Pivot - DOGE’s Chaos Strategy, X’s New Valuation, and Guest Co-Host Katie Drummond

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Kara is joined by guest co-host Katie Drummond of WIRED! They talk all things DOGE: Is Elon Musk not in charge? How much have cuts actually saved so far? Is Steve Bannon a fan? Plus, X is in talks to raise money at a valuation of $44 billion, which is the same amount Elon Musk bought it for. Read more from WIRED here. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on Bluesky at @pivotpod.bsky.social. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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On this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, I'm sitting down with Lexi Alford, AKA Lexi Limitless, the youngest person to have been to every single country in the world. We chatted about how she turned her passion for travel into breaking a world record and transforming that momentum into a seven figure business. Listen wherever you get your podcasts

or watch on the Your Rich BFF YouTube channel. Keep going for big balls. Tesla.Sexy LLC and big balls, two things I am very sorry that I have to keep saying on TV interviews and podcasts. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. Scott is off today. Who knows where he is, but in his place, we have someone so much better. Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired. Wired has always been a powerhouse, but particularly in the era of Trump, Elon and Doge, which I'm calling Doggie now,

and its coverage has become required reading. Katie, welcome. You've had a busy couple of weeks with all these scoops on Doggie, which led to a record-breaking increase in subscriptions. We'll get to that in a second, but welcome. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much for having me. I am also in a mysterious location, but I'm not going to tell you where I am either. Okay. All right.

Well, you're here at least as opposed to whatever the hell Scott's doing, taking edibles and not skiing, wherever he is. So I want to talk a little bit because you guys have really come on strong here. Now tell me about your approach to covering this administration. Now you became global editorial director relatively recently, right? Is that correct? Yes. Time is a funny thing these days, but it was about a year and a half ago. It was September 2023. I got the job. I started. And actually, my second day on the job, I emailed my boss. My boss is Anna Wintour.

That must be fun. It's, it's actually delightful. She's amazing. And I said, I need to hire a politics team. And here's why. And here's what I want to do. So it was, I'm happy to talk more about it, but it was sort of from, from inception, I think, looking ahead at 2024, which was obviously a critical election year for the United States and for so many other countries around the world, at the time in my head, it was much more about generative AI, misinformation, hacking, and those sort of tech adjacencies to politics.

I wasn't thinking, well, obviously, Elon Musk is going to jump in and end up sleeping at the White House. That wasn't on my radar at the time, but certainly our coverage has evolved a great deal since then. And why did you have that instinct? Because of AI around the world, regulatory issues, that was the focus, was that everybody's going to be focused in on what AI means and the government's included. AI was a major catalyst at the time. And I think my feeling was, you know, Wired covers a lot. I think Wired being described as like a tech outlet is incorrect and sort of misses

the forest for the trees. But you can't separate technology from politics anymore. And so it just felt like we had the tech industry coverage, we had the consumer tech coverage, we had the science coverage, we had all this other coverage, but we were missing this really important piece over here that made everything kind of click together. Like you can't cover artificial intelligence without looking at, well, how is it being used in elections? How is it being regulated? How are politicians talking about this technology? So it just felt like we needed that political expertise. So when did you sort of get the idea that you should really look at DOJ?

Because I think it's really, I mean, I'm feeling like how did they get into this USAID? Where did you get this, you know, all this stuff that you were getting and the identities and information about all these people that were working for it? Because that's years of beat reporting, essentially. I mean, I was trying to figure it out, and like, wow, they were up to speed rather quickly and rather accurately on what's happening. What was the strategy there? Yeah, no, I would love to say it was years of beat reporting

because that is something that I believe in, and that is something we have implemented at Wired, is the notion of each reporter owns a beat. We believe in iterative reporting. So what that means essentially for someone who doesn't work in journalism is you sort of, you break off pieces of a story, you publish what you're able to confirm at any given time,

and that reporting builds on itself and builds and builds and builds. You don't wait. You know, I think it was over the summer, when when now President Trump was shot in the ear, you remember those the photos, the raising the fist, these sort of iconic images that I said to the staff, there is a very good chance that this person is president again, there's a very good chance that he wins, because that was such a seminal moment in this election. And and shortly after was when Elon jumped in, endorsed Trump, and really started running

into that campaign with, I think, something like $280 million ultimately in contributions, and obviously a lot of contribution via his megaphone on X that he uses. So it was at that moment that we knew we had to really focus on Elon Musk and we had to really focus on Trump as probable president-elect. And so at that point, you know, we ultimately assigned someone to cover Elon Musk in government, like Elon Musk as political operative. That is your beat. That is what you own. So that was in July. So we had a lot of lead time to start sourcing up because it was over the summer that we

said, everybody here, no matter what you cover, in some way, shape or form, what you cover will be impacted by a Trump administration. So you need to start working on that now. And people did. I mean, they did. And so we were prepared, I think, in large part because of that. And then I think in large part because we have journalists on the team, including Zoe Schiffer, who joined us in January, who knows a lot about Elon

Musk. I mean, she wrote a whole book about him acquiring Twitter. So I think we had the political aspect of it staffed up and running. We had the tech industry coverage and the sort of expertise on Elon. And when you combine all of that together really forcefully, which I think we're very good at being very forceful, we just ran at that story. Like we ran at that story. That's interesting that you're forceful because I get what you're doing because we've done it, we did it previously at All Things See with Uber or Yahoo, whatever the story was. It's nothing like this story.

I'll tell you, I wouldn't even know what to do with this story. But talk about forcefulness because it's really important to have an editor who is your critical part of this, as I know because I've been there, not on this biggest story, but talk about the idea of forcefulness and aggression in doing that, and not in a negative way. No, I love forcefulness and aggression. I mean, gosh, that's such an interesting question. I just, I think that I am a forceful and relatively aggressive person.

