Pivot - Biden Wins the Debt Deal, and AI Extinction

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

Elizabeth Holmes goes to prison, the Sackler family escapes liability, and Twitter's valuation drops even lower. Also, Congress votes to raise the debt ceiling, but did Speaker McCarthy get floored? Leading AI scientists and entrepreneurs warn of possible extinction. Kara and Scott weigh the odds. Send us your questions! Call 855-51-PIVOT or go to nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

So once every couple of months, I like to have sex. So I'm having sex. Kid walks in on us. Son walks in on us. I'm like, get out of here. And then a few minutes later, I walk down the hallway and I hear a bunch of noises coming from his room. I walk in and he's having sex with his grandmother. And I'm like, what are you doing? And he looks at me and says, not so funny when it's your mother. and he looks at me and says, not so funny when it's your mother. Oh my God, really? Oh, Scott, no. That's good.

That's Bill Einstein from Larry Funkhauser or the guy who plays Funkhauser from the Larry David show. Oh, Scott, really? I just wanted to ease back into the whole podcast given that we've been on. Oh, Scott, can't you take that joke over to your other podcasts? Oh, it's worse on the other pod.

This is PG-13 compared to the other pod. Oh, that was not PG-13. That was tasteless. That was utterly tasteless. That's why the other pod is growing so fast. Well, they're equally tasteless, I feel. Actually, I was at a lady fest yesterday and last night in Silicon Valley. And they asked about your proclivity to talk about penis jokes and tell

penis and sex jokes. I had to explain it. Well, notice how they were talking about it. Yeah, that's true. I'm just saying. Just saying. I wouldn't say it was positive, but I was like- I thought you were supposed to invite me to that. I was going to be the surprised guest with outdoor plumbing guest with outdoor plumbing. And introducing outdoor plumbing. No, actually, it's this party run for many years, first by Aileen Lee, who's a venture capitalist here, and then Jackie Reeses joined her. It's quite a big event. They used to start like 20 people and Costco food, essentially, and margaritas. And now it's 300 people of women.

And the men are either the company founders or their husbands serve the food. So men are just waiters at the thing. God, that sounds just so stupid. Yeah, it was lovely. We loved it. It was great. It was really nice. Have men serve.

Men serve, yes. That'll show them. It was nice. No, it was sweet. That'll fix things. You know, I think people have normal sweet lives where everything isn't loaded with these kind of things. That'll fix things. It didn't fix things. You know, I think people have normal sweet lives where everything isn't loaded with these kind of things. That'll fix things. It didn't fix things.

But actually, it was nice to see so many young women entrepreneurs. There was a cannabis entrepreneur there handing out samples. So, in addition to gender diversity, the problem with venture capital is there's no background. 40% of all venture capitalists, and I bet it's 80% of venture capital allocated, are from people who went to one of two schools. So while everyone's focused on gender because it's an easy thing to distinguish, the real problem is that everybody, the capital that gets allocated basically gets allocated around things that one type of person, specifically a person who's a rich kid or freakishly remarkable at 17 would do, in my view. All right. Okay. I'm glad you changed a woman's topic to schools,

but that's fine. Anyway, it was lovely. Femtech is underinvested. I'll give you that. Yeah. Hugely underinvested. By the way, menopause is having a moment. There's a bunch of funding and information around,

or a bunch of attention around menopause. All right. Okay. The party was fun. The party was fun. It was good to see a lot of really amazing people. I can't believe I wasn't asked to serve. Yeah, you weren't asked to serve. It was people's husbands, and I guess I could have

next year. How about next year? I am the closest thing you have to a husband. That is true. And almost divorced husband, as it turns out, after today. As I said last time, you're on thin ice on that issue. But anyway, it was fun. It was fun. And then we had a ladies' party afterwards at a very good restaurant called Bird Dog. It was a very Palo Alto, Silicon Valley evening. And so all the ladies then had dinner and it was full. I had Ryan Holiday, the Daily Stoic, my other podcast, the NC17 podcast. And he said that the key to marriage is not breaking up. So I just want to throw that out there, Kara. But it kind of made sense, right? Yeah.

Yeah, I guess. Yeah, that's true. When you think about the value out of marriage, it's that you think twice before dissolving the relationship in an era where it's the bigger, better deal always comes along. Yeah, I think a lot of people do think twice and three times, actually, in a lot of ways. Yeah, 100%. Let me ask a question. They asked at the dinner party, which was a small group of women last night, they were asking two questions. What is your secret indulgence, essentially? And what is your greatest challenge right now?

I'd like you to answer that question. I really like, my indulgence is late night. I stay up till 3 a.m. and it's just peaceful for me. And sometimes I do an edible, other times I don't. But I just enjoy that time at night. That's an indulgence because if I had a real job, I wouldn't be able to stay up till three in the morning on weeknights. That's true. So that's a real indulgence.

And challenge, what's your greatest challenge? This got very serious very fast. I'll go, but then I want to hear yours. My greatest challenge, Cara, is being present. I struggle a little bit with anger and depression, so I spent too much time in the past. And as a successful person, I am successful. I spend a lot of time in the future, constantly trading off the present for the future.

And my greatest challenge is not getting to the end of my life and looking back on it and thinking, wow, what a life of exceptional privilege, blessings, people who love me, people I love immensely. But I was never really there. I never really lived it. So my greatest challenge is, quite frankly, is just, it sounds passe, is being in the moment. That's really, that's a great, that's a great thing to talk.

So very deep, actually. See, they also talked about how they liked that you had access to that very much. Besides the penis jokes, they said it's really nice. It's all fun and games when it's your mother. See, this is the problem. What's your greatest challenge? Well, my indulgence was power washing the deck. I love to power wash the deck. Jesus.

I do. I take my time. So I take it. You should see. I'm going to send you pictures. I take it we're hanging out with lesbians again. No, not at all. But there was a straight woman there who also loved to power wash the deck. Power wash? Yeah, I love... It's so satisfying. I would have not guessed that if you'd asked me to guess a million things. I love the power washing of the deck. I did it for hours the other day.

It was so lovely. And you can see the difference when the dirt is totally meaningless, but it's so beautiful. I'm telling you, you want a TikTok that goes viral? There is. Get an Insta360 of you doing power washing your deck. Let me just tell you, power washing is a big deal on TikTok and everything else. Because the difference, I'll send you a photo. If you power wash, I power wash something that I didn't know was light.

And it was light. And I was like beyond belief, thrilled. And so that was my adult-ance, which I enjoyed. And people like that. And my challenge was time management, that I have lots to do. And I wish I had more time. I think you're great at time management. I am, but it's still trade-offs, and I wish I had two of me and stuff like that.

