Pivot - Amazon under scrutiny; Zoom security expert Alex Stamos explains it all (and talks Facebook), plus some special Wins and Fails

Episode Date: April 28, 2020

Kara and Scott talk about Senate Democrats being vocal about breaking up Amazon, after a report that the company lied to the House Judiciary Committee. They talk about the Wall Street Journal investigation into Amazon's use of data from third-party sellers. Meanwhile, France upholds a ruling that is keeping Amazon warehouses in the country shuttered until they address workers' health protection concerns. Privacy expert Alex Stamos joins the show to talk about the $5 billion FTC/Facebook settlement and Zoom's new approach to privacy. Clorox is Kara's win and fail. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. press, but I haven't intentionally misled anybody because you can't see into my heart. Can you believe this shit? I'll tell you, they cannot pay Jay Carney, who is, I mean, arguably probably the best compensated full-time liar in the world. I love that response when Amazon was accused of basically lying to Congress. We didn't intentionally mislead anybody. You can't look into our hearts. It wasn't our intention to break the law.

Well, it's not my intention to. I don't understand. I don't get it. Like, there's the whole culture of lying, like essentially lying constantly, which I think, of course, Trump leads the parade. They're paid to do it. Yeah, it's just an amazing,

I don't know how people do it. I mean, I guess maybe it might be the scales have fallen off my eyes but i just feel like people don't usually do that but maybe they do maybe that's just the way well i'll give you two billion reasons all right cheryl sandberg is worth two billion dollars and has spent the majority of her career figuring out elegant ways to put lipstick over lies so why wouldn't you want to grow up and be a liar like cheryl well come on would you do that for the money i don don't know if I could. Let me think.

Yes. Oh, yes. I think you would. Or a lot less. No, but seriously, have you lied in your career a lot? I have not. I have not. No, I just...

I would think the fib is as far as I've gone. Like, actually, you know what? It's not telling someone the absolute truth all immediately just to inspire their feelings. That's pretty much it. Like, when you manage people, you don't don't say like when you're getting rid of someone you don't go oh you just suck you just say well you know it's just not the right place or something like that that's very different than actual alignment i don't i can't recall an actual like serious lie to get something to happen um i think that it is very easy to make a series of incremental

statements that are spin and to look at, you know, we, this wasn't, this wasn't a hack. It was a breach. We weren't hacked. It was a breach from one of our partners. And we're disappointed in our partner and oh wait, we're proud of the progress we've made. It's like, are we really proud of the progress we've made? You know like, well, are we really proud of the progress we've made? You know, we need to do better. I mean, it's just you come up with a series of you're so attacked all the time that you turn into more of a PR machine than somewhat a sentient being with rational decisions around. It's just because you don't have the pressure that you don't lie, but you would, you think? You think you would or do you? I just don't think, but you would, you think? You think you would?

I just don't think if I got in those positions, I would stay at those companies. That's even, you know, just the same thing with like Dr. Burke sitting there or anybody just like, are you kidding me? Like, I just don't think I could stay there. They don't think they've lied, though. They think they're just playing the game and they think that people lie to embarrass them. And so truth becomes an amorphous thing around shareholder value or lack thereof. But yeah, I don't think I'd be above doing what they're doing

if I could make millions of dollars. I am above you then, because I would. Look, I want to go to the Academy Awards with a woman with lip injections. That's how the dog would like to roll. Well, those are lies you tell to yourself. Like I'm- Oh, I got a lot of I'm, I had an internet who sent me pictures of all these Russian models. I don't know why they do this, but they sent me pictures of all these Russian models. They were like, what do

you think? This is my latest date. I said, I'm sure they like you for your looks. This guy was just not attractive. It was like, he was sort of a lovely person, but it was very funny. I love that. Do I lie to myself? Yeah. Every day when I say I like myself, I'm just a fucking psychopathic liar. Well, I like you and that's not a lie. That's not a lie. But it's true. It's true. It's a really, it's interesting, this culture of lying.

I mean, and maybe it's just, it creates such a cynicism around kids. I don't know. I just feel like. You think it impacts kids? Yeah, I do. I just like, my kids are like, oh, what's to believe anything? Like, you know what I mean? I mean, I think they My kids are like, oh, what's to believe anything? You know what I mean? I think they're in that mode of quarantine like this fucking sucks.

My son last night was like, why am I studying? It's meaningless. And I was like, it's pointless. Pointless, really. Meaningless is the word he used, but I think he meant pointless. But I was sort of like, well, just learning for learning's sakes. And that only goes so far. It's a culture of cynicism around that I can't change.

I've heard that so much from young people. Like, not everybody, but enough that it creates this sort of like, you know, and the pandemic on top of it just, it's just, I don't know. Maybe we're going for a beautiful spring at some point where it will be, everyone will turn around. But it's an interesting, I think once you start down that road and then act like you're victims, when people question you, like it's the press's fault or stuff like that, you get in a very dark place, Scott, a dark place. I think to be a good, effective leader, you have to be, it's very difficult. You have to be 30 or 40 percent, you have to be psychopath-ish. Because the day before you lay off 40 percent of your staff, you have to put on a good face and

say, this is why the company is doing so well. This is why you don't need to worry about layoffs. It is very hard to, you can't always be truthful as a leader of a company. You have to manage the narrative. And so it's like when you start lying all the time, I think you can, it just, it gets very difficult to, or very easy to kind of lose your base around this stuff. You're the only guide around anything. Your truth becomes what's good for shareholder value because you can rationalize that that's what you're there for.

It's like being, it's like being that guy. Remember that guy? I forget his name, the spokesperson for Iraq. Joe Isuzu? Oh, Iraq. Oh, that guy. Yes, yes. We are turning them back at the airports. We are beating them on the battlefield. That's who you turn into. Bagdad. Bagdad. Bagdad

Bobby or whatever. They had dolls with the guy. That guy was awesome. Yeah, exactly. All right, we're going to move on. Okay, big story breakdown. We've talked, speaking of Amazon, we've talked a lot about how COVID-19 may make Amazon even more essential. We talked about that a lot, and we actually talked about that very early. But it seems like Congress has been listening to Pivot and won't let COVID-19 deter them from breaking up Amazon. So this is the thing. So let's talk about Senator Warren. This is your invitation to be a best friend of Pivot. I am actually talking to her, people, so maybe we can get her on to talk to us about this. Senate Democrats have been vocal about the antitrust violations. Last week, the Wall Street

Journal, as you know, reported that Congress had been taking data from third-party sellers to create their own Amazon brand products and sell them on the platform. And actually, it's the same thing at Whole Foods. I was looking at all the products they now have, and it's the only stuff on the shelves, actually, is Amazon Whole Food branded

products. This has been a crux of a lot of arguments that Amazon is anti-competitive and should be broken up. Back in July, Amazon testified to the House Judiciary Committee that they do not use third-party seller data to craft their own products, which is like, not so much. Amazon disputed the accuracy of the journal's account and said, as Scott noted, that it did not offer, quote, intentionally misleading testimony, but that it said it would conduct an internal investigation into the report. In response, Elizabeth Warren, who really should be vice president, said, this is exactly what happens when you let a giant company be both the umpire and the player in the game. Ooh, a baseball

metaphor. Amazon needs to explain why it misled Congress. We need to break up Amazon and big tech. So she's not backing down. And over in the House, Representative David Cicilline, who is a terrific guy, I think he's really interesting and smart man, who is the head of the House Antitrust Subcommittee, is pushing for a ban on mergers during COVID-19 outbreak as part of the next relief stimulus bill. His proposal will allow mergers only if a company is already in bankruptcy or about to fail. Any other deals would be on hold, at least until the national pandemic declaration is lifted. But, you know, they weren't going to be able to do it before this and probably not after it. So what do you think?

