The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – CES 2026: AI and Innovation Take Center Stage with Gary J. Shapiro of Consumer Technology Association

Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Because you're about to go on a moment. Monster Education Roller Coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hello, welcome to Voss here from thecrisVos Show.com. Ladies and gentlemen, and the earliest things that makes it official. Welcome to the big show and all that wonderful stuff that's there. I hope you're ready for some wonderful show today.

Starting point is 00:00:50 We've got good shows, they like to call it. Today we've got a, we'll be talking with our good friend for his six or seventh appearance. I think it's a seventh appearance on the show. as annual appearance for announcing the new CET show for six to, yeah, I can't count beyond five because I flunk second grades, but I believe it's seven by my account here. Six seven. That's a thing, Chris. You got to look it up.

Starting point is 00:01:13 It's 67 at this point, but we hope to have him on our 67th time on the show. So we'll just keep him coming back. But the meantime, we need you to go to goodreads.com, for chest, Christchrist, Vos, YouTube.com, FortressaSchristfos, Facebook.com, Fortes S. Chris Foss. And follow the amazing things we do there. And our good friend, Gary, who's on the show today, he also posts a lot over there on the LinkedIn.com. You should check it out. Today we're going to be talking with the amazing Gary J. Shapiro. He is the CEO and vice chair of the Consumer Technology Association, otherwise known as CTA. It's a trade association representing U.S. consumer technology and industry.

Starting point is 00:01:53 He's held the position since February of 2024 after serving a CEO from 1991. He got sick of that job, I guess, for after 20, 30 years, something like that. I'm just putting words in his mouth. Mr. Shapiro is a lawyer, author, and lobbyist who's been recognized as a tech titan and one of Washington's most influential people. Welcome to show, Gary, how are you? Chris, thank you for having me. I'll tell you, we've done this more times than I think any show I've done.

Starting point is 00:02:21 And so I have tremendous respect for what you've done. I love your book. I like your honesty and your candor and your refreshing way. In fact that you've been doing podcasts a long time, and you and I have known each other a long time, you know what? I can't you as a friend, a colleague, and a voice in the industry. And I just wish I could keep up with all your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:02:41 And I wish you could keep up with all your great post you make on LinkedIn. You talk a lot and you lobby Congress hard and politicians hard on behalf of businesses. and so I'm just going to shed a little tear there. Thank you for saying the wonderful things. Oh, Chris. You too. I love you, buddy. So anyway, let's get into the show.

Starting point is 00:03:00 We'll talk about CES for those who are uneducated on it. That's what we want to do, build awareness. Where can people find out more about your organization and the CES show? CES. dot tech, T-E-C-E-S.T.E.H. CES. That is focused on CES. And, of course, there's c-ta.

Starting point is 00:03:17 dot tech, which is the association, the consumer technology association. So we're a big association, but one of the best and coolest and funest things we do is produce is mega event, one of the largest events in the world, largest business event in the world, largest tech event, largest, large, largest of every, just about every measure. And then we even hire an independent order to tell everyone that we're honest, which we are in terms of all the different numbers we release. But it's all out there. We are what we say. We have pages and pages. and pages of information about the industry, about what we do, about the CEO, which you've been coming to for how many years?

Starting point is 00:03:55 I don't know, 10 years plus something that I've been coming to. I've been aware of it for longer than that and promoting it and things that are there. You know, it's always, it is the largest trade show, I think, ever, really, isn't it? I know. That one, there's some big outdoor events that are held once every few years, but certainly in an annual basis, definitely as an independently audited event, we're the largest. We have a big footprint, one of the biggest in the world. And it's been held since 1967.

Starting point is 00:04:23 The guy who hired me started at New York. And I moved to Chicago, got pretty cold one January there. And they were the first big business event to move to Las Vegas. And that was in like 76, I believe. And I think my first one was in the 80s. And I haven't missed any since, Knock Wood. Oh, that's not sure. I guess we missed the COVID one that didn't know.

