Pivot - The Growing U.S.-China Divide, Senate's Journalism Bill is DOA, and Congressman Ro Khanna

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

Twitter ads are showing up on white nationalist profiles, and some big names exit Salesforce. Also, Congress killed the Journalism and Competition Preservation Act, and the divide between the U.S. and China is growing in the tech industry. Plus, Sunny Balwani has been sentenced, and Britney Griner is free. Kara and Scott are joined by Friend of Pivot, Congressman Ro Khanna about the Twitter Files, and his emails. You can find Congressman Ro Khanna at @RoKhanna on Twitter. We’re nominated for a Signal Award for Best Co-Host Team! You can vote for us here. Send us your questions! Call 855-51-PIVOT or go to nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

And I had my person invaded by a man named Dr. Joseph. He's very good looking. Yes, I saw that. I had a colonoscopy. I didn't feel the need to put it on the Twitter, but you did. Tell us about it. Tell us about your adventure into your colon, Scott. Look, I have a wonderful life. I have people who love me immensely, and I'm going to do smart things that keep me around longer. And that's what it is to get a colonoscopy. It's the third leading cause of cancer death or the number three cancer killer. And it's not entirely preventable, but mostly preventable, unlike most cancers.

And simply put, they go in, they find these polyps. They can turn cancerous, but the good news is they grow really slowly. So when you find them, you just take them out. Did you have polyps? I have the colon of a supermodel. Oh, do you? I do too. I do too. You had a clean colon. I can't believe you do, but go ahead. I know, beef and bourbon. It's what's for dinner. I should not have a clean colon. Anyways, he showed my colon to a bunch of people.

He was very excited about it. And I was still coming off the meds, and we had a little party. Everybody came in and checked out my colon. But I did this. I talked about it. And the new stuff, you used to have to drink all this horrible liquid. I've had two of them. I had my second recently.

As I'm turning, it's my birthday week, Scott. So thank you for the birthday wishes. But- 70. This is 70, right? Yeah, right. 60, which you're soon to be reaching. The PrEP was great.

It was just a pill. Is this your first colonoscopy? Is this your first? No, I had one. I had one eight years ago, but I forgot about the Niagara Falls of your innards. It's nice. Don't you think it's nice? I felt good.

I felt clean. It feels good at first, and then you're like, again? Really? No, but I feel clean afterwards. It's like every, it's like, ah. I hit my target weight. I'll get, that's good.

I've hit my target weight. Yeah, you know who got me to get one? I'll tell you, it's Katie Couric. Katie Couric. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, she's the famous colonoscopy person. She yelled at me for a good year to get it, and it was great. It was good.

It's a very good thing. Everybody should get them. They're very easy now, except for the pooping part, which is actually very pleasant, I found. My doctor was dreamy, too. He's got great hair. Yeah, and it happens really fast. And then you get beautiful pictures of your colon. Did you get to take some home?

I got to take some home. Yeah, they gave me a whole bunch. I'm going to get them framed. Shall we bring them together? It's my Christmas card. I thought you were going to give them to me as a present. Okay. Get a colonoscopy. It's easy. Right. Right. Yes.

Dr. Joseph. Thank you, Dr. Joseph and team. Okay. All right. We're going to talk about a lot today. The U.S. and China square off over TikTok, Apple, and more. And Meta scores a big win with the U.S., but a loss overseas. And we'll speak with Representative Ro Khanna about the Twitter files. He got doxxed by Elon Musk. In any case, the first thing I have to say, Brittany Griner is free, and I'm very pleased. We talked about this last week. Of course, it's because we talked about it. No, they made a deal. We're learning details, but we're told she is in the custody of U.S. officials. Another prisoner, Paul Whelan, was not part of the deal, sadly. He's an analyst who is still in prison there. But she's out, and that's a great thing. She was going to have a really terrible life as a gay person there. She's unusually tall. I know that sounds weird, but she stands out and subject to incredible working conditions where she was in a work camp.

where she was in a work camp. And so I just, it's wonderful. I think that's wonderful. I feel sad for Paul Whelan, but there's many political prisoners all around, but he's been there quite a while too. Anyway, good news. You're not gonna like what I have to say about this.

Oh no, what? Let me just say, she was incarcerated illegitimately. I am really happy for her and her wife. Yeah. I would have done everything I could have, and I appreciate that she inspired people to raise awareness. I could not be happier for her. She was held illegitimately. We got played here. Because? Well, when they found, let's assume that she did have marijuana vaping cartridges,

and I want to be clear, I've likely traveled accidentally with marijuana vaping cartridges before. I don't vape anymore. But I've had marijuana on my person before, probably at an airport. Yeah, I'm sure you have. She was incarcerated illegally. They got played. As soon as they found out who she was, they said, okay, she's from a community of color. She's from the LGBTQ community. They will be outraged. This is our opportunity to get the merchant of death back. And Victor Bout provided arms to the Taliban, to Afghanistan. Basically, anyone that was willing to kill Americans, he gave them the artillery and the ammunition for.

ammunition for. This is a very bad person who has killed a lot of U.S. servicemen. And Paul Whelan served his country. Paul Whelan was a Marine. It is pretty clear, and this is on Wikipedia, that Paul Whelan was working for our security apparatus and was captured. And what I really don't like about this was all the images floating around Twitter right now showing pictures of President Biden and Vice President Harris with Brittany Greiner's wife. And I would like to see pictures of when they called Ms. Whelan and his kids and said, sorry, we didn't get as much Twitter activity over his illegal incarceration, so he's not coming home. The reason— Well, not yet.

Hold on. I'm done. No, you don't know what's going on. Okay. All right. I'm going to let you not go on much longer on this one. Well, he's not coming back. He's not on a plane to Dubai right now. Yeah. A lot of thoughts and prayers right now for a former Marine who's been in captivity for much longer. Indeed. I don't want this to go on any much longer. I think you're making it in a zero-sum game that is not that. That's the way these things tend to work. And that you have to, here you are picking among between people who are, the Russians are cynically doing this. And so this is precisely what they want us to do, which is argue over which one's better. And I think you celebrate your small victories and you don't, you don't like.

If Paul Whelan had come home first, would you be celebrating that small victory? I would. I would. I would. I would. Absolutely. 100%. We got played. We got would. I would. I would. I would. Absolutely. 100%. We got played.