What do you think about not just Amazon line? We discussed that already, but the mergers in big tech. Now, Facebook put an investment into an Indian company last week we talked about. What do you think about this? Well, instead of the stasis or the worst of both worlds, and that is the big tech, there's a chill over acquisitions by big tech that are some of the most, other than Apple, are some of the most acquisitive companies in the world and are fantastic exits for shareholders and for employees and startup companies. So they're freaked out about raising any red flags. And at the same time, you still have companies that are so large and so powerful that small companies can't get out of the crib. So the fastest growing parts of our economy are in a stage of stasis where they

basically aren't... You can't have both a chill around acquisitions and those companies suppressing innovation. So you have a lack of exits and you have a lack of startups. So it's absolutely the worst of both worlds. I am heartened by the fact that Congress is going to or is contemplating breaking these guys up. And what I've noticed is, and I think this is true across all industries, when, so I interviewed Senator Michael Bennett, kind of my hero. He is, indeed. Last week. And he's at home, and all these senators at home, and quite frankly, it's just given them a lot of additional time to sort of dig into their work because they're not running around and giving interviews to whoever it is they give interviews to or shuttling in between places or going to dinners or not like that. They're not spending,

you know, they're probably not spending nearly as much time fundraising. I think a lot of them are getting a lot of work done. And this is, in my opinion, if you were to say, all right, what are the two best investments that our economy could make right now or that our government could make right now to long-term get the markets recovered? organization like AmeriCorps or creating a core of tracers to ensure that the apex, it's all about the slope or the apex of the relapse now in terms of our economy reopening and fall. That is the only metric, quite frankly, I think we should be focused on. So any investments around reducing the apex would be great ROI. The second thing is I believe if you tripled the budget of the DOJ and the FTC, that people like me who are Amazon and Apple shareholders would benefit greatly. Because I think these companies are worth more broken up than they

are as one. So the DOJ and the FTC have been emasculated. They also politically- Which was previous to this, previous to this. 100%. But that would be, those companies, it's like the IRS. For every buck you invest in the IRS, you get eight back, is the government. The DOJ and the FTC have now become underinvested, like an asset class that has been abandoned. And so any investment there is going to pay huge dividends. And every industry, and it's not just big tech, there's been a concentration of power among the biggest two or three companies, which is really unhealthy for the economy. So do you think it will happen? It's interesting that they're bringing it up. And of course, they're doing it on the face of lies.

But as we've talked about, this gives them a chance. This pandemic gives these companies a chance to be bigger and more powerful going forward. Is there going to be the political will to do that? Because again, they're going to want to turn to a lot of these companies, not just for donations and essential services like Amazon with delivery, Google with information, Google and Apple are making the contact tracing app. They want to be at cross-purposes with these companies right now.

If they're going to be the things that are going to be the engine of return. And if you want this kind of recovery, you may have to trade what they want, which is to get bigger. Yeah, you know, I'm hopeful that a lot of people take the attitude of, you know, this is the world we live in and my attitude is the world is what we make of it. And if we had the fortitude and the backbone

to break up the oil companies, the aluminum companies, we absolutely can break these guys up. And also coming out of this, I think some people are going to realize that it's dangerous to come out of a crisis with companies that are too big to fail. And we're coming out of this crisis with Amazon and admittedly, probably Walmart have now become too big to fail. And the reason why France can stick up the middle finger to Amazon and warehouse workers is it looks as if their supply

chain is more diverse than ours, and they're're not dependent and they don't have to be kind of obsequious to Amazon. Right, because they've been favoring smaller companies there always. Europeans do. And so, although in China, which had been favoring smaller companies, of course allowed their giant companies to get larger like Alibaba and others. But it's an interesting question. I don't think they have the will. I think Elizabeth Warren is incredibly articulate.

I think David Cicilline is also, but I don't know if they have. Senator Warner? Senator Warner. Senator Warren. Senator Warren. Elizabeth Warren. Warren and Warner. Yeah, they are, but I just don't know if they have, like, this is not what the public is going to be focusing on.

Like, let's break up Amazon. I think they've all gotten a pass here, which I don't know what to say. I think they've gotten a pass for at least a couple of years, which will allow them to get bigger and more. They may not be able to buy big things, but they can certainly go around the world like Facebook buying into things. But I think this is going to be not a time

where even if Elizabeth Warren says we need to break them up, that she's going to get a lot of traction buying into things. But I just think this is going to be not a time where even if Elizabeth Warren says we need to break them up, that she's going to get a lot of traction on these things. She's impressive. And I met with Senator Warner from Virginia, and he seemed pretty honest about it. Although his aides were just, when I said, you need identity, you need identity, you need antitrust, they were just rolling around. I was like, okay, if we can hire 11,000 legislators, it's because Google, Facebook, I mean, all of these companies have such armies of lobbyists now that they've been overrun. They're kind of outgunned. So it's going to take- I had a top Justice Department person tell me this exact same thing. Like, by the time we get to it, get our pants on and get it going, it's already, everything's changed

in the technology. And that's the fast rate of technology combined with their lobbying power, combined with now a need for companies to save America, I think is going to be, I just don't see Uncle Joe, if he gets in doing anything, and I don't think Trump will either. He just won't do anything, absolutely. Even if it's Amazon, although he's trying to mess around with the post office. But first, when we get back, we're going to keep talking about Amazon and go to the other side of the Atlantic, which you prefaced, around France.

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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. Okay, Scott, we're back. We're still talking about Amazon, but now we are doing it in French. Okay, French unions continue. That's my French accent in case you're interested.

French unions continue to win against Amazon in French courts. A French appeals court upheld a ruling from last week that forced Amazon to shut down its six fulfillment centers around France for a week and put 10,000 workers on paid furlough while the company addressed workers' safety concerns. The court said Amazon would be fined the equivalent of $108,000 for every delivery not meeting the requirement. of $108,000 for every delivery not meeting the requirement. In a tweet response to the court's decision, Amazon said it was perplexed by the decision, but they are, quote, currently assessing the implications for our sites as well as for our employees and customers in France. Amazon told French customers that their orders will be fulfilled by warehouses in Germany, Belgium, and other European countries.

