On with Kara Swisher - Biden’s Antitrust Advisor Left the White House. Here’s His Exit Interview

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

In his first extensive interview since he stepped down as the Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy on the National Economic Council, Tim Wu shares what he learned in the West Wing. We find out who holds most sway with the President, how Lina Khan undid any perception that there is any antitrust exception for “nice guys,” and get Wu’s predictions on lawsuits against Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. Also: Kara presses him on why Biden — who campaigned on getting rid of Section 230 and hinted at breaking up Big Tech — hasn’t been able to make much headway when it comes to regulating Silicon Valley. Before the interview, Kara and Nayeema look at exits, from Jacinda Ardern, the former prime minister of New Zealand, to Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings. And among all the exits, they also discuss one possible return: Meta’s looming decision regarding Donald Trump’s Facebook account. You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter at @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Ready, set, grow. Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees? And it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot.

It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is the West Wing, and I'm President Josiah Bartlett. Just kidding. I wish I was.

This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naima Raz. I think I'd be Josh Lyman. That's correct. You would be. You are just like Josh Lyman. Lemon Lyman. Anyway. Lemon Lyman.

That's what. Oh, you don't. You're not. I know. I know. So Iman. That's what, oh, you're not a big fan of the show. I know, I know. So I'm not going to go into it with you. Anyways, our guest today is Tim Wu, who was special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy at the National Economic Council. And he stepped down earlier this month. Yeah, he formed kind of an antitrust team in the Biden administration, along with FTC chair, Lena Kahn, and also Jonathan Cantor at the Justice Department, who's head of antitrust, and they even had mugs made as if they were a law firm.

And people thought it had a lot of promise. You know, it's really difficult to make changes and shift things around, but I've known him for a long time. He's an academic at Columbia and have talked to him quite a bit over the years about everything from misinformation and hate speech to different regulations in Europe,

and of course, legal stuff, which is his specialty. I think Tim Wu is maybe best known before this for the book Attention Martians. Yes, he had a lot of books. And you know, there's a couple people that you really do rely on for really interesting takes. Shoshana Zuboff is another one, academics. And so I like to bail myself to academics. And this is an academic who went into the White House, which is not the easiest thing in the world. Yeah, and then he came out and we'll find out why. But I think he was really early on to this, the power of social media and this moment in which Silicon Valley was really gaining power. And it brings to mind something we should probably discuss today, which is Meta

needs to make a decision on whether Donald Trump's allowed back on Facebook after a two-year ban expired earlier this month. I think they're letting him on. That's what I predicted. Oh, he's going to say his prediction. Okay. Of course they are. Trump recently gave an exclusive to Fox News Digital saying...

Exclusive. Yeah, because they don't give him the TV spots anymore. Saying they need us more than we need them. True or false? I do not think that's true. He needs them to raise money. That's it. I mean, it's ridiculous.

They don't need him at all. It's been nice and quiet and not controversial. So I still think they're going to let him back on. They've gotten air cover from Twitter. Exactly. Yeah. Donald Trump raised a lot of his small donations using Facebook in the 2020 campaign. I think he tried like six million micro ads versus Hillary Clinton's 60,000 back in 2016. And the Trump campaign does really need it. But I love that he positions everything as they need me. Yeah, of course. No one needs you, Donald Trump. We've been fine. Met as president of global affairs,

Nick Clegg will be making the decision. We want him to come on the show and talk about it. Yes, Nick, come back to Kara. That's what I say. Come back. He was never with you. Well, that's true. Come to Kara.

Yeah, yeah. In Silicon Valley news, Reed Hastings stepped down. say. Come back. He was never with you. Well, that's true. Come to Kara. Yeah. Yeah. In Silicon Valley news, Reed Hastings stepped down. Yeah. From Netflix. You've known him a long time. Indeed, since the beginning when he was mailing out DVDs. And, you know, all told, his history has been really stellar, what he's done there. He's, you know, he pivoted that company really hard into streaming.

He was a pioneer there, except for last year where they were seeing some problems because of all the other competitors. But overall, he's been a real legend in this area. He's always ahead of the pack. He's changed things in filming. I mean, you know, as a documentary filmmaker, that that's been critically important, I assume. Yeah, I think Netflix has created the ability to do things that I don't even want to say niche, because you can find an audience for something at scale at a global level fast in a way that the theatrical window never allowed you to do, and traditional networks never found interest in doing. And so they completely revolutionized the business model. I think there's a lot of fear when the stock price was down 70% last year, and content budgets were feeling like they may be constrained. But certainly Netflix has done a lot.

