Pivot - Jack Dorsey's Bitcoin hopes, Biden picks a heavy hitter, and the Pegasus spyware scandal

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

Kara and Scott discuss Marjorie Taylor Greene's recent Twitter ban, Jack Dorsey's hopes for a bitcoin "world peace," and the "joyless" Olympics. Kara has high hopes for Jonathan Kanter, Biden's pick for the Justice Department's anti-trust division. Things look a little more glum for privacy after the Pegasus Project revelations. And in listener mail, we get a question on every Zoomer's mind: Should I even bother planning for retirement? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Well, yeah, and I think he's the one to do it. Just not via Twitter is your point. So Scott Harrison is saving the world from charity water, kind of like one well at a time. But he never says, I think I can save the world. I think there's a special type of narcissism when you claim that your next venture is going to save the world or is for all humanity or imagine the possibilities when, okay, maybe you should just put in place technology to demand identity so people don't harass trans kids. Why don't we start there? There's a special kind of like uber master bullshit to be using the term, I think it's

going to save the world when you're making every day through your inactions and your delay and obfuscation, the world a tangibly worse place. So look, reaching for the stars, that's wonderful. I don't think there's anything wrong with people grasping beyond the reach and making these bold statements, it just rings hollow when your company is leading or catalyzing Miami's genocide. Well, his other company. Anyway, what do you think? You know, it's just, there's been a lot of like billionaire pronouncements this week,

with Jeff and others. And it's exhausting. It's exhausting to be lectured to by these people. That's how I feel about it. You know, I think what's interesting is that they can't help themselves in terms of when they've got the world stage, this is what they do. You know, I just, I find it, I don't know. I'm just like, okay, just keep lecturing us on how the world should be and how you're going to take us to space, although you're the only one who's going to get on that spaceship and things like that. And so, I find it, it's just,

you know, what's interesting is I went back, I'm writing my memoir of Silicon Valley, and I went back and I written a story 20 years ago where they were doing the same thing. We're doing this to save the world, Kara. We're doing this to make the world a better place. We're doing this to bring people together. It was always some, you know, giant pronouncement. And I don't know if it's a disease. And, you know, in some cases, it's admirable to talk about things like this. When I hear this from different people, I'm good with it. It's just that, I don't know. I just feel it's just- Only I can fix this. Only I can fix this. It's just like that, which is the book, you know, about Trump that's on the

bestseller list. It's the same level of sociopathy that affects all of these folks. I mean, going into, and by the way, they're the targets of this disdain, but the underlying disease is among us. And that is, do you realize, you want to talk about a scary stat, Sunday morning or broadcast morning television shows spend more time covering the Blue Origins, Bezos, Dickens Space. Well, it's irresistible for TV. Well, hold on.

It looks like Bezos. But in one day, in one day, they spent more time, more hours covering the Bezos launch than they did covering climate change in all of 2020. I know. I know. And at some point, the editors or whoever it is at these stations has to go, okay, are we a big part of the problem? And when they send all these reporters and journalists down there to act breathless, I mean, think about this launch.

And by the way, I was on MSNBC yesterday, and I felt intimidated not to be that cynical. Yeah. And I just couldn't help it. They went 100 kilometers to the car in the line. Say what you said because I thought it was quite interesting. Okay. It would have been cheaper if Jeff Bezos had crashed his Canary Yellow T-Top Corvette into a hair plugs clinic. What is the achievement here? They went up 60 miles and floated back down.

50 years ago, we sent three brave people into orbit. We sent them 400 times as far. No, I'm sorry, 4,000 times as far. We sent them a quarter of a million miles, had them land on basically a big asteroid rotating at tens of thousands of miles an hour. We weren't even sure what was going to happen when we landed on the goddamn thing. And this was in an era- Which is the anniversary, but go ahead. This was in an era when the majority of homes in the United States didn't have air conditioning. A third of homes in certain regions didn't have indoor plumbing. And then we brought these men back safely to Earth. And now we're pretending this is some

sort of achievement. I am going to be in Nantucket this summer. I'm going to take a boat just as far across the Atlantic, which would be the equivalent of six miles, and have Lester Holt cover it and claim it's for all mankind. And then I'm going to ask Bezos for $100 million. Okay. Anyways. I didn't like that he thanked. You know, whatever. Everyone criticizes Bezos, but it just was a little much.

Let's just say it's a little much. A little much? A little much. They're all a little much. I like that they've come out of their pandemic, like, shelter, and I want them to go back into their shelter. That's how I feel. I don't want to hear pronouncements.