Of course they did. So what is this? This is what you're just saying, that the French appeals court, I think they will not get these kind of rulings here in this country. What do you think of the French? You know, I would do anything to be in Paris right now. I would love to be in a sidewalk cafe smoking cloves in a beret with the cat. He's a good in a beret. Yeah.

He's a good in a beret. No, there's very thick few things I look at. And anything that generally covers up my face is an improvement. But there is like France, it all comes down to one thing. And that is we have a hierarchy in the United States. If you generally bucket our society or our populace into three groups, and that is workers, shareholders and consumers, the consumer reigns king here. Shareholders are a close to and workers are a distant number three. And the general, when you look at the difference between Europe and the U.S. in general, it's that the consumer is not number one there. And anyone who's ever tried to have their cable connected or get their check in a hurry in Paris realizes the consumer does not come first there.

And it's just an entirely different gestalt, if you will. You don't realize how spoiled you get as a consumer. You can be, as long as you have your seven, you know, or your four euro or your five bucks for your double cap, you know, latte, you are king for that moment. You can complain, you can be rude to the worker. You can get angry if it takes more than 90 seconds in line. We are a, people just don't realize how we have canonized saints or consumers in this country.

And the majority of Europe's just not like that. And so they would say, look, if you can't get your shit within 48 hours or your Nespresso pods have to be fulfilled out of Frankfurt, we're willing to live with that. And the unions are much more powerful there. And it brings up a really – a question, and I'll ask it to you. I don't understand in the U.S. why unions haven't taken more advantage of this situation because – Yeah, good question.

I don't understand why they haven't. Like there isn't a Jimmy Hoffa or a Cesar Chavez that has emerged that has said, look, it is time that people, we need, we're fed up with people calling us essential and then treating us like chumps and paying us nine bucks an hour. Yeah, I don't, people are saying the unions, this might give an opportunity for unions to get stronger. I haven't seen it. Have you seen it? No, no.

And in fact, I find them more less smart. You know what I mean? Like, they're more not savvy in terms of how they need to deal with it. What would be interesting, though, in Europe is if other European countries, which do have similar situations of France, I think France is probably among the

strongest of the unions, follow suit. If Amazon can't deliver from Belgium or, I mean, they'll find a way, as usual. Amazon always tries to find a way. Maybe they'll airdrop them by drones from the United States or something. But I don't know why our unions do not come back in a really smart and savvy way. I do think it's because the government is sort of stacked. Even if Donald Trump can't stand Jeff Bezos, he's on his side from a giant business point of view. And so is most of Congress. And so I don't think it's even more than the consumer.

It's that corporations come first and corporate interests come first and shareholder interests come first. And I don't, you know, I don't, there's no other countervailing force to that kind of stuff here in this country. I don't know. I just immediately go back to you and me on the Champs-Élysées and I look at you and I say, Cara, don't eat the French fish. It's poisson. And you roll your hands and you affectionately hold my hand.

We're not having romantic sojourn. It's not going to happen with you. Do you know Amanda speaks French? Let me just tell you. Listen to me. Amanda speaks French fluently. Fluently. Let's bring her. Fluently.

No, you're not coming. Yes, let's bring her and then leave you at home. Anyway, well, France, we had a lovely time right before the baby was born. I speak the language of all nations. I have an American Express black card. Oh, well, then you can come. Okay, well, France is mounting big fines for big tech. U.S. judge approved the parking ticket, $5 billion Facebook settlement with the FTC for privacy issues. The deal had been reached last summer. The fine amounts

to 7% of Mark Zuckerberg's net worth. The deal included tight restrictions on how Facebook treats user privacy. Both FTC and Facebook have been eager to get the deal pushed through, but advocates say the deal does not go far enough. The judge who approved the deal said it calls into question the adequacy of laws governing how technology companies that collect and monetize Americans' personal information must treat that information. The judge doesn't even like it, but the court had to defer to the FTC discretion for appropriate punishment. Now, in a statement, Facebook said the decision, quote, brings new levels of accountability and ensures the privacy is everyone's responsibility at Facebook. That's one of your favorite lies right there. Why did they need to wait for the FTC settlement to start implementing better privacy protection

is a good question. And what would be enough to hold Facebook accountable here? They're starting a privacy oversight board, and that's very soon. I think they're naming members to it still. What do you think has happened here? I think they got away with it. That's my, again, But still, what do you think has happened here? I think they got away with it. That's my, again, bad word. Well, yesterday, my youngest took a Nerf gun. We'd given him and went up short range and shot us. Why did you give someone a Nerf gun in a pandemic?

But go ahead, move on. Oh, we'll do anything to just get them away from us right now. Anything. Yeah, I'd give him a Glock if he'd go outside with it. No, no, no. Anyways, so anyways, he decided to take this thing and immediately go over, load it up, admire it, and then go over to his older brother and shoot him at close range in the face.

And this is tantamount to if I'd said, okay, here's your iPad, play six hours of Minecraft in exchange for shooting your brother in the face. And that is, it's not going to motivate the right behaviors. And when you charge Facebook 11 weeks of cashflow or 11 days of top line revenue, in exchange for shooting your brother in the face. And that is, it's not going to motivate the right behaviors. And when you charge Facebook 11 weeks of cashflow or 11 days of top line revenue for letting their platform be weaponized

or disregarding the Commonwealth, all you're saying to big tech is go shoot your brother in the face. And the opportunity here, this judge had such a big opportunity because my understanding is that judges, they don't have. Discretion, right? Discretion. They don't have the ability to overturn the punishment, but they have the ability to put the brakes on and say, I'm uncomfortable with this.

Right. It needs to be. It needs to be. If you if if, you know, if someone kills somebody and they get two years in prison, the judge has the right to say, no, I don't, I'm not comfortable with this sentencing. And also on the other side, if they think that they, you're right, they have discretion. This judge, the opportunity here, and the absolute best thing that could have happened for, I think, for the Commonwealth as it relates to Facebook would have been if they'd fined them 50 billion, because you don't want to put them out of business. It is an economic engine. It is a ton of innovation. It's an interesting company. Well, they couldn't do that now, again, the pandemic cover. They have, I think, $53 billion in cash. They wouldn't even,

I mean, this is what would happen. The company the next day would be the same company, except all of big tech, every CEO would have gotten in a room and said, okay, shit just got real. This might actually impact whether I can get a Gulfstream 650 or a Bombardier Global Express. So we got to really look at this. Instead, it's just become, okay, give some more money to the lawyers, keep the delay and obfuscation engine humming on all 12,000 cylinders. This was absolutely the worst thing ever because it gave them the sense that we can pay, we can absolutely buy our way out of anything, anything. So the judge, I think the judge must have the opportunity.

But why did the judge do anything? Why do these judges defer? I don't know enough about the legal system. I guess it's because there's laws and they have to respect the FTC. What do you think? I don't know. I think they can. They can do anything they want. I think they have to respect the FTC. What do you think? I don't know. I think they can.