I am good at time management. That's not a challenge. Well, it's more, it's behind the scenes. You don't see how the, I am very good at it. It looks that way, but it's also very. Do you overcommit? Does your professional life challenge your personal life and vice versa? It used to much more. I've gotten much better at it. I spend a lot more time with my kids than I used to. And it's all worth it, obviously. But it gets you tired at times. Like committing doing the book and all my podcasts and this and that. But succession ended, so I I have some more time, but, and the book is done. So.

So your book is done? Yeah, the book is done. That's exciting. You know, I think that book is something you will tell your great-grandchildren about when you see them later tonight, because you're old, get it? Anyway, I took Louis with me yesterday. I went to see Aurora. I saw, yeah, I saw the Instagram. Yeah, he was, he went to, I haven't shown you the Aurora one, which was great, which is a truck company, makes software for autonomous trucks. They're much more further along than the car stuff, which is really interesting.

It was run by the guy who started Waymo. I was wondering how long it would take before there was a dig at Elon. No, it wasn't. Seven minutes into the show. No, the old car. So it's not a dig. into the show. No, the old car.

So it's not a dig. It's just an easier thing to do because these are these long-haul truckers on long, straight routes in the South, for example, they're working on. That just makes so much sense, doesn't it?

Yeah, it does. I'm just saying, it's a better market. It's a better, they were outfitting Peterbilt trucks. It was really cool. I'll have a podcast on it,

but it's just a better economics. So trucker is the number one job for men without college degrees. Well, there's not enough of them by a lot, actually. That's one of the reasons all these companies are participating in it. They've got a lot of partners as opposed to doing it by themselves, making their own trucks. And this isn't, Cybertruck is not the competitor. These are real long haul trucks.

These aren't like Rivians and things like that. But it was cool. And we were in the cab of the truck. But that's not going to exist. It's all going to be computers and doesn't even have to look that. But it was cool. And Louis, we were in the cab of the truck. But that's not going to exist. It's all going to be computers. And it doesn't even have to look like that, which was cool. So you take your kids to autonomous.

He wanted to go. Autonomous driving software companies. I'm taking my kid to Man U versus Man City on Saturday. And then I'm taking my other one the next weekend to Istanbul to see the finals of the Champions League. Oh, well, that's a good thing to dad-son thing. Inter Milan and Man City again. Yeah. Louis wanted to see it.

He was really interested. I'm taking my daughter to Disney Princesses at Wolf Trap at some point. Disney Princesses at what? Yeah. Amanda won't come. It's a Disney Princesses concert. All the Disney Princesses sing all the Disney Princess songs. Have you seen the princess, whatever you want to call it, experience at Disney?

Not yet. I'm sure I will. I'm not exaggerating. It is magical. I've seen it from afar. I almost decided to have a third kid because I thought, I got to have a daughter. A, because I need someone to take care of me when I get older. Yeah. When my wife rises up and kicks my ass to the curb.

And two, you see these little girls emerge with their wings, and I'm not exaggerating, they can fly. It is the most, like, a wonderful experience. I'm like, Disney, I hope Disney does really well just because of that. Yeah, it's interesting because Amanda doesn't want to go, She doesn't want to lean too heavily into the Disney princesses. And I kind of like them. And it's a really interesting issue because Clara loves them. She wears her Disney princess outfits all the time.

And, you know, she's a spunky young lady. But she's also very into this. And it's really, I want to take her. But it's something you think about a lot. Like, do you want, but. What, Amanda wants her power washing? How can you not have your little girl dress up as a princess? But, you know, I'm more eager to see the, they've done a much better job with these movies lately.

But, no, I don't know. It's just a thing you think about. You think about. Like, just, you do. You have boys and I have boys. So. My youngest, was my youngest or my oldest, got the best birthday present. A friend of ours brought over a pram, the pram for a doll.

And she said, boys like cars and girls like dolls, but both boys and girls love the pram. Yes. And he absolutely loved it. He would put things in the pram and drive it around the house. And it was wonderful. Saul loves his stroller. He loves it, loves it, loves it, loves it. It's his favorite thing.

He also bangs it in and throws it, but it's also, he loves it. I'm so glad there's not a real baby in it, let me think. No, my kids like this. And tonight, Louie's going to cook here with Jeff and a whole pack of people. Your brother's in town? Yeah, he lives here. I'm in San Francisco. Oh, you're in San Francisco.

Okay. Yeah, that's why I was down in Silicon Valley. D-Swish. D-Swish. Dr. Silicon Valley. D-Swish. Dr. Swisher. J-Swish and also Louis are going to cook, which is going to be great. They're making Wagyu beef. Jeff got some somewhere. They're wagguing the beef.

That's what we're doing. It's very exciting. Anyway, we have a lot to get to today. The winners and losers of the debt ceiling deal. AI is either an existential threat or an incredible investment opportunity, depending on who you ask. We'll get into that. And the hardest question to ask another parent. First, Facebook said it could pull news from its app in California if the state passes a bill requiring it to pay publishers.

It's the same threat made in Australia over a similar law in 2021. In that case, Facebook briefly banned news from its Australia platform before reaching a deal to pay publishers in the nation. This is going to go on all over the world. Do you think they'd have a better answer than Bullitt? I don't know. What do you think? One of the greatest slow burns that have really hurt America is that journalism plays an exceptionally important role. The national stuff, the geopolitical stuff, the stuff on the markets, and the stuff on money is either adequately or over-covered. in Worthington, Ohio. There used to be,

I think you call it gumshoe, a guy or gal on the beat that said, these people are stealing or these people were supposed to funnel money for this program to the homeless in Worthington and they're not. And journalists were arguably,

other than the algebra of deterrence and that is punishment, journalists were the best sort of forward-leaning security force or police without a badge in America because of free press, because we had remarkable people who got great certification and learned this journalistic skill around trying to do the work and have a balanced view around stuff and fact check. And in the last 30 years, the number of journalists in America has been cut in half.

And the number of PR comms people who I hear from about 15 times a day telling me what a great podcast guest they have for me, or inviting me to dinner with some incredibly, remarkably uninteresting douchebag just because he runs a tech company for some reason. I'd want to have dinner with him. Those people have gone up. So the ratio of spin and bullshit to on the ground coverage of really key issues has gone the wrong way 12x. Yeah, it's true. But with Facebook bluffing here? Oh, 100%. I mean, who would benefit there? VPN, so you could get the full Facebook experience by just dialing in through a Las Vegas VPN or something? I think this is a total bluff.