Although code is coming up, so we'll be hearing a lot of pronouncements from people. But hopefully we'll have some more illumination in them. Another thing is the Olympics are supposed to kick off today, barring any last-minute cancellation. There's been a lot of glitches. Fewer than one-third of Japan's citizens are vaccinated. They do not want it there. COVID cases hit their highest level since January this week. Toyota is one of the top sponsors of the game, and they're pulled all Olympic-themed ads off of Japanese TV, although they're doing it elsewhere. It's very hard to

resist doing the Olympics for advertisers. I get it. So it's just, you know, there's all kinds of things popping up besides the early stuff. There's, you know, different people that can't come, and they are getting this and that. I think people will probably forget it the minute the Olympics start and you see Simone Biles doing something fantastic. But the fact that they pushed on through with this is really interesting to me. Yeah, I don't know. I'm more, what a shocker, I'm more glass half empty. I think that malls, office space, movie theaters, business travel, and the Olympics are never going to be the same. And this is the perfect storm of bad things for the Olympics. And I think this is a real tragedy specifically for the athletes. When I was at UCLA, if we were a country, we would have

been the seventh most successful country in terms of medals. And I knew a lot of Olympians in water polo and in track. And, I mean, they basically have kind of a 24-month window where they peak physically from a training standpoint. And if they don't strike during that window, 99% of them aren't going to make a living doing this. And so this is really their shot. I think this is a tragedy for the Olympics. But look at the semantics here. You have obviously the novel coronavirus. And I feel sorry for the IOC.

I feel sorry for Japan. I mean, they are in kind of a no-win situation here. And then the athletes are testing positive. And this is their one moment. And all the news, attention is important. And all the news has been around COVID. It's not been building up any athletes. It's not been talking about Michael Phelps or Simone Biles' road to the Olympics. Like, other than Simone, who was an amazing and was the last Olympics, have you heard of any new stars except the one that got kicked out for THC?

Yeah. So, this is a real tragedy for the athletes. But what it also represents, you're going to see a decline in viewership of 50 to 70 percent. All right. Okay. That's going to be your prediction. We're going to get to predictions. But yeah, I mean – But it will take Peacock from 3 million to 3.01 million sign-ups.

I don't know. I'm not sure because, you know, the winter clubs are going to follow very quickly. Usually there's that break time. So, you know, I think they didn't – they were going to go through no matter what after the delay. They were going for it after last summer, I think. It just wasn't even a question. Oh, I think they're going to do it. I just think it's going to – it's just going to bomb.

It's going to be like – We'll see. They have all kinds of new things. They've got some skateboarding. They've got some interesting things. We'll see how many people want to look at it. I like the optimistic, sunshiny Kira. I'm not sunshiny.

I just think people like the Olympics. They like the Olympics. And one of the things that's interesting will be, you know, people are out in their hot summer of love. Although now with the Delta variant, people are, you know, suddenly talking about everything, about whether they should get vaccinated again, about whether they should go to restaurants. People are back to that thing with the Delta variant. But I think people will enjoy the Olympics. I do think that they shoved it on through. And I think the Japanese government's going to probably be in a little bit of trouble with their people there when they're doing it.

It's not with any joy. This is not with any joy. This is the joyless Olympics. But we'll see. We'll see. It really is tragic. Think of joyless. Marjorie Taylor Greene is back on Twitter, that ghoul, after getting suspended earlier, speaking of someone who says things that are ghoulish constantly.

She was suspended early this week for spreading COVID misinformation, which is, you know, anything every time she opens her mouth, essentially. She's calling it a communist-style Twitter ban. I'm not sure she knows what communism is. Saying she was sharing information that anyone can find that her First Amendment rights were violated. There are not, of course. Under Twitter's policy, 12-hour suspensions are imposed for second and third violations. A fourth violation gets a weak suspension and a fifth strike would lead to a ban. You know, she's headed down the Donald Trump highway on this one, I think, in terms of what's going to happen to her. You know, she raises a ton of money. She and Matt Gaetz are the ones that raise a ton of money. She says crazy stuff and

she gets a lot of attention. And I think she's completely calculated. She's not stupid by any stretch of the imagination. So she's using it to like bang on her first amendment drum, which is not accurate. But here she is. What thinks you speaking of Jack Dorsey is going to save the world through Bitcoin? Well, I love this because I can talk about my favorite subject, me. But so as you know, and I've mentioned several times, I hauled my ass down to Wall Street every Wednesday morning for about four years to speak on CNBC. And I loved it. I love Carl Quintanilla. I love John Ford. I love Sarah Eisen. I love Mike Santelli. I just think they have fantastic business journalists. And then one day they said, oh, we have a scheduling

conflict. And then they never invited me back. And then someone who works there says that on their guest registry, it says, do not book ever. So I was banned from CNBC. I'm still not entirely sure why. And then I've been talking about- I keep thinking I'll find out, but I don't really care. I'm about to get banned from my second network. And then yesterday on MSNBC, I'm not exaggerating. At one point, Stephanie Ruhl had her head in her hands on live TV. Head in her hands. Okay, so I may now be banned from three networks. And here's the thing. No, that's the same network. Here's their thing.

That's their fucking right. They're private companies. The First Amendment, just quick and dirty civics lesson here. The First Amendment states that government shall pass no law that prohibits free speech. And by the way, there are carve-outs to that. This is not the government. Facebook is not the government. And they law that prohibits free speech. And by the way, there are carve-outs to that. This is not the government. Facebook is not the government. And they've been hiding behind.