They can do anything they want. I think they can absolutely do anything they want. And I don't, I don't, I just, I think this fine, if even if he had doubled it or tripled it, it would have made a big difference. But it's just, it just, it doesn't send any kind of signal. And I know people in the FTC felt, they felt like they couldn't,

because they didn't have the legal firepower, fight it. That was what you hear from inside when they're being deadly. A couple of them were public about it, the Democratic ones. The others were much more like, well, this is the best we can do. We figured it out. And I'm sure that probably was the feeling when they did sort of the risk analysis of doing this, is we can't fight them in court. We can't't win but i can't believe this judge couldn't do something about it say you know what this is crap because he of course then he goes out of the way to make a statement about it but then doesn't put any you know nerf gun behind it essentially um he doesn't say no i calls it a question therefore i'm tripling the fine and they can take me to court you know what i mean huge missed opportunity i don't but again

it might be this atmosphere it might be that nobody wants to i think you're going to see a lot of these signs is them slipping out of one thing after the next and and they aren't gonna i i don't know it's the it's the money that holds them accountable shame doesn't do it you know the these things they always have an excuse for why the privacy protections weren't better and money doesn't there's not enough money i mean i guess maybe just is money the only thing You know, these things, they always have an excuse for why the privacy protections weren't better. And money doesn't, there's not enough money. I mean, I guess maybe just, is money the only thing that would hold them accountable? Or do you have anything else, any other idea from the court of pivot that you could do? Well, I'm curious to hear your idea, but you know my go-to, and my go-to is antitrust.

Antitrust, right. But you see, does that really create, does that stop them? Like, where's the antitrust argument here? Is that they aren't going to be private because they're too big a company, and so if you break them up, each individual company would care more. YouTube is radicalizing young men and doesn't put in place the requisite investment to ensure they aren't because they have no incentive to because they're the only game in town. And when the largest search engine in the world and the largest video search engine in the world are And when the largest search engine in the world and the largest video search engine in the world are coordinating and cooperating as opposed to competing, you have few options for advertisers.

And as a result, they have to invest in platforms or advertise on platforms that destroy the commonwealth, create teen depression. So if the FTC said, okay, I'm sorry, Google, you have to spend YouTube. And the first corporate strategy meeting of YouTube, they say, I know, let's get into text-based search. And in the first corporate strategy of a Google without YouTube, they go, let's get into video search. And overnight, you have two competitors. And one of those competitors, in an effort to capture more dollars from P&G, goes, here's an idea.

Let's put in place a requisite investment such that we don't radicalize. Except they're the same people. They're the same people who used to work for each other. Yeah, but they have different incentives now. Now they look at the guy next to them and they're the enemy because every dollar you make is a dollar less I have to be king of the world. Look, I generally think that these people... Competition. Yeah, competition. And also, we live in a capitalist society and for every additional dollar you have, you become more

noble, your kids get more opportunity, you get a greater selection set of mates, you have better healthcare. So that there's no... And we keep... it's amazing, we keep inventing reasons why it is better to have 3 billion than 2 billion. I remember when I was in, the first time I went to Hungary in like 1987 and I got this pile for 100 euros or not 100 euros, 100 Deutschmarks at the time, it was pre-euro. I got this pile of currency and i thought oh i'm rich going to hungary and there was nothing to buy there was no reason to be rich there was literally nothing to buy and the amazing thing about america is okay there's premium economy and then there's economy plus and then there's business class and then there's flying private then there's

jet smarter then there's fractional ownership then there's having your own plane then there's having a cesna then a bombardier then speaking of France, a Dassault Falcon 2000 LXS. Not that I think about it every day. I don't think about it at all. Our economy. Why do you think about flying right now? Oh, I forgot about flying. Oh, do you understand?

I'm an interesting guy, but with a Falcon 2000 LXS, I'm fucking fascinating. It's never going to happen. With me in a private jet, I'm fascinating. It's never going to happen. You think it's going to happen? Everyone's like, oh, he's so interesting. The only way you're getting on a private jet is with me and one of my billionaire me in a private jet, I'm fascinating. It's never going to happen. You think it's going to happen? Oh, he's so interesting. The only way you're getting on a private jet is with me and one of my billionaire friends, but go ahead. I'm in, literally. I go from awkward looking to sexy, literally, with a jet. A jet is such a good

accoutrement on me. Can I just, I'm going to take it aside here. The people I cover, they're not, a few are my friends, but most of them are not in any way my friends. So I'm not going to get you on the jet. But it's interesting. They either really want to meet you or they really think you're an asshole. It's really interesting. Well, you know the answer. The answer is yes.

The answer is yes. Come meet the asshole. They hate you. They like hate you. They don't hate you in the Anand Girgados way. They're just like that guy. Because I think you get at them in some way. Like, they can dismiss Anand, oh, he's a communist or something like that,

whatever their ridiculous arguments about him are. But you get under their skin. Like, the ones that dislike you really dislike you. And the others really want to spend time with you in their jets, I guess. I don't know. I like that. I'll just make, anyway, back to Facebook. Listen, we're going to have someone on as a friend of Pivot who can address this issue in a second.

But let's just agree, the fine was meager. And the judge was the only way this was going to happen in this instance that it was going to be like, no, this shall not stand. And it did not happen. Right. So that's going to be that. And they're going to get off. And in five years or 10 years, just like they did this time, they're going to come back and they're going to have done it again. And the money they made in the interim will be so massive that it won't have mattered that they violated people's privacy again.

Would you agree with me? It goes back to the same point, Cara. When it's raining money outside, it's easy for your vision to be blurred. When it's raining money outside, it's easy for your vision to be blurred. And I don't, like, I think Mark Zuckerberg is, as anyone, or it'd be easy for a guy, if you drop out of school at 19 and you become kind of this mini Jesus Christ of our economy. And, you know, it's easy to see how, I don't know if you saw the WeWork documentary on Showtime last night. No. But with young men especially, when people tell you you're Jesus Christ in your 20s or 30s, you're inclined to believe them.

And it's the reason, again, we pay 23 cents. They're not screwing up. We are. And the fact that we haven't been able to elect people that have the backbone to do what every other leader has done in the past and break up companies when they become more powerful. And it's not just economy. It's not just money. when they become more powerful. And it's not just economy. It's not just money.

The world heads to very dark places when private power is co-ops government instead of government being a countervailing force. It just leads to very, very ugly, dark places. And I find it heartening. I really do. I was encouraged because like you, I thought they were gonna use this pandemic as cloud cover to come out stronger

and not that more immune from antitrust. And the fact that the government and our elected officials, led by Elizabeth Warren, who I just think is so... Oh, she's so boss. Yeah, she's just... I heard she's back in the running again. She really is the thought leader of the Democratic Party. Scott, speaking of privacy, because I'd like to have the exact right person here to you to ask questions of, we have the ultimate friend of Pivot expert on the topic with us, Alex Stamos.

He is the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory at Stanford University. He is also the former chief security officer at Facebook. You now are working for Zoom, right? Correct? What are you doing precisely? Yeah, so when Zoom started having some big public security issues, I tweeted about it, about this being a need for Zoom to focus on a security turnaround. And I got a call from the CEO. Actually, he got my phone number.