We got played. This was a bad trade. We got played. We'll see what the details are before we know what exactly has happened. But I am very happy she's home. I, too, am happy she's home. This leads to more people from disenfranchised communities that have been treated like shit in the U.S. for 200 or 300 years. They will inspire Twitter outrage, get incarcerated again at Moscow airport.

Well, no, I don't. I think you're being very simplistic about a very complex situation, but nonetheless, we'll disagree. I'm happy she's home. I'm happy she's home as well. In the opposite direction, Sonny Balwani has been sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison. This comes after Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to more than 11 years last month. During the sentencing hearing, Balwani's attorneys tried to direct attention away from their clients saying decisions were made by Elizabeth Holmes. You know, he got slightly more than she did. He was in charge of the lab.

He didn't have any medical background, by the way. in charge of the lab. He didn't have any medical background, by the way, and certainly sort of rode these employees who were in that lab to lie and sort of attack George Shultz's grandson, Tyler Shultz, et cetera. So, he was more actively carrying out things, but he's sort of blaming her. He's going to appeal, presumably, but it seems like it's relatively equal sentences, relatively equal sentences. I think this makes sense, right? They couldn't send the woman to prison and have the guy that kind of did the same thing get any less. So, I mean, we've said a few times it's the CEO, but it looks like they were kind of literally sort of partners in crime here and partners in big quotes. I thought it was just inappropriate. They were having a relationship. I don't know. The whole thing just stinks.

And I think it would have been outrageous had the person with the ovaries gets a prison sentence, but not the dude. She was the CEO, but I mean, him trying to say she was, they were in it together, decision made by Elizabeth Holmes. And she was, of course, doing the same. He had a hold on her. They were partners and they're both going to jail relatively same times. They'll probably get out a little earlier, both of them. And so it seems like fair and it seems like this particular trial showing that you can't commit fraud on investors.

Of course, it wasn't about patients. They didn't have that case. It was about these investors being defrauded. It was a pretty straightforward case. And there they go, off to jail. We'll see if they get allowed to appeal or anything else, but it looks like a pretty solid case against both of them. And then there are more mysterious departures at Salesforce.

Salesforce is a sponsor of ours, but nonetheless, we're going to talk about them. It seems a little messy there. Last week, co-CEO Brett Taylor announced his departure from the company. And now Tableau CEO Mark Nelson and Slack CEO Stuart Butterfield said they're out too. I know they are close to Brett Taylor and myself. I think the moves are connected. Spooked investors, Mark Benioff, who was found to the company and has been a sort of a big force there. This is his second co-CEO who has left. He had a guy named, I think it's Kevin Block, many years ago. He was going to be co-CEO. It didn't happen. There's a lot of discussion about that they're not keeping up with the rest of the industry in terms of results. Shares of the

company are down about 11% in the last five days and 51% for the year, hitting its lowest point since March 2020. It seems a little chaotic, this trying to find an heir or, you know, someone who's going to take over after Mark Benioff, who is a, you know, a very charismatic CEO. Apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, Brett spent too much time with other CEOs and not with the engineering and product staff. And so more and more is going to come out what's going on, but he's got to really find a plan. Scott? This was really shocking to me. When Brett Taylor stepped down, it really shocked me because he was arguably, I mean, he was definitely in line, the heir apparent to be the CEO of a really important company to go run a startup. That was truly shocking to me.

And it also, it's a pretty negative forward-looking indicator on the company, and to be blunt, on Mark. Because when you're about to hand over the keys, and Brett's still a fairly young man to a really important company, and he decides to leave, you know, he either doesn't like the company, either maybe personally he just was decided they had gotten along i they had they had a good relationship but it sort of got tense and including the twitter stuff um he was a chairman of twitter and of course he that that took up a lot of his time um so i think we'll see a lot more here what's going on but yeah you're right it's it's not a good symbol except when the other two from companies they bought in 2020, at the end of 2020, led by Brett,

Salesforce acquired Slack for more than $27 billion. Investors worried they'd overpaid for it. And so, you know, there's obviously a link between Stuart and Brett, presumably. So it's, you know, he's got a lot on his hands here. He doesn't have strong executives. It's never a good sign. This just reminds me of a little bit of Disney when some of those people left. Well, let's take a moment to bring this back to me. Sure, okay, sure. I did my prediction stack yesterday.

Yeah. And I always like to go through like, what are black swan events that could happen in 2023? And one of the black swan events I came up with is what if the cloud just doesn't have the growth we all think it has? What if cloud-based technology across Azure, Google Cloud, AWS, and all these, you know, every kind of cloud-based company,

what if all of a sudden we find out that the budgets, the corporate budgets for cloud are not infinite and begin to flatline and even decline? That is where you see the NASDAQ really throw up because so many high flyers are based on, they go, well, it's a cloud-based company and the cloud is a gift that keeps on giving. What happens when it stops giving? And Salesforce is a cloud-based company.

And you said the stock's gotten cut in half. And what you got to look at is when senior management starts leaving, I mean, sometimes the CEOs of companies that are acquired, I was the CEO of a company that was acquired by Gartner. I lasted 14 months. I left a lot of money on the table. I just couldn't stand being there. No fault to Gartner. It's just a cultural clash.

Yeah. So I understand that. But Brett Taylor leaving to go do a startup, I thought, well, maybe he just wants to hang out with his family. He's made a lot of money. He's going to do a startup. So there's definitely issues here. And to your point, I think you're exactly right.

More is going to come out. Yeah. Yeah. You're talking about tensions. This is not unusual, by the way. I, co-CEOs, I hate them. Like, it's just, it sets it up for, you either make someone the CEO or you don't, but you leave the room if you're,

especially when you're such a charismatic and big voice as Mark Benioff, right? There's no way you can, and he's also a big man. I know it sounds silly, but he's a force. Mark's got a lot on his hands, he really does. Especially as we had, it's continued to head into headwinds here. And he's got a lot of competition.

Speaking of sponsors who regret their ad buys, ads from high-profile brands, including Uber, Amazon, and Snap, have been appearing in white nationalist Twitter profiles. At least one of these profiles was previously banned in 2013. One of them is particularly terrible. The Daily Stormer guy, Elon Musk, has brought back thousands of banned accounts. A former Twitter employee told The Washington Post the profiles would need to be flagged to prevent ads from appearing on them. Actually, I've spoken to people at these companies. They were assured by Twitter, they tell me, every one of them, that this would not happen, that there was brand safety. This

would never happen. They made these ad buys recently, and this happened. They're all going to cut ads. I mean, they couldn't believe it. They couldn't. They were shocked. And, you know, hot mess, not even a hot mess, just a mess. This was, they assured us this wouldn't happen. Now it's happened. Not good. None of them were happy people at these companies. Well, I got it wrong.