This is Twitter. Okay, Twitter. They've been hiding behind this First Amendment bullshit. They have no allegiance, responsibility, or fidelity to the First Amendment. They do not. Nor does she have any rights to impose on these private companies as it relates to the First Amendment. If Vox decides to censor me. Unless they get to third utilities, et cetera. You're right. You're 100 or whatever.

Yeah, it's one or the other. But right now, it's a private company. It is indeed. The First Amendment thing doesn't, that dog doesn't hunt when it comes to private companies. Yeah, we've said that a million times. She's a nincompoop. What's really bad is she's not reading the room. If you notice, the Republicans backtracked on vaccines, and suddenly they're hugging vaccines. And here she is spreading vaccine misinformation. I'm sure they're not happy. I suspect they've seen polls that show people don't like dying, especially the unvaccinated. And there's been some very, you know, you and I both tweeted the same story about the Alabama doctor who was like,

these people all want vaccines right as they're dying. Harpreet, can you say more about that? I thought that was really powerful. It was a great piece. It was really, it was this piece about people, this doctor in Alabama who, you know, she's putting young people on ventilators and they're like, can I get the vaccine? And she goes, it's too late. It's too late. And then she tells her family, go get vaccinated. That's the only thing you do to honor this person who's about to die. You know what I mean? And it's a really, it was a really gripping, really, really gripping story. And it's just, you know, I think probably a lot

of people are reconsidering what they're doing here because, you know, again, people with vaccines can get COVID. It's just like the flu. You can get the flu if you have a flu vaccine. It's not as serious in most cases, almost every one. And as Biden said, and I think he's using the term, I thought it was a really good political term. I'm sure it would have been tested politically. It's a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And so Marjorie Taylor Greene is a ghoul and she needs to move along and she's going to get kicked off of Twitter and then we don't have to hear from her, which would be great. But she'll have find a ways to get on all her kind of things. But she's very powerful voice and unfortunately she's using it for bad. In any case, let's get to the big stories. Speaking of reigning in tech, Wu, Kahn, and Cantor, the hottest new law firm of all in DC. President Biden will nominate big tech critic Jonathan Cantor to lead the Justice Department's antitrust division. It's a big appointment. Again, it's more, John is, I know him, is a big tech critic, especially with Google. And so it'll be interesting if confirmed, he'll join Lena Kahn,

who is at the Federal Trade Commission, and Tim Wu, who's on the National Economic Council, to form essentially an antitrust trio that's sure to terrify big tech that already is. By the way, there is already a coffee mug with their names on it, like a law firm. So it's pretty much a done deal. The website is called leftygoods.com. It's very funny. But the fact of the matter is, this is a trio that's, Biden is sort of walking the talk in terms of big tech. And so Cantor gets confirmed. He takes over the DOJ's lawsuit against Google, monopolies and search and ads. So what do you think of this? This is sort of, this rounds out that he picked the most, not the medium character. He picked the one who's going to really, who has been very clear about issues around big tech.

Look, this is another step in the right direction. And the only part of the narrative that I don't think is accurate is everyone's like, big tech is scared. Now, Mark Zuckerberg, who values power and money over everything and has such a lack of self-awareness around the fact that he probably shouldn't be controlling the content of the population of the southern hemisphere plus India, the reality is employees at Google, the shareholders, are going to do well when the breakup becomes a reality because everybody's going to go, you know what? YouTube's an amazing business. And when it's no longer coordinating with Google, it can start its own text-based search. And instead of having all these constraints around their actions and trying to figure out what impact it's going to have on their other divisions, they will... And every one of these companies are three or five amazing public companies that in aggregate will be worth more than the original company, literally not even on the day of the breakup, but on the day where the breakup becomes imminent. You're making the economic argument.

I think they're going to try to do all kinds of manner of things. John has represented Google competitors. And so they're, you know, they may try to get him to recuse himself like Amazon and Facebook have Facebook are trying with Lena Kahn, who will probably be refiling that lawsuit, the FTC lawsuit where the judge pushed back on it. You know, a lot of progressives are very excited about this. And this is something that Biden can do for progressives. He's not going to do everything for progressives. But he also has support from Republicans like Megan Delrahim, who had the job before. So it'll be interesting to see how they proceed. They don't have a lot of time. Like they, you know, just assuming that as often happens, say Biden loses the House, but the Democrats lose the House, they've got to move quickly in these

areas and get things in place so that they can do this. But it's a really interesting appointment because it does say to tech, let's make a deal because these people are the toughest trio you're going to put up in front of us. And so what would be interesting to see is what kind of deal they make. They've been rather aggressive, which is of course very typical of what you do in these situations, but we'll see what happens behind the scenes. I don't know. I just feel like it's, this is a tough trio. They didn't, they didn't, you know, they didn't Merrick Garland it here. Right. I don't know. Merrick was like the seems to be a disappointment to a lot of progressives.

