Pivot - Trump's Tariffs Return, Kalshi's Midterms Hub, and Elon's AI "Odyssey"

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

Kara and Scott break down Trump's new tariffs on Canada, Kalshi's new midterms betting hub, and Anthropic's growing political spending. Then, they discuss AI leaders' warnings about China, France's ban on social media for kids under 15, and  Tesla's rocky Q4 earnings. Plus, Kara has a prediction about Elon's plans for an AI-generated "Odyssey." This episode was recorded live at the CAO Summit on July 22, 2026. Watch this episode on the ⁠⁠Pivot YouTube channel⁠⁠.Follow us on Instagram and Threads at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcastofficial⁠⁠.Follow us on Bluesky at ⁠⁠@pivotpod.bsky.social⁠⁠Follow us on TikTok at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcast⁠⁠.Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Busy. See terms. Gregus believes in the art of living in choosing the pleasurable over the practical. It's why we craft our premium vodka in France using pure spleen water from Jenzac. And why you hear the celebratory pub of our quirk reminding us to make every martini cocktail count. So go on and make every moment count because there's no better time than now. Griegoose, make time wait. I think my third wife is here. So my next ex-wife is somewhere in this crowd. I'm not going to say a word about that.

Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Scott, we're here in California. The hellscape behind us. It's really quite horrible here. I don't know how people survive. This dry weather, the breeze, the ocean, the in and out burger. God, awful. Yeah. So we're here at a conference. conference. We're recording this live in front of a live audience at CAO Summit in Los Angeles. This is a Teraneo where, again, I used to run the Code Conference here for many, many years and many memories. There really are a lot of memories here of doing things. Yeah, this is, yeah, you're absolutely, this is kind of where you're, this is where you made Mark Zuckerberg sweat. Yeah. This is, it's spectacular down there. I didn't make him sweat. He sweat because he had a panic attack.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, no, I think you. What's the real memory for me is this is actually the last interview that Steve Jobs ever did. He did several interviews here, but the last one before he died was here, which was really an amazing interview. It was actually just in this ballroom here. And one of the things that I remember before that when we did Gates and Jobs together is when we had Mark here, the year he sweat, all he wanted to do, he was an up-and-coming entrepreneur, that Facebook wasn't very big. And all he wanted to do was meet Steve Jobs, like kind of like a fanboy, which was really something else. So I introduced them, which was kind of a moment.

And it was actually literally right down on this lawn right here. So it's places full of memories. Yeah. No, that's been fun. Anyway, I know, you're thrilled with it. So what have you been doing this week, Scott? You just became a regent of the University of California. Yeah.

And thank you. In other news, Joe Rogan has been appointed the head of the CDC. see. Yeah. Let me be honest, when you saw that this morning, did you think it was the onion? I did. I didn't think it was real. I was like, what is Gavin up to? Like, what was happening? And they also called you the left wing Joe Rogan in the story in the New York, California Post. Yeah. How many graduates of the University of California do we have here? So, you know, I don't like to talk about myself, but I will for just a moment here. So everyone, all right, when you get a certain age, you want to be on an important boards. You want to be on. you know, organizations that are innovators, I would argue that the University of California is the greatest innovation machine in history. We have 75 Nobel prizes, four of five last year, 300,000 students, 200,000 faculty, 7,500 PhDs, more startups, creating more value than any nation in history, with the exception of the U.S. in China and consistently punching out, you know, giving unremarkable people, remarkable opportunities.

And just to flash back to when I applied, I'm UCLA and Berkeley, mission straight when I applied was 74% to UCLA. And I was one of the 26% that didn't get in. Wow. Well done. True story. And I was installing shelving, came home. My mom said, let's appeal.

And I remember when they called me and said, you're not qualified, but you're a native California, we're going to let you in. And then I rewarded them with a 2.27 GPA, true story from UCLA. And this is how- Wait, you got 2.27? Which isn't easy to graduate. It's not easy to do to get a 2.2. It's not easy. Would you not go to classes? No, I learned, I learned every line from Planet of the Apes and how to make bongs out of household items. Okay. All right. And then this is how different the University of California was back then. I got into Berkeley's High School of Business with a 2.27 GPA. And then quite frankly, like a lot of men who have an immature prefrontal cortex, I got my shit together. And so just a virtue signal, my, my sole mission is accessibility and

figuring out a way that we can let in more unremarkable kids that might get to do remarkable things. Yeah. Anyways, that's my, my, that's my story. I'm sticking with that. I'm still sick with 2.27. Is that like a D? A lot of, I had nine Fs. So, I got a job at Morgan Stanley because I lot about my grades. But I wasn't going to be able to graduate because I couldn't pass calculus. I failed it twice, and it was failing it. And if you fail something the third time, you're not allowed to take the class again. And I was going to have to become a psych major and go seven years undergrad.

And so I looked up the nine Fs I've got. This is all true. And I went to all of these professors. And I walked in and said, if you give me a D, I get the units. And I get to go to Morgan Stanley and you get to give this valuable seat to someone else. and within about 20 minutes, I got three professors who were basically like, you disgust me and they signed it. And I was off to Morgan Stanley to build a world of fixed income.

