The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Big Tech, Addressing Cyber Attacks, and Strengthening U.S. Competitiveness — with Ro Khanna

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

California Congressman Ro Khanna, who is serving his third term as the Representative for Silicon Valley, tells Scott about the Endless Frontier Act, a bipartisan bill he co-sponsored that aims to strengthen U.S. competitiveness with China through investments in technological and scientific leadership. Ro also shares the best and worst of big tech companies, and what it will take to get them back in check.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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cards, savings accounts, mortgage rates, and more. NerdWallet, finance smarter. NerdWallet Compare Incorporated. NMLS 1617539. Episode 91, the atomic number of protactinium. Terminator 2 was released in 1991. I miss the 90s when we didn't get measles and had mandatory vaccinations, or as I like to refer to it, the decade we didn't have our heads up our asses. Too much? Go, go, go! Welcome to the 91st episode of the Prop G Pod. I don't know if it's the bourbon I drank last night or the testosterone therapy I'm on,

but my voice is getting deeper and sexier. And that only happens because you don't see my face. Face for podcasting, but I like my voice. It is getting, I literally register, it's getting deeper as I get older, which I kind of like. I kind of like. Anyway, today we're busting right into our conversation with California Congressman Ro Khanna. Ro is serving his third term as a representative for Silicon Valley, and he sits on the House Committee on Agriculture, Armed Services, and Oversight and Reform. And Oversight and Reform. Talk about the hall monitor with some power, finally.

Ro tells us about the Endless Frontier Act, a bipartisan bill he's co-sponsored that aims to strengthen U.S. competitiveness with China through investments in technological and scientific leadership. We also discuss with Ro the best and worst of big tech companies that are based in his district in the Valley and what it'll take to get them back in check. Enjoy our conversation with Representative Kana. He is, I've always said, like said it's easy to be cynical about government or our elected representatives. And when I meet with our representatives and I get a chance to meet with a lot of them, I usually walk away pretty inspired. And this is no different. This is a guy who has a lot of options. And you think to yourself after speaking with him, it's good that we have really

smart, thoughtful, and he just kind of reeks of integrity, people representing us. He's also not afraid to be very honest and critical of the companies in his district. And if you imagine, he's got the most powerful companies in the world as his constituents, and he's not afraid to tell it how it is. Anyways, this guy's going to be a comer.

I don't know if he's going to be senator or governor, or I can even see him being on the ticket someday. Anyways, he's a comer. Get to know Roe. Get to be a comer. I don't know if he's going to be senator or governor, or I can't even see him being on the ticket someday. Anyways, he's a comer. Get to know Roe. Get to know Roe. So, Representative Conner, where does this podcast find you? I'm in Washington, D.C. We've got late night votes tonight.

So, we had you on Pivot back in January, and you said that you'd hope to see, or you talked about what you hope to see in Biden's first 100 days. How do you think he's doing? I think he's off to a strong start. Yep. The economic recovery, the American Rescue Plan was very effective. I think they've done a good job on COVID, though the Delta variant poses new challenges.

And I think he's outlined a bold vision of infrastructure. I do think it's challenging times to make sure we get something done on infrastructure and new guidance on the Delta variant. So let's talk about the Delta variant. I have a little scripture with a bunch of questions, and of course I'm going off script. A bunch of young men in 1941 said, I don't want to go back to Europe. My mother was widowed. We're impoverished. We were there 25 years ago with no to Europe. My mother was widowed. We're impoverished. We were there 25 years ago with no noticeable change. I'm not going back. And we imprisoned 5,000 of them.

And now it seems as if we want to, are we suffering from both side-ism around this, our inability or unwillingness to pass legislation that mandates vaccination passports for people? Leadership needs to step up and put a stake through the heart of COVID. Your thoughts? I agree. And I think as starters, the CDC made a mistake by getting rid of the mask mandate. But second, I mean, Macron, I think in France, has done things where he's basically said, if you want to ride the trains, if you want to go to the restaurants, you have to be vaccinated. And I think that's perfectly appropriate. And we can have religious exemptions. They just should be narrowly defined. I mean, we have all the jurisprudence in this country. You know the law