Reed has obviously built the company, he co-founded it, but Ted Sarandos is on the content side and others like Adam Del Deo and really like led this documentary push. Yeah, it's a legacy of the whole system. And I think they're still far ahead from all the others, despite, you know, very aggressive moves by Disney and many others. They've managed to be cash flow positive while everyone's losing enormous amounts of money at other companies. And they've also managed to build something that really matters internationally, and the amount of domestic content that they've built and the fact that people in the U.S. are watching, you know, Squid Games or, you know,

Indian rom-coms that just didn't happen before. Were you in touch with Reid? I would like to get him on the podcast. That's what I'll say. What did you say to him, Cara? I just told him, don't pull a Bob Iger, that's all, but come on and talk to me for your exit interview like he did. So, you know, I've interviewed him a lot over the years, including very early on at Sundance with Jason Kyler, who ran Hulu, and Chad Hurley ran YouTube in the early days. And so I want to sort of round it out since I was there at the beginning. Speaking of comings and goings, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, another person that we Yeah, in the early days. And so I want to sort of round it out since I was there at the beginning. Speaking of comings and goings, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, another person that we would love to have on the show,

she just announced she's stepping down, which came to some people as a surprise. Let's play a clip. I believe that leading a country is the most privileged job anyone could ever have, but also one of the more challenging. You cannot and should not do it unless you have a full tank, plus a bit in reserve for those unexpected challenges. This summer I had hoped to find a way to prepare not just for another year but another term because that is what this year requires. I have not been able to do that. And so today I'm announcing that I will not be seeking re-election.

She had a very hard time around misinformation and hate speech there. Christchurch. Christchurch, the shootings. And I think she was just inundated, especially by anti-COVID people, and it probably exhausted her. I remember five years ago when the leadership of the Labour Party in New Zealand stepped away because she was this rising star and the only person that the Labour Party could organize around. And COVID has cost her a lot. I think COVID also has cost the Biden administration a bit, right? Yeah. People don't want to talk about it anymore. And a year ago, I know Parliament was stormed there.

But she said this is about family. She said she didn't have this gas in this tank, which is so refreshing. Yeah. To hear. I think she doesn't have the gas in the tank because of the battles she's been fighting that were directly related to misinformation and the, you know, the growing tide of conspiracy theories there. And she's talked about that a lot. I know it's this, I want to spend time with the family, but if she was, she didn't have gas in the tank because that, that happened there and really eroded her support in a

way that was, I think, surprising to her. Yeah. She spoke about it like internal gas in the tank. I'm kind of, people have been reporting it as burnout or other things like a Naomi Osaka situation, but she also may not have had the political gas in the tank. But she goes on to say, I know there'll be much discussion in the aftermath of this decision as to what the so-called real reason was. I can tell you that what I am sharing today is it. Do you buy it? Yes, I do. But I do think the political stuff has been heated and it's been exhausting. So that's why I want to talk to the next person we're talking to. Well, hopefully she'll come here and we'd love to understand more of why she left and kind of get

the exit interview, which is a little bit like the interview we're doing today. Yes, exactly. That's correct. So Tim Wu. Yeah, he just stepped down from his government job as special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy at the National Economic Council. Yeah. He left a lot undone and so did a lot people, not as much happened with privacy. There's no antitrust bill. So it's slow going. Do you think they'll do more in the next two years or even less with the Republican House? No idea. Probably less. Okay, well, let's see what he has to say. We'll take a quick break and we'll be back with the conversation with Tim Wu. Fox Creative.

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and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hey. How you doing? This is your exit interview in case you're interested. This is what I'm calling it, the exit interview. Thanks. There are many I have done this with. Bob, I are a bunch of people when they leave their jobs, I like to talk to them because then they get chatty in a really good way and actually a substantive way. So I want to start because in August, you tweeted rumors of my leaving the White House are greatly exaggerated, still a lot of work to do. In December, you announced you were leaving the White House. You've gotten rid of that tweet. So I'd love you to give an idea of why you left, and then we're going to get into what you think you succeeded with. Yeah. I mean, one of the things I really wanted to make sure happened was that we locked down

what we saw as this shift in how we approached competition, antitrust, anti-monopoly. And that process of trying to institutionalize stuff takes time. And I didn't really feel like we were done. Maybe we're still not done, but at some point, you know, the demands on family became unbearable. But I wanted to make sure that we kept going with having the president meet his cabinet officials, checking in where they were on competition, antitrust, and the things they had said they'd do. And that was the reason I wanted to stay longer. Your family was in New York and you were in D.C.? That's how I did it. You know, I went back to New York every week or went to D.C. every week.

And I've got to say that was a painful undertaking. I would imagine it. So talk about what you thought you got done in that time when you say institutionalize or get people thinking about antitrust. Yeah, I think the big move was to try to change a 40-year trajectory on how we had approached all the economic policy areas that we describe roughly as antitrust, but really are broader than that, really have to do with the structure of the economy and the kind of conditions there are for workers and consumers and small business. And we've allowed most industries to consolidate to, you know, three or four big players. You saw that in tech. You saw that in hospitals around the country.

Chickens. Yeah, chickens. Chickens. Telecom, you name it. It was everywhere. And we wanted to turn the proverbial battleship. And I feel that we, particularly with our big, we did a big executive order, appointed Lena Kahn, Jonathan Cantor, started blocking mergers, were beginning to really turn the ship in a way that is not easy to unturn. Explain the order for people, what you did exactly in that order.