Wow. And then 08 happened. Yeah. Put the dots together. Wow. That's amazing. What do you think I got in college? My great point out of it.

I would imagine you got every award and were recruited by the best companies and the best newspapers in the world. No. No, I was rejected by most newspapers because there weren't jobs then. The journalism was undergoing a crisis. You went to Georgetown, no? I did. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I went to the Foreign Service School. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Care wanted to be in our, in our, work in our security apparatus. I would. I wanted to be in the military. And was rejected because of her, her lifestyle. Yes, my lifestyle. Just got very quiet in here. No, I was gay. I wasn't allowed to be in the military. So, there you are. So we're going to move on with the show. We're going to talk about it. I actually just, I just got here because I spent a lot of time with three possible Democratic candidates. Go on.

I went, I interviewed Gina Romando, who was the former governor of Rhode Island, and also the Commerce Secretary who passed the Chips Act and the infrastructure bill. I was with Pete Buttigieg in Michigan, where he lives, Traverse City. And I was at J.V. Prisker this morning. So it was interesting. It was a little tour of the three have no chance. One's too female and once too short. Okay.

All right. True story, folks. We're highly sexist and luxist in this nation. Absolutely no chance. Two or three of those will be the Democratic company. They were very impressive. True. All right, who is going to be the presidential candidate then for that?

It'll either be Gavin Newsom or TBD. America likes to fall in love with someone they don't know well before Fox destroys them. It'll be a Democrat. America likes to go back and forward, but tall, handsome, California's got a good story. J.B. Pritzker, outside shot, good to add energy. Ossoff, if he can maintain the whole Kamelai Kennedy thing, but Fox will soon turn its sights on him and we'll find out something weird. He's being called Hotlanta now.

That guy's too perfect. There's got to be some weird shit in there. That's who I would bet on. And here's our political pundit going on. Anyway, we're going to talk about things. I was a guy at the Mondale poster in my fraternity room. Then I supported Dukakis. I hosted a fundraiser in 2020 for Michael Bennett, so I am not good at picking candidates.

Let me say, ladies and gentlemen, 2.27 average. So I'm going to go on to the topics. This is something you do know a lot more about. Donald Trump's tariffs are making. making their not so triumphant return. He imposed a 50% tariff on Canadian goods like alcohol, milk, and hockey sticks this week, justifying the move with an unused provision of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act. Smooth-Hawley. This is just the beginning. Trump is reportedly set to unleash new tariffs on a dozen countries that worked so well the last time, given his 10% temporary global

tariffs are about to expire. The Supreme Court struck down his Liberation Day tariffs earlier this year, but the White House keeps attempting various workarounds, given the havoc that the Iran war is reeking on the economy, which is still ongoing, even though it was supposed to be over many times. Is it really now the time to impose tariffs? Well, look, if you were running above 4% inflation, and if you were, and it came down, but it looks like it's flipping back up, that doesn't sound like a lot, but that means if you're about to have a kid, we just met someone who's expecting. By the time that kid goes to college, if it maintains it 4%, that means tuition 40,000 goes to 80,000. So inflation is how countries basically devolve into chaos.

Like the Fed is there basically to ensure employment growth and to make sure inflation doesn't get out of control. And you can have a lot of unemployment and people don't riot. But when people are working two jobs and they can't afford, you know, bread, that's when they overthrow the government. So inflation is really scary. And if you were to reverse engineer that four points, two of the four points can be attributed to one, the skyrocketing energy prices and tariffs. Tariffs will take approximately $1,000 toll on every household this year. It'll go to $1,200 on every household average if these tariffs go through.

And about 90% of those tariffs are being borne by U.S. consumers. When I was in graduate school, we literally used to look at tariffs as an example. of could you believe how stupid we were to do these things? Right. Specifically, the Smoot-Hawley act. Exactly. And it was considered antiquated and something we would never do again. And then unfortunately, probably our strongest ally, largest undefended border in the world is Canada. 80% of their exports come. I mean, this is really ugly for Canada. 80% of their exports come into the U.S. And to believe that somehow part of this whole narrative is this grievance culture, that we're victims, that we're being taken advantage of.

If there's anyone being taken advantage of, it's our trading partners. Because the way, if you think about what we sell into Canada, we sell iPhones and JP Morgan and advertising services into Canada. Those are high margin products. The margin on an iPhone is 40 or 60 points. So on $100 worth of iPhones that we ship into Canada, we get to hold on to 40 or 60 bucks, call it 50 bucks. Apple trades at a P of 30.

So that's about $1,500 in shareholder value. When they sell $100 with a timber or refined oil or hockey sticks, you're talking about 20 or 30 points of gross margin in a company that trades in a multiple of 10. So for every dollar we ship over, we get about $20 or 10 to 20 in shareholder value. For every dollar, they sell their stuff and they're getting two or three. So there's any dramatic asymmetry in trade that's accreting to one partner. It's the U.S. If anyone should be putting tariffs on a nation, logically they would be putting tariffs on us.