Starting point is 00:04:44 Oh, yeah, the COVID one. I remember that happened in Microsoft. actually, we did a digital event. That was a wild times. Wild times we talked to that. So you're an acclaimed author. We've had you featured. How many books do you have under your belt there?

Starting point is 00:04:58 There's four books and about 1,300 or 1,400 different op-eds and commentaries and probably some other stuff. And I don't know. It's just a lot of words. It's a lot of words. And I'm going off the CTA tech website here, but you are a lobbyist for, of course, all the businesses in your consumer technology association, the CTA. And it says here it represents over 1,300 consumer technology companies

Starting point is 00:05:24 and owns and produces CES show the global stage for innovation. Is that right, the 1,300 number these days? Now we're saying over 1,200, but it's variable. It depends how long we give people to pay their dues. We only allow a company with a, you know, a U.S. facility. so that limits some of the foreign-owned companies. But we're doing okay. We keep getting new members in, big new members.

Starting point is 00:05:52 Our prospect list is getting shorter and shorter. But CES has several thousand exhibitors all over the world. Yeah. And it's as an association. The other word I struggle with is lobbyist. I do get on every lobby, not every, but many lobbyist lists is most influenced and all that. But actually, I'm not a lobbyist, which is the ironic thing. a legal definition, which means you spend at least 20% of your time lobbying, which I definitely

Starting point is 00:06:19 do not. You'll have to take it up with the people of your company because they put it on your website. Oh, really? They use the word lobbyists. Yeah, I read that from your website. That's why I made the disclaimer because I don't know what. That'll teach me. Sometimes when I quote numbers from bios, they're old because, you know, we see that all the time

Starting point is 00:06:37 on Amazon. Somebody will have some bio from like their original first book. As long as they're not doing the Ann Landers thing with a picture from 60 years ago for me when I had a full head of hair, then I'm okay. No, no, they got a recent photo up there. But, you know, I mean, you could have that barbaw-wa-effect, you know, that whole, I'm going to start putting that on all my stuff. So tell us about...

Starting point is 00:06:59 The fuzzy lens. The fuzzy lens, yeah, that beauty lens. Oh, I don't think I was ever hired for my looks to begin with, so I don't worry about that. You and I. That's the one thing we have going for us, I guess, or well, at least one of them. So, Gary, give us a, this is going to be held, the show at least. The exhibits are January 6th through the 9th, and I believe you guys do other stuff, pre-show with the press and stuff. Give us an overview of what this show is, maybe to people who are laymen and aren't aware of it.

Starting point is 00:07:28 And give us the rundown of what's going on this week, this week. Yeah, this is a global event. And by that, I mean, we have people from all over the world. 40% of the people at the show are from outside the United States. That was, this past January of 2024, five, I'm sorry, it was, we had 55,000 people from outside the United States. Yeah. And we had, you know, another little under 100,000 from the United States. We had about 4,000 exhibitors.

Starting point is 00:07:55 It was in about 2.5 million square feet of exhibit space, spread out across Las Vegas. We have a lot of major facilities we use there. You know, Las Vegas has three of the ten largest convention centers in the country. And for the show, different parts of it, we use all three. Plus, we use a whole bunch of hotels. We get about 6,000 media around the world. We have a whole special event. It's a side event, in a sense.

Starting point is 00:08:19 Part of the show, though, called C-Space. We use this about four or five hotels now. We get about 10,000 chief marketing officers and content creators and tech people to go to that. They're focused on the business of the Internet, if you will, in terms of selling things, the marketing techniques, the Internet allows. So we get all sorts of people doing, going to that conference. And then, you know, the convention centers have a lot of exhibits. They are exciting, you know, big companies like LG and Sony and others show their full display of products.

Starting point is 00:08:52 That's the way they want them displayed, the message they want to get to the world. It's really interesting stuff. We have the chip companies. We have a lot of the mobility companies. Not only the car companies, but also boating mobility, air mobility. We have a lot of companies that are just trying to make the world better and feed people like John Deere and Caterpillar with their equipment. We have Oshkosh, which makes half the fire engines in the countries and the airplane, airline, airport service vehicles. And we have all sorts of different companies.