What are your thoughts? Yeah, I think you're right. I think they're going to maybe do it. They'll end up paying. And then the thing is, we need national laws on this, not state laws. This is another issue with state laws. I've talked to so many people recently around AI, around all these different privacy. people recently around AI, around all these different privacy. These state laws make it impossible for, you know, whether it was Montana with TikTok or whatever, even California laws,

it creates all kinds of chaos, including for these companies. Like, who do we look at? You know, there's got to be some global initiatives around certain AI things. There's got to be national initiatives here. And that would be, they're not going to pull it from the US, right? They're not going to pull news from the US, or they can try. They tried to do it in Australia and threatened to do it. But it's a complex topic. And I'm not going to just say, oh, they should pay, like how they should pay is going to be hard. Figuring out who benefits is going to be hard, but they certainly know. Or change the business where the news is not important to their thing.

I don't know. I just feel like it's a bluff. And I wouldn't bluff California on lots of things. They tend to pass these things. It might get blocked in the courts. I mean, there's – Might. I was looking at the Montana thing, and there's one –

Oh, yeah. Interstate commerce, you're not supposed to get in the way of a company's ability to do – Oh, Montana's going to lose on it, like nine different things. But, you know – The Montana bill is really – bills of attainment when you target a company. This is targeting, I think, a sector, all social media. Disney's going to win in Florida. But yeah, I'm a fan of being very outfit with digital earrings that they entered into a series

of just ridiculously stupid deals and then normalize the notion that they do all the work, take all the risks. I had Bill Keller. He used to be the managing editor on my podcast in New York Times. And I remember at a board dinner and I was at the table with Bill. I remember in the middle of the dinner, Bill had to leave early. And I said, what are you doing? He's like, I'm negotiating. I'm trying to negotiate with several different parties the release of a journalist from the Taliban. And I thought, okay, that's what we do here at the fucking New York Times. And meanwhile, Google's off printing money in their sleep because we send people into harm's way to report, and they end up as hostages, and we got to negotiate for the release. I mean, the balance, we were so stupid to fall in love with this

bullshit notion of information wants to be free. Remember that one? Yeah, I do. I sure do. with this this this notion of information wants to be free remember that one yeah i do and oh oh senator kerry it's early days and we're going to send you a ton of traffic and we these companies essentially just pulled up a dump truck and started taking money um from media companies and it's been it's it's been very damaging i mean it's given the flip side is it's given a lot of people voice and access and some incredible talent bubbles up. It doesn't have to go to the Columbia School of Journalism and get in the right platform. It has democratized a certain level of journalism. But on the whole, I think we've been net losers.

Yeah. By the way, Bill Keller was the founding editor-in-chief of the Marshall Project, which looks at criminal justice things. That's right. Yeah. But he's had quite a legendary career. We both think they're bluffing. Speaking of not bluffing anymore, one person is headed to jail. That's right. on the hook for more than $450 million in restitution to victims. They probably do not have that money. We'll see if she serves her full sentence or gets early parole. She's still appealing her conviction. It's a, as I said, minimum security prison where families can visit more, but three women escaped the prison where Holmes is serving her sentence. One is still at

large. You know, there were tons of stories about this. There's never been so much coverage of one woman, given all the fraud that's happened in Silicon Valley, going into prison. But she's a, you know, she's a character. She's someone who people seem interested in reading about. And she's headed to prison. So that's that. I think they got this wrong.

Yeah, really? Yeah, I think she's guilty of fraud. I think she should go to prison. I think 11 years does not match the crime. Yeah, what, more? No, I think it should have been less. Yeah, it was like, God, Scott, I'm going should go to prison. I think 11 years does not match the crime. Yeah. What, more? No, I think it should have been less. Oh, less. Yeah, I was like, God, Scott, I'm going to have to come and reach you. No, the four factors of sentencing are the severity of the crime, the defendant's history,

mandatory minimums, and the purpose of the sentence. So the severity of the crime here, she committed fraud and she stole money from institutional accredited wealthy investors. There was nothing around health here. No one got an incorrect diagnosis and they died. That they proved, yeah. She didn't pump up a stock on CNBC and call it a software. I mean, no retail investor lost money. She committed fraud against institutional investors. She should go to prison.

Should she go to prison for 11 years? Yeah. Yeah. She probably won't go to prison for 11 years. It was interesting. Okay. But that's what she was sentenced to. Yeah, I know. No, I know. I get it. She's got two kids. What should she judge Scott? The thing here, and I'm not a sentencing guideline person here, but I think that you had a series of very well-connected, older, very kind of credentialed and well-connected people, including former heads of allied, Supreme Allied commanders of NATO on this board. They felt lied to. They wanted to cover their own ass. They wanted to position her as the criminal here. Yeah.

And went after her. And let's compare and contrast that with the Sacklers. Yeah. The Sacklers, by the way, for people who don't know, will pay up to $6 billion to help address the effects of the opioid crisis, but they won't be held liable. The federal appeals court granted them immunity from civil liability suits. But let's compare the two. Elizabeth Holmes lied to investors. She stole from them. She's going to prison for 11 years. The Sacklers delayed and obfuscated and ignored a ton of evidence about the damage that their product was doing. And we have what is arguably more deaths per year than died in the entire Vietnam conflict because these individuals were so incredibly greedy. And they're going to have to give up half their wealth, which means absolutely nothing. Being worth $6 billion versus $12 billion means nothing.

And the problem in corporate America, or a problem, it's not immorality. People who are immoral are easy to find and starch out of your company. It's amorality. Specifically, you talk yourself into believing that because there's not direct attribution between you and someone who is an opioid addict in the Midwest, in a small rural town, you come up with reasons and the ability with lobbyists and regulatory capture and investors who love you and people around you tell you you're a genius to continue to incrementally do massive harm. And because of the corporate, because of the, you know, and this is one of the great innovations in America,

the corporate shield protects you from criminal liability yourself around what the company, quote unquote, the company does. Let me just say, they think that getting money to the victims, I was reading all the stories about it, was important. About under a billion dollars will go to individual victims and survivors. And so they felt like they just needed to get this money out because these people had continued to try to get out of the situation. But let's look at this. The severity of the crime. Let's look at both of them. The severity of the crime is about a billion times worse than the sacklers Elizabeth Holmes said.

The defendant's history. None of them had a criminal history. Mandatory minimums. There are no mandatory minimums with a corporate shield. There was a minimum with a federal case around fraud. The purpose of the sentence, I would argue that the purpose of these sentences or these fines is very simple. It's a deterrent. They're trying to say to other CEOs, regardless of how big your bull economy is or how many turtlenecks you have or where you went to school, if you lie to your investors, you could go to jail.