And I think that my enthusiasm for news and for scoops comes through very loudly and very clearly to the team. And I think it has since I started the job and made it very clear what we were here to do, which was to interrogate power structures within the tech industry. Like, that is what I'm interested in doing. And so I have been very clear about that from day one. And another thing is people do try to stop you. They say, why are you being so aggressive?

And I think people don't understand that. When we were very aggressive on Uber and what was happening there with Travis Kalanick, a venture capitalist approached me at a restaurant called Marad and they said, when are you going to stop being so hard on him? And I said, when he stays down. I just don't know what to say. And they were like, well, that's, you know, rude. I'm like, what? Like, I'm sorry. he's a terrible CEO. He's doing terrible things and he's not staying down. So when he stays down, that's probably when we'll stop or even beyond.

It was interesting. It's hard for people to understand. Do you feel pressure yourself? Because this is big stakes. I mean, that was just Uber, like who cares kind of thing. I don't mean to say who cares, but you know what I mean. This is the bigs. This is really the bigs. Do you personally feel pressure when you,

or do you feel that you have to pull back anyway? I've noticed a pullback among certain people for sure. No, no, no. And it's not even some grandiose notion that I have. I mean, I remember when we published that one of our first stories naming several of these young engineers, and it was an explosive story. We got a lot of criticism. And it's not that I was surprised by any of it, but I just hadn't, like the idea of softening that story had not even entered my mind.

And I don't say that to brag. I say it because we're just like, this is the job. Like this is my, I get paid to do this. Like this is my job. I take my job very seriously. I love what I do. But I have not thought for a second that we should soften anything that we're doing. I think what we owe our audience is very clear, very transparent, like very direct coverage and explanations of exactly what is happening as we are able to

learn it and confirm it. Like that's all we're doing. That's it. Yeah, exactly. One of the things that was the attacks were so disingenuous, you know. You're saying who they are. You were not saying little pricks or anything else. I was saying that. But you were very clearly just saying, this is who's working on this stuff. This is the federal government. It deserves transparency. And those attacks were disingenuous. I mean, he attacked, Elana attacked Scott and I for being mean to them or something like that. It's part of a narrative they have trying to get on how these poor kids, how dare you attack these poor kids kind of things.

Right. I mean, the notion that there is something illegal about naming individuals working within federal agencies at the behest of Elon Musk is nonsense. Like I just, I don't even understand what that means. Yeah, exactly. And those stories were anything. So let's go into some of these stories because I think it's really, people are sort of, it's a breathtaking level of scoops, I have to say.

It's really, and I think a lot of people are doing a great job now. I do too. And what's interesting is they've stepped up since you stepped up. It actually creates an energy around the coverage itself, which I think is, I've noticed just today, I saw about three stories elsewhere elsewhere and I was like, this would only be because Wired's been so aggressive. Oh, I appreciate that. But you can feel it, you can feel it. But people were slow to the idea of what's happening here.

So it's been a month since Trump took office. There's a lot happening in the land of doggies, as I say, so let's dig in. One shocking thing we learned this week, Elon Musk's apparently not in charge of doggie. The White House said in a court filing that Elon Musk is not the US doggie service administrator. I'm sorry to say it that way, but I'm gonna keep doing it. He's an employee in the White House office akin to a senior advisor.

Talk a little bit about this. And I'm gonna go into some of your stories too, but talk about what you thought. Is this the lupius of loopholes? The White House can stay out of legal trouble. Several states' attorney generals argued in a suit last week that Elon is wielding power that can only be held by elected officials and people confirmed by the Senate, but a federal judge ruled there wasn't enough evidence for irreparable harm to justify a temporary restraining

order. This is a legal nicety. The judge also expressed questions about what the White House was doing. Yes. Questions isn't quite taking it far enough, I don't think, at this point, but I'm not a judge. So my understanding of this, I mean, first of all, it is just, it is chaos across the board. It's like, wait, sorry. The President of the United States has been saying for months that Elon Musk is in charge of Doge, that he runs Doge, he's in charge of Doge, Elon's doing this thing, Elon's making these decisions. All of a sudden, in a court filing, we now have the White House saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, first of all, total chaos. Second of all, my understanding of that sworn statement, just to be clear, it is a sworn

statement, is that essentially that allows Elon to continue doing what Elon is doing within these federal agencies and within Doge without facing legal ramifications for overstepping in a role that, to what you just said, ought to be an elected position. Like, he ought to have had to be elected or confirmed in some way, shape, or form. Instead, he just walked right in the front door. And I think what they are trying to do is avoid any legal scenario where he needs to stop down what he is working on. So, Wired published a story this week about a law that could possibly stop some of Dogey's actions. Explain that, explain what you're doing,

because you are building, you're building a case, right, in your own way, in a journalistic way. Yeah, I think trying to, you know, there have been so many lawsuits at this point filed about what DOJ is doing. What several of them have in common is that they rely on this Watergate-era law, the Privacy Act, that essentially prevents government employees from accessing Americans' data in a variety of different ways.

So it essentially is designed to safeguard very sensitive information about the American people from agents within the U.S. government. And so essentially we have lawsuits saying, you know, everything that's happening here, sort of the access that DOGE appears to have within these agencies is a violation of this Privacy Act that was instituted, you know, several decades ago. You know, whether that actually succeeds in any or all of these lawsuits is an open question. And I think one thing that's interesting to me and I think troubling to me is that that argument could succeed in one instance, let's say a lawsuit with regards to access in the Treasury Department, and it could fail in another instance.

So let's say access to IRS data, right? So you have this sort of like band-aid slapdash approach to trying to just like stop Doge from accessing as much data as possible, but how do you stop them from accessing data wholesale on sort of like a holistic level? I don't think we have an answer to that. Do you have a legal reporter?