So the net effect of tariffs is that the market for our products declines or shrinks, but our products, the things we buy become more expensive. And they find other partners or allow other partners in, whether it's Chinese cars or Chinese AI open source models or whatever they happen to buy, they will have stronger relationships with others, particularly China. Oh, absolutely. I think they've, I mean, they're going to pay a huge price. And I've said this, it's like that animal house film when Otter says to the guy who errantly lent his parents car to the fraternity brothers and they crashed it. And he looks at him and said, you fucked up, you trusted us. That's how Canada feels about the U.S. right now. They fucked up. They trusted us. They thought they had a great ally. They thought they had a great trading partner. They don't. We were willing to basically neuter them economically. Why do you think Trump is doing this? I mean, he was mad about the wildfires. I think they were sending us beautiful orange skies in honor of him. But why? Why? There's no rash. I don't. But the notion that they can raise money, I don't. It literally, unless if he was more strategic, I can't imagine a more elegant way to reduce the prosperity of Americans than tariffs. I don't. I can't understand. what he's thinking. Even supposedly his inner circle has said this is a terrible idea. Right. And yet. And yet here we are. Here we are. Another story, Kalshi just launched a new midterms hub tracking real-time odds for every House and Senate race across the country. Kalshi is calling it a one-stop shop

for election forecasting, serving the public campaign, journalist, policymakers, and researchers. By the way, roughly 75% of people are going to Kalshi are there to check odds. 25% are trading. more than $30 million has already been traded and wagers about the control of the House and the Senate, and a spike in the prediction market volumes expected as we get closer to the election. Now, you put a lot of faith in the predictions market. I find them very game-oriented, meaning they can be easily gamed by not-so-great people. I also have an issue with polymarket, given the kind of things they allow people to bet on. There's an interesting story in the New York Times today about an investment firm that Don Jr. is involved in that somehow

has 200% returns, which are unprecedented. And it's probably because of his large brain, I'm guessing not. But talk about these markets, because if you were advising a campaign, what would you tell them about them? You've put a lot of faith in them. I put less so. Yeah, so I'm not making a qualitative judgment on whether prediction markets are good or bad.

I have real concerns around gaming and gambling and its impact on young men. But polling companies are basically going out of business. because if you want to know how someone, what someone really thinks, don't ask them what they think. Ask them where they're putting their money. That is, it ends up that the wisdom of crowds in terms of what they're actually wagering on, what they're actually voting with their wallet. So, for example, Kalshi has never gotten a Fed rate decision wrong. And the data I've seen is that there are 78% of the time they're able to predict an outcome in election, which is greater or they're 78% more accurate. In some, polling firms, are basically going out of business, because think about the people of polling firm calls, that you pick up your phone, you fill out a survey, that's not always very accurate in terms of the actual election. So these firms, what's interesting about the election side,

it'll get more headline news than it is a business. The total election business for Kalshi is somewhere between 1% and 2% of their revenue. Five and a half billion dollars was wagered on the World Cap Final. This is a tiny business for them, But it gets a lot of headline press because it's pretty accurate. They're predicting, I think, about a 70 or 78% likelihood that Democrats overtake the House, but only 45% that they take the Senate.

But I find that that data so far, if I think of a source of truth or accuracy, I think of the – Do you differentiate between Polly Market and Kalshi? These are the two big ones. And apparently Facebook is also considering putting one together. Yeah, I think of – Calchity just because I think it's bigger and has more liquidity and has more just more volume of people spending their money, if you will. What's the biggest worry you have of them right now? Because as they become more and more, because they were betting on drug outcomes. They're betting on illnesses, disasters. You know, apparently Trump, the guy who does the teleprompter for Trump was betting on what he would say in the speech since he knew and is under investigation for that. Yeah, there's some scenarios where you could see someone finding a market where they say,

okay, someone's going to be hurt or killed or whatever, and they start doing strange acts in order to bet money. But that's no different than fixing like the World Series. And then there's fears around insider trading. But I think ultimately, the insider trading will be arbed out when people realize that if there's anyone that could have inside information, they shouldn't bet on the other side. And my biggest fear is very simple, and that is we have millions of young men who every day are being seduced by screens and algorithms to spend another second on a screen and another second less with their relationships. And we're slowly but surely evolving a new species of asocial, asexual males.

They become obese, depressed, anxious, and start blaming women for their romantic problems and immigrants for their economic problems. And some were producing a cohort of really shitty citizens that threaten the nation. That's what I'm worried about, Kara. All right, other than that, Cal, she's fantastic. All right, let's go on a quick break. We come back. Speaking of the midterms, we'll talk about Anthropics, Big Spend. Support for this show comes from Ship Station.

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comes from NPR. You know those questions that run through your head at night? Questions like, is social media actually bad for your mental health? Do we as a society spend too much money on weddings? Why is heteropessimism trending? If you're thinking about it, others might be as well. And NPR's It's Been a Minute podcast is talking about it. It's Been a Minute stands for your right to to be curious, one big question at a time. Four days a week, host Brittany Luce breaks down the ideas, trends, and conversation shaping the culture. She goes beyond the obvious takes,

talking with creators, critics, and cultural voices who help you see things differently. You'll hear dialogues with both up-and-comers and cultural icons. And it's from NPR. Simply put, I think NPR just hits it straight down the middle. I think they do a fantastic job. I also enjoy just the production quality

that they put into everything they do. It's been a minute, knows cultural trends, don't happen by accident. It's not just what's trending. It's why it's trending and what that says about us. Brittany and her guest dig into the latest means to unpack how they got into your feet in the first place and why they're stealing our attention.