much better than I, but there are things we can do to mandate it and still have genuine religious exemptions, which are very narrow. And I don't see why we don't do that. And is there, so I saw, excuse me, Senator Klobbuchar talking about removing 230. Do you think there's any momentum to get more aggressive around mandating vaccinations for public schools? Or do you see any momentum in the House or the Senate around that? I think it's a heavy lift because I think people are concerned about how that mandate would be perceived. But I personally think that when it comes to schools, when it comes to public accommodations, places where you impact other people's lives, you should be required to get a vaccination unless you can show a genuine religious exemption, and those shouldn't be broadly defined. Talk a little bit about, you're putting your name,

or you've authored the Endless Frontier Act. Can you explain what that is and why you're passionate about it? It will make the largest increase in science and technology funding since the Apollo years in the 1960s, over $100 billion, going to the National Science Foundation, going to our laboratories to invest in synthetic biology, AI, critical technologies. So we lead in the 21st century and we'll make sure that it's distributed across the country, not just to elite universities on the coast. And it will make sure

that it's collaborating with the private sector to commercialize. So my view is this is what's going to keep us competitive and it's bipartisan past the Senate. 68 to 32, Senator Young and Representative Gallagher teamed up with Senator Schumer and I to do it. And what do you see when you see our competitive advantage or disadvantage? How do you think this makes us more competitive or narrows the gap between those who have shot out ahead of us? I would say that the Endless Frontiers bill, the bill that Senator Truman and I did, would give us a competitive advantage on key areas of science and technology and clean technology and synthetic biology. Let me give you a concrete example with AI. Right now, as you know, there's a huge data advantage that China has.

Well, at MIT, Josh Tenenbaum is doing work that says, well, when a child learns the word dog, he doesn't have to see a thousand pictures of a dog. The human mind is more complex. And we can solve that riddle and have AI function anywhere more closely to how human comprehension functions. That would be a huge advantage for the United States and not make us as data dependent.

And the big tech companies aren't going to necessarily invest in that because their model is so data driven. So those are the kinds of initiatives that we could fund across different technologies. DARPA, I mean, the whole internet, the TCP IP protocol was invented by Vint Cerf while he was at DARPA. We've done this before and we can do it again in new industries. And when you were speaking or sticking with the theme of global competitiveness, give us your sense.

There's competitors, there's adversaries, there's enemies, there's a scale or an index. Where would you place China and Russia on those poles? They're strong competitors and in places adversaries, but we should not replicate the Cold War. The way we win the 21st century is by leading in innovation, by making sure our nation welcomes people who want to come to the United States and contribute to our country. I mean, people still want to come to the United States. They're not lining up to go to China.

That means we have something we're doing right here. But do you see one as a bigger threat economically or in terms of military action or cyberterrorism? How would you differentiate? Are you worried more about one than the other? I think China is by far the bigger threat and competitor. I mean, the Russian GDP is one-tenth of the U.S. GDP. They have very little innovation.

It is an economy that isn't very impressive by any metric. Now, we have to take seriously Putin's aggression, his aggression in Ukraine, his aggression in Georgia. We have to take seriously his efforts and meddling in elections and cyber attacks. But that is not, in my view, a threat to the American leadership of the 21st century. It is a challenge, just like we have challenges of terrorism or other threats. China poses an alternative model to governance, one that is not based on liberal democracy, and their economy is very strong. I mean, they have their internal challenges, but there's no doubt that they are a more serious competitor. And when you think about, specifically,

when you think about cyberterrorism, sitting here not knowing what's going on behind closed doors, I think there's a sense of frustration that it doesn't feel like we're counterpunching, that we kind of sit around and wait for the next attack. Are you satisfied with the response? Is there more going on that the general public doesn't have visibility into? I'm not satisfied with our response. If I were the president, I'd advocate this. I would call a Manhattan project on cybersecurity and say, how can we be secure?

And we can, because I'll tell you where I'm confident about our security is our most critical, sensitive defense security. I don't think our nuclear weapons is our most critical, sensitive defense security. I don't think our nuclear weapons or our most sensitive defense weapons are susceptible to cyber attacks. There was a famous attack in 2008. The defense leadership saw that threat and they reacted to it. And they have built a very stable, secure system to protect us. The problem is that same protection doesn't apply to critical infrastructure. protection doesn't apply to critical

infrastructure. It doesn't apply to a lot of government agencies that we know how to do it. We need to have the resources and we need to get the people to do it. And I'd rather focus on that and international policy to make sure that we're trying to reduce the threat of cybersecurity than engage in offensive cyber attacks where we don't even know who necessarily is attacking us. But at the end of the day, do you think, and again, this is someone who's read too many spy novels, but without some sort of counterpunching, does this ever get any better? Or if we're constantly playing defense without ever playing offense, do we ever really get a lid on it?