I said that when you lay off 70 or 80% of your staff, the site's going to go down. There's just no way. And what's actually happened here is that it ends up that the dozens or hundreds of people escorted out of the building on the content moderation team, that they were actually doing things. And the new content moderation team is a guy named Elon Musk. And one, he has absolutely no idea what he's doing and is not capable. And you're going to see this happen everywhere. And within six weeks of the acquisition, 50 of the 100 largest advertisers have taken their ad budgets to zero, which means the other 50 have likely decreased, which means the biggest advertisers are soft 70% to 80%. If that's a proxy for that, I mean, you've never seen. Distinct of this being a terrible acquisition,

distinct of all the noise, the news here is that a company that was doing $5 billion in revenue is probably now doing one. I mean... Yep. First time ever I've noticed ads on Twitter, which is interesting. Yeah, I've never noticed them either. But I... Okay, here's what I have. This weird ear product that you go into your ear, it looks like a thing you collect spaghetti with and it pulls dirty stuff out of your ear and it shows the dirty stuff. That sounds kind of nice, actually. I know, but it was like, what? And then there was a noisy, a real squirrel sounds of a noisy,

super rough.com. Yeah, it's becoming Fox. Have you noticed the ads on Fox versus CNN? Wooden pet carvings, a game that you play called Super Winner, and then this very weird Pilates challenge. I'm like, I keep taking pictures of them because I'm like, what is this? Really bad. These people were furious, furious. Anyway, let's get to our first big story. The US-China divide is growing and it could swallow the tech industry. First, Apple is ramping up efforts to move its supply chain out of China. We've talked about that to Vietnam, India, after a rocky fall that saw worker protests. Apple's Chinese production facility, the uprisings, China's strict COVID measures, which have been lightened now suddenly this last

day or two, have created supply chain delays for products like the iPhone Pro. Now Apple is telling suppliers to prepare for assembly outside. There's obviously, it's going to be more difficult to operate in those things. And also there is, just so you know, Chinese activists are currently, I think they still are staging a hunger strike outside of Apple's headquarters. They're urging the company to remove restrictions of airdrop in China. So, you know, people are trying to escape to get back to their hometowns. It's not great for them. And, you know, it's a very tough situation there. Now, again, China just announced in the last few days of lifting of quarantines and restrictions, et cetera, et cetera,

and taking power away from local officials who have been very crackdowny, and they're going to pull that off. There's still quite a few rules happening there, but it's much less so. It's sort of maybe us a year ago, essentially. What do you think? Yeah, this is every board or every company I'm involved in that had woke up, whether it was during COVID, and you realize that when the COVID, when there were outbreaks and total shutdowns in China, and all of a sudden, you know, 500 or 550 stores no longer had tops because they were all being produced, we became way too concentrated in terms of supply chain. And at first it was COVID. Now, there's more of an existential risk, and that is we didn't see this coming. But Xi used to be, or China used to be, the government

was very kind of not pro-democracy, but pro-capitalism. Yeah, he's shifted. And he is, I think it's just fascinating. I think they look at the US and go, okay, the dollar ascending to a superior position than the government, and that your tech innovators can shitpost the government, your kids become addicted to social media, companies becoming more powerful in terms of their command of data. He just said, you know what? Not here, girlfriend. We're done. We're not going that way. And we didn't expect them to do that. And the reason why the Hang Seng and Chinese stocks were so traded at such incredible multiples

is that the second most powerful government in the world was the wind at their back. And now it's the wind in their face. The government has said, we are not opting for the dollar. We are going to force, we're going to turn off social media for kids, except for one hour. They can only game. We're going to quarantine you. We're going to quarantine you. Yeah.

And it's caught American and Western companies totally flat-footed. And Tim Cook, as always, who's playing chestnut checkers here, has been working on this for a while. It's going to cost them tens of billions of dollars. It's going to hit their margins. And it's the smart thing to do. They will leave enough in China such that if she or anyone in China starts putting demands on Apple, he can say, well, we hope you don't decide to do that. But if you do, we're just fine. We'll ramp up and India will ramp up in Vietnam. So they won't totally exit. And the U.S. Let's remember the

U.S. eventually, these do take a while, as many people point out to me with the CHIPS Act. Biden was in Arizona where TSMC is building a chip manufacturing fabs for clients, including Apple and NVIDIA. Tim Cook was there too. So he's placing bets all over the place. It'll be, you know, I still think they have lingered in China far too long and allowed themselves to be exposed, including selling into the market. Same thing, you know, there were stories about Tesla not selling enough Teslas in China. They're the two most exposed companies in China. Tesla denied these reports, but if people aren't outside, they're not buying car Teslas and stuff like that.

It's a really interesting thing to pull away from this incredible manufacturing, you know, juggernaut of China. And I think that's going to be hard to replace because these other countries just don't have the infrastructure or the government that can control it in quite the same way. So it's going to be more expensive. It's going to be more difficult. They've got to now negotiate with all these new players. It's going to raise the level of complexity rather significantly. I mean, this brings us back to just how what a shit show is Elon Musk right now. Okay, so China.

China and Tesla. I think it's like a quarter of their sales and 40% of their cash flow. It's their growth market. They have manufacturing. Just like with Apple. It's not unusual to have done that. But go ahead. Okay.

Tim Cook is in charge of content moderation for Snap right now and kicking off and on Yi. I mean, it is so insane and ridiculous. The big story here isn't all this bullshit noise of Twitter and moderation. It's the fact that Tesla is about to pay a huge price and has become infected with Musk's ridiculous behavior at Twitter. The fact that he's like, unlike Tim Cook,

isn't focused on very important issues for the golden goose in China. Here's the problem for him there. Let me say, he can't sell more cars there if they're under strict quarantine. Now that it's lifted, that might change. One of the things that someone was rightly pointing out to me is that this has tamped down consumption across the globe. And so prices will rise if China gets out of their apartments. We're going to see a rise in energy prices, a rise in all

kinds of things because they have demand there. And so this would make sense that if he's trying to sell cars in China, you could see Apple selling more iPhones if people are home, but cars not so much. And so, you know, it's a smart bet to have been there. I think the problem is the quarantine and the shutdowns have affected him very strongly. And again, the company's utterly denying this. The CEO, at the end of the day, is supposed to, their job is to make better decisions allocating finite capital. They have finite investment capital, they have finite human capital, and they have their own finite capital. And so, the notion we're so used to letting these idols of ours do anything, the fact that this individual,

given the incredible importance of Tesla globally, the incredible issues that Tesla faces, including the ones you've outlined, is now the new head of content moderation at Twitter, and that's where he's spending all his time. Where the hell is the port at Tesla? Well, there are executives at Tesla. There was a really great profile, I think, in the information about the guy who's actually running. He's sort of a mini Elon over there at Tesla, and he's got Gwen Shotwell at SpaceX, who's been doing a good job. So he might say, I'm over there, and I've got great executives, which may be the case. So that would be his excuse. And they should make that person CEO.