And they went for the like the ones that really hurt. And you've seen action. You're going to see action from Lena, I think. And you've seen action from Tim Wu on the executive order. And you'll see action from this guy. And so, you know, he, they wanted to get in these positions for a very long time. I don't know anything about him. He's a longtime representative

of the anti-tech forces. I don't know. He's just been well-known for this. And so- I like the cut of his jib. I like his jib. I just think the three of them and they all know each other.

If I went into space or near space, I would take him. Oh, would you? I would take him. Would you? Yeah, him and Lena Kahn and Tim Wu. We don't want them. The antitrust dildo space adventure. We don't want them off the earth.

We don't want them on the earth doing these things. So I think what will be interesting to see is how the confirmation goes and what kind of resistance he faces and then what they do afterwards. has not been as aggressive as Facebook and Amazon have in terms of they're a little more like, we'll wait and see, we're going to fight these things, but they haven't been sort of that in your face kind of stuff. I suspect they realize what's happened here and they need to do something. And I don't know what's going to not break up something necessarily, but be more cooperative. I suspect Google's going to be more cooperative here. Interestingly, I interviewed Neva CEO, that Google's going to be more provocative here. Interestingly, I interviewed Neva CEO,

Sridhar Ramaswamy yesterday. Would you have an investment in Neva? And he thought this was, you know, this was inevitable that they would have. He used to work at Google. He used to be head of advertising there. And now he's doing this paid search engine. And I think a lot of people- He's a nice guy.

And he's got a nice shit about him. It was good. He said a lot. But what's interesting is that, you know, I think everybody sees the writing on the wall here. And so time to make a deal? Yes, I suspect. We'll see. Google has been like Ted Kennedy at the Anita Hill hearings. They're just like, let's just not say anything. Let's just fade into the woodwork. Anything we say is not going to be a good idea. This is a no-win situation for us. Let's just keep it to ourselves. Well, Wall Street doesn't seem to have affected these stocks.

They're doing really well. Yeah, but they get it. A breakup's good. Yeah. Heads I win tells you this. Yes, I suspect. I've said this a bunch of times. I think the most valuable company in the world in 2025 is AWS, which will have been prophylactically spun by Rocketman. We'll see. I don't know about Amazon. They seem – you know, Andy Jassy, prophylactically spun by Rocketman. We'll see.

I don't know about Amazon. They seem, you know, Andy Jastrow, when I asked him, said absolutely not. And now he's in charge. He said, you know, whatever. Let's see what's, let's see if he does that. At the time when he wasn't in charge, he said no. I don't know. I feel like they, they'll do what they damn well please. As, you know, that's how they act. And

Wall Street will like whatever happens, I think. These companies are valuable, powerful, and they're valuable, not powerful. But this group of people are very surgical, I suspect. They don't just rail at big tech. And if you've noticed, they've all been very quiet. Tim, who's been around and talked a lot, Lena, same thing, and John, too. I think they're going to be very quiet and try to make a deal here. Anyway, we'll see where it goes. I think a deal would be the best thing

rather than sort of banging on pots. That's my feeling. All right, Scott, let's go for a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the Pegasus spyware scandal and take a listener mail question. We've got some good ones this week. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content good ones this week. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year,

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Go to constantcontact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca. What a surprise. The International Investigation scanned a list of tens of thousands of phone numbers. I don't know if we're on it, Scott. Belonging to activists, lawyers, politicians. The Post said that 10 prime ministers, three presidents, and a king were among those potentially targeted by the spyware known as Pegasus. Pegasus was developed by a cybersecurity company named the NSO Group. The organization insists that Pegasus is only intended to be used against criminals and terrorists. But what a surprise. It's being used against others. Pegasus is only intended to be used against criminals and terrorists, but what a surprise it's being used against others. The founder of the NSO group issued a statement saying,

NSO will thoroughly investigate any credible proof of misuse of its technologies. Of course, we're going to build these things. Now, it's interesting. It also comes at the same time that a high-ranking Catholic priest resigned last week after his phone data showed up, him supposedly using anonymous gay hookup app Grindr. The Catholic news outlet called Pillars somehow obtained the app data and outed Monsignor Jeffrey Burrell, a top administrator of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Federal law does not prohibit this type of data from being sold. I mean...

Yeah, I don't. I mean, this isn't surprising. I think whenever you have a connected device, you should assume that some security apparatus or somebody might have access to it. It's just not about... I mean, everyone has a right, let me be clear, everyone has a right to privacy, but I don't think a bad way to live your life is to assume that at some point everything is, you know, comes of light.

And to a certain extent, if it just all got out there, it would in some ways be better because then everyone would realize the majority of people have some sort of, I don't know, dysfunction or weird or human, whatever you want to call them. The thing that struck me, and I want you to comment on this, is that- Because I could not agree with you less, but go ahead. Keep going. I think people should have secrets, but go ahead. No, I agree with you. I don't, let me be clear. I just don't think it's you should just assume that anything you type into anything that is going to be stored on a server might someday come public. And I agree. People have a right to privacy. I don't.