Eric Yu. And so now I'm consulting with him on the kind of structure of their security team and the kinds of projects they need to be taking on and helping them staff up to meet the needs that they have of, you know, going from 10 million to 300 million users in a very short period of time. All right. So why did they go with you? I mean, is it just like getting like trying to cover? I don't mean to be rude, but you're like a guy, people are like, oh, trusted guy. So now

they're really serious. How did you, what was your, were there any strictures you put in place? Like if you don't do this, I'm cover for you. I'm coming at you afterwards. Or was there any deal? Nothing like that. I mean, the reason I took it was, we had this initial phone conversation for something like an hour. And I sent him this big email of all the things

I think they should consider. And then the next day he announced that he was implementing a bunch of those. So he was, the fact that within 24 hours he was taking my advice. Working with CEOs that care that much about fixing security problems, that's actually somewhat of a unique position for me.

They usually ignore you, right? That's an oversimplification. It's hard being a CISO. It's a really rough job because you're the highest up person in the company whose entire job it is to be a Cassandra, right? To go around and say, oh my God, here's the risks that we're taking on. And then to try to push. You're the ultimate cost earner.

Yeah, right. You're complete. You're all L. You're no P. And it's a critical job, but it's also not a very liked one. So, Alex, I have a question. We talk so much about Facebook. And to a certain extent, we're sort of heckling from

the cheap seats. You were at the company and you've had a chance to be at different companies before and after and at great companies. Can you try and distill what is unique about the Facebook culture and if and why that culture has led to them maybe getting in more trouble than the majority of tech companies? Yeah. That's a leading question, so you can disagree with the premise. I know, and it's the backdrop of the settlement being approved by the court. And the court sort of slapped them on the way out but still allowed them to get away with that settlement. Yeah.

Okay, so I have some opinions on the settlement. I think the FCC is actually aiming totally at the wrong, if they want to punish Facebook, they went the wrong direction. But to Scott's issue, Scott's question, excuse me. Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg, right? So I think to a much greater extent than almost any other large tech company, it is still a founder-led company. And so as a result, it can move rather quickly

when he really wants to do something, right? As you know, Scott, business is all about kind to do something, right? As you know, Scott, business is all about organized capital, right? It's about the ability for people to do lots of things together in a coordinated fashion and to apply their resources very, very quickly if you want to be successful. And Facebook can do that because Mark is the center of everything. The flip side is, something that was really interesting when I got there, is it's actually a shockingly small C conservative company.

And that the people at the top, when I got there at least, the people at the top had not changed for eight, nine years, right? It was this... Yeah, and they thought it was great. They celebrated it, right? And they had been through, when many of these executives had joined, they were part of the adult supervision that Mark had brought. Sheryl Sandberg, Mike Schrepp, Jay Parikh, a bunch of folks in product. These were the adult supervision of Mark bringing on,

I need help to build this company. And they went through round and round of people saying that they're going to fail. They went through people saying, oh, this thing's so stupid. Oh, you'll never monetize. They had this bad IPO. MySpace will crush you.

Right, MySpace will crush you. Google Plus will crush you. You'll never figure out a way to make money on mobile. And so every one of these times. You overpaid for Instagram. Yeah, buying Instagram's a bad idea. This is what Mark was told, and this group of people went and they succeeded. And the result is, I think there's a little bit of,

you know, like Napoleon won all his battles and still he started losing, right? You end up with a situation where if the same group of people is successful, they look back at their decisions and it's hard for them to separate out the decisions that were actually critical to success and the decisions that weren't.

And then what are things that are no longer relevant. And I think that was, for a while, a core problem at Facebook, which is there's this real, again, small-c conservatism, this looking at the past, and, oh, the company was so much better back then. It was a smaller company, and it was great, and we made all these right decisions. And so as a result, the circle of people around Zuck is very, very

stated and it's fixed. And it's very hard to get those people to kind of re-question the decisions they made. And if you look at the issues that I was involved in around safety and security and misuse of the product, most of the decisions that were made in 2009, 2010, 2011 were fine at the time, when Facebook was like this fun thing that you played Zynga games on and that you super poked people and stuff like that, right? But those decisions were no longer relevant in 2015 by the time it had become the world's most important media platform.

And it's very hard to get people to revisit decisions that they have personally made, even if the situation has changed. And I think that's one of the core problems. Therefore, it's up to the government. And so when they have these fines, what happens when they hear a fine like that? Do they go, oh, we deserve that? Or do they know in their hearts that they got off cheap?

Well, so if we're going to talk about the FTC fine, I specifically, this FTC, so one, like, I mean, yes, $5 billion is not a big deal for Facebook. But the key thing there is the consent decree, right? It's not about the fine, it's about what are you legally obligated to do from here on out. And this is where I think the FTC made a big mistake,

which is, effectively, the rules that the FTC have put in place are that Facebook can no longer build APIs that allow people to get to data. It's all based upon the Cambridge Analytica scandal. So I'm going to say something that I think you guys are going to be angry at, but I absolutely think it's true, and I think it really goes to the root of the misregulation here,

which is the Cambridge Analytica scandal is the most overblown, most media-centric fake scandal in the world. If you look at privacy issues that have ever happened, it is not impactful at all on people's lives, and it obscures a core fact, which the core problem here is that Facebook is incredibly powerful and owns people's social graph. And Cambridge Analytica came out of the fact that for a short period of time, Facebook allowed other people to build on their social graph.

There's lots of interesting and difficult security issues there. I don't think they made the right decisions. That was all fixed. That all happened before I got there. They did that to get as big as they are. They did that for a reason. No, and that's not true. This is the funny thing.

I love that he disagrees with you. I love it, Alex. Go. Tell her why she's wrong. What I'm saying is they allowed the third party that he disagrees with you. I love it, Alex. Go. Tell her why she's wrong. Tell her why she's wrong. No, but what I'm saying is they allowed the third party in order to build the company into a larger entity. It was part of, there's really, and this is what you go back, like, I know you're probably not a big

Antonio fan, but he... I am. So he wrote a book about this. Again, these decisions were made before my time, and Cambridge Analytica was fixed before my time, so I can't take credit either for the mistake or for the fix. But he talks about the fact that when Facebook was trying to figure out how to make money, there were two directions they could go.

And one was to become a platform, which would have made them equivalent to the mobile platforms. So one way is like, okay, we want to be like Apple or Google. We want to allow tons of commerce, and we'll take a percentage off the top. The other was, oh, well, that's crazy. Let's just take all this data, hold onto it, and sell ads against it. And in the long run, let's be a data monopolist

and sell ads against the data that we have was the decision that made the most money for Facebook. But they didn't kill the old API because they were making something and such. And so it was basically running these two businesses. And so it wasn't a big deal to close the API they allowed for Cambridge Analytica, because at that point, they were making all the revenue from ads. And so back to the FTC consent decree.