How do you, because I think the lawsuits will reveal a lot, but it's the slowest way of dealing with a very difficult situation. It's the slowest way and certainly it opens up questions about whether or not the administration decides to abide by the rulings of the courts, right? I mean, I think that's an existential question for the country. You know, we don't have a legal reporter. We just have really, really smart security and politics reporters. And you know, a team of managers on top of them who are the smartest journalists I've ever worked with, and we make a lot of phone calls. So we talk to a lot of experts who know this stuff inside and out and can essentially help

us translate all of that information for the audience to make it as easy as possible for people to understand, you know, what is happening and what potential safeguards exist to prevent it from happening. So you use the word chaos a lot. It's important. This is one of Elon's signature moves, chaos, to create chaos or create trouble and then make accusations. He's got six or seven moves, including attacking you for revealing the names, for example.

But chaos is the point here, I think, in many ways, so that everyone has to run around and do these Band-Aid approaches. Yeah. It's interesting, too, because chaos is also a signature move of President Trump. And so we're sort of seeing chaos in a big picture way across the entire federal government, the entire federal apparatus. Doge being one pocket of chaos that like sits within the larger chaos umbrella. So it's just like chaos everywhere you look. And I actually think

my sort of theory is that at least some of the chaos being created by the Trump administration in a big picture way is distracting people from like the nitty gritty doge chaos that's happening inside of all of these agencies in this sort of simultaneous and concurrent way. So I actually think like a lot of the, you know, it's like the Gulf of America, all of the craziness of distraction. Yeah, the DEI stuff as awful as it is, I think these are, you know, Canada is the 51st state. Like these are distractions while 25-year-old engineers who interned at

SpaceX are trying to obtain administrative access to very sensitive systems that contain data about millions of Americans. Can you give people a sense of why they want that? I have a theory, but what is their need for getting that to get to the data? That's a really good question. If I had an answer to that question, I would be publishing a story. I mean, if you say that they want to train AI

on Americans' data, I will smile and laugh and freak out. Although I certainly wouldn't put it past them. I mean, I think that that Elon Musk wants complete and total control of the entire federal infrastructure and apparatus. I think that sort of that's what the driving force is here. I don't think he's in it for his contracts. I don't think he's in it to like make Tesla a more successful company. I think he's in it to run the thing the way he runs every other company in his portfolio. Whether or not he wants that data to train an AI, I think is an open question.

But I'm curious to hear what you think. It does vaunt Grok ahead, which is not ahead. Grok is not ahead. But it vaunts, it puts him in a pole position. Because, you know, as you know, many AI researchers think we're running out of data, right? That's been the big discussion recently. Well, there you go.

And you're right, he does. But for what purpose does he want to run it? That's the part that's going to be very difficult to report when you're thinking about it in that big term. Well, and you have a better sense of his psychology than I do. But there certainly seems to be something very, very deeply buried inside of him that just wants to run everything. I mean, it just feels like pure ego. Or he wants to go to Mars and he needs the government to do so. There's all kinds of

theories on that. So let's talk about the relationship you mentioned between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. They sat down for a joint interview with Sean Hannity, the House reporter there at the White House, and I mean that in a negative way. Hannity said he felt like he was interviewing two brothers. Hannity, it was the biggest wet kiss. He licked them up and down the entire time. Elon shared how much money he's trying to cut from the deficit. Let's listen.

Well, the overall goal is to try to get a trillion dollars out of the deficit, let's listen. Well, the overall goal is to try to get a trillion dollars out of the deficit. And if the deficit is not brought under control, America will go bankrupt. This is a very important thing for people to understand. A country is no different from an individual in that if an individual overspends, an individual can go bankrupt. And so can a country. That's the idiot's guide to how countries are run, but that's not correct. That's not correct. But, well, DOJ says it saved $55 billion in federal spending so far.

The actual data shows it's much less. One major error found on the DOJ website, it mislabeled the contract as $8 billion when it was actually $8 million. You all have been doing a lot of reporting around this, this idea of what the cuts that are being made. And NPR just did one showing the same thing, that this is not $55 billion. And of course, now they're also talking about sending people dividend checks, which is trying to make people happy with them and allowing them to keep doing what they're doing. It's come rather early, the payoff has come rather early. But talk a little bit about this and what these young people are trying to do.

Are there more of them moving into the space now that it's gotten momentum? Yeah, from everything we can tell, you know, DOGE is expanding. I mean, the budget for DOGE, I think, last week expanded to the tune of several million dollars, which strongly suggests that they are onboarding more personnel, that they're bringing more people in, not exactly a model of efficiency themselves if they continue at this rate. But essentially, what we have been able to establish, there's a pattern to what they are doing, right? So they gain access to an agency, they gain access to, in particular, I think, systems

that contain, you know, personnel files, personnel data about, you know, who is a probationary employee, for example, right? So that's someone, as the Trump administration recently changed the rules around this, someone who is, I think, like, they made the probationary period one year instead of two years, I think, which basically allowed them to fire more people. So they're going into these agencies, obtaining data about personnel and salaries, and then they are just pushing through sweeping layoffs of hundreds or thousands of federal workers

across every agency that you can possibly imagine and sort of a new one every day, right? I think that has become like the repeat sort of mad libs version of these stories is Doge is now inside X agency doing Y layoffs. Like that's, that is the story. The reality though is first of all to indiscriminately fire thousands of civil servants without really having an in-depth understanding of what each of what they do, what it even means to be in a probationary period, because that also applies to someone

who was recently promoted. So you have people who have been 10, 20, 30 year government workers who were just lumped into this probationary worker category and fired, first of all. So there's that whole hot mess express over there. But when the rubber hits the road, like when you look at the math, like when you do the numbers, firing a bunch of civil servants isn't going to get you a trillion dollars. Like that's not where the money is. And so you have these sort of these big promises, these sweeping claims about savings from like, we cut this contract, we don't subscribe to political pro anymore. Look at us go.