So there is a lot of authority, a lot of power in the agencies to affect competition, economic policy, what the economy looks like. And from the beginning, we had the idea, and the president was very into this, of him making clear to all his political appointees and to the world and the country, this is what we stand for. We want our industries to be more competitive. We're not going to let hospitals merge. We're not going to have drug prices be whatever they want to charge. We're going to transform from the top down the way we approach

markets in this country. And so the president signed the executive order on July 9th, 2021, and it was an explicit direction to all the political appointees, all the cabinet officials, and strong suggestion to all the independent agencies that there was a new game in town, a new way of approaching this, and they should get in line. So what is one thing you couldn't get done that you had gone there for? Because we talked about before you went a lot of things that you wanted to get done. You said still have a lot of work to do. What did you leave behind that you wish you had more ability to do? I felt we had a shot, a good shot at passing

privacy legislation and maybe some child protection legislation or at least children's privacy, and none of that passed. And it was a extraordinarily missed opportunity. You know, business was online. Republicans were into it. It is a great regret. And obviously, the president was into it, we were into it, we were pushing for it. Why it didn't happen is a mixture of complicated, you know, inside baseball stories. But that was a true shame. So tell me what, give me an overview of the baseball. I know a little bit about baseball. You know, some of it came down to the fact that states like California, which had traditionally wanted to export their policies to the rest of the country, have become more interested

in protecting their prerogatives. You know, they were concerned that they, and I, some legitimacy that the federal law would preempt them. So they were concerned that they, and I, some legitimacy that the federal law would preempt them. So they were concerned that maybe somewhere along the line, they would want to do something again stronger or something like that. But I felt that California, you know, broke from the tradition, democratic tradition of experimenting in your own state and trying to move it to the rest of the country. So, you know, they were one of the culprits. Other culprits were just the usual bickering between different members of Congress. And ultimately, even though the Republicans were nominally on board, it's also the case that Mitch McConnell had a chance to make this happen in the final stages,

particularly for children's protections, and killed it. in the final stages, particularly for children's protections, and killed it. So it's sort of the old pro-business core of the Republican Party had something to do with this as well. So what did you learn about this White House and how decisions were made? I came away with, this is going to sound, I'm worried about the sounds, but with enormous appreciation and respect for the president's view of the world. You know, in academia, we are very easily prone to becoming overly detail oriented or too ideological. And we're frankly unable to be understood by people. And the president is not a weeds guy. Everything has to be translated into like, what is this really

going to mean? Why are we doing this? How do we sell this to like the whole country, not like to Jason Furman or something. And that had an influence on my thinking. I feel that I also became very convinced that a government needs to be able to do what 80 or 90% of the people want. And if it doesn't, it's a sham or disgrace. And I feel like too often that does happen. I mean, one of the things that struck with me, near the end, we had some child protection legislation. And people, I won't say who, but inside some of the companies was like, you should force us to do more to protect children. You know, we really don't feel like we need to invest in that because why should we when there's just an occasional letter for Congress or something? So, you know, we got behind some legislation, but, you know, probably 95% of people think the online environment isn't that great for children. Right. And, you know, that never got a vote. I remember that it got, frankly, killed by

Mitch McConnell, but also the subject of all kinds of negotiations. So those are some of the things that affected me. So who had the most sway with the president on tech issues? I think the president is not a person who thinks to himself as having tech policies. I think he believes and still believes there's an enormous imbalance of power in this country that doesn't favor the average citizen. So, you know, in terms of pitching the president on like what we should do about things, it really had to be about what does this mean for Scranton? How does this translate? How do I talk about it? My family's from Scranton. I'm not even going to go into it. Oh, is that right? Kara Swisher's from there and Joe Biden's from there, but go ahead. Keep going.

So you were asking, like, you know, who had, in some sense, the president's ear on, quote, tech policy. I think it was more like who is able to present the case that this matters for the American people. All right. Who was that? Bruce Reed has known the president for a very long time as his loyal confidant, and I think was a person who the president relied on very strongly for these things. Now, before you joined the administration, there was some speculation you'd be joining Lena Khan at the FTC. Would you have thought that was a better and more impactful role for you?

No, I don't think so. I mean, hindsight is 20-20. I think one of the major reasons I wanted to go to the White House, well, I'll say two of them. One, during the Obama administration, I was in the White House at the end of the Obama administration. I had seen that this policy, the areas, both tech and antitrust or competition generally, had gotten too far away from the presidency, if that makes sense. You know, they were kind of off in their little world, and we had allowed the economy to consolidate in most industries, two or three big guys, and it kind of happened independent of the democratically elected president. Just kind of was this technocratic

thing overseen by the economists. And meanwhile, we were playing the price, you know, as Hillary Clinton was out there running for president. And people were saying, look what you did to this country. You know, look what's happened, look at the inequality. And a lot of that had to do with competition, not all of it, trade policy too, but also antitrust policy. Yeah. So I wanted to turn the ship from the top, if that made sense. That makes sense. I think, you know, I've said to Obama, which is why he finds me irritating, that they sort of took a dive for the tech industry at the time when they could have done something about it, but they could have put things into place before they got too powerful. You are right. There was a moment there where the platforms were allowed to essentially vacuum up

all their major competitors right that's antitrust policy we sat there we watched it happen and just let it be so I was determined that the missing link was not another commissioner of the FTC spouting academic theories there's nothing wrong with that I'm a spouter of academic theories trying to try but you know the president has the power to declare policy for the entire administration. Some of it was areas that aren't tech, like industrial defense complex, too concentrated. You know, I know tech is a major interest of your listeners.

