk to me just a little bit. Let's finish up with what you read and the future. When is your book coming out? The Marie Curie? Yeah, that one. Probably.

I don't know. Priscilla went to come in a lot? Venge? Huh? I'm supposed to go home right now in type, she said. I thought so, yeah. I think that was a hand signal for Go Home and Time. Yeah, yeah.

Now, tell me what you read and whether the... I tend to read fiction now. I'm doing a lot. I just reread the Underground Railroad. I just reread that amazing book. Oh, yeah, Colson? Yes, I just reread it. I read it quickly, and I spent a lot more time on it.

I love North Woods, which I love that. I love that author. He's amazing. I just love it. It's such a beautiful book about time. I love time track. It's a little bit of, it's just wonderful. I just finished the piano tuner.

I tend to read everybody. I'm now going to read all of Salman Rushdie's books, and I was just. I was about to say, I recommend Salman Boschee. Yeah, I would. I always felt like, my wife was a book editor at the Boston Globe, and is a really, it was an editor, was also an editor. Amanda. Amanda at a publisher, she's an incredible, has incredible taste.

I'm kind of dumb. Like, I feel like I'm dumb around nonfiction, and so I always felt Salman Rushdie was too hard for me. I know it's, like, and I have a lot in my head, and so I tend to, I'm reading mostly fiction right now. And when I get recommendations, I try to read it. And I actually, right before this, I went online, and I said, what's the easiest Selman Rushdie book to start with?

Apparently. You should go to chat GPT. Well, it gave me a good recommendation. I'll recommend David Eggers' books. I have interviewed him. I've read all this books. And all about what you write about. No, when that circle came out, I did a great interview with him.

Those are sort of in my genre, so I tend not to want to read in my genre books. I probably will read the book Hail Mary's, Project Hail Mary is based on, because it looks like an amazing movie. And I will note that what's really interesting about the Oscars are coming up, but I just did a great show with Matt Bellany. Speaking of Humans and not A, there's all this controversy in Hollywood about AI, and AI replacing, and there's going to be definite changes in Hollywood because of this. But the two most important movies, three or four most important movies,

were all from original artists, whether it was sinners, one battle after another, or Ryan Coogler's brilliant, or weapons. All the popular movies with regular people, humans, not AI. And so that to me was really important. Kara Swisham. Thank you. Thank you. Today's show was produced by Christian Castro O'Selle, Michelle Eloy, Catherine Millsop, Megan Bernie, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishot Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Special thanks to Madeline LaPlante Duby, Corinne Ruff, and the New Orleans Book Festival. Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Juan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following this show, you're building an omnibedia empire like Martha Stewart and me. And you're a genius. If not, you're a moron like Pete Hegesath. Go wherever you listen to a podcast, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On With Caras Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.