These are the conversations you want to have and the ones you'll be bringing up later. Follow NPR's, It's Been a Minute podcast, and indulge in your cultural curiosity. Scott, we're back. Anthropic is making a big bet on the midterms, recently doubling its spending to a total of $40 million. The money is going into public first action, a PAC pushing for AI regulation.

It's a counterweight to leading the future, a PAC backed by Andresen Horowitz and OpenAI's Greg Brockman. It's not just exacts. Filing show Anthropic and Open AI employees are emerging as a new donor class, pouring money into races. Anthropic is also writing big checks outside of politics, a federal judge, approve the company's $1.5 billion settlement with authors whose work were used to train Anthropics' AI model clause. they're essentially thievery of copyright. The crypto folks have had a major impact on the last election. Is this the AI election?

We had talked about that. Obviously, Sherrod Brown got his, he may be back, got whacked by the crypto people. I think Elon's now put $90 million into the midterms right now. Is it again going to be, is it all about AI at this point? Well, I've been doing all the talking. What do you think? I think that's what they're doing. I think they really very much want to control.

They're very worried about a couple of things. One is the regulation around the country, around AI in states. They're particularly nervous about that, of which are popping up everywhere, the uses of AI. They're worried about the uses. I think the idea of social media being banned, they're sort of getting used to that. And France just did that. I think that they are worried about data centers. And as you say, as a proxy for everything else, I had a long talk with someone from one

of these companies today about what to do and maybe change their tone with citizens on data centers because they realize they look like villains. And what can we do to not look like villains? And they were asking me my advice. And I said, well, maybe don't be villains, which they were like, we're not villains. I'm like, people hate you, which is what I had told them at a dinner a while back. I said, people hate you and they're going to hate you more. So I think them entering even more politics is really problematic for all of us. Because, you know, We don't want to get into a sharks versus jets thing between the Anthropic people and the Open AI,

Elon Musk and Driesen gang, essentially. And that's what it feels like. Because I don't think it's in the interests of good legislation. I don't think it's the interest of safety. I don't think it's in the interest of bringing AI to all of us. I think it's the interests of protecting what their business is, essentially. Yeah, the way I read this, so Anthropics claiming They're putting money into an organization that's actually promoting stricter AI regulation,

which feels sort of counterintuitive because typically an industry or a PAC representing an industry gives money to try and stave off or delay and obfuscate regulation. I sort of saw it as they recognize how powerful and what a great ROI it is to invest in Washington. So this is sort of their ticket to the conference where they're going to network and establish relationships, should they need those relationships? I don't think any of them have an interest in any actual legislation, none at all. I think this, Mark Zuckerberg did this. Please regulate us.

Please regulate us. And then did everything possible to stop it. Even Apple does it. We talk about age verification and other things, and they block it everywhere you go. And I don't think, I think these people like no regulation. And I think this money is incredibly dangerous by this one group of people, no matter what side they're on. And I don't like either side pretty much. Yeah, look, it's all all roads lead to the same place.

Unless we overturn Citizens United and we get some semblance. I mean, I think that money is going to decide this election for the most part or have a big influence on it. And companies running unfettered. It's just, anyway, I'm on a broken record here. Well, speaking of that, they may not have unfettered money. Executives at Open AI and Anthropic are warning about the rise of cheap AI from China, which we've talked about a lot, saying it will lead to security risks and a dystopian future. The Trump administration says it will look into whether AI has been distilled from American models,

of course they have, saying it doesn't support IP theft, which is rich from these people. In an attempt to gain ground over China, the U.S. plans to overhaul federal funding to support individual scientists and the use of AI rather than universities, which is individual. This is a real problem. They're starting to give money to individual star scientists. Meanwhile, on a security front, Open AI models went rogue and hacked a startup hugging face during a security test. They were bragging about it a little bit. It was unprecedented that we managed to attack another company.

What happened was the AI jumped out of the sandbox it was in and went around all of OpenAI's security efforts and went and attacked a company on its own. So to me, I'm not sure these executives are worried about the future or just, worried about competition. How do you look at this? You were the first to mention this to me, this threat from China. Well, in January of 2025, which was not long ago, about 10% of token usage was coming from Chinese open weight models.

As of today, it looks like it's 58%. So what you effectively are seeing is this bifurcation in the market where American models are turning into German automobile manufacturers. they're high-end, they're more expensive. And even though you have 58% token usage from the Chinese models, on a revenue side, the American models, the frontier models, are much bigger businesses because deep-seek charges about 135th of the price for token usage.

So I think this is just turning into the automobile market, where you're going to have a high-end BMW or Mercedes. And then you're going to have Toyota, Hyundai, you know, Honda. So they'll produce more cars. They'll produce more AI. It'll be lower margin. But the market's bifurcating. There's still a market for the frontier models.