Yes, co-CEO. Yeah, that's going to work. Yeah. But the good news is in China, they are loosening the restrictions on lockdowns. Those protests appear to have paid off. We'll see what happens. Same thing in Iran. That's another place where you're going to see a lot of action, I think. Meanwhile, in America, the deal between the Biden administration and TikTok is delayed again over security concerns. U.S. officials are said to be worried about the algorithm manipulation and data sharing. They've got to tread very carefully here and do it right. State governments aren't waiting for the Fed to take action. Last week, Republican governors, of course, because it's a great topic

for them in Maryland and North Dakota, have both banned TikTok on some government devices. for them in Maryland and North Dakota have both banned TikTok on some government devices. I mean, listen, I've talked to several different, I was with a bunch of government people and someone asked about TikTok. They're like, we're not putting TikTok on our devices. Are you kidding me? These are Biden people. Wisconsin's congressional representatives have called on their state's governors to do the same.

You know, they've got to reach this deal, especially when the Republicans control the House. They'll do, I'm sure, some sort of hearing. They're going to love to do hearings. This would be one of them on the top. So, they've got to come to a conclusion of that deal or somehow make a deal with TikTok. Yeah. One of my predictions yesterday, I think TikTok is going to breach a trillion dollars. I think it's going to be the fourth most valuable company by the end of 2023. And there's so much money on the line here that I think they will come to some sort of accommodation or deal. There's so much value here. Well, Beijing doesn't want to be pushed around, you know, and they're worried about protecting

the intellectual property of the thing. And most people who know this company said they're not going to, this is their golden goose, and they're not going to let Americans regulate their company. Well, but here's the thing, and I'm not sure it's, again, I think we might do a bad deal. Among Gen Z and millennials, two-thirds of Gen Z would rather have TikTok than all of cable and streaming television. If they were presented with a choice, you can either have TikTok or you can have basically anything that comes through, everything from Netflix to Apple, take it all, all of it. Two-thirds of them chose TikTok and 53% of millennials chose TikTok. So TikTok right now across this emerging cohort who advertisers are obsessed with, who are going to

be coming into their prime income earning years, would rather have TikTok than basically the rest of media. I mean, it's just, TikTok is the most ascendant, not media, it's the most ascendant company in history in terms of its velocity. And whether it be a good idea or a bad idea, I think when you have this many young people that's addicted to a product, when you have this much money on the line, they're going to figure it out. All right. Okay, we'll see. I mean, I think the Biden administration has to tread very carefully here for a lot of reasons.

I'd like them to ban it. I just don't think they will. They won't. They won't. You know, Marco Rubio wanted to do that. Trump had talked about it, but actually wanted to have a sweet deal for Oracle. But we'll see. I mean, there's got to be some solution here because it's got this technology that's very valuable. It's a very valuable... I always say when I talk about TikTok, I'm like,

setting aside the Chinese government. And it's really... And everyone laughs because you really can't. Anyway, it's a really interesting- Ignoring for a moment. Ignoring for a moment. All right, all right. The Daily Stormer guy on Twitter. It's quite an enjoyable, no, it's not. It's got weird ads for cleaning out your ears. I'm surprised I haven't seen a colon ad on Twitter.

Anyway, all right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Facebook says no news is good news, and we'll speak with Congressman Ro Khanna about his emails. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. 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, scammers made off with more than $10

billion. It's mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure that's been built to facilitate scamming at scale. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scam centers all around the world. These are very savvy business people. These are organized criminal rings. And so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better. One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them.

But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple. We need to talk to each other. We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize? What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive? Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim and we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. So we are all at risk, and we all need to work together to protect each other.

Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Procrastination, putting it off, kicking the can down the road. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out.

Carpet in the bathroom. Like, why? In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Scott, we're back.

Like most users, Facebook will not pay for news. This week, Congress killed the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. That's been pushed by Amy Klobuchar, Senator Klobuchar. The bill would have allowed media organizations to collectively bargain for rev sheer deals with tech giants like Facebook. Meta was so opposed to the bill, it announced that it would stop hosting news

on its American platforms rather than pay publishers. Consumer advocacy groups weighed in against the bill as well saying it could harm content moderation and small publishers. This thing is probably not gonna happen. This is something that happened in Australia, passed a law like this, but they did have Rupert Murdoch, you know, was really pretty much the one pushing for it. Facebook did stop briefly hosting news there and reached a deal with the government.

It pays Australian news publishers, but it wasn't going to do this here in this country. I think you have a better sense for this than I did. What are your thoughts? I thought it was problematic back in Australia. I was like, why are they paying for it? I mean, I get the, I don't want to paint their fence, but publishers can make these decisions themselves, right? Of whether to be on it and whether they get efficacy out of it. A lot of them were paid by Facebook in this country and elsewhere. I remember when they came to me to try to pay me

to be on Facebook and I'm like, why do you have to pay me? Like, I thought it was weird, right? to try to pay me to be on Facebook. And I'm like, why do you have to pay me? Like, I thought it was weird, right? That they did that. It's either good for me or bad for me, right? Or I can make money off it or I can't. And so I never really loved the Australia one. I was not, you know, even though it's really irritating that Facebook makes these declarations of stop hosting news, their argument, of course, is that they're helpful to news people. They provide distribution. I was trying to think of where people could go if you're a news publisher. Someone asked me, a pretty prominent news publisher, like, where do we go? And I'm like, well, TikTok's got the Chinese government and Facebook, you know, it doesn't really work and you end up not in charge of your data as much. And like, there aren't any alternatives, right? There just aren't. I couldn't think of one. And I was thinking, oh, I should call Scott and ask him. You know, I think it's quite hard to figure out where you go, but I'm not sure why Facebook would pay them at all. I just, I don't understand it. I mean, I like that. I think they should be able to collectively get together

and negotiate different things, but why? Like necessarily. I mean, Facebook's in the catbird seat here. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. It would be like forcing, taxing Tesla and then taking those subsidies and shifting them to traditional Detroit automobile companies. It's like you're taxing the ones that are more successful to try and maintain the less successful.