Agriculture, airlines, telecom, all these areas. But tech led the way because they were the most valuable companies. I'd like you to talk about two, and then I want to get to the politics of regulating tech. So I'd like you to first start talking about the impact of first Lena Kahn at the FTC and then John Cantor, the top antitrust role at the DOJ. Talk about their impact. Then I want to get to Congress and legislation. I describe their impact as historic, transformative. I think they've done more in the last two years to transform those agencies than we did in the last 40, maybe with partial exception of some of the Clinton years. And they both, I would say, have a certain fearlessness where they haven't had the kind of anxieties. You know, I worked at the FTC, and it's a very anxious place. People are like, well, what's the bar going to think? You know, might we lose in court?

What's going to happen? Lena, by the way, came from Colombia. Actually, also we worked on an election campaign, my election campaign many years ago. Went for it and has gone for it. She has made herself a lot of enemies, and there's no question about that. But it was obvious, I think, to her that she could be loved or she could really change things, which is crazy in a way, because she's really a sort of soft-spoken, kind person,

but possessed of a deep core. What has been her biggest mistake by her or what's the situation that's in front of her that's made it difficult for her besides the not having enough commissioners so that was split, which everybody that's changed, that's recently changed. A lot of people are predisposed to dislike Lena because she's a young woman who kind of leapfrogged the hierarchy. You know, she's in her 30s. There have been people at the agency for decades. There's people in the antitrust world who feel like, I should be running that place.

So I think there's a lot of people predisposed to dislike her. She has done stuff that when I was in the FTC, we only dreamed of doing. You know, take the non-compete rulemaking. Yeah, I was very pleased to see that. Yeah, these are agreements that your employer may make you sign that says you can't quit and go to work for someone who offers you more money, for example. You know, they started for high-paid executives. They've gone all the way down to low-wage workers. They're a travesty. President is, by the way, personally very deeply committed to eliminating and banning non-competes, but Lena did it.

We called for it in that executive order. In fact, that was a signature part of the executive order, but Lena has at least started the process. She challenged two kind of scary mergers, including Activision and the Facebook merger, big tech mergers. I'm sure you know Microsoft people, and everyone loves Brad Smith. He's a very nice guy. Yeah. My mind established that there's no nice guy exception to the antitrust laws, which is a real risk in D.C.

You become friends with people. They help you out. So I think she's just getting started. What about John over at DOJ? He kind of started from an easier position. His main challenge has been getting money for his agency, and I think he's got that. So, you know, I think he's also doing great, and he's had the conviction to take on the big cases. I would watch their merger guidelines, see if that comes out, and see whether he does one of the big reverse breakup cases,

like breaking up Ticketmaster or something like that. But I think these guys have the wind behind their back. I think having the president, you know, the president's constantly behind them, I think it's helped them. What is John's biggest challenge or obstacle? I will say the greatest challenge for both of them is going to be and is the judiciary and some of the residual resistance in other agencies. He brought a big sugar case. One of the officials who testified against the Justice Department was an official in the Agriculture Department. So there is residual parts of the government who still see their job as to

help out their industry as opposed to, you know, be with the president's program. So I think that's probably his greatest challenge. And we have a judiciary which was largely schooled in the more, I will say, neoliberal or business-friendly antitrust tradition. And that's a constant challenge for everybody. So let's talk about that power of these companies and legislation. The White House has been active, but Congress has to be active too. And I would give them an F in terms of legislative action in this area. But why has Congress been so unable to act? This is Exhibit A, where Congress is unable to do what the vast majority of the American public wants.

You know, there's no real question that people want privacy, want better protection for children, want tech antitrust bills. And not only that, there's no question that the votes are there. Nobody really doubts that these bills would pass were they to move forward. I think the story is a little different for everyone. In tech antitrust, we were in some ways outgunned, outspent, hundreds of million dollars. I don't know the exact figure. But what really happened is that the tech companies said, we'll just run ads against you if you vote for this bill. Say Maggie Hassan or whatever. We'll just run ads against you. We don't care about the content. We're completely impartial as to the ideology. We'll just pay for ads against you. We don't care about the content. We're completely impartial as to the ideology.

We'll just pay for ads against you. And that scared a lot of people off and they were able to privately indicate they didn't want these bills to move forward. I mean, one of the great shames is when things don't come to a vote, there's something extraordinarily anti-democratic about that. That's where the power lies. I guess everyone knows that, not letting things go to a vote. But the number of things lined up was extraordinary. And I found that very disheartening. In some ways, privacy was even worse in the sense that business was behind it. So, you know, I came into this job slightly cynical about Congress. I leave maybe 10 times more cynical and disappointed an institution that does not do what super majorities of the American people want.

Right. Did Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi decide to stop moving forward, or was it just that they got too much pressure from the other representatives? We had a last chance in the omnibus. We put on the table children's privacy, children's protection, and tech antitrust as well. And the Republicans can say whatever they want about being hostile to big tech. Mitch McConnell killed it. So we put it out there. You know, Pelosi was always enthusiastic backer of all the tech antitrust stuff. I mean, you have to divide up the different tech areas. But that combination of money, the Republicans actually being pro-tech as opposed to anti, or at least pro-business, are not willing to give the Democrats what looked like a victory, played a factor. I think these are the combination that led in what I will admit is a disappointing outcome.

When you think about who the most important allies on the Hill to what you're, when it comes to regulating tech, who are they? Give me three. That's a great question. David Cicilline, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren. Okay. And on the Republican side? I'm sorry.