Effectively, the FTC consent decree is telling Facebook, you are never, ever, ever allowed again to create any API that allows somebody to compete with you on the social graph. You don't have to be in a business you don't want to be in anyway, is what you're saying, essentially. It's a get-out-of-jail-free letter. The real risk to Facebook is competition. It's not regulation. One of the big motivations of Mark at all times is he does not want to become MySpace.

He is always looking over his shoulder at who the competitor is coming up from behind. And that's, of all the things he's good at, that is the thing that he is best at. So therefore, and I want to get to a couple more questions, but therefore, we were just talking about this, is breakup the way to do that? Or how do you push more competition into the marketplace?

Should Facebook be broken up? Yeah, I mean, I think it is too big as a structure. I mean, I think you could definitely argue to break up WhatsApp and Instagram from Facebook, right? Which they're going very hard the other direction. I mean, it would be tough. It would not be easy. I've spoken to some government regulators who have asked me, well, how would you do that? And especially Instagram, like pulling Instagram out of Facebook.

And they've more integrated it more and more over time. It's like breaking up AT&T, right? When Instagram was bought, it was tiny. What Instagram is now is not anything like when Mark bought it. But I think that is one thing you could do. The flip side is each one of those networks is still a humongous network. And now they've got this FTC letter that basically says, well, you don't have to then share your data with other companies, which I think makes it a lot harder to compete with them. Do you think if Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are three separate

companies, and by the way, all the companies, all the baby bells that spawned from the breakup of AT&T ended up being worth substantially more than the core AT&T. So my question is, put your shareholder hat on. They break it up into the core platform, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Do you think shareholders are better off in five years or worse off? Talk about it purely as a capitalist.

Yeah, I mean, purely as a capitalist, I think it is probably better. But the funny thing there is that the baby bells are all popped back together, right? Like we've got Verizon and AT&T. Yeah, it's re-aggregating. Yeah, my grandfather worked for AT&T, then he worked for

Pacific Bell, then he worked for SBC, and then he worked for AT&T again, then retired, right? But those 30 years, just to be fair, those 30 years unleashed tremendous shareholder value and innovation, right? That's true. And that's where, you know, perhaps things like a competitive mobile environment and such existed because AT&T had been broken up. I mean, Facebook is not as powerful as AT&T. That's one thing, right? Like, AT&T owed in the actual wires. Facebook is still competing for, you know, they are always, always looking over their shoulder

at companies like Apple and Google that control the equivalent to the wires, right, of the real underlying systems upon which the value is built. It's interesting you say that, though, because I would push back on that and say that AT&T couldn't nudge people into voting one way or another. I mean, it could shut down the infrastructure, but it couldn't start creating algorithms that might go to the highest bidder and enter into these unholy alliances with certain political leanings or ideologies because

they find that those ideologies, whether it's anti-vax or white nationalism, result in more shareholder value. That AT&T, even if it decided one political ideology was more beneficial than the other, they couldn't nudge them. A big media company, in my view, is more powerful than a big telco. But you see AT&T as having been more powerful? I guess I'm just... So let me put out a premise. I think Facebook is the most powerful and the most dangerous organization, private company in the world.

Tell me where I'm right and wrong in that statement. I'm comparing it to AT&T from an actual monopoly perspective. The number of companies that Facebook can squash is actually quite small, whereas AT&T in 1975 could have cut off the opportunity company right um yeah but from an influence perspective yes i mean you know one of the metaphors i used with my

team internally when i when we talked about like why this was important is i said i don't think there's been a organization since uh you know honestly the either the the catholic church the christian church breaking into the catholic and Orthodox churches, or the Protestant Reformation, you know, they invented the printing press. Since then, there hasn't been an organization that has controlled so much speech and information that's going to so many people since the church, right? Since, you know, Gutenberg broke the monopoly of the Catholic Church. And that is an incredible power. But to push back a little bit, often I listen to you guys every week, you guys are generally pushing for them

to use that power more. Like the complaint that most people in the media have about Facebook is that it doesn't use that power to control speech and censor it enough. And I think we are now seeing this fascinating flip where because of coronavirus, Facebook is being much more aggressive about doing things like deciding what is legitimate truth.

And we're about to see what happens when the company's activated like that. Sorry, we have to wrap up soon, but let's talk about, now Zoom, there's a series of these privacy issues and you agreed to do this. What are the critical issues? And I know, and I don't want to hear like,

they didn't know this would happen. It's happened and here we are. So what are the lessons you're taking from your time at Facebook to Zoom? Cooperative is one thing, that's great. But what are the key issues regular consumers need to understand about using this platform? Because it's only being used more and more and more. Right. So Zoom really has two totally different classes of issues.

The first are the classic security issues. And they just did not properly invest in this area, which is that that's where you have the problems around cryptography and bugs in the software that people can exploit and stuff. That area is about hiring the right people, investing the right amount, getting stuff fixed. And that is something I'm helping advise on,

but it's honestly, that's something that a lot of companies have done. And the equivalent here is really the Microsoft turnaround from 2002 to 2007, which I got to see as a consultant, is they need to do the same kind of thing, except they don't have five years. They've got to do it in three months, four months. The other class of issues is the really interesting one, which is because of coronavirus, people went from using this as an enterprise video conferencing bridge to becoming a core part of their lives in a way that it was never designed, right? Right, whether it's cocktail parties or school or yoga. All kinds of use cases.

Yeah. And those use cases, the really interesting part is in many cases you're inviting strangers in. And so this is where I think my experience at Facebook is relevant in that a lot of Facebook safety issues are about the fact that strangers are able to find each other and to interact in ways that are sometimes harmful. And so in that area, they have to figure out how do you, you know, they have to build the same kind of capability you have at a YouTube or a Facebook or Twitter, right? Which is the trust and safety side, which is the people who make the rules about behavior and then enforce those rules. But then they have to balance that against the privacy concerns of large enterprises, right? Like they cannot regulate the Zoom network in the same way Facebook did, because it's an

enterprise company. The big banks that use Zoom are not going to be okay with them watching all the chats and watching all the videos and such. We have to try to find out, one, tooling that empowers hosts to make sure only the right people are in, and then if people do bad things, that they are punished. But then second, try to do detection of people who are using it in really harmful ways. And so there's a bunch of work that has to happen there, and we're actually going to have some announcements

pretty soon of what's going on there. So Alex, you're blessed. You're a mix of talent, good luck, whatever it is. Your problem professionally is not what to do, it's what not to do. Five, ten years out, what is your dream job? What does Alex Stamos want to be doing? That's a good question.

So I'm not sure I'm lucky. I just keep on taking jobs where there's significant security problems. I have to jump on it. Oh, trust me, brother. Anyone on this call is very lucky. Yeah, that's true. We are all pretty lucky. Yeah, it's weird because our profession is really new.

There's very few people I can look up to. There's no 65-year-olds where I'm like, oh, wow, that's a person who really had a great security career. But you want to stay in this career. You don't want to run for office. You don't want to start a family office. You don't want to go to nonprofits. This is what you want to be doing.