And the difference here is that the less successful play a really important role in our society. The number of journalists has been cut in half the last 30 years. The number of PR and comms people who want you to have dinner with some CEO to hear their vision on technology has gone up sixfold. So the ratio of bullshit spin to journalism has gone the wrong way 12x, right? So you can see the need and what Rupert Murdoch played it perfectly to basically put a tax on more successful media companies to subsidize his. So that it just kind of, if you're a capitalist, it doesn't make any sense. I think what they should do, and I don't know if you can target these new media companies,

I do think they should be paying their fair share of taxes, which they don't. But I'm actually now a fan of what the UK does, and that is they place a tax on households to sponsor the BBC, which does its best to call balls and strikes. Because the reality is, really hard-hitting, fact-checked journalism that attempts to do long-form, thoughtful, important journalism and gumshoe journalism, it's a shitty business. And I do think that there's a social good, and we should come up with a way to subsidize it and have two layers. Have a subsidized layer of media and then the private media on top of it. layers, have a subsidized layer of media and then the private media on top of it. But this, if you're a capitalist, it's really hard to see the logic here. It's kind of like, okay,

they're the bad guys, we're the good guys, let's tax them and pay us. It doesn't, I don't, I think it's very hard to argue this. Yeah, it's interesting. Let me read Amy Klobuchar's statement, continually allowing, who was the backer, the key architect of this bill. And this would, just so you read that, she argued that it would help small local journalism survive if they could band together. I'll comment on that in a second. Continually allowing big tech companies to dominate policy decisions in Washington is no longer a viable option when it comes to news compensation, consumer and privacy rights, or online marketplace, we must get this done. You know, it was being put in a bill, a defense bill, all kinds of things. It's interesting, Canada and New Zealand are considering similar measures, Australia passed it. But one of the things that's, it's not just Facebook that opposed it, it feels kind of funny. And one of the things, there's a real bifurcation between powerful media companies like the New York Times, which I consider a monopoly at this point, right, versus these small sites. They'll just be bullied by the New York Times, right? Although, by the way, today, New York Times reporters are on strike, which is interesting. I can't believe it got to that

for the day, their 24-hour strike they're doing over their contract. But they really do. I don't see it helpful that small companies can join with the New York Times, right? Is that true? They've walked out for 24 hours? Yeah, 24 hours. Well, that'll show them. You know what? That's what you do. That's what they do. They're going to put in, the international reporters do not, are not in this union. Anyway, they got to do something. It's been like a year. It's been like a long time. Yeah, this is what you do, Carrie. You got another job. Okay. All right. Now, anyway, you anti-union person. Problem is that nobody has alternatives to distribute their work, and small operations don't have the money to do news websites that

will attract reach and everything. And so, one of the two dozen groups said, JCPA, that's the name of the bill, would make myths and disinformation worse by allowing news websites to sue tech platforms for reducing a story's reach and intimidating them into not moderating offensive and misleading content. I've never been very comfortable with this bill. I have not. And you know, Amy, Senator Klobuchar talked about it on stage, and I felt it was a lot of overreach. I can't believe I'm agreeing with Facebook, but I do. I did at the time, and I still do. It feels funny. It feels funny. Well, it's the wrong legislation. There should be legislation saying that you're responsible

when we can reverse engineer teen depression to the actions, or lack thereof, of a media company you're responsible. That when you license your IP to an over—and Facebook doesn't do this, Apple does—when you license your IP to an over, and Facebook doesn't do this, Apple does, when you license your IP to a foreign entity such that you can charge the domestic entity $10 billion and thereby suppressing revenue, top line revenue in a low tax domain and increasing revenues artificially in a high tax domain, that's pure tax avoidance. I just, we need legislation that is equitable, not like, oh, we like that, we don't like them, we're angry at them, so we're going to come up with weird legislation that is sort of counter to our values. Let's focus on privacy legislation.

And, of course, Senator Colbert's antitrust legislation, things like that. Anyway, one of the things is there's pressure to find more alternative revenue streams. The Washington Post may spin off its publishing software. The Post has been struggling, and their tech person who— Do we know anyone that works at the Washington Post? We do. We do. Give us a little pillow talk. I think that they're struggling.

What is this thing? I don't even know what it is. I've never heard of it. It's this publishing software they have. They've done a lot of interesting publishing software. And they, under this guy who just literally just left, a lot of tech people have just left there recently because they wanted to spin it off and, you know, be able to compensate people. It's hard to have these software and technology things within a company, but they've been doing a lot of different, some of which has worked. There was one called Zeus that didn't really work very well. But Bezos is allowing them to do these things and spend some money, but they're never going to thrive within a media company. It's just not the same incentives. So, I have a story about this. I just thought of it. When I was on the board of the New York Times,

we owned about.com. And about.com at one point was worth a billion dollars. And about.com was really hot at one point. It was. It was a content farm where you come to pages. Yeah, it was a shitty product, but go ahead. Anyways, it was a content farm where someone would write great content or marginal content on Southern cooking. Mostly marginal. Get traffic.

They'd run ads against it. They'd pay Google to get traffic, and they'd do an arbitrage. And we thought it was a hot company, and we loved it, or management loved it, because they got to accessorize their analog outfit with digital earrings and say we were an Internet company. And I said in a board meeting with the About people, I said, do you think we should spin about.com? And I thought management at the time was going to reach it. They were so visibly shaken that I actually asked that in a board meeting because I'm like, why do we own about.com? Just so Janet Robinson can get on an earnings call and say that 15% of our revenue comes from digital. And they absolutely should

have spun it. It had no business being inside the New York Times. The editorial could not have been more different. And immediately I was accosted outside by the management of about.com that said, thank you. They all wanted their payday, right? They all wanted to be an internet company with their own options.

And Janet and Arthur were just so incensed that I would bring this up. Anyways, we ended up selling it like two years later for 200 or like for a fraction of that. When Google said, you know what? We're doing a panda at midnight tonight. Panda. Remember panda? Yeah.