Starting point is 00:09:23 We have Lego exhibiting for the first time. Oh, really? Yeah, we get some really interesting companies coming because they, you know, every company is a tech company. Yeah, that's wild. And they want to let the world know what they're doing. Yeah. We want to reach this extremely influential, high-value audience of media, of investors, of retailers, of potential partners, and of startups.

Starting point is 00:09:46 One of the most areas of her exhibit, if there's one category, it would be startups. We have over a thousand different startups that come in a separate area called Eureka Park. We give them a special treatment, so they just have to show up with their idea, basically. And they get a place to meet all sorts of investors and media and potential partners or customers or investors. and that's it's called Eureka Park and it's dedicated to our proposition as a non-profit organization that we want to make we know good ideas can come from anywhere in the world anywhere on any type of person and these people that are risking you know their time and their own credit card may be maxed out and they just want to get their idea out to the world and we try to help them yeah mission in the

Starting point is 00:10:28 core of the organization actually that we we want to always make room for startups I love that Because you, you know, there's a lot of people that exhibit in the main halls and the main areas that, you know, they can afford it, you know, Samsung can afford, you know, a million dollar probably, I don't know what they cost, but, you know, the big tents and the, in the audio and the video and all the engagement they have going on there. But, you know, if you're a small, up and starter, you know, you're like, I really can't afford the big booth and all the stuff there. And it's so great that you make that Eureka Park. And there's so many startups, like the French section, is just, I've watched that grow over the years that has just become huge. Other countries going there and using that area to profile their startups. And it's really like the place to go as a press person, that's one of my favorite places to go, is you see the future of companies that hopefully will be eventually someday on your main floor. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:11:27 It's exciting. You know, it's really interesting as what we've seen in the last couple of years is we've, We've seen South Korea become ascendant. Yeah. They're probably the number one country after the U.S. in terms of startups and Eureka Park. Countries like Italy are also growing. Clearly, the Dutch and the French, you know, always have a strong presence. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:44 And obviously, the Americans have the most startups, which makes a lot of sense because we're based here and we're known for our startups. But it's a global event and good ideas can come from anywhere in the world. Which interesting is you talk about some of the bigger companies, but some of them help finance those startups. And a few of them actually send their entire teams. people to comb the area. Yeah. And look around. And I was introducing myself to the CEO of Walmart.

Starting point is 00:12:07 He says, I go to CES every year and see, I know you are. And he says, I love going to Eureka Park. Who would think that the CEO of this huge company? Yeah. You know, we'd go to Eureka Park and walk around Eureka Park every year. But like Mark Cuban, it's one of his favorite places to go, Shark Tank. Mr. Wonderful are there. They do Shark Tank tryouts there.

Starting point is 00:12:28 It's an opportunity for them. And some of our biggest volunteers were Shark Tank contestants or in Eureka Park, and they company succeeded and they grew and they wanted to give back and volunteer to the industry. Those are the kind of people that run our organization and provide us the guidance and leadership and direction that we need because they've lived it. You know, those people that have helped out, and I can think of so many of them off the top of my head, they started, as Bill Gates once told me, he says, Microsoft needed CES. So we started as a tiny company in CES, and there was a small company in CES, and there was a

Starting point is 00:13:00 show then called Comdex. They made us seem bigger than we were. And they got it. Every year we got bigger and bigger and bigger because the business we were able to do there. It's very efficient. You know, the average person that comes to CSS 29 meetings. It was a whole bunch of business deals. And as much as I'm the paid cheerleader for the consumer technology industry, let me tell you something. I believe in the power of face-to-face relationships and trade shows and in business, and also the value of discovery, of serendipity. You get at an event like a CES, like a trade show like ours, and we try to encourage it in every way possible.

Starting point is 00:13:38 We're always trying to make it better. We've improved our app for those that come, so they could find things and say what they're interested in. We certainly improve it in terms of our programming, and if you look at our programming, you'll see some big names there. It's really impressive. We all have 1,200 different speakers. No one could hear every speaker, do everything, or see every exhibit.