There's certain applications where people want the best, latest, greatest model with more security, more testing, someone you can sue, someone you can call with customer service complaints. They'll probably do a better job of hiring some of the people in this room to figure out how to monetize it through advertising. But you now have, essentially, I would argue, that AI, I mean, on a volume level that China has already won. And it's not a race to see who has the smartest model. It's a race to see who can put the most AI in the most people's hands. And right now, right now that's China. And the backlash to data centers will be part of that. They'll be able to do more compute there. They'll be able to get it to more people. And the backlash to data centers is these companies own fault for the way they behaved. Even if some of them, you know, I ran into the mayor of Lansing, mission. who had a great deal from one of these companies,

and the citizens just didn't want it anyway because they hate them, which I keep telling them. I don't think they like me saying that, but they do. People hate them. All right, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about France banning social media for kids under 15. Support for the show comes from Corweave.

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There's a civil war happening in the Democratic Party, and if there's one place that that's playing out most clearly, it's in Michigan. A crucial Senate primary battle in Michigan that could determine control of Congress in November. Congresswoman Haley Stevens and Abdul-El-Sayed. A progressive Democrat and a moderate Democrat. In the end, it all comes down to the dreaded e-word, electability.

But in Michigan, one candidate is trying to turn the electability concept on its head. If we think that voters walk around asking, where do I sit on some theoretical left-right spectrum? Then in theory, the bulk of the voters are somewhere in the middle. The problem, though, is that that model hasn't really accurately predicted our politics for a very long time. If Michiganders wanted moderate, why would they have elected Donald Trump twice? Dr. Abdul El-Sayette is making the progressive case for America first, and he's trying to settle the Democrats' ideological battle in the process. This is about the many versus the money.

I'm Instead Herndon, and this is America Actually. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. One, two, day. I'm stand-up comedian John Marcos Sarasi. And I'm actor-penis model, Russell Daniels. The downside is our podcast where we bring on guests to talk about how miserable their lives are because let's face it, things are not getting better. Every episode we talk about what's wrong with our lives, our guest lives, the world, but in a fun way. Bottom line is you're

going to walk away feeling better about your life. We've had so many cool guests, Caleb hereon, Busy Phillips, Stavros Halkius, Laverne Cox, Hassan Piker, Alana Glazer. I promise you're going to have a good time. Now on the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is the downside. has banned social media for children under 15. It's the first country in the EU to pass a blanket ban, and the bills also bans the use of mobile phones in high schools. Last year, Australia banned children under 16 from having social media accounts. The ban is failing to keep teens off the platforms. This is a worldwide trend, and it will be coming here at some point, and relatively soon. And I suspect the social media companies, some of them are going to get on board with it.

Yeah, look, we've been talking about this for a long time. We're going to look back on this era, I think, and regret income inequality. We're going to regret Citizens United and money overrunning Washington. But I genuinely believe our biggest regret for parents is we're going to look back and think, how to we let this happen to our kids. I think that I just don't see any piece of research, any rational argument for why any of our children should ever be on social media under the age of 16. I mean, just imagine being that age, just as you're thinking about your social capital, your sense of self, you're physically awkward.

You know, you're growing too fast. You have weird skin. You're being evaluated. You're starting to, you know, recognize your own sexual self and what's attractive and not attractive. I mean, you're just so fucking insecure, right? Remember that? No. No? Well, the rest of us. And then the high school cafeteria is finally. following you around 24 by 7. And I think social media is really damaging to young men because they get radicalized and they sequester from the relationships. I think it's especially hard on teenage girls, though, because boys bully physically and verbally, girls bully relationally.

And we put these nuclear weapons in their hands called smartphones. And I think in high school, I just think the level, the expectations on aesthetics, the unreal mimetic benchmark that teen girls are supposed to live up to, the bullying, the, it's like a giant eating disorder waiting to happen. Or it's a distraction in school where you aren't paying attention to teachers, you're watching some latest dance video. Yeah, but most schools, even before, if they don't ban phones, they only use them in class. Correct. But I think the use of them creates a distraction and a lack of, including the chatbots that are now very popular among young people. But what a lot of people, their initial argument was ridiculous shit like, well, 15-year-olds have First Amendment rights and they're socializing.

And then they went to, well, it's bad parenting. And anyone who thinks keeping your kid off your phone is about parenting doesn't have kids. Because unless there's a collective ban, the research my colleague Adam Alter did at NYU was that what they found is that unless you ban it all, for all teenagers. For everybody. The kids whose parents take it away are more depressed

because they're ostracized and isolated from everybody else. So unless it's a collective universal ban, it doesn't work. But this is just, this is literally

a no-brainer. This is, in my opinion, one of the most, it's got bipartisan support, all the research in the world showing. There's just very little we give up

when we don't let our 15-year-old daughters and sons on social media. another colleague, Jonathan Haid, I think,'s done real good work. I think this is going to sweep over Europe. Absolutely. It's a question of when it's going to sweep here in this country, which we'll wait and see.