What is the deterrence here if you're a pharma executive? What is the deterrence? It's not a deterrence. It's an encouragement. It's an incentive. If you kill 50,000 people indirectly, you might have to give up half the $12 billion fortune you acquired by creating this damage. Yeah, it's interesting comparison. I want to get your view on this. Do you think Elizabeth Holmes should go to jail for 11 years?

I think she shouldn't be. 11 years was a surprise to me. I had forgotten it was 11 years, and it is too long. You know, a couple of years, I suppose. It is interesting that, of course, of all the many hijinks in Silicon Valley, she's the one that gets it. The one with the ovaries gets put away. Yeah, and same thing with Martha Stewart and going to jail for insider trading. I was like, huh, I haven't heard many of those for high-profile people like Martha Stewart. And maybe she did that, but boy, was that a real. And, of course, she's bounced back rather significantly. But it still is. I think it's too long, obviously. And the Sacklers, I think should be thrown down in a hole. I just don't know what else to say. They

were clearly pushed this stuff out there. And there has to be some liability that is more significant that they can't shield themselves from, but they did. That's what they've done. Let's move on. Elon Musk may have cut costs at Twitter, but he also cut something else. It's value again. Twitter is worth just one-third of its $44 billion purchase price, according to Fidelity, which had already cut that number, marked it down, and now they're marking it down further. It's not even worth what they just marked it down to. So, you know, there you have it. It's continuing to lose value. Musk's stake is worth now eight, I guess. Not a surprise, of course. Marks are really interesting.

And if you want to look at perverse behavior on a board and management team, you can almost always reverse engineer it to compensation. And so, and I'm on these boards currently or have been. And that is, rather than get, you should always, when you're doing an extra round of investing, you should always get a third-party lead. Because it's easy for us to smoke our own supply and say, oh, the company's doing better, even though the market's shitty. Yeah. And we've hit some bumps. We raised money at $3 billion. Right. But now we're worth $4 billion.

Yeah. And you're not. Right. And what you need is a third party to come in with fresh capital and say, this is what the company is worth. And then if your existing investors think that's too low, they can do their pro rata, but you need a third party mark. And what there has been an abundance of over the last decade is a lack of third party marks, because what happens is the following. The guy at Fidelity who made this investment gets compensated based on where the

performance of his investments are relative to a benchmark. And it's based on, with private companies, right, such as this one, the mark. And so the real mark on Twitter, Cara, is zero for the equity. Because they have $13 billion in debt. The company will do two and a half billion, unless it's worth more in terms of valuation metrics than Meta or Google. The value of the company is less than $13 billion, meaning the equity value is zero. So the real mark should be zero. But the guy running that and the IR people that have to report that number don't want the mark to be zero. So back to private company boards, what you see a lot of times is an internal round, and this happened like the last two or three rounds at WeWork, where they keep investing at higher

valuations so they can report a mark to their fund and their limiteds and maybe even fake out retail investors when it goes public. But marks are very dangerous because there's perverse incentives around them. They should just say zero, it's worth nothing. The equity is worth zero at Twitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How is this? Show me the math, the comparables, the EBITDA, the growth rate. Just because someone will pay for it, yeah. No company in history without some sort of a legal act or forced a majeure has gone from $5 billion in revenue to $2 billion in about eight months.

Yeah. That is a historic decline in revenue. $13 billion in debt. What's the multiple here? Two to three times? It's worth $6 to $8 billion. That means its equity is negative. Yeah.

He's got to get a business. He's got to get Linda Iaccarino in there working. I had heard that she's got some contract issues at NBC. It was a rumor at the party last night. Did one of your waiters tell you that? No, they were useless. It was interesting because, by the way, there were a lot of Twitter people at this party, and he's not paying them. He's not paying them. He's not paying anything. Not paying rent. Not paying. He owes lots of money. Severance, yeah. His He's not paying anything. Not paying rent. Not paying. He owes lots of money. Severance.

Yeah. His attitude is sue me. There'll be some breakage. Yeah. Sue me. That's right. He's like a health insurance company. Make it really hard to get reimbursed and you'll just have a certain amount of breakage.

Yeah. The whole thing is a financial meltdown. It was so interesting when I said it's not even worth this. What are you talking about? It's not worth anything. You went on Twitter to do that. And of course, all his stans came out and like, you don't get what he's doing. He's making a super app.

It's going to be this big business. I said, the only thing this is going to be is a meme stock, maybe. I was like, that seems to, like he'll sell it to a bunch of imbeciles like yourselves and he'll run away with the money. Like, are you kidding? Like, and he won't go to jail,

by the way, for doing that. You'll just have bought, you know, a ticket on the Dum Dum Express. Wealthiest man in the world as of today. Is he, again? Because of the increase in Tesla stock. Took it back from Bernard Arnault. So there you go.

It goes up and down. It's worth zero. Yes, that's correct. But he can afford it, and it gives him influence. That's what he's buying in this case. What'll be really interesting is when the banks that underwrote the debt take the debt off their balance sheet and cure it and price it to see what the debt trade's at. They seem to try not to be doing that. They protect him, for sure. Well, I don't think it's them protecting him as much as they don't want to take the loss,

because right now, I bet they have it on their books. Again, back to this notion of Marx and perverse incentives. When Morgan Stanley has, call it $5 billion worth of Twitter bonds, if they have to sell them at two and a half billion, they have to take a two and a half billion dollar loss and they have to talk about it in their next earnings call, which is not a good look, especially, you know. So they would, they're probably keeping it on their books

at 80 to 100 cents on the dollar. And if it goes out at less than 100 cents on the dollar, what that means is the equity is worth zero. The company is not worth the 13 billion in debt, which the debt will not go out at 100 cents on the dollar. So again, the equity here is worthless. I think he's already tired of it. He wants out of Dodge.

He's going to blame Linda Iaccarino for his failings. She's there a year or less. One very smart person said that to me at the beginning. It's not about money. He'll lose a ton of it. He wants out of Dodge. He's going to blame Linda Iaccarino for his failings. She's there a year or less. One very smart person said that to me at the beginning. It's not about money. He'll lose a ton of money. It's about influence and his profile. And it's probably worth it to him. That's true. That's what these guys do, right? I mean, they buy media companies. He could have bought like a lot of media companies. He could have bought a lot of things. For $44 billion? Yeah, that's a lot. What could he have bought? He could have media companies. He could have bought a lot of things. For $44 billion? Yeah, that's a lot. What could he have bought? He could have bought CNN.

He could have bought, not that it's for sale, but the New York Times. He could have bought, I think Bezos looks like a genius in comparison, paying a couple, whatever he paid for the Post,

almost nothing, much less than his yacht. Bezos paid $250 million for the Post. That means Musk could have purchased about, what is that, $44 billion, $88. That's 176 Washington Posts or Twitter. But he doesn't get to tweet and be crazy. There you go.