Starting point is 00:13:56 But you know that because you've been there. I've tried. And you get such a flavor for the world and the optimism and the technology. It's great. We'll have a lot of people from the Trump administration, as well as Democrats from around the country. And international politicians are coming in force from all over. Yeah. It's going to be a huge event.

Starting point is 00:14:17 You know, you've been hosting this since 1991 or working with CS since 1991, over, you know, nearly 35 years, roughly, of doing the show. What's new this year? Are you seeing that AI? AI, what's that? What? I don't know. That's, no, AI will be pervasive throughout the show.

Starting point is 00:14:39 It's, it's huge. And everyone's talking about it and doing it and they're showing different cool implementations of it. And there's a lot of stuff there in terms of helping your customers, helping your employees, having cool products that do all sorts of things. it's definitely, if there's one, you know, core technology underlying the CES, it's AI. In fact, we have a new area called the Foundry that focuses on AI and cybersecurity and quantum computing, and it's new.

Starting point is 00:15:08 It's more of a conference with some cool places to see, excuse me, see things. And it's oversubscribed at this point. We have a waiting list to companies to get in there. Holy crap. Yeah, you know, you try new things. and part of our obligation is to introduce our constituencies to the future. For example, like this past show in 2025, we had a whole big focus on energy. Well, we're continuing and expanding that because you need energy to power AI and quantum and electric cars.

Starting point is 00:15:39 Now we're seeing more self-driving cars with a new administration. Electric is not being subsidized, and they're back to the focus we should have on self-driving because that solves a lot of big societal problems and powers. seniors people with disabilities it cuts down in traffic accidents and deaths who doesn't want that yeah i was really i was really surprised that hadn't been adopted sooner i was expecting like 2017 to you know nothing ever happens as quickly as you think i'm certainly ai is taken over quickly because that's just software but this is you're changing a whole industry the auto industry and you're changing how people get around but increasingly you know if you go to san francisco

Starting point is 00:16:14 you could take self-driving taxis they're doing phenomenal they're saving lives already it's only news when happens, like, you know, one hit a cat and killed a cat, and that was big news. But it's the number of lives being saved because of self-driving technologies and active collision avoidance. It's hard to measure, but it'll be reflected in the numbers each year. Yeah, AI is, I mean, I'm just surprised at the growth of it. I shouldn't be, but, I mean, just them, because I'm like, just trying to hold on for dear life to keep up on new technology. What other technologies are you seeing that are leading the charge there at CS 2026. Another one is that's really seeing fast growth in is robotics. There's factory robotics, obviously, which is really important, especially as we

Starting point is 00:16:59 bring manufacturing back to the U.S. in different ways. And we're having a fact, we're having a whole half-day sessions focus on manufacturing. We have manufacturing factory engineers exhibits there. We have, as people try to reach a global audience for U.S., that's certainly part of our agenda that we didn't have last year. or this year, I should say, this is January, next year, 26 in Las Vegas, we're talking about we will have manufacturing, we'll have a lot on robotics, and we certainly see a lot in healthcare still. And this is just accelerated since COVID, in that you have all these devices which are basically providing supercharging, the ability of doctors who are at scarce supply

Starting point is 00:17:43 and takes it a long time, and hospitals, which are looking to make sure they get the people when they should be there and not when they shouldn't be there. Remote monitoring, telehealth, telemedicine, drug discovery, discovering what works and what doesn't. My wife's a doctor, and she's already done some original research looking at her patient records and discovered that one of the treatments she's experimented on is actually just as good as everything else, but it's only once every eight months and not once every four months. And it costs only a few dollars rather than several thousand dollars in existing treatment. So we're on our way as a country, as a society to finding better ways to do things.