Look at all the people that we're firing. That doesn't actually add up to that much money. And so I think the question is like, where are you planning on finding the other like $92 billion that you need to find to get to a trillion dollars? When you are looking at who is doing this, it's indiscriminate because they're also inexperienced. The vetting of these people who are doing this is also, you're doing the vetting. Wired is doing the vetting.

And a lot of them have sort of what I'm not surprised by, but typical obnoxious tech bro behaviors, you know, in terms of being on certain sites, doing certain things. Yeah. Wired is doing the vetting to the credit of so many other journalists too. I mean, other news organizations, you know, Wall Street Journal, very notably Bloomberg have been breaking some really important stories about some of these individuals as well. I think one thing that's important to note is sort of how this recruiting appears to have happened in the first place. So we published a story, I think, 10 days ago about, you know, essentially like former interns at companies like SpaceX or Palantir

going to online forums for alumni of those internship programs or of those companies, and basically doing like a spray and pray, like, hey guys, does anyone want to save the federal government? Like, DM me and we'll get you like onboarded with Doge. So that appears to have been, you know, the very sort of elite handpicked recruiting process

was actually just, you know, posting in message boards. From there, it's relatively unclear what kind of vetting actually happened or whether there was an interview process, whether there were background checks, security clearances. I mean, we published a story about one of these guys who goes by big balls. We've all heard about big balls. Everyone has talked a lot about big balls, but you know, we talked to several, I think three or four different experts who said, it is very unlikely that this guy would ever pass a security clearance to walk into a federal agency. It would not happen. This guy has been involved in not criminal enterprises, but at the very least, like criminally adjacent enterprises. He has, you know, he's running, you know, web domains out of Russia.

Like he is doing all sorts of really bizarre, sketchy stuff that would raise serious red flags with someone doing just a background check before allowing a new federal... He loves that. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's, it's this sort of like reckless disregard for any standards in terms of who you're bringing in. And explain why he wants those young people to do it. I know why, because older people wouldn't. Older people wouldn't.

I think, look, there is this, as you know very well, the cult of Elon, right? And I think for a lot of young men in the technology space, what he is doing and everything that he does and the way he lives his life, the way he communicates online, he's an icon, he's an idol. I mean, they look up to him and they are very malleable and pliable and they will go into these agencies and do as told because they are doing it for Elon, they are doing it for this larger cause, this notion of saving the United States. I would imagine for a 19-year-old who runs a company called Tesla.Sexy LLC probably thinks

this is a pretty exciting adventure to be on with Elon Musk. It is. It is. It is. And yeah, older people just wouldn't do it. They do have older people, as you've noted, and others have reported, very sophisticated lawyers and everything else. Someone who's not hiding his disgust for Elon is Steve Bannon, which is interesting.

Bannon called Elon, I think, this week a parasitic illegal immigrant, though he did compliment Doge. And he said, Elon wants to play act as God. He does seem to be a fan, as I said, of Doge's work. He told CNN, let's listen. Elon's doing some great work. You know, I'm a huge supporter of the deconstruction of the administrative state and what Elon's doing in Doge. I'm a big supporter of that. I hope and my prayer is that these cuts are real. So Bannon later called out Elon, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos as oligarchs who don't support the MAGA

movement. What is going on here? I think he would turn and be pals with Elon in five seconds. No question with this guy. I mean, my best guess here is that Steve Bannon is outside of the inner circle and wishes he was inside of the inner circle, right? And has sort of been supplanted by Elon Musk. I mean, I think it's interesting to compare that Time Magazine cover with Bannon from

the first Trump administration to now Elon, you know, in that very iconic Time cover from a couple weeks ago. He's sitting in front of the resolute desk. Yeah, I think that Steve Bannon is sort of on the outside looking in, probably wishing that he was part of the club. That's my best guess. Right, right, right. And try, that's what those compliments for.

When you think about those who are pushing back, are there really true people pushing back? And what can be done? Obviously, Scott made fun of the people, the Democrats standing in front of agencies and yelling. But, you know, there is something to protest, obviously. Is there real pushback within the government and within technology circles? They just seem to be quitting.

A lot of the techies who are in there are leaving, are going. Yeah, yeah. I wish I could say that we were seeing signs of some really coherent strategic effort on the part of the Democrats, on the part of leaders within these agencies to push back on what was happening or prevent it from happening. That's not what I'm seeing. I don't think that's what our reporting indicates. I don't think that we're seeing that play out. I think what we're seeing, to your point, are politicians standing up outside of offices in DC and making

a fuss and making noise, which fine. I mean, even just the visibility of that, I think having those clips on social media, there's value there. Obviously we're seeing people take to the streets and protest in, I think, relatively small numbers at this point, if I'm being totally honest. And I also don't think the Trump administration gives two shits whether people are taking to the streets and protesting in relatively small numbers. And then we are seeing career civil servants,

people in very senior positions within these agencies walk. We're seeing them walk publicly, right? They're not being shy about why they're leaving. And I completely understand that for someone who has been in a position like that and who can no longer, I think with integrity, hold the office that they hold, that the only choice they feel they have is to leave. On the flip side though, what that means is it just became that much easier for Elon Musk and President Trump and all of these, you know, leaders within these federal agencies to put someone else in these big jobs who will be malleable, who will be pliant, and who will execute according to Musk and Trump's demands. So that's essentially what that means. They just opened up the headcount and that's a good thing.