Well, first of all, we have a lot of tools in our arsenal. We have sanctions. We have economic tools. We have conventional weapons. So we don't always have to counterpunch with a cyber attack, especially if we don't know where it's coming from. But we definitely need to take action. And I think the president has said that if there is a traceable cyber attack from Russia or another country, that we would have a very deliberate and strong response. And all things are on the table. And that includes our cyber capability. Coming up after the break. You need a beefed up FTC and you need a beefed up FCC and DOJ with actual technologists there who understand the games that technology companies are playing. And then you need far more excessive fines and sanctions

so that more than the interns are paying attention. Stay with us. Support for this show comes from Constant Contact. You know what's not easy? Marketing. And when you're starting your small business, while you're so focused on the day-to-day, the personnel, and the finances, marketing is the last thing on your mind. But if customers don't know about you, the rest of it doesn't really matter. Luckily, there's Constant Contact.

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Go to constantcontact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to constantcontact.ca for your free trial. Constantcontact.ca Hey, it's Scott Galloway. And on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS wherever you get your podcasts. So you represent Silicon Valley. You are technically

the representative of big tech, at least geographically. Would you describe their behavior over the last, do you think things are getting better? Do you think that these organizations are behaving more responsibly? Or do you think things have gotten worse or just kind of stayed the same? I think marginally better, but not better nearly enough. There hasn't been enough introspection. I'll tell you, I saw an interview recently by Mark Zuckerberg, and I don't want to beat up on

Facebook. They get beat up enough and I've called for breaking them up. But it gave me an insight into the lack of full understanding. And Zuckerberg said, look, when I was growing up in this community, I had to play baseball because everyone was playing baseball. But that's not probably the best self. I wasn't destined to play baseball. I liked coding, and I had to sneak around and meet with this one friend who was also a coder. And now think about it, on communities, you can meet whoever you want with whatever activity you want, and we have this amazing freedom to pursue our talents. And I thought, okay, that's reasonable, but you're not seeing the benefits of community. That when you were growing up in a community and you had teachers and church leaders and neighbors saying that white supremacy was terrible and it had no place in the community, that that had an

impact. And now that you're totally freed from any restrictions, that you basically have these ideologies run amok. And so the faith, in my view, on a human freedom in this absolute sense without restrictions, I think, is a misreading of American history. I mean, obviously a misreading. No one's read Democracy in America by Tocqueville. It doesn't give sufficient value to community or institutions.

And I think that myopia of blind faith and technological optimism is still prevalent. So we have a tendency to want to reduce big tech down to just one basic concept such that we can assign blame or innocence or engage in gross idolatry of all of them. But there are different companies. There's Apple,

Facebook, Google, I think all in your district. Who do you think the best and the worst actors are? And these are nation states. I mean, these aren't, I don't think I'm asking you to name, these organizations are so enormous that I do think they warrant individual scrutiny. When you look at them as individuals, do you think there's anyone that gets too much criticism? Are there individual companies that deserve more praise? Or are there organizations that really frighten you among what's loosely considered big tech? Well, let's go through all four of the big ones, and maybe we can do it that way. I think on Apple's case, they are incredibly thoughtful about issues of privacy.

And Tim Cook has a more philosophical view on issues of social justice. He grew up in segregated Alabama. When you talk to him, he's very aware of John Lewis. He's got great admiration for Gandhi. He understands issues of racial justice and feels them in inclusion. I think, though, the 30% commission is ridiculous. He knows I feel that way. And they need to do more to open up their app store to other sellers.

I also think that they shouldn't have a promotional deal with Google to make Google the default search engine. And I've spoken about that before publicly and privately. So I think they're an actor. It's good that we all have... Many of us have iPhones, and they've done a lot of good, but they have bad practices. On Google, again, I would say the fact that you can now search anything and have that information come to your fingertips is a good thing.