He could have just tweeted for free, actually. He could have been crazy on Twitter himself. Anyway, all right, let's get to our first big story. big story. The House of Representatives approved a deal to suspend the debt limit late on Wednesday. As we record this on Thursday, the deal is headed to the Senate. And even if approved, Wednesday night's vote has big implications for the future. An embarrassment to Speaker Kevin McCarthy. More Democrats voted for the bill than Republicans. 71 Republicans voted no. I think it was 149 Republicans voted yes. They were supposed to be 150, but that's what it was. And Republicans cited findings from the Congressional Budget Office, which said the changes to SNAP benefits wouldn't save any money,

but would increase costs over 10 years. Republicans aren't the only ones voting no, but these are the losers in any case. 46 House Democrats voted against the bill. AOC was the first Democrat to come out against exciting cuts to social programs. In the Senate, Bernie Sanders pledged to vote against the bill for similar reasons. He also opposes the approval of a pipeline in West Virginia that's folded in there for Joe Manchin, I think. I think it's going through. It looks like it's moving through, and McCarthy and Biden did almost the impossible. It's amazing how doddering Biden is and managed to get this bill through. But okay, okay, doddering. He's doing very well for a doddering Biden is and managed to get this bill through. But okay, doddering. He's doing very well for a doddering old man who's eating applesauce.

So what do you think? Work requirements here. Let me say what's in the bill. Work requirements for government benefits, some. Rescinds IRS funding, caps spending for two years, approves the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a priority for Joe Manchin, as I said, ends the freeze on student loan payments. A Times analysis said the bill would reduce deficits by $1 trillion.

Republicans wanted $4.8 trillion in cuts. Anyway, he's trying to also get rid of the debt limit. Jonathan Chait wrote at the New York Magazine, the deal makes financial hostage-taking a normal, accepted way to govern. I don't know. It felt like compromise here, less than that. But many people think that. So what do you think. It felt like compromise here and less than that, but many people think that. So what do you think? There's no compromise here. I'm going to turn to our favorite pastime,

and that is patting ourselves on the back. What was our prediction around this? And famous last words, because it hasn't been approved as of recording, but our prediction was the following. This deal is already done. It will take it right to the 11th hour. So Speaker McCarthy can claim to his crazies that he took them right to the limit. And they will, that Biden will throw some symbolic and meaningless gives. So let's be clear, people not getting food stamps or, I'm sorry, a work requirement, that is real. But if you actually read the bill, it actually expands eligibility for food stamps. Having to restart student loan payments. And then what was the other one? Taking IRS funding, additional funding from 80 down to 60.

Keep in mind the context here. The national debt is $32 trillion. Our economy is 25 trillion. I think our budget is five and a half trillion. And we're talking about a few billion dollars here and there. This was the following. This was Biden saying to McCarthy, "'This blows up.

"'You're gonna be the shortest serving speaker in history.'" Well, he still might be. What can we do that gives you your crazies something to nibble on? But let's be honest, boss, I'm not giving you shit because you're going to have to fold one way or another here. And they didn't give them. They gave, they got nothing. They got nothing.

And everyone did their performative voting like AOC, et cetera. And the people on the far left are upset, the people on the far right. And that's exactly what should happen is the reasonable people. The president played this, in my view, played this perfectly and said, okay. So is he still a doddering old man? He shouldn't be running for president. He can do better than this. He's pretty good.

He's pretty good at it. He's done some pretty good things in infrastructure. He's going to be 80. I get it. I don't even want to go here. I don't even want to go here. I'm just telling you. This is where we are.

Grandpa's working. Grandpa's got a lot going on. He should be able to do better than a good man who's smart, who is— Just throw him a fucking bone. He's doing a good job here. I like the man. Every decision he makes, I would make. Just throw him a fucking bone.

I like the man. Every decision he makes, I would make. But at the same time, there has to be something resembling reality. I would agree with you. Nonetheless, he's not going to start. Has anyone checked in with Senator Feinstein lately? I get it, but he's not Senator. Come on. He's going to be close, Tara.

Well, come on. He's going to be 86 in his last year of the presidency. I get it. I know lots of 80-year-olds who are in their 80s are perfectly fine. They can be the president of the United States? I don't love that a president. All of our elected officials are disowned. You know I don't.

But nonetheless, I'm going to say this was, once again, he managed to get to the middle. Oh, and also, what happens if he dies? Yes, that's right. President Harris? Yeah, I know. That'll be bad for the Democrats, probably, as much as I think she's quite accomplished and competent. But nonetheless, and younger, by the way. She is younger. What do you think? Is my assessment here incorrect? What do you think?

I think you're as correct as I think they managed to do a quite good job. And Kevin McCarthy probably might suffer. There are a lot of noisy Republicans like Chip Roy and that other Dan Bishop, I think, voting against the bill. That's a lot of people voting against it. I think he made that deal, the one House member to call for a no-confidence vote. They might do that. And then we spent a lot of time on that. Like, again, one of those, you know, when you were watching, like it was a TV show, whether Matt Gaetz would say yes or not or up or down, which is ridiculous that Lauren Boebert had any moment in any sun and hopefully should be taken out in the next election. She's the best thing that could have happened. Her and Marjorie Kellerman are the best thing that could happen to Democrats. It's just a reminder. Okay. Yeah, they're crazy. You may think we're crazy, but just so you know.

They're much crazier. Yeah, we have much crazier down over here. So, you know, it'll be interesting to think if he starts to really push back against these people and can have real power. There's a huge power in the Speaker's job, obviously. But he certainly has some highly competent people around him. Massey, I think there were a couple, even though I don't agree with him. There were some that really moved to get this done. I think that you never know what the crazies are going to do. And so he's at risk at all times because of deals he made to get the job. risk at all times because of deals he made to get the job. And in Biden's case, there was ideas that he may use the 14th Amendment in order to get it to court to get rid of these debt limits. Most

other economies set debt limits at a percentage of GDP. If we adopted the EU model, 60% of GDP, our debt ceiling would be lower than its current limit. Most people think that the debt limit crisis every couple of years is ridiculous. It's fucking ridiculous. And it creates a hostage situation. And I've read some very smart columns about it. And I think this ridiculous, this is not something people should be politicking over. There should be spending cuts. They should do it in the old fashion way, which is through bills and everything else, not to link it to something so important. So it shouldn't be there to allow them to do it. It's a gun. It's on the table. They'll shoot it at some point. I think a good move for Biden coming out of this once it's done is to get

very serious about some sort of fiscal responsibility and say, we need to cut spending, folks. And also, we need to do away with loopholes and raise revenues. Yeah. Well, that's a non-starter with the Republicans' taxes or anything else. Every fiat currency in history has failed and gone away. Because the dangerous part about a democracy, a representative democracy, is that when you can vote yourself money, you have a tough time. You do. Yeah. Exactly. Bingo. You do and you and you start inflating and you end up with debt you can't support countries don't go out of business because they're invaded they go out of business because they go broke yeah and yeah i agree it's just this is gonna be really

hard just look at this short thing to do something it was obviously they had to fix um but we'll see there's definitely spending cuts need to be made and uh we'll see if they have the stomach to do it i do think biden's been a very deft very deft president on lots of issues that they thought he couldn't pass. So maybe. He definitely has a left wing that's really up in arms about some of these cuts, and McCarthy has the right wing who's up in arms about not making enough cuts. And some of their cuts are ridiculous. Some of them are stupid. You know, they're not truly committed to really balancing the budget.