Yeah. Among the biggest people is the cyber people. They're terribly worried. That's the ones who are sounding the alarms in terms of the porousness of what's happening here. Yeah. All right. We're going to a quick break. We come back more about Doe's central and Wired's amazing reporting. Support for Pivot comes from Delete Me. You might be surprised how much of your data is on the web. You might be even more surprised to know that data brokers collecting that

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Visit voxmedia.com slash SXSW to learn more. That's voxmedia.com slash sxsw. Katie, we're back. There's obviously been a lot of questions. You mentioned about conflicts of interest since Elon came to Washington. I agree. I don't think his big thing is to make money, although he doesn't mind doing it. And he's supported, like he's using threats to push X, he's using threats to this and that. He's doing the typical shakedown kind of thing that can happen. Wired has done some new reporting on SpaceX engineers in the FAA. They're also putting his people within the FAA. And also, apparently, President Trump's trying to get him to figure out why he doesn't have his jet, like he's putting him on that, too.

Talk about that. I'll note SpaceX launches are regulated by the FAA, and the agency has alleged that SpaceX violated safety rules in the past many times. Talk a little bit about this story today. Yeah. So, ugh. I mean, and as someone who travels by airplane frequently and takes a lot of Xanax to do it, I have to say this line of reporting has been particularly stressful

for me as a human being. So we've identified several SpaceX engineers who were onboarded into the FAA this week. Even as the Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, I think on Monday said, we've got some engineers from SpaceX, they're taking a tour of some facilities, sort of like nothing to see here. Meanwhile, they were actually being onboarded as employees of the FAA. And so these are engineers. I think it's important to be very clear that these are people with legitimate qualifications, right? I'm not talking about 19 year olds who have decided to put up a rocket. Yeah, right

These are people who you know work at SpaceX like they make rockets go into the sky and then come down But there are obviously, you know several Concerns or issues with regards to the FAA right now. One is that, you know, Doge just fired, I think, several hundred FAA workers in a moment where it's very clear that the FAA has been understaffed and spread way too thin for far too long, right? There have been alarm bells sounded about that for a very long time. So the notion that we would be reducing staff within that agency is stressful to begin with. There's also just the reality, as you just pointed out, that the FAA oversees SpaceX and has fined SpaceX several times for safety violations. So the idea that you would have engineers from a company that is regulated by the agency that they now work for, going in to try to, quote,

fix that agency is one enormous and very stressful conflict of interest. I just find the idea of, you know, someone with experience relevant to SpaceX going in to fix the agency that also oversees and governs commercial aviation, that's genuinely a very scary prospect. Yeah, and it's happening all over the government, obviously. You guys have been reporting on that. And again, who's running SpaceX and Twitter and all these other, obviously Steve Davis, who's been a very active Musk minion.

What is the point here of putting them there just for eyes? I assume eyes and ears. LW – Yeah, I think eyes and ears and marching orders, right? I mean, they're there to carry out Elon's asks, even though he is ostensibly apparently not in charge of Doge. I think we all know that that's, you know, that's a lie. It's an interesting characterization that doesn't seem reflected in what's actually going on. I mean, look, I think they're the adults in the room. I think they're there to act as the authority within a handful of different agencies and

get these young operatives where they need to be. What's the impact on the companies? Because by the way, Tesla's not doing great, by the way. They're not, you know, but what is what is the what is happening at the companies when they pull these people out? I mean, as of now, I think it's fair to say Tesla is not doing great. But we also have situations like X being shopped around at evaluation that matches what Elon paid for it a few years ago. So I think it's it's hard to say what's happening at the companies, especially because so many of these people appear to be pulling double duty. Right. I think we had an example a week ago, I believe it was a Doge operative within the technology

transformation services who had kept his job at an external company while fulfilling this role for Moscow federal agencies. So it would not be surprising if a lot of these people pull the Elon playbook and work several jobs at the same time. Could he put, he could put them in every agency, his own employees, correct, that are beholden to him and nobody else. He could, and that's what has been going on. We've also seen Doge operatives, I call them operatives because that feels like the most

accurate way to describe them. They have multiple email addresses. You have people working within two, three, four agencies at any given time, multiple email addresses, apparently sort of acting out the asks of Musk and sort of Doge leadership across the federal government at once, which is a terrifying proposition, honestly. And who is coordinating all that? Elon is not doing this alone. Who do you think is the most critical person helping him coordinate this?

I think in particular at the Office of Personnel Management, which is I think shorthand for that would be like it's like HR for the federal government. There's a woman named Amanda Scales who has worked for Musk before, most recently at XAI, and she's there as chief of staff. So she's really sort of like running point. You know what a chief of staff does. I mean, they sort of like keep all the trains moving. It's like the managing editor is the way I think of it of the federal government. So I think that she is like a very critical linchpin in this. Then you also have the GSA, which is the General Services Administration and sort of the leaders

that he has installed across those two agencies because they oversee so many different branches of the federal government. I mean, I think that those are sort of the critical adults in the room who are working across all of these different agencies from where they are stationed. But I think Amanda Scales is an important person to be paying attention to just in the sense that she is really the operational leader working within that agency. And he always has those. He has those all the time that are loyal to him.

What people have to understand, they're loyal to Elon Musk, not Donald Trump. These were not Trump supporters and neither was Elon for a long time. So I want to ask you about the president because what is his role in here? Last week he's channeled Napoleon posting, he who saves his country does not violate the law. He was controlling people with that. He also called himself king on Wednesdays. He tried to kill congestion pricing in New York. He's busy. That interview was really something.