And Blumenthal, Richard Blumenthal as well. On the Republican side, we have Grassley, we have Ken Buck. Those were the allies. You know, I didn't work a lot with Republicans because it wasn't my job to do it. And, you know, they seem to be very much in good faith and wanting to take action. They're a very divided party, as you know. I mean, everyone knows this. There's a more, I guess, populist side to the party, which is much more critical. But there's a residual kind of quiet sort of Mitch McConnell-y pro-business, don't do any regulation at all, which obviously is not in the headlines a lot, but does kill a lot of things.

So that's who's standing in your way. What about among the Democrats? They managed to keep things fairly quiet, but I feel that our party is not always as responsive to what the people want as opposed to what donors may want or what they may fear could happen to them in terms of being attacked. You have to name a name there. Chuck Schumer, that would be mine. I don't think I want to name any names. I don't know how personally they made their decisions, but I do know that we had private indications of lack of support.

And actually, the fact that it is all private and secret is part of the problems. Where are the votes? Take Gigi Sohn, who was nominated to be FCC commissioner. So we'd have a part of the problems. Where are the votes? You know, take Gigi Sohn, who was nominated to be FCC commissioner. So we'd have a majority of the FCC. You know, some mysterious forces probably know who they are, stopped her nomination. But, you know, these things just happen quietly. And frankly, it's a disgrace. Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Procrastination, putting it off, kicking the can down the road.

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There's national security concerns and a broader question of whether we treat China differently because they treat us differently. So those are the concerns. Absolutely. I would think, sorry to be lawyerly, but it depends what you mean by ban. If you mean like consumers not getting TikTok at all, I don't think that will happen. Okay. Among other things, it's very unclear the country has legal authority, but will TikTok be placed under further limits? We already banned government employees from using it, which I'm sure they were not too happy about,

some of them, I would predict be further restrictions. And they're still in the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. They're still trying to work it out rather publicly. That's correct. Yeah, it's been a long time, which actually was started in the Trump administration, interestingly enough. Related, Taiwan and the chips crisis. How do you feel about what's going to happen there? The whole subject of China, Taiwan, chips, has a real personal connection for me. I have a lot of relatives living in Taiwan. Yes, you are Taiwanese-American. My father was in the army in Taiwan during some of the hostilities with China. So I have somewhat strong feelings about this. You know, I feel that it is essential the United States develop the ability

to do its own semiconductors. But I also feel for a large number of reasons, not only my personal stakes, but also the credibility of the United States that we must deter any invasion of Taiwan. And so I think as we begin to develop our capabilities here in the United States, which I think we need to have, we need to double, triple, quadruple down whatever it is on the security guarantees we're giving Taiwan. And I believe we're doing so, but it seems to me wrong and irresponsible to expose Taiwan to any serious risk of being invaded as one of the sort of outposts of democracy in Asia. Next one, will American regulators let Microsoft buy Activision Blizzard? I think we part ways on this one, but talk about the stakes here from your perspective. Yeah, I think this is going to go to court, but I think the basic concern is that Microsoft will have too much power over platforms. that Microsoft will have too much power over platforms.

Here's another personal connection. My brother was a developer of computer games and a member of a flourishing, what was once a very flourishing industry of small developers. And I think we've seen that industry increasingly getting vacuumed up and consolidated. And I think that's a pity. And I think the Activision-Microsoft merger would only add to that. It's a challenging court. It's going to be a tough case. top ones are Chinese and Japanese. So the argument Microsoft will be making, presumably, is that we are advantaging China and Japan at the expense of an American company who may be consolidating

this, but certainly is not the leader by any stretch of the imagination. Well, I mean, I'd answer that. It is not really a court argument, but a general point about national champions, you know, as you referred to it earlier, which is the United States has always done Better when it keeps its domestic industries Vibrant and live and don't let the big guys just stick around forever IBM being good example or AT&T or Microsoft in the old days so, you know, I think keeping the industry on its toes is very important and The idea of what we have to let this happen because of China or Japan or Korea or whatever, I think leads to very bad policy.

You know, Europe and Japan have followed those policies in tech. And I think that is one of the reasons that they have fallen so far behind. They certainly have. I was just in Europe and that was one of the questions that came up. Why don't they have anything more innovative than the U.S. has? So you think, what's the biggest challenge in court for that? And also, by the way, the U.K. and the European Commission might stop this merger too. Yeah, that's true. And in which case, the work will be done for us. You know, without getting too technical, I think it has to do

a lot with, I think it's gonna be less about these arguments about overseas and international competitiveness and more about the question of whether a judge believes in the Chicago school's view that vertical mergers were almost never a bad thing. I mean, that was the doctrine for like 40 years. There's nothing to do vertical that's ever a problem. And that is still in some ways a very strong culture. All right. Epic and Apple are still fighting over the App Store. Apple pretty much won the first round. But when will Apple be forced to rid a 30% commission or where does this case go next?