Starting point is 00:18:22 We do trust our experts, everyone trusts their doctors, but they're all human. And in the U.S., we have the most expensive health care system in the world, and we incentivize doctors to do everything. And we're not incentivizing the best treatments or the best care, which is something we hope we'll eventually switch to. Actually, I give the administration credit because they're very eager to learn and hear about all this. That's why we'll see a lot of leading people from the health care portion of the administration

Starting point is 00:18:48 They want to know what works and what doesn't, and they're willing to challenge the status quo. You could love them, hate them, you could disagree. I'm a little more nuanced. I mean, I think what they're doing in artificial intelligence is critically important. When I think they're doing tariffs is not helpful to American consumers and not helpful to our place in the world with our allies. Yeah. But, you know, it's he's trying to change things and trying to make things better. And that's important that we have open-minded leaders that are willing to do things like that.

Starting point is 00:19:14 I've got to get over the fact that you're not going to agree with them and everything. Yeah. I mean, you represent a lot of these businesses and, you know, try and get politicians to understand what they need to help these businesses grow and be great and help, you know, America be great and the world be great and solve a lot of problems with technology. And do you see, I know one of the things I've been trying to accomplish that administration is bring manufacturing back. I don't know if that falls fully under your purview, but are you seeing methods that are working going that direction of bringing manufacture back maybe through the show or you're feeling. and stuff, your viewpoint? To be perfectly honest, I'll be interviewing the CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers. A good friend of mine, talk about them in my recent book, actually, Pivot or Die in my meeting with their board, but they're focused exclusively on U.S. manufacturing, but they don't love tariffs

Starting point is 00:20:05 either because they think that they're making it very expensive to manufacturing U.S. if you're putting special huge fees on steel and aluminum and things you need to make stuff. Plus, to be honest, we're exporting a lot of people who, yes, they're here illegally, but they have skills and they're willing to work hard, and a lot of them from Latin America are, in a sense, they have our values. They have work, hard work, and God-fearing, religious, pro-family. They're really great workers, and we're getting rid of them. So the question begs, who's going to make all this stuff here?

Starting point is 00:20:40 Where are the workers that are going to do it? Are Americans, or I asked the Deputy U.S.TR today, do you want Americans to be be making pencils? Like, what's your vision 10 years from now? We don't have enough people in the U.S. to do all this manufacturing. And it's going to be so expensive that it's something that it'll be so deeply expensive that American consumers won't be able to to buy anything. The intentions of the administration are good, but it'd be nice if we manufacture it works. And it's important, especially when it involves, clearly involves national security. But to have everything made here is absurd, and frankly, it's not going to

Starting point is 00:21:15 happen because you put up an iron or electronic or both curtain around the U.S., Americans will be dying in poverty because we won't have the things we expect, food that's reasonably priced. And even today, I do the grocery shopping for my family. Let me tell you, I don't know how the average American could afford food anymore. I don't know either. It's just, it's, it's, we're, we have great aspirations, but we're ignoring the facts. And the same thing we're doing about this huge growing budget debt that we're, and I know. And I know. understand why president wants to get interest rates down because just the jump in interest rates is costing us trillions of dollars a year more. That's taking money away from investment,

Starting point is 00:21:53 it's taking away money from our kids' future, and it's not fair to the next generation. So in some ways, there's visionary, in some ways we're being delusional. I think it's important that we focus on the facts, and the fact is we can't build everything here. We never will be able to build everything here. We shouldn't build everything here because that's not how the world was built. 99% of the economists in the world will tell you that there's something we call the law of comparative advantage, which is a pretty hard, fixed physical law that says everyone wins if you build the stuff you're good at building and don't build the stuff you're not good at building. We're not good at building factories and pencils and things like

Starting point is 00:22:27 that. We're not good at backbreaking labor. We have to import a lot of our labor. We need it here to survive. And right now we're in this rapid transformation, which is super well-intention, but frankly just ignores the reality that we don't have here, even with growing unemployment, the workers we need with the skills we need. Yeah, we have a shortage of nurses and health care coming up, too. We talked a lot of doctors about that in the show. Oh, I was going to tell you, we've had people, you mentioned that investors go to the show to find, you know,

Starting point is 00:22:58 the newest big thing. And we've actually had companies that we've reviewed and profiled on the Chris Vos show from CS, and we've had investors write me and go, hey, can we get the contact information for those guys? We want to invest in that company. So it works. It does work.