By the way, did you see his first campaign ad? Who's Biden's? You know, at the very beginning, they have to disclose. It says, my name is Joe Biden, and I forget this message. Oh, stop. You know what? Again, give him a moment. You could not pull this shit off. And by the way, one of the people who've gotten a lot of the credit for this, besides Steve Reschetti, who's his advisor, is Shondala Young, who's the head of the OMB, very important. And even McCarthy was like, this lady really

helped us get to the right place. Anyway, it was interesting. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about a dire warning about AI, and we'll take a question about guns in other people's homes. Ooh, that's scary. That happened to me once. Anyway, Scott, we'll be back in a minute. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer

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Download Thumbtack today. Scott, we're back with our second big story, AI could kill us all again. That's the warning from the Center for AI Safety. In a short statement, the group said that mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war. That's the whole statement. We're doomed. It was endorsed by notable scientists and entrepreneurs, including Sam Altman, Jeffrey Hinton, the godfather, the alleged godfather of AI. One of many, I'm going to say that. And several researchers from Google's DeepMind team, DeepMind's team.

The market doesn't seem too worried. DeepMind's team. The market doesn't seem too worried. This week, the market cap of chipmaker NVIDIA briefly pushed past a trillion dollars, largely based on its role in creating hardware use for AI. Meanwhile, on an earnings call, Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff claimed that, quote, we are about to enter

an unbelievable super cycle for tech. It sounds like a storm we're not going to want to be in. So this was the group of people who are behind this, whether these warnings are helpful or accurate, or they just try to make people say, we warned you. Meredith Whitaker, who I've interviewed many times, a former Google AI researcher, called the letter, quote, theater and said, we'll know it's real when they quit their jobs, unplug the data centers and actually stop AI development, which is not happening. Should we be focused on the short-term harms of AI? which is not happening. Should we be focused on the short-term harms of AI? Critics like Kate Crawford, whom we had on Pivot last month, talked about bias, discrimination, and job displacement as near-term risks, which are important. And Sam, of course,

Sam Altman, who's sort of at the lead of this parade, said, regulate us. What do you think about this? Is it theater? Is it what? And let me just, I don't know, footnote this or caveat it or the fine print is that so many really smart people who I think their heart is in the right place and we're at the center of the development here who have the teeth and the power to start communicating across border. We have weapons. We've already decided, like, we don't want, bioweapons are a bad idea. And immediately we began talking to even our adversaries and said, okay, it's just a good idea if we limit the use of bioweapons. And people came to an agreement and there hasn't been full scale, like, you know, all green lights on the development of bioweapons. And people came to an agreement and there hasn't been full scale, like, you know, all green lights on the development of bioweapons. And that's been a good thing. I'm an optimist around this stuff. And I find it a little bit

frustrating when Dr. Frankenstein comes out and says, I'm worried about Frank. It's like, well, okay, he's in town now, and he's roaming around, and now you're worried about him. So, and there is something to the fact that after they made their millions, after they vested their shares, we've talked about this, they're all of a sudden very concerned. And there does appear, and the media loves to run with this stuff, because the end of the world, smart people predicting the end of the world is always great clickbait. I don't see why we wouldn't be able to establish LLM and generative AI that can play defense as well as offense. I think the idea of a pause is ridiculous when you can't monitor. It's not like underground nuclear testing. It's like Kate Crawford noted.

You can't monitor it. And you really think Iran and North Korea are going to push pause? I think it's, I thought the metaverse was stupid. Web 3, I never understood. I got bullied into being indifferent about it because I thought I was worried about aging and that it made me look old by not embracing something. I thought that Internet of Things, I mean, this shit, I think this Google, I think Apple's VR thing is going to be the biggest tech disaster since the metaverse. AI, I'm Apple's VR thing is going to be the biggest tech disaster since the metaverse. AI, I'm playing with this thing every night.

I think it's going to turn a group of young people, mostly young people, with the right skills, curiosity, into just information warriors. And I think we're going to push out preventive health care to pockets of people who weren't able to access it because they don't have the money or they were intimidated. I think it's going to be fantastic for the world. There's certainly been more warnings about this compared to any other. I mean, crypto, everyone was like, woohoo, you know, social media, fantastic, the early Internet, wow. And in this case, there is more discussion of the problems early on.

Now, the question is, will there be a global body like you talked about? Probably not, but there should be. Will there be adequate regulation or will it be this push-pull? It'll be that threatening thing that Facebook is doing. That shouldn't be the way this is. It should be everybody coming together to discuss this. And obviously, the business people have their business interests, which usually trump everything else because that's what they do. And there's going to be a lot of money.

Look at just NVIDIA, for example, but all these companies that are going to be created. And so there's ways to deal with this in a lot of ways because it's not going away. And how do you, like, what do you deal with that? Of course we know nuclear will kill us, right? It could kill us, but it could also help us. So what are we going to do? It's here. How are we going to cope with it?

And I think that it would be really great if there was some global body that had not just, they're never going to have teeth, I guess, but it has high profile. It has high profile to begin to talk about these issues. But, you know, they did it with pandemics. It didn't work out these issues. But, you know, they did it with pandemics. It didn't work out so well. They, you know, nuclear worked out better. The short-term risks are ones we should be addressing right away and not to be like so enthralled with the long-term risks that we don't deal with the short-term risks. And then look at it as an investment opportunity too. I don't, I think making it,

making it one or the other is really useless in some way. Yeah, there's no doubt. I'm sure there'll be any time you have this sort of transition of one substance or material to another, there's externalities as there will be here. But I mean, I'm still trying to figure out how the blockchain is going to change my life. I mean, I'm still trying to figure out how the blockchain is going to change my life. I've never understood virtual reality. Every night I am totally blown away by what AI can do. Yeah, you love that AI.