That's a great question. You know, I start from the starting position that for the future of this country, development has to be in a world where we don't have a 30% tax. I think you and I are, we're both around for the golden days of the, both the internet and the PC where developers, you know, just wrote stuff and there wasn't like, okay, and here's 30% of your cash to somebody else. What pushes that down is a hard question. Competition obviously isn't doing it. I guess the end question is whether Europe manages to push it down with the Digital Markets Act or other efforts to force Apple into having compete app stores. Of course, whether that happens in the United States

is a totally different question. But yeah, that's obviously a source of money they want. Yeah, they want the money. Yeah, I think they're going to do it themselves. It's going to get too much pressure. They have other things they can make money on, and it's too much of a nag for them. Facebook has two antitrust courses, as you mentioned, in court, one over attempted purchase of a VR studio, the one bigger monopoly case over

its purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp, which would be a reverse merger. How do you think each of those will shake out? So, slightly different stakes. I predict Federal Trade Commission winning both cases. In the case of the Instagram merger and also WhatsApp, that was a clear case of Facebook eliminating competition with dollars. In other words, seeing it had a threat to its future and buying its way out of that by purchasing Instagram for a relatively small amount of money. And in that case, I think the sort of trump card is the fact you have all of these emails saying exactly

what Facebook wanted to do and why they wanted to do it. There's some technical challenges proving monopoly power at the time, but I know they have very good economists. And why is that a big one? If the remedy is done correctly, that means the breakup of Facebook. Now, maybe by that point, Facebook will be sufficiently weakened that it won't matter. Yes, they've had some troubles. But that is the natural remedy is the Facebook breakup. And going back to a view of antitrust that takes seriously the breakup. Within the virtual reality case you mentioned, that's a significant case for a related proposition, which as an Instagram, it became the practice in the 2010s, in my view, to buy out entire industries that were of any conceivable potential threat

to the big platforms. And, you know, that worked. There were over a thousand acquisitions by major tech companies. Some of them were ACCU hires, but even getting dangerous employees added to your roster is an effective strategy. And I think that the two cases combined send no more big guys just buy everybody and don't have to worry about the future. They maybe have to make their products better now and then. I mean, has Facebook seriously improved their products in the last seven years? I haven't seen it. I would say never, Tim, but that's just me. I think they've bought a lot of stuff. But it will be interesting because they've been severely weakened by the economy. Ad business is getting much more competitive.

There's the money. Mark himself is shooting himself in all defeat. This is how you want it to happen. I mean, what you don't want is for companies to become invulnerable, last forever, even as their management starts to get out of touch and increasingly interested in their own bizarre projects. You know, you want a system where that actually leads to failure. Did you just say the metaverse was bizarre? I said investment in increasingly strange and bizarre projects that don't make sense. I mean, you know, call me, now I'm starting to sound like a capitalist or a free marketeer,

but I'm saying that when companies start to invest huge numbers of billions of dollars in things that don't make any money, maybe they should start to suffer consequences. If there's not, then you don't actually have a competitive economy. Fair point. There are two, speaking of very powerful companies, there are two DOJ investigations against Google, also under Alphabet. One is an antitrust case for Search Monopoly. Another is a probe for Ad Monopoly. The Ad Monopoly hasn't been filed, but the draft is circulating. Which one, if any, will make a dent? So first of all, I think overall, it's important to have these cases because they put the policeman at the elbow. The big tech platforms know that they are under active investigation.

They're in an environment where, you know, it would be crazy for them to do something grossly anti-competitive at this point. They're under watch. And I think, you know, having studied the history of Microsoft and IBM very carefully, I think it made a huge difference to the entire industry that IBM was basically under heavy surveillance from the federal government from 1970 through 1984. So that they didn't, for example, you example, buy Apple when it was two people. They actually didn't buy Microsoft when it was such an easy, obvious acquisition. I once asked Bill Gates, what was going on? And he was like, yeah, I was pretty sure they were going to buy us out or ruin us. And I believe that one of the reasons IBM didn't do that to Microsoft, this is early 80s, was because they knew if they did that, they'd end up back in antitrust court. So I think part of the reasons IBM didn't do that to Microsoft, this is early 80s, was because they knew if they

did that, they'd end up back in antitrust court. So I think part of the story here for the big tech platforms is just being essentially under government monitoring. The advantage of the Justice Department's case for the Apple payments, its great advantage is that it's extremely strong case. And I think a straightforward and simple case therefore has a good chance of winning an early victory or a big settlement so that's what i see as the main advantage of that case and showing that in fact the big tech platforms do not always win in court okay will the uk win its lawsuit against amazon for allegedly abusing its algorithm to give it unfair advantage against competitors in their own marketplace? Yeah, that I haven't really studied carefully

enough to have a view about. Is there any case in this country with Amazon that is going anywhere? I don't see Amazon under pressure at all in that regard. And they've certainly made a lot of acquisitions compared to the other tech companies. There's a case brought by the DC Attorney General surrounding pricing practices. And I'll say one thing that Amazon has done, which is extremely hard to defend, is to force other platforms to keep their prices at the same level as Amazon's. So they try to make it so you can't get a better deal if you go to Target or whoever else. And Amazon, you know, supposedly abandoned the practice, but I think at least the DC Attorney General doesn't think they have. And so that's an important case. And that practice, if it's continuing, is indefensible and reprehensible. On Amazon, I do think Amazon's

a different kind of company. and what we really need is what klobuchar's bill has which are the rules of the road they don't need that money when they clone somebody's like mousetrap or whatever they make tons of money as it is and we need basic rules for marketplace platforms so they don't eat too much of the economy and leave a lot of room for everybody else. Okay, we have two more. Supreme Court is considering two Section 230 cases, one against Google, one against Twitter, both from family members of people killed by ISIS, and now suing the platforms for having radicalized the terrorists. Which way will the court go, and has the Biden administration been waiting to see how this plays out before doing anything about Section 230?