Basically, they said, we have figured out about.com the arbitrage that you're doing. And we figured out a way that we're going to capture those revenues. And overnight, our revenues were down like 60%. And we ended up selling for scrap to Barry Diller. Yeah, there was a whole bunch. Demand, remember Demand? Yeah, that's right. I talked to Richard Rosenblatt at the time. That was another one. Demand was a lot like about and they got killed by the panda. The panda. I remember that was 2011, everybody, the panda. Oh my God. I spent so

much time talking about that. It was ridiculous. Last thing, Facebook is not going to get off easy. In Europe, regulators, the European Data Protection Board has reported a rule that Facebook can't run advertising based on users' personal data. This is where this hurts. This is where it hurts. The board instructed the Irish regulator to issue a hefty fine along with this decision. The ruling won't be publicly revealed for at least a month in which META could appeal. This is their whole business model, obviously. And so the EU is striking where it hurts, right? Everyone was looking for reasons five years ago to have a photo op with Cheryl and say that they were part of the Pepsi generation and pass legislation that helped our innovators.

It is entirely flipped. Everyone's looking for reasons to go after, especially meta right now. Yeah. Yeah. I would say. The U.S. should be focusing on privacy, antitrust, et cetera, although Facebook wouldn't be subject to the antitrust bill that Senator Klobuchar passed. All right. Let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Congressman Roe Conner represents California's 17th congressional district, which includes much of the Bay Area.

This week, the congressman's 2020 emails, his email address, his personal email address, showed up in the Twitter files, urging the social network not to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. Welcome, congressman. Thank you. Thanks for having me back. So I brought you here because apparently you've been doxxed by Elon Musk. I want to talk about what you wrote to Twitter at the time when this Hunter Biden laptop story happened. But talk to me, has there been an impact? Have you had to change your email? What's happened is your email appeared on Twitter in some documents that were released

around the Hunter Biden story. And you wrote an excellent email to Vijay Gade about what they were doing at the time. But have you had to change your email? I haven't had to change my email. I did get a lot of emails when that happened, a few hundred. But I've taken some security measures to make sure that the account doesn't get hacked. I think Matt Taibbi probably wanted to show that it was actually my account and that's why they put my email out there. Yeah, did you like that?

Were you irritated? You know, being a member of Congress is a pretty privileged position. I didn't care as much for me, but I thought it wasn't appropriate for some of the more junior staff people at Twitter. I mean, I think there should have been more care on that. Yeah, absolutely. But let's get into what you said. You said Twitter was violating First

Amendment principles and banning, not the First Amendment because it's a government thing, and banning New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop. As we said, Twitter is a private company. Talk about why you wrote that email and explain it a little bit for people. Well, I think the easy thing for people to default to is to just say, well, we're a private company. The First Amendment doesn't apply. Well, obviously. But Twitter is the modern public square.

And the question is, what value judgments are they making to allow for all types of speech? Now, I think they made the correct decision not to have the explicit Hunter Biden photos out there. That doesn't serve any value. And I said, fine. But to take down the New York Post story, I mean, look, the New York Post is no friend of mine. If you Google Ro Khanna New York Post, you'll just see negative articles.

But I would never think of saying, let's block the New York Post or not have the New York Post. And so I think that they just went too far in taking down some of the accounts that were sharing a New York Post article. And that was not a good look for Silicon Valley. And it's not the type of public square we want. And why did you write? Why did you write it? I wasn't surprised necessarily, but what caused you to write it at the time? Because they had been in, I just interviewed Joel Roth, and he said one of the reasons is because they had PTSD from the Hillary Clinton emails, where they felt they did get played by foreign governments.

And so they were on high alert. And so was everybody. And this could have been that kind of situation. It could have been, although this one was a newspaper putting this out. I mean, which could be sued for defamation, and Twitter doesn't even have liability there. But I reached out privately. I didn't even do it publicly.

I reached out privately because I thought that this is not something that Silicon Valley should be doing. I was hearing a genuine chatter about it in the halls in Congress. And I obviously care about the Valley being thoughtful and being stewards of a democracy. And I thought, let me at least make them aware that this is not a good policy. I think they were surprised. They thought I was probably reaching out to get them to remove it. And I had the opposite perspective.

And to their credit, they eventually did reverse the decision. Very quickly. Very quickly, they reversed it. Representative, it's great to see you. Good to their credit, they eventually did reverse the disdain. Very quickly. Very quickly, they reversed it. Representative, it's great to see you. Good to see you. The argument you made that Twitter is the de facto public square is made a lot. I think we would argue that it's the private square. But anyway, your argument is a valid one. A valid one. What do you think so far of the content moderation approach of Twitter since the acquisition? Well, I think there's some things they've done well, which is to get rid of the

bots or to make an effort there. I think Musk's statement that he doesn't want any amplification of hate is promising, but the question is who's going to implement it. But there are other places where, you know, the jury's still out. Like, there are all of these really extremist groups trafficking in hate that are, based on my knowledge, still out there. And Musk has said he doesn't want them to be going viral or amplifying it. So the implementation of that has to still be done. And he's also let on. He's let on people who were previously banned. If you had to write that email again, what would you write to him about letting, you know, the Daily Stormer guy back on, et cetera, et cetera? and that that is the primary thing that they're doing or things that are inciting hate,

that that is not part of the public square, that that doesn't need to be part of it. Even if there's some of that, it may be technically protected in the First Amendment. I would say Twitter can have some judgments that don't have that as part of their conversation. I view that as very different as a newspaper article that's criticizing a presidential candidate. Right, right. Did you put any credit in the fact that they were worried about getting played by foreign governments when they did that? And I think that they still are under that threat, is that a lot of stuff can be cooked and put up there, even if it's done by a valid newspaper in the United States. Yeah, I guess I'm not sure that that should be their responsibility. I mean,

I don't think they need to be fact-checking the New York Times and the Washington Post and the New York Post and all the media publications about whether the media is being played. I think that that's a sufficient amount of vetting. Now, not to say that those are good stories. They're stories about me that have been written by the New York Post that I think are false. But they're not defamation. They're within the bounds of public debate. Yeah, it's interesting. New York Post said Jeff Bezos might be the father of my son, but he's not, which I thought was amusing, but it wasn't amusing. It was irritating. But you're right. I didn't do anything about it, nor could I. When you think about First Amendment principles,

so you don't think these companies should be doing anything. So you're kind of on the idea of let it flow, which is what Elon is saying. Is that tenable for a company? It certainly could be problematic for a business, but you think Congress should not get near it, get essentially near any of this? Well, no, I think that there need to be standards on safety. So certainly the incitement of violence that even Brandenburg doesn't allow, that shouldn't be on the site.