And not only that, I generally find when the experts are all saying one thing, it usually means they're wrong. Especially around the economy and maybe around, I don't know. It's so strange to be the optimist. But all the catastrophizing- Well, mitigating the risk of extinction. Mitigating the risk. Oh, extinction. Yeah, mitigating the risk. But it should be on the level of that,

of pandemics, nuclear war, and at least on the same, social media should have been there too, where people were, I think we would have had a lot better legislation. And this will definitely spur people to hopefully write good legislation and not wacky legislation and go too far. But we'll see.

But people are definitely talking about it, and they're scared. The public that pays attention to stuff, and it's not just the elite, lots of people. I get asked about this all the time by everybody. And so non-tech people especially, they're like, what is this? They're worried. They're definitely worried in a way that they hadn't been with other technologies. With cyber, with cryptocurrency, they're like, how do I get in? I was like, don't, don't, please don't. Please don't yet. That kind of thing versus this, which I think they're dipping their toe in, as you are. You're dipping your whole body in, actually.

You're jumping in with all of you. You're swamming. You know, you saw that lawyer thing where he put all the things and AI made it up. Yeah, I love that. I love those stories. More stories like that. Yeah, more stories. That's going to happen all the time.

Anyway, I don't think that was the end of civilization. It was the end of that guy's career, but still. Anyway, let's pivot to a listener question. This is something much more immediate and dangerous. You've got, you've got, I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. Hi, Kara and Scott slash Scott and Kara. I have a question. I have two young kids and while I'm not planning on asking their potential play dates whether they're going to be going to any drag shows, I would like to ask parents whether they have any firearms in their home and whether they're locked up appropriately. What's a good way to broach that topic that won't make people uncomfortable or alienate my kids? Thanks. That's an interesting question. I would ask people, if you live in somewhere where you think

people have a lot of firearms, I would say, listen, do you have firearms in your home and are they locked up appropriately? That's okay. I don't think people would be offended. People who are good gun owners are not offended by things like that. In my experience, people who aren't the lunatics who just think you should be able to wander around with firearms all the time and just not take good safety care. Many gun owners are safety conscious, extremely safety conscious. So I would just ask them, and don't worry about your kids, you're trying to protect them and you're not being overly, I think you should ask that. I had that happen to me once in San Francisco. There was a guy who had just joined the FBI, and I got one out of the room, and he had his gun out showing the kids the gun. And the safety was not on, and I wanted to kill him.

I was like, I'm going to call the FBI on you. Like, what the fuck? It didn't ask me if it was okay. That's so inappropriate. Totally inappropriate. And I was like, he's like, oh, you just don't like guns? I'm like, no, not necessarily. I just think you should ask a parent if you want them to see a gun or to have it around them.

It's like, these things go off. She has to do. I don't think this is about her kids. I think this is about her. And that's important. Okay. Explain. Well, I have a lot of fears around my kids and guns.

Yeah. And it causes a lot of stress in my life. And that's important. And if I can do things to relieve that stress, that should be taken into account. If you look at the actual stats, the likelihood a kid is going to get killed by a handgun at a play date, the drive to the play date is much more dangerous. Yeah, of course. The drive to the play date is much more dangerous. Yeah, of course. 60% I think of deaths from handguns are someone in the house has a depressive event, suicidal ideation, and thinks, I know how to end this all. There's a gun upstairs, and they go upstairs, and they kill themselves. Yeah, the availability.

And just the fact that people have kids and are having play dates probably means they're fairly responsible people. So I want to be clear. The data shows your fears are probably not what I'd call – there are bigger dangers than kids – your kid being killed at a play date by a gun. Now, having said that, if it causes you a lot of stress, you have to decide you're going to be known as that mom. I mean, I don't I'm sorry. But when you call me and say, do you have firearms and are they locked up before you let your kid come over for a play date? I understand. I'm a progressive.

I get it. I say, no, we do not. You do not need to be worried. And then I'm like, that's that mom. But that might be worth it to you. You might say, I don't care. It gives me a sense of comfort and relief. I think this is a very personal issue. Yeah, it is. I think it's fine. I wouldn't be offended if I was a gun owner. If someone asked me, I'd be fine. They're fine. I'm not offended, but oh, that's that mom. No, I think it's fine. I mean, I think it's fine. I'm not offended, but oh, that's that mom. No, I think it's fine. I mean,

I think it's fine. I would not be mad about someone asking about that at all. I would not. I wouldn't, if they thought I had a gun and I would not, I wouldn't say that mom. Usually it's over like snacks. Like, oh, I'm giving my kids Ritz crackers. That's just the way it's going. Or, you know, do you, you're not, I mean, I would be more like if they were. The dangerous to the kids that live in that house. The danger around firearms is that the kid is bored, looking around, finds a shoebox, finds a gun, starts playing with it. And something, you know, tragedy occurs. Anyway, this is, but see, this is a kind of conversation that's uniquely American.

Yeah. In a bad way. And we just shouldn't be having these conversations in this type of listener mail. It's just so insane that we've let it come this far, that this is now something a mom needs to worry about, whether she should prophylactically be asking questions around where her kids play. I don't know where she lives, but if she's in a red state, it is a good question. It is like lots of people have guns in their homes and lots of guns. I did walk into one Silicon Valley house and it was someone, a venture capitalist woman. And I brought my sons a beautiful house

and it was some crazy party they were having. There was like a camel there. It was that kind of party. And I was like, I'm taking my kids to see a camel. And I walked into her husband's office. They've since gotten divorced. And he had guns everywhere. Like out and everywhere.

Like antique guns or firearms? That and all kinds. Like he loved a gun. He loved a lot of beautiful antique firearms. And my kids were immediately riveted. And I had to spend the whole party keeping him out of that room. I was like, you're not going in that room. You know, they just wanted to see and touch these things. And I was like, oh, for fuck's sake. Like, there were so many guns. It was crazy. And I didn't know if they were safe or not. I couldn't tell because they were right there. And I always feel like if there's a gun, it's going to go off. Like, it's just, I'm assuming it's going to go off at some point. My godfather, just to take this really to a depressing place, my godfather killed himself with an antique gun. Charlie Evans, this wonderful, very successful man, you know, kind of a baller, lived in the Hollywood Hills, beautiful wife, like had the life, right?

And lost his business. Wife told him she was leaving him and went into the garage, pulled out some very expensive antique gun, put it to his chest. I'm so sorry. Oh, a long time ago. Well, this is gone.