It doesn't seem like he knows what Elon is doing. That's my impression. Everything that we have heard from inside the administration and around the administration is that even people very close to President Trump don't know what Doge is doing. They don't know how often to be communicating with Doge. They don't know what that process is supposed to look like. It really feels like Doge is always two or three steps ahead and the actual

White House, the actual administration is behind. They are catching up with what Doge is doing. Honestly, it seems like as the press is, as journalists are publishing stories, it sort of feels like the administration is finding out what Elon has been up to, despite, you know, any assurances or anything that the president is saying publicly, because he has been very publicly supportive of Musk and Doge. It really doesn't seem like he has any idea what's going on. And frankly, it doesn't really seem like he cares. And why do you think he's allowing this to happen? Wow, that's a great question. I mean, I think that he likes the story that he's able to tell. He's telling, you know, U.S. citizens, people who voted for him, that he's cutting cost. He's telling them that he is very close to tech and to sort of tech leadership and to the visionary Elon Musk. I think he likes the story. I think

he loves the chaos. I think he loves the fact that Doge is in the headlines 24-7. I think it keeps his administration top of mind for people because it's inescapable. Yeah, it's a great narrative. It's a great story. I think he likes the story. I don't think he actually cares what's happening in the details. I don't think he's getting into the fine print on this. Nothing at all. All right, Katie, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about X's new valuation. Support for Pivot comes from Intuit QuickBooks. Are you a business owner looking to grow? You already did what most dream of doing, starting your own business. Now you're faced with the reality of making that small business run smoothly. Intuit QuickBooks can help. QuickBooks is a powerful AI-driven all-in-one business platform. That means those day-to-day tasks, things like invoicing, expenses, and taxes, can be done effortlessly. But here's where it gets really good. You don't need to hire a team of analysts to find

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customer, you were free to roam the aisles and test all the products that you wanted to your heart's content. And that was just a very unusual idea at the time. You no longer had to be teen Clinique or a Lancome lady. Maybe for you, it wasn't solely Maybelline. And that was fine. In Sephora, you were free. Consumers loved this new way of shopping. Sephora became a kingmaker.

It is still a very big deal to get your little brand into a Sephora bae. But now comes a reckoning. Does Sephora have too much power? Get in loser, we're going shopping. Listen every weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. Katie, we're back. Let's get to a couple more headlines. Elon Musk acts as in talks to raise money from investors at a valuation of 4444 billion. If that number sounds familiar, it's because it's the same

price Musk bought the platform back in 2022. In December, Fidelity Investments marked down its stake in the company by 70%. This follows a trend of Musk's company valuation soaring since he's taken a significant role in the Trump administration, even if the companies are suffering, such as Tesla. Numbers are down and the price was up. X is not in the same place it was for Elon. It's smaller. Today the Wall Street Journal published a very good story about X people pressuring advertisers to get back on or else maybe they'll face an investigation or they'd be added to a lawsuit that they're doing.

They're using a lot of legal means to try to force advertisers onto what is clearly a less good platform. Talk about this, although again, it's not for him to make money is not maybe his guiding role. He certainly is doing it and here's a perfect example of it. Here's a perfect example. I mean this is a platform that to say that it has seen better days would be a massive understatement. I mean it is for all intents and purposes a right-wing echo chamber. It's a mess. It's a terrible user experience. None of the ideas that they have advanced around X sound any good at all. You know, you could pay you could

pay people on X, they're going to introduce audio and video. They're going to integrate it with grok AI sounds like a complete train wreck. I mean, none of these are particularly promising ideas for the platform or the business. However, Elon Musk is very close to the president. I mean, he has that adjacency that for investors, I would imagine is very appealing. And for investors and advertisers, you know, the sort of the implicit or direct threats that are, you know, reportedly being made. So it's not just that it's exciting or enticing to think that they might be able to sort of get closer to the administration and curry favor with Musk and Trump.

It's that in some instances, at least with advertisers, it seems like they're not really being given much of a choice. Right. They are going to either pay or not, but you're going to be in trouble in some way. Let me read you some, I asked them about this today. I think this dynamic's playing out that every advertiser who knows what they're doing, no media buyer, indeed no marketer, once their CEO gets a call from Elon Musk berating them for not advertising on X, it sounds judgment to avoid by throwing some money to the company. Everything about this I loathe, it creates bad precedent, it puts money in Elon's pocket,

it undermines the advertising business. I think it's just prudent business. I have heard stories that the team is making veiled threats perhaps not so veiled threats, and I think it will ultimately bite them someday. But this is a classic story of corruption. It's just a kind of thing like that. You cannot build businesses on threats. I mean, you can't, but you can actually.

I mean, I think what is disturbing to imagine is what's playing out with X right now in terms of the conflict of interest, the corruption, advertisers bending a knee, investors bending a knee, everybody sort of getting in line to go along with what's happening here to be clear what's happening here is is not okay by any measure. If you extrapolate that and sort of think about it across many many companies across the entire country like across the united states of america like that this is what is happening to our country. to our country. X is a microcosm of that, right? But you have a lot of really wealthy, really powerful people, institutions, corporations bending a knee and saying like, oh, oligarchy? Like, okay, let's like, let's sure, I guess we don't have a choice. So hands up, we're gonna go along with it. They are saying, I've heard them say it to me, that we don't have a choice.

We can't do it right now, we can't do anything about it. Is there anyone else trying to take it back? Obviously all the tech leaders showed up at inauguration in that shameless display of fealty. I mean, I think that all of the pictures I saw of Tim Cook from inauguration, like he looked physically ill and like somewhat mortified. But he was there, and let history show,

let the photos remind everyone in four years, when knock on wood, we have another election, and the tables turn, knock on wood, he was there. They were all there. Sam Altman was there. Sam Altman, obviously an incredibly opportunistic tech executive, was there there and then subsequently, you know, polished the president's shoes while telling him how amazing his leadership was going to be for AI in this country and the world. You know, Mark Zuckerberg obviously is the most,

I think, brazen and craven example of this. And I'm speechless at that one because I think it is so, it's nauseating. It's nauseating. And again, I think really importantly with all of these tech executives, what's very important for the media and for press and for everybody to remember as the years go by and there's more and more chaos and we're doing more and more. When the dust settles, don't forget that they were all there. Don't forget what Mark Zuckerberg did to his company to appease the President of the United States. The influence that Metta's platforms have on millions, if not billions of people, don't forget what he did to appease the administration.