I do think the social media companies are suddenly starting. The only reason I realize that is suddenly they're calling me, which they don't speak to me ever. And now they're like, hey girl, I'm getting a lot of hey girls from all these companies. You speak to all the time. Didn't you just, I thought you talked to someone today that? I did, but I'm just saying. I just saying they're hey girling me recently. But they haven't in a long time, which is interesting.

Which is an interesting thing. It's like, we know we have a problem. I'm like, you know, no shit, Sherlock. In any case, moving along, speaking of which, this makes me laugh, The Daily Show is taking on microdramas. Comedy Central announced a show it will produce a first of its genre, a serialized soap opera of shot vertically designed for phones. A title will be Two Billionaires Fight to Dominate the Country and My Heart.

The series follows Alonka, a daughter of an aging and sleepy president, two moguls, Egon Husk, and Jif Davos, will compete to build an AI president to run the country. I feel good about this. I feel great about this. If they did a microdrama about your life, what would it be called? Seales? Okay. I love that they're doing this.

I think they've done it. Doesn't this feel like everyone would come here, like when they're divorced? I think my third wife is here. So my next ex-wife is somewhere in this crowd. I'm not going to say a word about that. I'm going to move on. I'm moving on very quickly. Tesla earnings just came out with the company reporting weaker than expected numbers for Q4,

even as revenue rose to $28 billion, up 26 percent from last year. The company is citing a hit from lower vehicle prices, despite increased auto sales, Tesla also shares jumped in operating expenses. And CAP, as it pours money into robotaxies and robots. But as part of Elon Musk master plan, he's calling it a massive KAPX year that will yield, quote, maybe the best KAPX returns that we've ever seen. But thoughts on Tesla, he's going to fold it into SpaceX, which is, by the way, at $115 a share, that's heading down. I don't know. Actually, I don't know if he's going to be able to now if it keeps going down.

Yeah. Tesla's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing. It's an automobile company that's reaching scale, and it's no longer is differentiated because other entrants have entered the market. And as a result, you see margin compression, because the only way they can maintain their share is to lower prices. And to their credit, their vehicle sales were up dramatically. Yeah. But in order to make- Not for the cyber truck.

They sold $7,000, $3,000, which were to- Well, that product is a lot on arrival. So, but their volumes are way up, but their margins are being compressed, and that's where you're going to see every quarter. What I think the analog to the previous story we're talking about is the same thing's going to happen in AI. There's going to be more AI. The same thing, China did the same thing with EVs, did the same thing with batteries. It did the same thing with shipbuilding.

And that is what we forget about in business is we're so in love with the innovator. We think the key to shareholder value is to build the best model. It's not. It's to put the model in as many people's hands as possible. The fastest zero to a billion dollar retailer was old Navy.

That did not have the coolest fashion. It offered 80% a gap for 50% of the price, which is the entire strategy of China. And what Tesla is doing right now, is they're being forced to lower the prices because BYD can come in with 80% of a Tesla for 50% of the price. And circling back, they're going to do the same thing with AI. The majority of us, or a lot of us, especially in startups or with CFOs who are very, very disciplined, are going to say, if you can get 80% of Anthropic with DeepSeek or Kimi or whatever it is, for 10% of the price, folks, this is the AI we're using.

And the same thing is happening, the same pressures we put on Tesla. What happens to Tesla from your perspective? Where does it go? I think it's a great company. I think it's a great car. It's just in no way. They need more cars. They need new cars.

Sure. Every automobile company has that problem. But the thing about Tesla, it's not that it's not a great car company. It's not that it's not got a great product. But he's been trying to promise something like robots. Or do you realize, do you know what the total number? of non-manned or non, I don't know what the politically correct term is, non-personified. Man is fine. You can use man.

Non-personed. There's 24 Teslas on the road globally now that don't have a person. A robo taxi, right? Right. I think, I think Waymo's at four or five thousand. Yes, they are. But he will always say, here's the robovin, here's robots. Yeah. I got a card up my sleeve to justify a valuation, a software evaluation. on a company that wraps steel around an axle that is typically a low margin mature business.

So where does it go? It goes to the same place. Great company, a lot of cars. They'll come up with new products. And it will trade, I think, at 70 to 80 percent less than it's trading now in the stock market. Yeah. And it doesn't get folded into SpaceX. If the stock keeps going down, it's going to be very hard for him to say,

now take on another problem or now take on something that's not related. I don't know if he's going to be able to do that if the stock continues to crater. Do you consider it's going to continue to crater SpaceX? It's close at 114 today, I think, 15 maybe. Yeah, so now it's only overvalued by 80%. I mean, just look at it. Yeah. One of the problems I have as an investor is I always anchor off of where it was.

So I think a lot of people are going to say, wow, it's cheap now. No, it's not. This is a company worth, I think, 1.4. Now it's trading at a cheap, cheap, 70 to 80 times revenues. I mean, it's just insane. And I don't know if you've been watching this. It's literally going down 3 to 6 percent every day.

Every day. Every day. This is something, a very good investor, George Noble said it's a $30 stock. That's the people are putting price targets on it of between $30 and $60, except for the folks who underwrote it and took a lot of fees. $200. They're claiming it's worth between $2 and $300.