But the thing that made me, I guess, sad about this is that as I get older, I'm more interested in Jesus Christ as a historical figure. is that as I get older, I'm more interested in Jesus Christ as a historical figure. And if you read the Bible or you read or you try and understand anything about Jesus Christ or even our constitution, the kind of fundamental is people should have the, we should be generous with people in terms of who they are. And the thing that really made me sad here is here we are in 2020 and we have a senior level executive of a very important organization who has to has to live a lie and can't be can't love who he wants to love that has to do with the catholic church the awful catholic church scott that doesn't have to do with his phone there's nothing wrong in my opinion there's nothing wrong with this this man there's

nothing wrong with grinder who's fucked up here It's an organization that in a strange way is very, in my view, anti-Jesus, based on what I understand of Jesus. So it's sad that I went to college with a bunch of wonderful men who couldn't be who they were for a long time. And it's still a tragedy that one of the most powerful organizations in the world has this view where you can't love who or be who you want to be. It just made me feel very sad for him and sad that we still haven't made a lot of progress. And also the Catholic Church continues to be one of the most damaging organizations in modern history. It's just fucked up so many lives. Anyways, I'll stop there. that is a larger topic.

But in this case, it's about technology. In the Pegasus case, we know that at least 23 Apple devices were successfully hacked. And of course, Apple devices are supposed to be unhackable or nearly unhackable. And of course, they're not. And that was sort of brought into sharp relief when Apple refused to hack its own stuff. And then someone did, you know, in terms of the attack in California many years ago in the big fight with Jim Comey over encryption. But it's really, it's just nothing is, nothing is not available to be hacking. And it's one thing to be worried about the government spying on you, which they do,

which we know from Edward Stone revelations and everything else. But this is from a private company that's licensed out. And, you know, we had Nicole Perlroth talking about this, that the United States, in a lot of ways, facilitated this by all kinds of things they did in creating these markets where you can buy information, buy tools to get information. And it's very hard to regulate this. You know, it's very hard to figure out. And then you want the government who's spying on you. Or no, it's not illegal, is it? But it's some of it is, some of it isn't. It's not clear. And so one of the things that's

difficult is that, you know, at some point you have leaders that really, if everything is porous, it's very hard to do a lot of things if you can't keep some secrets. And the fact of the matter is most people should realize, even if you take all kinds of precautions, I do, I think a lot of people do, you're going to get hacked at some point. And this could be very devastating, especially for criminals. And look at what happened with China paying criminal hackers.

That's the allegation from the Biden administration to do this. I think it's just, it's a hot mess here in terms of where we're going because we are all jacked into this system in such a way. But when it gets to like activists by an activist on

lawyers and politicians prime ministers they're not safe and this is not just donald who knows that donald trump got i assume he did because he was like using like a he was he didn't care he didn't care that's right that's exactly right he just let anything but at some point you do have to have things that are that are secret secret or protected or information that's protected. And I know that Internet security people go crazy about that. And, you know, you still today to this day when you talk to even Democrats or Republicans who are in the security industry, they just hate Snowden. But it still points out that, you know, this is a very thorny issue but very disturbing. I felt this was the most disturbing of all the many security stories.

So I believe that you can't put this genie back in the bottle. I think it's more important to have laws that protect people's rights because the notion that somehow we're going to hamstring these technologies, it's out there. If you have a phone, assume that at some point somebody could hack it. The question is, what laws do we put in place such that if someone does hack your phone illegally, that they go to jail and that we have the ability to track those people down? is going on here has been going on for 15, 20 years. It just used to be the U.S. government was the best at it. So when Obama went to the LATAM summit 15 years ago, he pretty much knew what every leader was going to say and ask for because we had their phones and we had, I mean, we were going into Starbucks and figuring out ways to plant listening devices to hack phones of world leaders such that when we showed up to negotiate a trade treaty with the president of Chile, we already knew what their terms were. And we don't like to admit this, but we used to be the best at it. And unfortunately, this type of spyware has now been democratized, for lack of a better term.

And it's much less expensive now now and a lot of different actors can do it. So it's, I think the big loser here is the U.S. security apparatus, the delta between our capabilities and the capabilities of anybody with some money

have narrowed dramatically. Yeah, I think, again, I think I would recommend listening to the interview we did with Nicole Perlroth. Her book is called This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends,

The Cyber Weapons Arms Race. And that's what it is. That's really what it is. And so, you're going to see, there was a story like this, maybe a couple of years ago, that the US was spying on people, and then they, from WikiLeaks to this, to everything else, this is all part of the same thing. And so, we are jacked in the system. We have all kinds of information. Everything lives there. I think about it a lot these days as I'm formulating. I have a couple iPads that I haven't used and I'm using them. And I thought, I keep thinking, you know, after I was interviewing Sridhar, like, why am I using Google? Like, what have they got?

And like, how do I get out of it? And then you can't. You just can't get out of it. You can't remove yourself from because different like Vox's email is on Google. New York Times email is on Google. You know what I mean? Like, it's really like you can't escape it in some fashion if you put them in them.