Starting point is 00:23:12 Yeah. I've seen a lot of that. So the interesting thing is going on in the show. I love it. To me, it's like a big Christmas day sort of opening presents, sort of experience at CES, where I get to see all the latest stuff and the coolest things and the most interesting innovations.

Starting point is 00:23:29 And sometimes you see stuff that you're like, I don't know if that's really going to fix the problem you think it is, but you see the minds at work trying to, you know, fix problems of people and innovate. and I mean, that's the great thing about the human spirit. You know, there's always a way to make things better. And as long as we have that drive in our country where the human spirit can, you know, have the freedom

Starting point is 00:23:51 and the wherewithal and the money to be able to invest in themselves or invest in products, you know, you never know what's going to be the next biggest thing these days. Absolutely. And it happens all the time. And sometimes there's something which everyone thinks is the next big thing and it clearly is not.

Starting point is 00:24:05 Yeah. I would say 3D television was in that category. And the Metaverse. I've been married four or five years ago I was doing all these interviews and all they want they lead with the metaverse this and the metaverse out and I I was ready to like seriously

Starting point is 00:24:19 but you know you can't argue with momentum and you know it's interesting to see how companies have spent huge amounts of money because everyone just agrees with each other and I've seen it mostly in Japan where there's no word for no and it's always consensus but you know

Starting point is 00:24:35 the CS is great because it's a huge laboratory and the people that exhibit there especially Eureka Park come back and they have a different business plan because they've listened to their potential customers, potential investors, people who want to buy their product if they change the thing, and, you know, they come back and that's the free market system in place. It's rough and tough and competitive and it hurts when you waste money or you've given your life savings and nobody wants to buy your product. But on the other hand, when you hit it big, you could hit it big in this country and that's what makes us a great country. We have more innovation here than I would guess all

Starting point is 00:25:09 the other countries in the world put together right now because we have a tax system. We have a, you know, we have a culture that embraces it. And if you fail at a business, you're not a failure. We've all failed at different things we've tried. That's when you learn. And that's the important thing in this country that we are a nation of learners, always striving for something better. And that's what the standard the CES goes to. We try to give everyone an equal chance and say, you're out there. You're going to, you know, your business may succeed, it may fail, but people will tell you what you need to do to succeed. People are honest.

Starting point is 00:25:42 Now, the show, I have to close here, but the show is, in January, it's open to anyone who can show a business interest, whether it's a media as an investor, working for a tech company or a startup. If you could show you can come and you can be inspired and it could change your life as it has for several other people. You go to our website, cES.com. You could see what it takes to go there,

Starting point is 00:26:03 but it is life-changing for many people. It changes the arc of the decisions, they make in life, the businesses, the people they meet. It's just an eye-opening, optimistic view of the world and how technology will solve the most fundamental human problems. And capitalism, frankly, and the free market are the solution to a lot of what's wrong, whether it's in healthcare or transportation or robotics or AI, or you want to name the category. It's there. Having said that, Chris, I look forward to seeing you, so the CES will be complete. And I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show. It's a great show, and you have a great

Starting point is 00:26:37 book that's out that I found really life-changing for me, just reading your book and you're about your experiences. Thanks, Gary. Thanks, Gary. It's been wonderful to have you. You just completed your eighth show. I counted them up. This is your eighth show on the Christmas. Okay. Awesome. Eight years and running. My goal is to make

Starting point is 00:26:53 it at least a nine. Always want to have that goal in front of you. You're always welcome on the show, Gary. We really appreciate you. And it's going to be an awesome show. Thanks for coming by. Thank you, Chris. Let's have a great holiday in New Year. All right. Thank you very much. the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning, consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter,

Starting point is 00:27:17 younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult the doctor for any resulting brain bleed.

The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – CES 2026: AI and Innovation Take Center Stage with Gary J. Shapiro of Consumer Technology Association

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