Who do you believe? I think it's a $30 stock. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, it's basically Comcast in space, which is a cool business. But this, you want to talk about the most ridiculous look over here as I stuff a rabbit into a hat. Data centers in space.

Yeah. Have you ever been to a data center? Yeah. There are enormous concrete facilities. It costs, I think, $75,000. per kilo to... Yes. Most people who know about this said it's impossible, actually. It makes...

But now he's talking about putting quantum computers on the moon. He did that the other day. To what end? Why do we do? They don't have earthquakes there. You can't have earthquakes. Quantum computers don't work yet, but when they do, we can't have earthquakes, and it's colder. I'm just telling you, that's his latest. Actually, he has another latest.

We'll talk about it a minute. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions and audits. audience questions. Okay, Scott, we're going to hear a prediction. My prediction is that his version, Elon right now, is very upset at Chris Nolan and the Odyssey. I know you know that. It made $250 million this week.

It turned out woke Odyssey was very much liked by the people. Elon's still mad about it. He's still angry. So he's decided he's going to do an AI version of the Odyssey that's historically accurate. it despite the fact that the Odyssey is fiction. It's a myth. Exactly. That's correct.

It's fiction. It's fiction. Okay. But he's real mad about it. So I predict this movie is not going to be very good. Look, so he just put on display on the network a movie called, I think the Vigilani, which is Arm and Hammer, the guy who played the Winkle Vi. Yeah. And it's about a guy who seeks revenge.

on behalf of victims that were killed by immigrant families, and a lot of people felt like it was very Islamophobic. And my view is, I love what you said. You don't like Chick-Palais? Don't need a Chick-Palais. Right. You think that's true? Don't watch it.

You don't want a non-white woman playing Helen. All I care about personally is that she's hot. That's all I'm it. That's the only criteria. Yeah. You don't want a transgender man playing a warrior? Fine. Then don't see it.

But is it any more fake than Tom Cruise is a stray leading man? Yeah. On that note, what is your prediction? And then we'll get to a question. I got a couple of predictions. One, well, I made the prediction. You're seeing the market in AI bifurcate into German automobile, high price, high margin, companies that won't be as relevant, is the Japanese or the low-cost manufacturers, which will be Chinese AI. I think China, quite frankly, I hate to say it, at a certain level, has one AI.

We just haven't woken up to that yet. I would agree. And then two, you're about to see the clip economy take over our TVs. I think the biggest show on television from Netflix or someone else is going to be a 60-minute compilation of two- and three-minute videos similar to what you see on Reels or TikTok. I think that's about to wash over their traditional streamers. You're going to see. You know, that was a big show many back in the day. Do you remember kids say the craziest things or bloopers or America's Funniest Home Videos?

Yeah, that's the same thing. Yeah, that's the same. I just thought of that. Yeah, those were that all linked together. So, okay, all right. So with that, we'll open the floor up for two audience questions. I'm just curious for both of you, who is sort of an under the radar creator right now, whether it's a substack writer or a YouTuber or a podcaster that you love, you forward to your friends,

but no one, we don't know, and that people are going to hear about it from a year from now, that we'll all kind of know about in a year from now. Huh. What do you watch? Mine are weird. I like the Gio Hussar who talks about military weaponry and strategy. Gee, I like Gary's economics. He's a total populist economist.

I follow boring, weird stuff. I don't, you know, I'm the guy who watches World War II in color. My favorite actor is Hitler. I watch anything about war. So my creators are probably not ever going to be that big. Right. That's really depressing. I watch a lot of the food ones.

There's a guy, and I don't know his name, and he screams a lot, and he grows ginger. But he's this food guy who does, he's very, my son put me on to him. And I actually listened to what my kids listened to because my second son was very into the guy who ended up doing backrooms and had tagged him for me on YouTube to watch and was very familiar. People should not be surprised that was so popular. All the kids knew about it on YouTube.

So I tend to listen to what my kids listened to. Like, I tend to watch what they look at. But I think there's just, all over the place, there are so many amazing ones. And I think I happen to look at food ones. And this young guy does this most astonishing about growing things. And again, my son put me on to him because he does a lot of gardens and stuff like that. I'm trying to think of anybody else. I've got one more.

And I guess he's technically a creator. But I think we have. I think that George Carlin, no one knew George. Carlin was the George Collin of his generation until after he died. It's like right now, I think we're, you never know when you're in a golden age until 20 years later. I think we're in a golden age in New York. I think New York's incredible right now, and we won't recognize it until 20 or 30 years when it's shitty again. And everyone will go, remember it in 2006? I think that George Carlin of our age right now is this British comedian named Jimmy Carr. And I find him just so insightful and funny and

brutally honest. He's one of my favorite creators that comes up in my... Yeah. And any of the comedy ones. I watch a lot. Yeah. I also like Rita Fias. She's basically a porn star. Yeah, I listen to all. Who?

Who? Who? Who? Rita Fias? Is that her name? Yeah. She's just in my feet a lot. I don't know why. Yeah.

Yeah. So, sorry we're not so good on that. He knows her. All right. One more. That guy's like, I said that. It's like, uh-huh. One more.

Right here. Right here. Right here. One more. Hey, Scott. Hey, Karas, Jason, Aelman, from brand innovators. How are you? Hi.