This is taking a direction. Really rocked my mother. Ask the parents, be that mother, mother. And thank you for saying Karen, Scott, and Scott, and Kara. But don't worry about how you act. But don't ask about Ritz crackers, okay? Just don't do it.

All right. If you've got a question of your own you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions, your favorite part. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. So my prediction comes back to AI. I do think we're going to see, I think the first realization of all the catastrophizing that's going around at NAI is going to come to light in the next 12 to 18 months, or it's going to happen in the next 12 to 18

months. We just don't know if it's, we might not find out about it till after. But essentially, you have an invasion of Europe, and you have an individual, Putin, who horribly miscalculated and is losing thousands of soldiers a week, his popularity is going down, and this war is literally life or death for him. If this ends up in a stalemate, slowly but surely, that means a loss for Russia because we have more resources, I believe, and more staying power. The Russian economy will start to go down. We have more resources, I believe, and more staying power. The Russian economy will start to go down. If he loses, if he picks up and leaves, I think he'll either be murdered by his own people or it's just not. There are a lot of bad options here for him.

He horribly miscalculated the Ukrainian army and the support of the West. speculated the Ukrainian army and the support of the West. There is one thing, the shortest distance between him and victory there is what? How does he win this war theoretically overnight? What would need to happen? Any thoughts? A bomb, bomb. It's not really winning. I think that's where most people would go and it's a correct response, but I think he would be I think that's where most people would go, and it's a correct response, but I think he would be singular and isolated. Even China and India would turn against him if he used a bomb. It'd be over for him. I think he would have already used one if he didn't realize that he would be—I think his own people would kill him if he decided to—I mean, the fallout starts spreading across China. I mean, I don't think he can use a bomb. I think the shortest distance between him and victory is if Trump is reelected. If Trump is reelected, he wins the war. And so what I think you're going to see, so if I'm Putin, and I have very smart people, and I also think he's very intelligent, have done the game theory here, they think this war is not going well.

We can't win it conventionally or through kinetic power. Our fastest path to a victory in Ukraine is the following, and that is if Trump gets reelected. So we need our best and brightest. We need our assets overseas to use generative AI and every tool possible to come up with misinformation that results in a Trump victory. And I think you're going to see the mother of all, come up with misinformation that results in a Trump victory.

And I think you're gonna see the mother of all and where they're gonna take advantage of porous social media platforms and people who are not immoral but amoral and will delay and obfuscate and wanna take the money that they'll get from these campaigns as opposed to, you wanna know where we need a pause? For 90 days before the election, social media should have a pause on anything political.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's where we need a fucking pause. You know, I've been hearing from a lot of, because I live in Washington, I run into a lot of lawyers and just type, just department type people. They're like, this case that the government has is quite dangerous for Trump. This espionage case, this essentially the documents case. They are like, this is like serious. And so,

it may derail him. I've never heard them say that. They're always like, oh, he'll get out of this, this way. Now, he- Well, I hope you're right. But- I'm just saying. I just- If history is any- That's interesting. Indicator- Yeah, I know. He's going to get to run for president. And- Guess who's in prison, Elizabeth Holmes. Like, it does ultimately get you. I know it doesn't, but- My prediction is the following, is that there are a group of very smart, I mean, they're going to spend, if we're spending, if just the U.S. is spending $ assets, all of our spies in the United States, and the best and brightest psychologists, linguists, and start testing this shit

out of misinformation that depositions Biden and elevates Trump. That's what I would be doing. Because the shortest path to victory in Ukraine for Russia is very simple. If Trump is elected, they win the war. If Trump is not elected, they're going to lose this war. It's that simple. I don't know. I think Trump's got a lot of problems

with his own party. Look, Lindsey Graham turns all the time, doesn't he? He seems pretty stuck on Ukraine, defending them. There's a lot of Republicans who are... The prediction isn't whether Trump will win or not. If you look at the map and issues, Trump in defending them. There's a lot of Republicans who are. I'm not. The prediction is whether Trump will win or not. If you look at the map and issues, Trump looks really weak.

Right. Right now, it looks like unless something weird happens, it looks like Biden handily beats him. Yeah. But the odds of ending this war are the best odds they have is to get Trump back in office. You're about to see the mother of all AI-generated misinformation around this election. Well, they could just have to get Ron DeSantis in. He's another one. You know what I mean?

Like, he's been questioning it. That's a good point. They just have to get him, and then they'll take him over. And Trump is harder to get in. So if I were the Russians, I'd back Ron DeSantis. That's actually a wrinkle I hadn't thought about. That's interesting. Why would you back Trump?

He's trouble. Like, you never know what he's going to do. And DeSantis, you kind of do. Yeah, but he's definitely, because he's the ultimate useful idiot. I mean, he really is. Yeah, but DeSantis feels the same. I just feel like he's the same. And we'll see.

We'll see. You know, he's got so much money backing him, DeSantis. It's kind of, at least here in the Valley, he's definitely got. So did Hillary. I get it, but I don't know. People do think he's got to come back in. I think he actually has a lot to run on. Yeah.

I mean, we were on opposite sides of this last one. You said he brightens up a room by leaving it, and you're right. He's not very charming. No, I agree. He's got $100 million, I think, already raised, and he has a strong case to make to people who are going to be receptive about his track record. He's doing it. If you've noticed, it's like, well, we love Trump, but he's going to jail. That's essentially his message. So I think a lot of people are making that calculation, which is why they're giving him money versus Trump. And I get that Trump's super popular and may get to it, but I don't know. I just feel like maybe desantis well maybe if you think about who

are the who are the beneficiaries of this tsunami of ai gender misinformation is it trump or is it desantis the answer might be yes they might just do it for both or let me put this or they'll just go the other way and start circulating just a ton of misinformation around around yeah well he's already doing that to desantis about his wife with cancer, whether she had cancer or not. And another thing, they've been doing a lot of it just explicitly. And you know who's going to get a lot of attention? Oh, wow. Who? You know who's going to get a lot of attention?

Who? Who? Is Vice President Harris. Yes. Well, so far, not yet, but they will. Yes. Well, so far, not yet, but they will. Speaking of vice presidents, another thing someone was talking about, which I hadn't thought about, is Trump's pick of a VP will be critically important. If he goes the Carrie Lake crazy route, it's problematic. If he goes to a more Tim Scott kind of pick, that's a better, you know, moves him closer to the center. And so anyway, it's an interesting situation politically. We'll see. We'll see. But right now, the debt ceiling looks like it's on its way to being passed. So old Joe Biden, old Joe Biden seems to have been doing pretty well for a doddering old man. Anyway, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Scott, read us out. Today's show is produced by Lauren Amon, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Dertot engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mule Severio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Cara, have a wonderful weekend.

Thanks, you too.