So at Stanford, I'm loving teaching. I'm actually around my kids. Being with the students is great, and it's helping me bend the curve. I'm writing a book on a bunch of this stuff. We have this new class, Trust and Safety Engineering, and so we're writing a textbook that goes with it. And so that can help me bend the curve, right?

So we can no longer graduate Stanford CS students who have no idea that any of this stuff happens when they build products. Maybe I'll do some work in the government, but not elected. There's some really hardworking people in the Trump administration who are effectively holding things together with duct tape and bailing wire. And, you know, I'm not even going to name their names because in some cases they're effectively hiding from the White House because they're doing things like trying to keep the election secure. And I think our country's in such a bad place. That's heartening. That's heartening.

It's heartening. It's also scary when you think of it. Because normally the White House plays this really important role in the executive branch of making sure everybody's going in the same direction. And now effectively there is a set of people

at the undersecretary level, at the assistant director level, at a bunch of agencies who without the White House knowing are working together to try to make things better. And that's, you know, the government is in such a bad place now, especially on cyber. We were already in a bad place during the Obama administration, but we have really lost the thread while countries like,

especially the People's Republic of China, but also the Russians, the Vietnamese, India, like there's a lot of countries that are now using cyber, offensive cyber as a big part of their growth strategy. And the U.S. has lost ground while everybody else is gaining ground. And so maybe doing some government work eventually if the right position brings itself. Well, you came to the right place.

If you're looking to be an academic who writes books or you want to know someone whose ex-wife is the chief technology officer of the United States, everyone's on the line here. We're here for you. I didn't know this was a job interview. What should people do on Zoom to make sure they're feeling safe? Three things, and then we'll get going. When I tell people about Zoom, the thing you've got to think about

is you've got to think about what's the metaphor you're trying to replicate when you configure the product. You can use it for the equivalent of a super private conversation between a couple of people in a physical office where you don't just invite strangers into your office. You can also use it for webinars, like a concert for 50,000 people. And so make sure to set your settings as paranoid as possible for what you're doing. So having invite only, make sure to set a password. Don't use the personal meeting link unless you absolutely have to. There's people who are setting meeting IDs and then using them over

and over again, then people can get in. Turn on the waiting room feature. And then once your event starts and you've got all the people there, go and lock the room or turn waiting room on if it wasn't so people can't pop in. But the key thing is just be careful about who can get access to those invites. And if you're doing something like, I'm going to throw this out on Twitter, then you should be turning off people's cameras,

turning off the share screen, and then inviting people up. Or use the webinar feature. So you can set up a Zoom webinar instead of a meeting. I think that's where a lot of the really public events have been. The dumb mistakes. So they have to be more. It's not dumb. I think that's where a lot of the really public events have been. The dumb mistakes. So they have to be more. It's not dumb. I mean, again, Zoom didn't make this super easy, right?

It's an enterprise product. And so enterprise IT teams love fiddly bits. They love to have these admin interfaces that have 55 little. Fiddly bits, is that a technical term? That's exactly a technical term, yeah. That's what we call those UX. They love to hit the little buttons. And that's not what Mrs. Smith needs

when she teaches her 10th grade class. And that's not what Mrs. Smith needs when she teaches her 10th grade class. And it's not what you or Casey needs if you're going to run a discussion with strangers. And so that's one of the things they're trying to work on is to make it easy to click a button and get all those settings. But for now, you've got to go through and just make sure to turn on all the security features.

Waiting room, super important. Invite only, super important. And to be careful who you send your link to. All right, but they should make these easier too if they're going to now become this. And it should also be, should they charge? Well, so this is one of the funny things here is that Eric basically did this to himself

by making the free accounts for education and getting rid of their limitations, right? So you end up with that. I mean, to me, the really, the stuff as a parent, the stuff that I really don't like to see is that the kids being

disrupted and people going in and showing naked pictures or yelling cuss words. I was porn bomb. I was porn bomb. Yeah. Well, I don't mind about you so much, but I'm talking about for you.

You say that like, it's a bad thing. You say that like, it's a bad thing. This is why I like you and I hate you at the same time. It's perfect. It's a perfect relate. No, I like, I think Alex is great.

Alex, we really appreciate being here. We could talk to you for hours. Thank you, Alex. It's really helpful. Keep, fix the Zoom so the kids can be safe. All right. Yeah, we're going. All right.

I appreciate it. Thanks for being here. Yeah. Thanks, Scott. All right, Kara. Break time. We'll be right back with wins and fails. All right, Cara, break time.

We'll be right back with wins and fails. Support for this podcast comes from Anthropic. You already know that AI is transforming the world around us, but lost in all the enthusiasm and excitement is a really important question. How can AI actually work for you? And where should you even start? Claude from Anthropic may be the answer. Claude is a next-generation AI assistant built to help you work more efficiently without sacrificing safety or reliability. Anthropic's latest model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, can help you organize thoughts,

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their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their next great idea? Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Okay, Scott, how's that? That's my next co-host. He's so smart. Professor Stamets.

He's very good. He's really good. You know what? He pushes back on reporters. Unlike the Facebook people, he pushes back intelligently and tells them and tries to be educational and decent. And the other ones are like, how dare you say that to me? Like, he has never been like that. others there because they weren't taking the email hacking seriously enough that was going on. And he was, you know, he left there over that. He sort of stalks out angrily. Anyway, we're going to get back to wins and fails. Obviously, Alex is a win. But what are your wins and fails? I'll start with my fail. I think Zoom's stock is going to get cut in half in the next 180 days.

On Friday, it breached the value of Airbus. So Zoom, a video conferencing technology, now has a greater market capitalization than the second largest manufacturer of commercial airliners. And I think that, by the way, if they go to $23 billion instead of $45, it's still an incredible win. But the stock's gotten ahead of itself because there's a pretty large cohort of investors who are all trying to figure out, by the way, we said this stock was going to go up when it was at 100. But what I'm saying now, and it's dangerous to be a trader, I think this thing at 160 bucks is overvalued. One, because it's inspired just a massive number of competitors. I've gotten calls just in the last seven days from VCs who've asked me to help them

evaluate video conferencing competitors. We're using Squadcast instead of Zoom. You're going to see competitors around education, different verticals, different concerts. Zoom doesn't scale that well beyond 1,000 people. There's going to be ultra-secure versions of Zoom. So basically, they've inspired a ton of competition, including who announced last week a Zoom competitor, Cara? I'll give you a hint.

Alex Stamos worked there. Facebook, yes. Facebook, of course, because they couldn't think of themselves. But also, there's tons of people doing this. There's Microsoft. There's other. Google, obviously. Cisco has WebEx.

Everyone's going to double down. That said, nobody has, nobody's got sort of the, this has been the biggest consumer marketing event for a company. Well, I think it's going to be acquired. That would be my guess. That would be, you know what, there's only a handful of companies. Yeah, but there's only a handful of companies. At $45 billion, that means you have to pay $60 to $70 billion to acquire it. Right. It's going to go down, and then someone's going to buy it.