And inciting illegal conduct. I think there need to be disclosure laws. So we need to be knowing what they're doing in terms of who they're allowing on the platform. And I would say that when Elon has said that you shouldn't be amplifying hate and the hate doesn't have a space on the platform, that seems to me a thoughtful guideline,

but then it has to be implemented. And it seems to me the question is, how is it being implemented? And why are some of these people who are just trafficking in white supremacy and all still being on the site? Because that to me is not speech. I mean, you can have, even in a town hall, you can have reasonable restrictions, right? So I just think of it as a sort of a town hall I'm doing. If someone got up to me in my town hall and said, you know, Congressman Khanna, there was this article in the New York Post that says that President Biden is implicated in X, Y, and Z, I wouldn't ask the police to escort them out. I would answer the question. If someone got up there and started spouting, you know, anti-Semite rhetoric or racial rhetoric, I would ask them to leave. And I guess my view is that's the same sort of criteria for Twitter.

Representative, you serve on the House Committee on Armed Services, and I immediately had to look up on Wikipedia what their jurisdiction is. But they, among other things, they oversee detainee affairs and policy. And I was just curious if you had any thoughts on our prisoner swap this morning. Well, I give the president and Secretary Blinken a lot of credit for having secured the release. And obviously, you know, you have to have diplomacy. We had to give up a prisoner. My understanding is it was someone in Russian arms trafficking, but I think that they made the right decision to secure the release. And it also shows, frankly, you know, I was criticized for saying that we need to maintain diplomacy and diplomatic

channels with Russia, but I think it shows why we do. Scott, you want to follow up there? Scott does not have this opinion. Well, my fear, Representative, is that this was very strategic, that they incarcerated Ms. Greiner knowing that they wanted this merchant of death back and that we've been played, and that there's no moral clarity around these types of things. But over time, what we've, unfortunately, I think we've done is just guaranteed that more people from communities, disenfranchised communities are going to be incarcerated. I think this is a bad deal for the US long term. But I'd love to hear your thoughts. I know this is very gray.

I hear the perspective. I understand your concern. It's why we typically say we aren't going to negotiate with terrorists and aren't going to engage in these kind of swaps. In this case, though, I think that the humanitarian concern outweighed it. I mean, politics is never perfect, and I give the president credit, but we have to be sensitive that this doesn't become a pattern. And I hear your point. I don't think it's an easy, easy answer, but I do give the president credit for this. All right, I'm going to move on to the privacy bill. And you always joke with me about it. It's not going to get passed. It's going to get passed. So if Congress had passed a privacy bill years ago, it probably should have. So how do we get to one? How do we

place limits on how long companies can retain user data? How do we mandate end-to-end encryption? What are the actual chances of a strong privacy bill ever emerging from Congress? We have a bill that's passed, as you know, the House Committee, finally. We should just pass it. Look, I know this is not popular among some of my California colleagues. There's a sense that California's regulation is stronger. And I agree with that. Let's try to get as much of California in, but ultimately something strong is better than nothing. And if we don't do it in the lame duck, we're going to get very unlikely. We're going to get it in a Republican house with a Democratic Senate. So I think we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And there are strong

provisions in the privacy bill. So will it pass in the lame duck? I hope so. I mean, you have people like me coming out, not that my voice is determinative, but if a few more California members start coming out for it, then it can. But I think it would be a real missed opportunity if something that passed the committee 55 to 2 doesn't pass the House. Doesn't pass. So you've also called for a new federal agency for tech regulation. Is that a way to go with this?

Is there anything wrong with our current system that combines the FTC, FCC, DOJ, state regulators, congressional laws? You think there's – the idea of a federal tech agency for tech is very controversial. Well, here's why I think it matters, Carol, because you know as well as I do that these tech companies often run circles around the regulators. Yes, we're aware. They'll have a law requiring consent, and they'll figure out how to have the check button bright enough in the right place on the screen, and they do the dark patterns. So I think it requires people of real technical competence to regulate tech. It requires Congress to have regulation, but I think we need an army of better equipped tech regulators. And that's no knock on the people there.

They just don't have enough staff. They don't have enough technical expertise. And that's why I've called for this. Now, what agencies it's under, I'm open to. An agency, a new agency, a new federal agency or part of? No, I think it could be part of the FTC. I think it could be part of the FTC or it could be some agency that's for FTC, FCC and DOJ to report to. What would you call it? Department the NSF for a positive reason. We created the NSF Tech Directorate, and that was to help science funding be commercialized into technology. This would be for helping regulators figure out how to regulate technology.

And chances of this? This one is harder because this requires spending, and I don't think a Republican Congress is going to want to expand government oversight. Ironically, some of their concerns would be better met if they're really concerned with big tech, if they had a strong FTC. I'm just shocked it's not getting more coverage. I'm curious what your thoughts are regarding President Biden's proposal to move South Carolina up to be the first state that holds the primary for the presidential race. Yeah. You know, I mean, here's the thing with South Carolina. Someone was telling me, Jamie Harrison was actually telling me this, which I didn't know. 40% of Black slaves came through the port of Charleston. So there's a huge symbolic place that South Carolina has in our nation's history.

And I have no problem, I think, with it being first, as long as you also have Nevada, New Hampshire, and I think the three of those together, where you have a population that is Latino, Asian, a white working class population in New Hampshire and a significant black population in South Carolina would be great. I think not having the three would be problematic. And I don't think it really matters who's first or who's three days after. Yeah. All right. Let me ask you that. You're a member of the House Progressive Caucus. Where are progressives right now? It would seem to me the election was very much like, we like the middle.

The voters were like, we don't like the election deniers. We like the competent people in the middle kind of thing. How do you look at the progressive agenda going forward? Well, the president basically implemented a lot of the progressive agenda. So they liked the agenda enough. I mean, the American Rescue Plan had a lot of progressive ideas agenda. So they liked the agenda enough. I mean, the American Rescue Plan had a lot of progressive ideas in terms of the child tax credit, the CHIPS Act I wrote as a progressive with Senator Schumer. The climate bill was progressive.