What do you do? And it renders people completely vulnerable, completely. Yeah, and the collision or the cocktail that I think is the sodium and the pentothal is not only the hacking. Your email gets hacked, right? That's bad. But I think what is worse is that bad actors who might be trying to undermine your credibility because, say, on a regular basis on podcasts, you are

critical of the Putin administration or whatever it is, they get your emails, and there's 6,000 of them. And they publish them. And then what do they do? They plant six misinformation emails. And will the media and the Twitter mob say, well, maybe, I mean, if 99.9% are credible and ring true, the 0.1% that really are false and take your reputation and your actions to an entirely different level could be just extraordinarily damaged. And our news cycle isn't going to take the time to stop and try to figure it out. I would agree. They're just going to go, oh, my God, this person was not only on Grindr, but they were downloading, you know, really awful stuff. And that might not be true. But if it's planted, it's like the best type of misinformation mixes the truth in with the false.

Well, that's the whole point of it. That's the whole point of it. And hence, Marjorie Taylor Greene. No, she just didn't make a poop. Anyway, Scott, let's listen to a of it. And hence, Marjorie Taylor Greene. No, he's just a naked poop. Anyway, Scott, let's listen to a listener question. Roll tape. You've got, you've got, I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. Hi, Scott. Hi, Kara. My name is Nicholas, and I am a Zoomer from the state of Minnesota.

With the ever-looming threat of the climate crisis, why should someone from my generation save for retirement? I understand it's a nihilistic view, but I feel this whole retirement brand keeps us from rebelling against the rich. Hope you guys could help. Thank you. Gosh, Nicholas, give it all up. Nick. Nick. Well, it's an interesting question. It is an interesting question. Someone posed something like this to me just recently. they were saying the democrats i don't know if you saw some dumb republican said democrats don't believe in the future they're not having children i'm like over here having children like what are you talking about and so i do think about i made

me start thinking a lot of kids a lot of kids a lot of little swishers running around but here's the thing i I do think about it. I was like, as we're having children, like, what is the life going to be like for the golden child and more? And so, I think it's – I hadn't thought about it until just recently a lot more. Like, what is their life on this planet going to be like in 70, 90 years when I'm going to be long gone? And so, it does make me think about it. Like, why do anything? Like, why not just sit there and stare at the wall, right? Because you see what's coming and you see what could possibly happen. And so, it's a good

question. I don't know how you save the planet. You have to just believe that the future will be better. You just, you know, despite some proof that there's going to be some really ugly, there's some ugliness. I, oddly enough, last night I watched Noah with Russell Crowe and it was sort of a dark take on the whole. Did you ever see that movie, Noah?

I didn't. It's, it was with Noah and Hermione. It was with, it was Russell Crowe and Hermione Granger, the girl, the woman who played Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter. It was dark. It was a dark look at civilization. And then, the girl, the woman who played Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter, it was dark. It was

a dark look at civilization. And then, you know, God just wipes the world clean, essentially. But even the Noah people, the Noah family was not clean. And so, it was really, and then when you, then I started doing reading into it. And it was like, there's some crazy stuff around Noah's family that's weird, that's weird and strange. And, you know, go and look. Look at Ham's relationship with Noah, which was his son. In any case, it made you start thinking like about that. I was sort of, I don't know what to say. How do you save the retirement brand? I just keep hoping. What do you, Scott, give the kid some hope here, please. Well, first off, Nick, this is what the world's going to be like for

your children. It's going to be wonderful. And historically, what we've seen is that the arc of progress has dips and it's jagged, but it bends towards increased prosperity and freedoms. We have an 80% reduction in abject poverty globally in the last 30 years. I mean, We have an 80% reduction in abject poverty globally in the last 30 years. I mean, as cynical as I am, as hateful and as angry as I am, if you look at the data, and this is one of the things that bothers me about some of the, I don't know, progressive social movements is that they never want to acknowledge. They never want to zoom back and go and just register and acknowledge the type of progress we've made. So first off, boss, it's important that you have cynicism. It's important that we hold people to task. It's important that we model out that we

have too many nuclear weapons. It's important that we model out that if the seas continue to increase in temperature, we're going to lose cities and have forced migration, and we need to address that. But generally speaking, I think you can rest assured with a lot of confidence that the world is going to be a wonderful place as long as there's thoughtful young men such as yourself. As it relates to retirement, Nick, oh my God, boss, what it means to be a man is to take economic responsibility for your household. And by the way, sometimes that means getting out of the way of your partner and saying that she is better at that whole money thing or your husband's better and being supportive of them. But economic security in America is key to your children's

happiness. So you absolutely want to begin saving and investing. And this whole nihilistic notion of why even save, boss, your lack of economic security will be worse than any climate change if you don't start saving and you don't live a little bit of a stoic lifestyle, you don't get good at something, you don't save more than you spend. Early investing with a focus on retirement, time will go faster than you think. Start saving, start investing right away. All right. Right away. And then develop the resources and economic security such that you can make a real change around the things you're passionate about,

including climate change. But oh my gosh, boss, investing is a wonderful thing. The reason why I can get kicked off of CNBC is I don't give a fuck because I'm economically secure because you know what I did? I didn't back into my couch and and go the world's going to be a worse place and not save i saved i invested and now i can get kicked off cnbc get kicked off cnbc nick all right okay nick i think the world is going to be the day after tomorrow which was the movie with dennis quaid and jake gyllenhaal which i watch over and over again i watch all these like disaster i watched 2012 remember. Remember that was John Cusack. I watch Greenland with my favorite, what's his name?