The fact that they have democratized access to a large sense of knowledge and have Google scholars who can get access to journal articles is a good thing. But they have problems as well. The most, in my view, the worst of it is what they have done with local newspapers. I mean, basically, local newspapers have been put out of business in many places. And Google takes the summary of that information and it puts it on a link and those local newspapers don't have any way to compete. And then it has a monopoly along with Facebook

on the digital ad market. So if you're a small business or you're dependent on ads, you have to be more reliant on Google. And those are things that I think need to be fixed. When it comes to Facebook, the biggest problem is democracy. And let me say this way, I mean, Zuckerberg, and I think Zuckerberg is a brilliant person. I just think he has blind spots. I mean, I think he genuinely

believes that we have a platform and everyone goes on the platform and they talk and we're going to have more community. And if it were that easy, we would never need political philosophy. I mean, you know, Jürgen Habermas wrote his whole books on how do we have deliberation. And it's not just go talk to each other. There are all these ideas of respect, of dialogue, of equality. And so when you just create a platform

and there are no rules to the platform and there's no sense of what is truth or not, and you just say, let everyone do whatever they want, that's not thoughtful enough, and it leads to mass misinformation, it leads to the proliferation of hate. I think if Zuckerberg just said,

look, we've created something, it has enormous goods, it has potential downsides, and I'm humble enough to realize that we need to regulate it and regulate it thoughtfully, and that we made a lot of mistakes, he would have a better reception. And then Amazon, you know, every time I joke around, every time I go bash Jeff Bezos for the way he treats his workers,

my wife has another Amazon package at our door and I realize why they're at 70% approval rating. I mean, the reality is they've really improved convenience, not just for professionals like my wife and I, but also for rural Americans who didn't have access to a lot of products before. But the way they treat their workers, I think, is absolutely wrong. I mean, the electronic surveillance is wrong. The amount that they're paying them is inadequate. The fact that you have in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and then I'll end my answer.

In fact, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, you have deindustrialization where people were making $30 in manufacturing, and now an Amazon warehouse comes where they're making $15, and that's their only option. It's a real problem. And then the way Amazon is treating sellers on its platform. So they all have their positives and negatives. It feels as if there's regulatory overrun,

whether it's Facebook absorbing a $5 billion fine like it's a flea hitting its windshield, or it's Robinhood getting a $70 million FINRA fine, and the language in there is reckless, you know, disregard for consumers. And then that afternoon in response to this fine announces their IPO. It seems that there's a regulatory overrun strategy

that is a shareholder-driven strategy. Varsity Blues impacted Stanford and your district impacted my school, UCLA. When Aunt Becky did a perp walk, I feel as if we've solved that problem. A parent gets a call from someone claiming they can get their kid into Stanford with a $200,000 donation to the sailing coach coach hangs up the phone. Do you think that we ever really get big tech back in check without a perp walk? Well, first, I think we need to have people who actually understand technology doing the regulation.

So you're absolutely right that they're running circles, not just around American regulators. They're running circles around European regulators. I mean, Europe likes to brag that they are innovated in regulation and we can innovate in technology. Someone should just read about dark patterns and how these companies basically can manipulate consent

and opt-in consent, and the European regulators have no clue what's happening. Yeah, GDPR hasn't worked. Yeah, I agree. And then they've got their forum shopping in the least enforcement. So I would say you need a beefed up FTC and

you need a beefed up FCC and DOJ with actual technologists there who understand the games that technology companies are playing.

And then you need far more excessive fines and sanctions so that more than the interns are

paying attention. Because I agree with you, in some cases, it's a cost of doing business. But the fundamental problem is we don't have regulations. I mean, in some cases, the problem has been that some of these tech companies would actually even welcome regulations. Because on the one hand, they've got Democrats saying, take this stuff down, it's misinformation. On the other hand, they've got Democrats saying, take this stuff down. It's misinformation. On the other hand, they've got Ted Cruz saying, no, no, no, you can't take down someone who's an anti-fascist.

That's discrimination. And so they kind of throw up their hands and they say, well, tell us, create some bright line rules and punish us. And it's ironic because they've gone from having all this power where they wanted that in government hands off to realizing, wow, these are really difficult questions that America's struggled for for centuries. And we probably can't figure it out with oversight boards suddenly making jurisprudence decisions. So the antitrust warriors have been called up for service, right? We got Professors Wu and Kahn and now Cantor. Do you see the breakup of big tech? And if so, what do you think kind of realistically

is the timeline for it? I don't think there'll be a mass breakup. I think you could see an unwinding of Facebook from WhatsApp and Instagram. In certain cases of enforcement of antitrust law, so you don't have 30% commissions and you don't have sellers arbitrarily kicked off. But in my view, that doesn't get to