Hi. So my question is, not a funny question. because I'm usually a funny guy, which is who's the next tech mogul no one's talking about, but you guys seem to always know who's who. That's a good question. There's a couple of really interesting, oh, God, I'm supposed to meet a couple. I've been asking people for some really innovative people doing AI. But I'm suddenly interested.

I just happened to be, as I said, with J.B. Pritzker about their new quantum computing. they're putting a quantum computing campus in Chicago on the site of U.S. Steel, where U.S. Steel had its factory, which is kind of ironic and wonderful. I'm super interested in quantum computing right now for some reason. You know, quantum computing, people don't think,

they think AI, AI is everything. Quantum computing is AI's well-behaved and more important brother. You know, they're siblings in some ways, and there's quantum AI and things like that. But I think the ability, to create these quantum computers is really where the real innovation

is going to happen. And so I'm spending a lot of time trying to figure out who are the big names in that. And that's where I'm focused completely, almost like trying to figure it out right now of who that is. And the other thing I'm looking at a lot

is I've been doing a lot on crypto security. And that is a big worry of mine. I just had an interview with Nicole Pearl Roth from the New York Times. She was a former New York Times reporter, but she now is a consulting firm at sort of the dangers we face with these AI models and the offense defense happening right now with all kinds, whether it's finance or pharmaceuticals or your personal information. I think a lot of really smart people I know are very worried about it. So I'm looking for those companies that are sort of the white hats in that area because there's a whole lot of black hats in cybersecurity right now in cyber attacks. I forgot in California when the sun goes down. It gets pretty cold here.

Yeah. I'm shivering. So tech means technology. Mogul, I think, means rich. So I'm not talking about who should be, who's going to be good for the world or not good for the world. But when I think of someone who's going to make, create potentially trillions of dollars in shareholder value, I think probably, is it a Palmer Lucky, Andoril. Yeah. I think, unfortunately, defense and defense tech where you take some of the Silicon Valley,

ethos and apply it to defense and asymmetric weaponry, as opposed to these big platforms, I think that's just going to create enormous amount of shareholder value and wealth. And I think underrule is going to be probably the IPO of 27. And then the other one, I think the most impressive or relevant technology right now is not AI. I think it's GLP1. And I think a guy who actually could be a long-shot, dark horse, presidential candidate, is the CEO of Eli Lilly in Indiana,

which is the most important company in Indiana, which is, you know, not that impressive. The CEO of Eli Lilly? Long-shot? Why? Handsome, tall, Midwest, smart, rich. Skinny. Yeah, he's just, I think he, actually, I think he or Doug McMillan are actual viable candidates. I think someone from business, and you said this, and it's got me thinking that the Democratic Party right now has got such a terrible reputation that it might be someone who comes in from outside.

But anyways, I think that the CEO of Lai Lili, whose name I'm blanking on, or the CEO Vonderal or the next tech moguls. Yeah, and the reason I mentioned quantum computing, because that's where the focus is beyond health care. That's where a lot of the innovations are going to happen with these computers. and a lot of pharmaceutical companies and others are part of this effort, which is really impressive in Chicago, actually, because we really are going to lose an AI right now to China. I think Scott is 100% right. I mean, I had some very significant people say that to me in the last three days.

Quantum computing is an area we should be heavily investing in. And one of the great tragedies of this era right now, of all the many things that are happening, is the cuts to research money to universities where much of this stuff happens. Right now, major researchers in MRNA, in all manner of really exciting stuff where the U.S. is ahead,

are moving to France, to Canada, and recently a Nobel Prize winner is moving to China. Like, it's really grotesque, and every university president I meet has talked about this in terms of them. And then they can be slow. there's going to be bureaucracy, but our university system is one of the, speaking of Scott being on the UC's board, is one of the greatest assets of this country and this systematic obsession with DEI and

hurting places like Harvard and everyone else and litigating is such, is going to be, it's going to take decades to recover from. And I've interviewed many scientists that say this exact same thing. So I would, the efforts like what's happening in Chicago and other things, where public private partnerships where the states have to make up the difference are critical, but it's not going to matter until the federal government gets its, you know, stops with this endless corruption and starts really focusing in on the real race we're in, which is to dominate and have a democratic AI and which we're not in, we're not. And that's a real worry for me. Your thoughts? Board sister.

Board sister. All right. In any case. By the way, UC system, $54 billion. 60% of the revenue comes from a hospital. hospitals. Yeah. So any ant eaters in the house? UC Irvine? Isn't that where we're close to? What? They're called ant eaters? The ant eaters. What do you mean? Yeah. Like, how would you pick an anteater to be here? UC Davis, the banana slugs? Oh, my God. Oh, Santa Cruz. Sorry. God. And suddenly he's kicked off the board. In any case. Any, any Trojans in the house? It's in Orange County. I was going to go to USC, but my SATs were too high. Yeah.

In any case. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Read Us Out. Have a card? I don't. I think you can do it later. Correct, Lara?

No, he has to do it now. Oh, I don't have it. Today's show is produced by a group of wonderful people who we appreciate whose names I forget.