That guy who was, oh, he's so good. Damn him, Gerald Butler. I watch all these like apocalypse movies. If you remember many years ago, the one that where the nuclear weapon went off, that was a great movie. I have a more apocalyptic feeling about this planet. At the same time, I keep having children.

So there you have it, Nick. Save for tomorrow. That's all I have to say. Things are going to continue to get better and better. Assume the worst and prepare for the best. How about that? Assume the worst and prepare for the best rather than assume the best and prepare for the worst. That's what I would say.

That's how I would say I conduct my life. So I'm actually incredibly hypocritical. One of those ways you prepare is you start saving and investing early. Yes, you do. You do. That is a good thing. Assume maybe things will break for you. And even if it doesn't, it's okay.

And by the way, Jeff Bezos won't be on this planet anyway. It's so funny. The world's richest person on the planet likes to want to leave the planet. Let's get back to that. Everything about it, everyone had a real bad feeling. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think many people were like going, yay, for him. I think if Elon did it, they would.

In the history of media, I have never seen so many people tune into something they had so much disdain for. Really? It was amazing. It was amazing. It was interesting because I didn't see an Elon comment. He didn't drag him, which I thought he might, but he didn't. It was amazing. It was amazing. It was interesting because I didn't see an Elon comment. He didn't drag him, which I thought he might, but he didn't. It was interesting. I think he's actually the winner here because the scrutiny shows that space hauling is a great business and the rest are shitty business. It's not space exploration. It's space execution. Anyone you send to Mars, you're executing.

Virgin Galactic is a Mach 3 train wreck. Yeah, that would have looked good. You have, and then you have space scientific exploration, which should be done by the government because we don't know where the payoff is going to be. But space hauling, SpaceX has already secured $3 billion in contracts in the Pentagon and NASA. It was awkward. Blue Origin has a lot of catching up.

It was awkward. The whole thing with the hats, the whole thing. The old lady I liked. That's the only part. Oh, she was inspiring. Yeah. She was inspiring. But at the same time, I was like, you know, there was the moon landing.

And then I was like, I'm inspired by those people. Like, and they're long dead, you know, whatever, 50 years ago. It was just, I don't know. Anyway. Come on, Sally Ride, youngest person in space. Yes, I agree. I agree. I like being inspired.

Now the youngest person in space. I love exploration. Now the youngest person in space is the son of a Dutch private equity billionaire. What's wrong with our world? Nothing. What's wrong with our world? By the way, I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that that is the mother of all bad parenting. You think? We're going to take away your iPad or we're going to spend $28 million to send you into space. I just... I know. I know.

I feel like we should be nicer about it. Like, inspiring. Nicer? I do. Oh my God, I couldn't. It's one of those things, I couldn't look away and they're like, for all mankind, a rocket up 60 miles and then it floats down?

Yeah. What the fuck? What the actual fuck? All right, okay, all right. I need a prediction from you. We need to, thank you, Nicholas. We feel like you should be hopeless and hopeful at the same time. So please, please do both things.

That's going to be difficult, but please do both things. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees sees and it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing and makes writing blogs, creating videos and posting on social a breeze. So now it's easier than ever to be a marketer.

Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere and you're making content that no one sees and it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers.

Scott, we need a prediction from you. So once a year, my mom and I used to take a vacation, and we would take two weeks. And one year, we went to Niagara Falls, which was lovely, which was lovely. That's the kind of vacation you took in the 70s with a single mother. And we flew through JFK, and this was like 1974, I think, or 75. And my mom said, I have a treat for you. And this was a time when they didn't have security and you could just walk around the airport and go to any terminal.