Once it goes down, you think it'll be acquired. Well, it's sort of like there's two companies, Slack and Zoom, that have sort of outrun, even though they're struggling comparatively, they've outrun them in terms of consumer liking them, liking the product. So that's your fail. What's your win? So my win is I spent a lot of time last week and thinking about there's I think there's a bunch of moons lining up. And that is this is going to be the mother of all gap years across America and probably across Europe, too, as people recognize that sixty eight thousand dollars tuition at a university is hard as a jagged little pill to swallow that's been washed down by certification and a four-year experience. And when that four-year experience turns into a bunch of shitty Zoom calls, a lot of people,

and I'm getting a lot of these calls, are going to decide, them and their parents are going to decide that they should take a gap year. And my win, if you will, is the Latter-day Saints mission program, the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps that take young people and help them serve in the agency of others. And I always say greatness is in the agency of others that help them at a young age, develop grit, work hard. You know, the missionaries, I love missionaries. They work six days a week, 12 hours a day, focused on something bigger than themselves. I think the Peace Corps is a wonderful thing. AmeriCorps is fantastic. And I think there's a huge opportunity given that the key to our economy moving forward and our society's superpower, America's superpower,

and that is maintaining our optimism is all about now the apex of the relapse. And the key to flattening that curve, if you will, is simple algebra. It's testing, tracing, and then isolation. And it looks to me like the weak point in that now is tracing. We only have 2,500 tracers around the United States, which are mostly focused on foodborne illnesses and STDs. And I think there's an opportunity to take all those gap year 18-year-olds and put them to work in what I would call some sort of AmeriCorps-like army of people to trace and using handheld technology, ask them to work exceptionally hard and give them the opportunity to serve in the agency of something greater. And what would you

have? You know, young people, we send 19-year-olds to the front lines in Kandahar and all sorts of hotspots around the world. They're not immune to bullets, but to a certain extent, this army of super soldiers would be immune to this virus. And I don't want to, I'm not an epidemiologist, so I'll only report what I've read, but my understanding is the mortality rates and the severity of the disease is much lower among people who are under the age of 25, that this is in fact an ageist disease. So the idea of tracing an army of tracers and giving them the opportunity to go to work and do something bigger than themselves. Because part of the reason we have such fantastic leadership and legislation and bipartisan cooperation in the 50s and 60s is that the majority of our elected leaders had served in uniform. And they felt they were all there.

And the agency of something bigger than their party. I agree. That is important. We need to reestablish that sense of empathy and cooperation. I think we need a massive effort. I agree. That is important. of college for a lot of middle-class kids. And we might emerge or generate a series of, a generation of leaders that understand the importance of cooperation. Wow, that would be like a great program if our leaders had the ability to do that. Well, here's the thing, do the math.

I've figured the math, 500,000 people, 30,000 bucks for two years, 25 to 100% off their tuition. That costs $50 billion. And the way to think of it is it's a 2% insurance policy on the $2.5 trillion stimulus to ensure we don't have to pay it again. So I'm really trying to promote this idea of a volunteer corps of young people that take advantage of the insufficient education we're

going to have for the next 12 to 24 months at the university level and an opportunity to establish a generation of people who are more cooperative and think bigger than themselves. So anyways, my winners are AmeriCorps, the missionaries the Latter-day Saints, or the Peace Corps. By the way, Peace Corps, including the wrestler China and Reed Hastings from Netflix. Both Peace Corps volunteers. I like that. And I wanted to be in the military, just so you know. It was not allowed because of the gay thing.

But let me tell you, my win and fail, same thing. Clorox. Clorox, go on. Disinfectant. I love disinfectant. Thank you, Clorox and Lox disinfectant i love disinfectant thank you clorox and lysol and all i got a straw my bottle of clorox because i heard what the president said thank you for them for saying that the fact that they had to say it is appalling and obviously the fail is the ridiculous and then pretending they didn't mean it this is just this administration is out of frigging control out of that is just like I know we say that all the time, but drink disinfectant.

No, inject it. And then I was kidding? Like, what? I was being sarcastic, obviously. Let me just tell you, he's crazy enough, but the right-wing media that has continued to back this stuff is literally, I just don't even know what to think. Breitbart had a story that was so appalling right afterwards. Fact, you know, he didn't say that. I was like, he did. And then when he, then he, then he turned on them, both his press secretary defended him.

And then, then he said, no, I was kidding. And then she, she looked, she, he hung her out to drive. Like the, the amount of people he throws under buses on a daily basis because of his lunacy is really quite amazing. But they deserve it. A bunch of Hannity viewers want to take the ultimate Tide Pod challenge. I just think that's natural selection in Darwin. All right. Go for it, guys. All right.

Okay. Nonetheless, thank you, Clorox, for putting out a statement that people shouldn't drink you. Good idea. I appreciate that. Speaking of marketing, we didn't intentionally want you to take our Clorox, for putting out a statement that people shouldn't drink you. Good idea. I appreciate that. Speaking of marketing, we didn't intentionally want you to take our Clorox. Anyway, I appreciate it from them, and I can't believe I appreciate that statement. Anyway, Scott, what's on tap for you the rest of this week? We're going to have a lot to talk.

It's going to be a busy week, I think. Busy week. I got a lot going on. I'm filming my first TV show, premiering on Vice, May the 7th. Yes, we got to get you on the podcast to talk about it. That's right. And, you know, just, you know, everything's kind of blended. There isn't really a next week.

Everything is just sort of blending. What are you up to? Your life's much more interesting. I have an interview with Joe Walsh. I've got an interview with- Who's Joe Walsh? The singer? He ran for, no, he ran for president.

You know, the one he used to be really conservative and then he became not as conservative. He ran against Trump. Oh, the guy who loved Trump and now hates him? Yes, that guy. I'm going to talk to him. That guy's such a little bitch. Ask him how he became such a bitch.

Okay, I'll tell him. That's exactly how I'll ask him. It's shocking that people don't like me, isn't it? Isn't it shocking? I know, I know. And then I'm interviewing Ryan Murphy. Who's that? He's the Canadian actor?

No, I'd love to interview Ryan Reynolds. And Jill Walsh saying you can leave your hat on, right? I've got that right. Listen to me. Ryan Murphy created Glee. He created American Horror Story. That guy's a genius. He does a new series called Hollywood, which looks fantastic.

He's a really great creator of TV shows. He did that big deal with Netflix. Shonda Rhimes did one, and he did one, Ryan Murphy. And he actually claimed to fame. He and I were interns together at the Washington Post. And so we hung out like one summer all together. He's an amazingly interesting guy. So he is now sort of one of the most premier producers in Hollywood.

So we're going to talk about all that stuff and what it's like to be at Netflix and stuff like that. That sounds good. It's going to be fun. I will bring back stories for you. Anyway, don't forget, if you have a story you're curious about and want to hear our opinion on, email us at pivot at voxmedia.com to be featured on the show. Scott, please read us out. Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Our executive producer is Erica Anderson. Special thanks to Rebecca Castro and Drew Burrows.

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