I'll say the Biden administration has expressed views on this case, and we filed a Solicitor General's brief that describes our views, which I'll say. I do think the Supreme Court is going to take action. It was our sense, and I think a lot of people's sense, with the Supreme Court taking a hard look at Section 230, that that was the most straightforward avenue. And I think they're going to end up with more accountability for the platforms, in particular in the situations where they are explicitly identifying content for you and saying, this is you the big difference being between okay i go looking for stuff versus like here here's something we recommend i think at that stage they have adopted the conduct and they should shed their legal immunities conduct of an editor in other

words correct right yeah all right so the next one will the supreme court let states keep laws in the books that bar social media platforms from so-called viewpoint-based censorship? Texas and Florida both have laws that are supposed to stop platforms from censoring conservatives, for example. It's all gotten sucked up in that. Yeah, I think even this Supreme Court is going to find those to be unconstitutional beyond the authority of the states and particularly violations of the First Amendment. So obviously, there's going to take some time for that to rattle up, but it goes against so much established court precedent. The laws are so strangely and politically drafted that I think they're just

extremely vulnerable to constitutional challenge. Non-starters. They'll make a lot of noise. I mean, I think those laws aren't designed to be constitutional. No. You know, I think that they just wrote this to appease a particular base. They're too wacky. Wacky is your legal determination? Is that a... That is my studied academic

opinion. Ergo, comma, wacky. Okay. Before I go, I have to ask you about the nexus between industry and government regulators, which you've alluded to several times. Today's tech, agricultural, healthcare regulators, tomorrow's lobbyists. There are so many lobbyists. I think there's 10,000 PR people just to deal with Carol Swisher in Washington, and probably 20,000 for you. You have made your dent. I've made my dent in the universe, as Steve Jobs says. How do you

change that? Or is it impossible? It's not impossible. There are countervailing forces, and there always have been. First of all, there are elections, which really, I mean, seems obvious. But you have an election. You have a president who promises things to the American people. You know, he needs to appoint people who feel they have a duty of loyalty to the president and to the people of the United States, not to an industry. That is, is like fundamental. And you can tell from what people have done often, whether that's going to be the case or not. You know, yes, some industry experience can sometimes be useful, but have

you spent your entire career, you know, spouting what the industry believes about a certain area, you know, likelihood is you're going to continue and you're going to thinking about looking for a job back in that industry. I think it's important to appoint people whose future career plans do not involve going to their industry and making millions of dollars. I'll give you an example. Marty Oberman is the chair of the Service Transportation Board, which regulates railroads. It's a small agency. Those are multi-billion dollar companies. He has been a menace to them. He has called out all of their anti-competitive practices, called out their terrible service record, and has basically refused to play along. You know, one of the reasons is, this is a small thing, but he's an older gentleman.

He's not looking to a career of like trying to run the lobbying group for the railroads. And he's public spirited, and he thinks the president has his back, and the president does have his back. And so, you know, we can fight it. That's what I want to say. I'm an optimist, in fact. All right. So no one's offered to pay you $15 million. Not that I've noticed. No one's called you out to be a lobbyist? No, I get a lot of calls. I think they would find, I think I would be unreliable as a lobbyist. I get them and I say, the minute I get in there, I'm going to leak everything you have. And that seems to end the discussions.

We're almost done. I noticed your biggest investment was Bitcoin. How do you look at it, especially with the collapse of the prices with Sam Bankman Freed? Where is that going to go, the regulatory aspects and the legal aspects of that case? If you were advising SBF, what would you tell him? This is an example of how academia can oddly, weirdly pay off. I mean, I just bought Bitcoin because I was interested in trying to understand it. And I wanted to know how it worked. It was something new. I'm always interested in what's new around the corner and essentially experiment, but I guess I I got lucky

It's not technically my largest investment. I do also own New York real estate which is extraordinarily expensive So what I was I should say recused from all of these issues in the White House because of because of the Bitcoin stuff and you know, frankly Not having to keep up with something was relief And, you know, frankly, not having to keep up with something was a relief. All I can say is that there is something to me still sort of interesting about the ideas of currencies. There's always been sources of value that are independent of sovereign governments. Maybe that's going to make me sound crazy. I also own a gold bar, too.

Good for you. But I'm just interested in this stuff, but there's that, you know, question of value that is not tied to sovereigns and a totally different question about the scammers, the centralized exchanges, the taking of money. And, you know, my advice, I don't think I have advice. I know, obviously, his parents, because they're also a law professor. I guess I would advise him to come clean and confess his sins, I guess, because he's done something very wrong. All right, two last questions. One is, what is the technology we should be paying a lot of attention to now that you're the most worried about?