And we went to the international terminal and she showed me the Concorde because she knew it was there. And that was the kind of thoughtful person my mom is. I was really into science and I saw this thing and I thought it was just so incredible. And the link to the prediction here is that I hope and I expect, I think the real economic opportunity and the real problem that needs to be solved is, as it relates to space, is not around far, it's around fast. And I think companies, including Overture and some of these sonic transportation companies or supersonic transportation companies, deserve and will start to get more attention because the reality is the addressable market to go up in a plane and then go

for eight minutes into near space for $250,000, much less $40,000. I mean, this is how fucking ridiculous that thing is. They're claiming they want to do 400 missions a year if they execute perfectly. So let's assume they do. That capsule holds four people. That is a total of 1,600 people. That's if they execute perfectly. They're claiming they want to bring the price down from 250 grand to 40 grand. So that's a total revenue of 6.64 million. The company's trading at 7.5 billion. So it's trading at 120 times revenue if they execute perfectly. Anyway, it just makes no sense. You know what does make sense? If I can get from New York to London in two and a half hours, there is an enormous market of people who will pay $5,000, $10,000, or $15,000 for that. So if you want to talk about the economic

opportunity- Supersonic. That's coming want to talk about the economic opportunity. That's coming back. Supersonic is coming back. Yeah. Overture, United Airlines just put down a commitment. So I think if you, and I say this because I'm hoping one of them calls me and lets me invest. I think that's a huge market, underreported.

That's where the money is. So that's a different way to get at it. So this is the bottom line. The opportunity and increased excitement and a common sense around really exciting collision of science and actual utility for people here on Earth. Money is nothing but the transfer of time and work. And if I can save a lot of time and I can connect with people more easily. I'd like to go to Australia six times a year. And the reason I don't is because it's so, it's not that it's so far, it's that it's so long to get there, so much time.

And if I could get there in five hours, I'd be there every eight weeks. So this is, and I would pay a lot of money and there's a big market. If you look at, the reality is 1% of the population, the global population, the global population, that's 75 million people have the money to pay for supersonic. It's a huge market as opposed to 600 people who signed up to go to the near Carmen line.

So rich people flying all over above us and noisily is a good business. That hurts my feelings. Okay. All right. Fine. So I'm going to end on two tweets. Speaking of this topic, since we've been on this is one is from my lovely wife, who I thought did the most perfect tweet about the Jeff Bezos thing. Everyone, she goes, everyone watches on TV. This is Amanda Katz. Everyone watches on TV as the world's richest guy takes what would have been government funds if he paid taxes and uses it to go to space for a few minutes in a ship shaped like a giant penis. America. I feel that was. Yeah. And then Brooke Hammerlein said she wanted to do a badger rocket. It was their turn. So just some stats. Let me read one more. Dan Rather. These are so many good tweets. I would prefer watching the launches of independent bookstores. They're a lot more entertaining and they actually occupy

space. Who knew Dan Rather was so funny? Oh, he's such a huge fan. Twitter's been great for Dan Rather. Funny, funny, funny. Right. Yes. Anyway. But here are some stats. Okay. So Bezos, okay. The entire budget for NASA is $21 billion. 21 billion. In the last, what, five years, Bezos has added $100 billion to his net worth and he has paid 1% taxes, if he had paid the same tax rate as, say, you, we would have garnered just enough tax revenue from Jeff Bezos to double the budget of NASA.

And so you got to hate the game, not the player. I don't resent Jeff Bezos. I resent us for not electing leaders who have decided to have a more progressive tax structure such that we can properly fund NASA, who puts the daughters of ministers who are PhDs in chemical engineering into space. That's who we want to be our explorers. What we have now is we as a society have decided we no longer want astronauts. We want egonauts. Egonauts.

Oh, is that a new Scott? That's a new term. TM. We used to have astronauts. Now we have egonauts. Egonauts. Boom! Boom!

All right, I'm going to end on that, Scott. So, we'll see what happens. We're going to get- Go to my OnlyFans account and spill some bills for me. All right. That's right. So, listen, you're only going to be here another week, right? You're going to, and then you're going away for August.

Aren't you going away for August? Oh, that's right, August. I'm so European, I take August off. He does. That's right. I will be here with lots of guests. Jackie, marry me. I make you very happy. I'll wait until you hear the guests. I'm not even going I take August off. He does. I will be here with lots of guests. Jackie, marry me. I make you very happy.

I'll wait until you hear the guests. I'm not even going to tell you the guests. You're going to be so jealous of all the guests that I'm having. Well, hold on. People. I'll tell you about them next week. As long as it's not Chuck Todd, who, by the way, is clearly trying to get my attention by, again, not inviting me on Meet the Press this weekend. Well, you know what?

I have so many people they're so good they're so good oh yeah i want to just surprise you canadian are you bringing back the canadian thursday i will listen there's a lot there's a lot happening there's gonna be a lot but there's some new faces that you're gonna enjoy you're gonna enjoy the whole thing yes it's gonna be i want them good they will be very good. We're going to try to keep, you know, what happens if Scott goes away is our ratings go down and vice versa with me. And so, I'm going to see if I can keep the ratings up. That's what I'm going to do. And then you'll feel smaller, probably.

I don't know. Anyway. Reach out to Bezos around trying to keep it up and failing and failing and failing. Okay. All right. Enough Jeff Bezos bashing. That's enough. All right.

Don't forget, if there's a story in the news and you're curious about and want to hear our opinion, go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show. Read us out, Scott. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Camila Salazar,

and Evan Engel. Ernie Entretat engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows. And for a limited time, you have a chance to fill out our survey. What a thrill. That's right. We want you to tell us how we're doing.

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