I think that that's really important because so much is happening every day. It's been a month. It's been a month. Is there any resistance in tech at all, besides Reid Hoffman and maybe Mark Cuban? None that I have been able to discern. I've talked to a lot of tech leaders and tech CEOs, even just off the record or talking to their comms people. And the message to me has been very clear. When we go on the record, don't ask us about politics.

They don't wanna talk about it. They're not talking about it. And I think it feels so markedly different to 2016 when a lot of them were talking about it. I think Airbnb, I remember, was a really notable example then of a company that came out swinging with regards to the Trump administration, with regards to the president's comments on immigrants,

people from garbage countries, whatever you need, shithole countries. Um, you know, it's radio silence, which I think is really telling, really disturbing, and will unleash any number of crises over the next four years. I really believe that. So last question here.

Are the Democrats, I don't think we're as close to tech as people thought it was. I thought Obama was, you know, in that regard with Eric Schmidt and others. Do you think it's a wholesale change? I think it's an opportunistic change. The joke I make is that if Kamala Harris won, Mark Zuckerberg would be asking us to call him they them. Yes. You know, I don't think it's anything other than that because I don't think they're committed

in any way. And I think C. Bannon's right. They're not MAGA friends. They just are opportunistic. In that regard, is there an opportunity for Democrats in that way besides giving these toddlers what they want? You mean to get closer to the tech industry? To get closer, back to closest. Or do you think it's an overall shift that's permanent? I don't think it's an overall shift. I think you're right that this is like company before country, right?

This is opportunistic, what's best for Metta in this specific moment in the context of the numbers, right? It's about the bottom line. It's not even about the staff and whether or not they're having a good time. It is absolutely opportunistic, but I think for the Democrats to be able to create an opportunity here would require them to first get their shit together and figure out what their strategy actually is over the next four years. And so it's a really hard question to answer when beyond some sternly worded statements and speeches and a couple of people hanging

out in DC outside of these federal agencies being noisy, I don't really see a coherent strategy taking shape at all. I would be very interested to see what they think they could do to collaborate more closely with the tech industry to sort of create a productive working relationship with some of these leaders so that hopefully in three and a half years, we're in a very different position ahead of the next US election. But it's very hard to see that happening right now because I don't see much happening at all. Yeah, I would agree with you. I would agree.

Okay, Katie, it's time for this week's threads poll result. Last week, we asked you all what you wish Democrats were doing in response to Trump administration, that's why I was asking about that. Here are a few responses. Kerry said, replace Schumer's entire comstash with Pete Buttigieg. From Marina, primary, retire all those old white men and support young ferocious fearless candidates. And Nick said, talk like human beings, stop fundraising texts, demonstrate understanding of urgency. We know the house is on fire. We want to see

firefighters, nurses, cops. Good answers. Kind of what you were saying. Yeah, those are great. What would, I mean, I think this is right. It's the elderliness of it, the tone definite, the lack of social media. I think the Republicans are excellent on social media and comparatively. And the Democrats certainly aren't as much. Some are, certainly are. Do you see anybody being very promising? I mean Pritzker has suddenly sort of developed a backbone and is using social media a lot,

obviously AOC uses it. Is there anybody, and how important is that going forward? I've always been a big Pete Buttigieg fan. He knows how to create a viral moment. He's very well spoken. He's very forceful. I think that he continues to be a really promising voice in that party. Obviously, I think that AOC is tremendous.

I mean, I think she is articulate. She is forceful. She is accessible. I think what she does on vertical video, on social platforms in terms of communicating with her audience is phenomenal. I wish that we saw more politicians do that kind of, I want to call it grassroots outreach. It's grassroots digital outreach, right? It's meeting your constituents where they are on the platforms where they spend time,

talking to them in a way that feels authentic, helping them navigate what is happening right now, and sort of really genuinely acting as a voice for the people and someone for the people to look to as a leader. I think the Democrats need more, to the point of one of the commenters, really sort of, you know, high energy, high velocity, forceful political leaders instead of, candidly, you know, the geriatrics who are just kind of sitting on their hands right now. And waving, Scott says waving their canes at people. I would agree. I actually see Chris Murphy doing some interesting things. There's a bunch of them. There's a bunch of them, but it has to be coordinated in a way that, you know, and you still have the power of the Rogans, although he's

slipping a little bit. You're starting to see slippage with him. I think the audience is up for grabs, that's for sure, if they want to have the right questions. All right. Now for this week's questions for our audience. Do you think China will agree to the sale of TikTok under the Trump administration? Katie, I want your response very quickly on this one. No. And? So what happens? What happens?

I mean, first of all, I think everything happening right now is very dubious in its legality. And I'm not quite sure how TikTok is still in the app stores that the Supreme Court said it shouldn't be in. I think that Trump brokers some kind of deal to keep TikTok in the United States. I think it's very clear that he has no intention of letting this thing shut down. Mm-hmm. So I think he brokers some sort of deal. What's in it for Beijing, though, is the big question mark I have, because they have no interest in allowing that platform to operate in this country

without their oversight and without their control of that algorithm. So how he actually solves for that, I do not know. And we at Wired, I will say, we do not know. And do you see any person besides Larry Ellison rising to the front? I have said Musk, obviously, because he's acceptable to China. I think Elon Musk. I think Larry Ellison. I do not think, as much as I really like Frank McCourt, and I think that he is a very articulate and intelligent person, I don't see that sort of taking shape in any meaningful way. Yeah, I think it's probably going to be the Elon thing once again,

because he's going to fix everything. And it's good for Twitter, it would be good for Twitter, because that's an actually good product as opposed to Twitter. Visit us on threads at Pivot Podcast Official to answer. So we'll hear the answers that we get from listeners. If you've got a question of your own or you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com.com. Pivot.