Because if we would anticipate what would happen with the Googles many years ago, and I know you did, I did for sure, what are you worried about the most now of an upcoming technology? I am both excited and terrified by AI, but for different reasons, I think, than other people. but for different reasons I think than other people. I am worried that it will take us even further from some of the fundamentals of human interaction and contact. You know, I think that without even noticing it slowly, we'll start to notice that most of our day's interactions are actually with robots. And we already have that when you call for consumer help. And I believe that that could leave some of this sort of mental health crisis

that is unfolding in sort of time that I think believe comes from lack of real, meaningful human contact to get even worse. Because we'll be replicating and, you know, in the same ways Facebook kind of replicated seeing your friends, I think we'll be replicating. And, you know, in the same way as Facebook kind of replicated seeing your friends, I think we'll be replicating the experience of reading a reporter when you're actually reading a robot reporter's work. Right. So that's what I'm fear. And what I fear about is it's under the radar and it's so exciting and cool. And, you know, I love playing with the stuff,

but I'm worried that it'll take us further from our souls and further from being human. That is a very good thing to be worried about. My big worry is that it's owned by the bigs. Again, Google, Facebook, Elon Musk, Microsoft. It's the same players just moving into a much more pervasive space. That's my worry. I agree with you. And I think the deep question is, you know, what are the underlying motivations?

I mean, I've always thought the basic idea of Facebook connecting you with your friends is actually pretty noble, beautiful idea. The problem is the idea we also have to make billions of dollars off of it. And so we have to, you know, do stuff that's cheesy. And you're right. AI has a real sense. It has some promise, a huge amount of promise. a real sense. It has some promise, a huge amount of promise, but I wonder whether it's going to slide under the radar some of the ways that it distances from us from what has real meaning in life. That's a fair point. All right, final, final question. You ran for lieutenant governor,

you referenced it earlier, in New York along with Zephyr Teachout in 2014. Will you run for office again? No current plans, as the saying goes. Oh, wait a minute. What's no current plans? No plans. And I would say that being in this job and also having run before makes me aware of the effect on family. And so, you know, it'd be a big ask. I've already been apart from a wife and children for the better part of two years. So for my own sanity and, um, so, so no current plans, but I, you know, I do the same time think that people should run. So I'll just leave it there. All right. We'll leave it there. Tim Wu, thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

Yeah. It's been a pleasure. Kara, I did not know you were from Scranton. Tell the people your Scranton roots. My grandparents, my grandfather was actually born in Italy, but they settled there. And they lived there their whole lives. I was in Scranton all the time. Kara from Scranton.

Sounds like a campaign ad for SF Mayor. And my brother lives there. They're our family's company is there. And so I know a lot from Scranton. I know nothing of Scranton. You don't need to go there. I will not. So Tim generally towed the Democratic Party line. He was very diplomatic. Were you surprised by that? No, I think he had little bits where he pushed out. I think he had a lot of struggles within the White House. I've heard from lots of people like that. I think that was the idea, is that no matter how you slice it, executive order or not, you know, this is the kind of things you should do. But a lot of things that didn't pass the privacy legislation, which he blamed on Republicans

in California, I think if the Biden administration wanted this stuff to go through, they could put more shoulder behind it. And they didn't, ultimately. And I get McConnell. It's easy to blame McConnell. But if this was important, privacy, antitrust legislation, transparency, it would have passed in the time they had control of the House and Senate. Right. I thought there were moments in this interview that I think were revelatory.

I thought it was interesting that Bruce Reed is the person he selected as having sway over Biden. I didn't expect that answer to come up. Did you? Yes. There's an old boys network at the White House, and he's one of them. Sorry. Sorry to say, Bruce Reed. Shocking, Kara. There's an old boys network? Well, Biden particularly has people he's super comfortable with, and he'd rather deal with them than experts. And as Tim said, Biden's no Luddite, but he's certainly not in the weeds. Definitely Obama knew a lot more, but they didn't get any done either. Obama was even worse. But that didn't help him? Obama was even worse. He was right up in there with the tech people in a way that something could have been done at the time. It was a less intractable problem

then. Or you think he was too cozy. I mean, that was the other thing we talked about in this interview, this nexus. I wrote column after column saying that. And so there you have it. Yeah, cozy, cozy. Cozy, cozy. Tim also said that the tech industry threatened to bankroll ads against anyone who voted for tech antitrust or online privacy bills. You know, not surprising in the sense that they've really come after Lena Kahn in a big way. Yeah, Amy Klobuchar said that in an interview.

That's what was happening. $90, $100 million against her. I mean, this is a very big bipartisan issue. Even if there's a lot of noise publicly, they all agree. And they picked, the tech industry picked people off one after the next. Yeah. I mean, there was even that reporting in the Washington Post about January 6th committee and how some of their findings around social media companies and the role of the social media companies was diminished. And they were arguing, one, that Liz Cheney was trying to zoom in around Trump, but two, that there was a congresswoman from Silicon Valley, Zoe Lofgren,

who responded that, no, I didn't have anything to do with the removal of this information from the report, etc. But it is interesting how much sway the tech industry has. They do. I'm still in Europe, where there's less of that. Well, they've got their own problems. Anyway, it was an interesting interview. And hopefully we have Nick Clegg to talk about that issue in the next couple weeks. Nick, come on.

Let's talk. Come to Kara, Nick. Yeah. All right. Want to read us out, Kara? Yes. Today's show was produced by Naima Raza, Blake Nhek, Christian Castro-Rossell, and Rafaela Seward. Special thanks to Hayley

Milliken. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get a bar of gold. If not, you get an FTX token, which is completely worthless. But go wherever you listen to podcasts or something valuable. Search for On with

Cara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.