The president forgave student loans. That was progressive. President made a decision on marijuana. So I think that you're right that and the abortion issue, I think is a I mean, that's a beyond a progressive issue, but it's a an issue that obviously progressives were strong on. I guess what I think the voters were saying is, yes, we want to protect a woman's right to choose. Yes, we want to protect democracy, but we're still concerned about the economy. And then the question is going to be for the next two years, what are we going to do on the economy? And I still think progressives have good ideas on that. Should a progressive candidate primary Biden in 2024? No, no. I mean, Biden's done well. He's achieved things. You've got Trump DeSantis lurking out

there. You know, I think that I've said this a number of times that I think that the time for the Democratic Party to have the fight about the future is 2028. I think we want to have this president succeed as much as possible. I have a last question. Scott, I'm going to have one more. Jack Dorsey called on Elon. I want to get back to what happened with your stuff. Your emails were released. He called on Elon to release everything without filter, presumably meaning more emails.

Do you support that given the privacy stance? These are letters people wrote to a company. They're owned by a corporation. Should that be sort of the way corporations operate with radical transparency? Is that even possible? significance and you can have that be transparent. It's probably for the good. I don't think, I know that I try to assume anything I write on email anyway eventually will get out. Doesn't say that mean that I haven't written bad emails. But I think that that's different than taking information from someone on privacy, right? Like when we write a letter to someone, which is what an email is, you can't really say, well, they took my letter and they shared it

with someone else. I mean, you're sending a letter. There's no expectation necessarily of privacy. But I think that there has to be a sensitivity, particularly for those people who are in lower level positions. And they shouldn't be opening up, I think, people's inboxes without consent, unless the company had clear policies on that.

And what did you think of what came out so far? I know there's Twitter Files 2 coming, but Twitter Files 1 was not a particularly good movie. It showed a group of people struggling in a good way. No, I mean, I've seen your commentary on it, and I tend to share that view that there wasn't some, it wasn't that there were some smoking gun that, you know, they were being pressured in a nefarious way to hand Biden the election. I mean, I think that there, so I didn't see that being a smoking gun. I did see this genuine debate about where the what the First Amendment principles should be about and speech should be about.

And I think to the extent that it has opened up that debate in this country, the Twitter follows. I think that's a good thing. But I didn't think it was a gotcha moment as much as a this is a new forum. We've got to really think what the rules of these forums are going to be that respect different people. I will say this. I was surprised at how many conservatives who have criticized me in the past liked my stance on this. Yeah, your favorite. And I think it made me think that it's not about Hunter Biden, and it's not about the laptop, and it's not about Biden. What's going on in this country is there are too many times where

we try to silence people we disagree with. We try to condemn people we disagree with. We try to act as if sort of we're morally superior than people we disagree with. And I think some people are just like, thank you for believing that you can have honest disagreement in this country and that someone doesn't have to be morally inferior if you disagree with them. And I think to the extent we can have more of that spirit in this country, we can have some chance of getting past the culture wars, which have really polarized the nation. Well, I think we'll end on that.

Ro Khanna, hero of conservatives. It's really great to hear. Ro Khanna is on Twitter at RepRoKhanna, and you can find his email address in the Twitter files if you need to do it. He still has it. We really appreciate it. Please write him, as many of you as possible, and say hey. Say hey, hero

of conservatives. Anyway, thank you. There goes my South Carolina bid. All right. Okay. Thank you, Congressman. All right, Scott. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Okay, Scott, let's hear some predictions.

Let's hear one from you. So I did my predictions webinar yesterday. 13,000 people, Cara. Very nice. How many did you get for your colonoscopy? Slightly fewer. Slightly fewer. But they had soft, gentle, loving hands. Anyways, 2023 is going to be just as whatever the metaverse or crypto, 2023 is going to be the year of AI. I think at my long shot acquisition here, I think Disney could acquire Roblox. Just Iger's

been the best. He said he's not going to be doing too much, but okay. He's got to do something. He's got to do something big and bold, Kara. The current model, he's got to do something big. And he's got the license to do something big because he has so much credibility. So this is my thinking. Just as their acquisitions have been to take characters from subscale companies like Lucasfilm or Pixar and bring them into the parks and monetize them all sorts of ways through content in the parks,

I think that they could go the other way here and take Disney to Roblox and create the Disneyverse. Yeah, remember he talked about that. He talked about the worries about Facebook's version or other people's version because he was worried about things that would happen to their characters. But go ahead. Well, 50% of American youth are on Roblox. So what if they figured out a way to take all those incredible characters that they have at Disney right now and put them on Roblox?

And because Roblox stock, like every other stock, is off 50% or 60%, it's got a market cap, I think, of $18 billion. And I think Disney's $160 or $180. For the first time in a long time, Roblox is, quote, unquote, acquirable. Anyways, my long shot, long ball here is Disney acquires Roblox. Yeah. And you think Tesla. This is the year. This is the year, right?

Yeah. Anyways, as you said, my Waterloo. And my final prediction was the U.S. reasserts its dominance and hegemony. If you look at everything geopolitically, food independence, energy independence, our economy appears to be growing again and we're reducing inflation. Our vaccines are working. The smartest people in the world want to come here. We're kicking the shit out of Putin in a proxy war without putting any boots on the ground. I just think the U.S. right now, if you look at it

honestly, as much as we dislike each other, as much as we want the situation room and to shitpost America or feel bad about ourselves, America has pulled away from the rest of the world on almost every important dimension. Yeah, well, we'll see. The only issue is, look, people are getting weary of funding Ukraine all the time. I think there's statistics showing that. I do think China coming online is going to raise inflation. That should decrease inflation. Well, maybe. If they get the gunk out of the supply chain, that should lower costs, I think. But also, they have energy demands. Energy prices could go up, stuff like that. And they're a demand economy now. They're a food demander, by the way, so food prices could go up. They're an importer of food now. So, we'll see. I agree with you. I think things are going well

for the Biden administration at this moment. What did I get wrong there? What do you very much agree with or very much not agree with? I think Disney is a tough row for Mr. Iger. I don't think he's going to be able to do a whole lot. I think he's going to be doing a lot of cutting is what he's going to have to do and consolidating more than anything. But that sounds like a good acquisition. I don't think they're going to be acquired. That's a big rumor that was out there. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Before we go, we're nominated for best co-host for the Signal Award.

You can vote for us. Go to SignalAward.com. Find the link to vote for us in our show notes. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday for more. Read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naim and Evan Engel and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Ingetod engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Neil Silverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. I have the colon of a supermodel.