Submit a question for the show or call 855-51-Pivot. All right, Katie, one more quick break. We'll be back for your prediction. Hi, this is Kara Swisher, host of On with Kara Swisher. Over the past few weeks, I've been covering President Trump and Elon Musk as they continue to attack the federal government and dismantle our democracy. on with Kara Swisher. Over the past few weeks, I've been covering President Trump and Elon Musk as they continue to attack the federal government and dismantle our democracy.

At least, that's my opinion. I hosted a panel on Elon's takeover with Ann Applebaum, Owen Higgins, and Ryan Mack. I had a conversation on the constitutional crisis we may or may not be in with Preet Bharara, George Conway, Jamie Gangell, and Jonathan Cantor. And I took a look at Trumponomics with economists Orrin Cass, Paul Krugman, and Mariana Mazzucato.

But life is too short to only talk politics, and honestly, politics may make our lives shorter these days. It's important to find moments of levity, too. So I've also interviewed brilliant actors like Laverne Cox, Ben Stiller, and Cynthia Arrevo. We've talked about their work and what it's like to make art in these new times.

And to listen to any and all of these conversations, search for On with Kara Swisher wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to follow On with Kara Swisher for more. Okay, Katie, let's hear a prediction. You are Scott Galloway today. Okay, I'm going to offer a completely insane, improbable prediction. But I feel like I have talked so much about so many things that are very stressful and

real bummers for everybody. And I'm sorry about that. So here's my prediction. One thing that we know about Elon Musk is that he latches onto an idea or an ideology and he sticks with it and he goes really, really hard at it. And then he changes his mind. It has happened before. My prediction, and you'll have me back on

in six months or a year and make fun of me for how wrong I was. Something will happen, whether it has to do with his companies, whether it has to do with a divide in MAGA world within sort of the Trump orbit, something will happen. And he will pivot back to a more progressive, more left leaning, Dem centric ideology.

And he will do away with this sort of like hardline extremist far right approach. This is I am giving you a very optimistic, a very optimistic prediction. And it's just your wish, your wish that he that he will do this? I think there is a 1% chance that it will happen. And so I'm using it as my prediction. He used to propose a port, but I just was looking at texts he sent me about the climate change thing. He was all over the place.

Exactly. He was so upset in the text like Trump was doing. Same thing, oddly enough, with gay and lesbian stuff. I think it's important for people to remember that he was not always this way. It was not always like this. Well, he was a little bit this way. But he was not out there avidly cheering on Donald Trump in 2016. So I am saying there is a 1% chance that he moves in the other direction.

Well, we'll see. I don't know what could happen. Getting off the evening activities, I don't know what could happen. I don't know. You never know. His daughter is nice to him, who can't stand him. Exactly. You never know. You never know. If Elon Musk and Donald Trump in the last six months have shown us anything, it's that you never know. I did not know. If Elon Musk and Donald Trump in the last six months have shown us anything, it's that you never know. I did not know. He is consistent. Donald Trump is consistent. He has not changed one bit, except he's got

a rich friend that he uses as a cudgel on everybody else. But we'll see. That's a really good one, Katie. I like it. Thank you. Thank you. I like it. Excellent. I like it. We'll see. I will have you back in six months if that happens. Wonderful. All right. I just want to say absolutely stellar coverage. You are, you guys are not just a scoot machine, but the context and you're sticking to it.

Let me ask you a personal question. Are you worried in any way for yourself with all these threats? As people ask me that a lot, because when he recently threatened Scott and I, and I was like, oh, did he? Like, okay. Like, but it's not something that's not in my mind, legal action or, you know, pressure from people. I have seen it. I'm seeing it happen. I was supposed to appear with someone they pulled out. They're like, oh, you're too hot. Like, and I was like,

I don't think you mean that in a nice way, like kind of thing. I and to is do you feel pressure not to keep doing what you're doing? I don't feel pressure to stop doing what we're doing. I think what I feel is concern for the legal and digital and physical safety of my staff. I worry. Like, I'm a mom. I have a family. And I bring my mom energy to work. And I care about them. I worry about them. I worry about myself and my family to a degree.

And of course I worry about it, but the thing is, there's nothing inaccurate about the journalism. Like there is no... Everything, as I have said before, and this is such a cliché thing for an editor-in-chief to say, but we stand by the reporting. It is rock solid. There is not a strand that you could pull on that would unravel in some detrimental way. And so I have to just stick with that and keep going. And I think that's for the entire newsroom. Yep. I used to tell that to our reporters, you just have to get it right. It has to be

right. You cannot make a mistake with these people because the minute you make even just the slightest one, you know, you have an Achilles heel showing them they will come for you and that's what they'll do. But still there are issues. I think you're right to be concerned about digital issues, about hacking, about legal attacks and stuff like that. And so that's why it's all the more courageous for what you and others are doing in terms of, and keep going. Keep going for big balls. I don't know. And the fact that you couldn't, I'm sorry, it was so good.

We shouldn't laugh at this, but come on. How good is that? Tesla.Sexy LLC and big balls. Two things I am very sorry that I have to keep saying on TV interviews and podcasts. You like it a little bit. I love to keep saying on TV interviews and podcasts. Yeah. You like it a little bit. Oh, I love it. You love doing it. Okay.

That's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. I will read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Neyman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Enderdot engineered this episode. Nishant Kherwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Thank you, Katie. Thank you.