some of the even broader and deeper issues. And the broader and deeper issues are, what are we doing about democratic speech and disinformation? What are we doing about the fact that my district and the surrounding areas have $11 trillion of market cap? So you're going to create three Facebooks, still have $11 trillion of market cap. So you're going to create three faceboats, fine, we'll still have $11 trillion of market cap. In rural America, with people 50,000 or less has had declining wages. In black and brown America, it's been

left out of wealth generation of the digital age. Those are difficult issues. But on antitrust, let me be very specific. And Cantor, I think, is a brilliant pick. We need to overturn or vacate Trinko, which is the Supreme Court decision 9-0, by the way. Ginsburg and Breyer both voted for it. So it's not easy to overturn. But basically, Trinko is why the judge dismissed the Facebook case. And Trinko basically says that these companies can do almost anything they want on their own platforms,

that we defer to their business judgment. Before Trinkto, there was this case Aspen skiing said, no, companies have a duty to treat sellers fairly when they have an essential facility and essential product. We need to get back to that. And I think that kind of fix can take place realistically. Look, I'm somewhere between Gen X and a boomer, depending on which lie did I tell. But if you think about the amount of money, the debt, and I'm struck. I would love to know your philosophy around the levels of debt we're taking on. And what I see, and I don't understand it, is modern monetary theory, where it's more about putting points on the scoreboard and the deficits, I don't want to say don't matter,

but maybe we shouldn't be managing government spending the way we would think about managing a business. I'd love to know your take on our current debt and the explosion of our debt and what you think the right level of debt is relative to GDP and our receipts coming in. Well, I do think debt is a problem. I mean, debt is a problem because eventually it leads to inflation,

and eventually it leads to higher interest rates. And I don't think any theory that says that you can just print money and not be concerned about the deficit and the consequence on interest rates or inflation would hold water. Now, I don't know modern monetary theory enough, but I doubt that they say just print money endlessly. I guess I would say, well, what are the causes of the debt? Let's go back to Bill Clinton where he left the country with a surplus. Let's say three things happened.

We went into these terrible wars that have cost us $6 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was for the initial strikes to get al-Qaeda, but we're leaving after 20 years and the Taliban is basically in control. What did we achieve over 20 years? We were spending billions of dollars there. We're leaving Iraq.

We should never have gone in. What did we achieve there? So that was a cause of the debt. The Bush tax Iraq. We should never have gone in. What did we achieve there? So that was a cause of the debt. The Bush tax cuts, which were largely for the rich, were a cause of the debt. The Trump tax cuts, which were largely for the rich, were a cause of the debt. You reverse the Bush tax cuts, the Trump tax cuts, and you make sure that we're not in Afghanistan or Iraq, you could have a much better financial situation. I mean, think about this, Scott, if we hadn't gone into Afghanistan for 20 years, we could have had free public college for that money for every American, free vocational school, free public college. What would have been

a better national investment? It's staggering. So let's talk a little bit about, obviously, the debt is a function of how much we spent, but also our tax receipts. In your district, there are probably, I don't know, several hundred people just at Facebook who are worth more than 50 or a hundred million dollars. And in a low interest rate environment, they never sell their stock. They borrow against their stock at 0.75, 75 bps or 1%, thereby never triggering a taxable gain. And someone like Jeff Bezos can increase his wealth $100 billion in a couple of years and pay an effective tax rate on that increase of wealth of less than 1%. And it feels as if we've not only abandoned a progressive tax rate, we've gone fully regressive once you hit kind of the 99.5%.

Do you think we need to revisit our tax system in terms of figuring out a way such that the wealthiest among us pay more? Yes, and I think we should call them the ultra rich. You're absolutely right. It's not actually the doctors and the lawyers. Yeah, the workhorses are paying 50% in California. And the upper middle class professionals. You're actually talking about the ultra, the lawyers. Yeah, the workhorses are paying 50% in California. And the upper middle class professionals.

You're actually talking about the ultra, ultra rich. And there's something odd in this country that you can go to sleep and wake up the next day and you're considerably richer. And that goes against this kind of American ethos of we want people to accumulate wealth through innovation and hard work and active investment. But this is just passive investment.

They just go to sleep next day and their portfolio grows. And so nothing wrong with that. I mean, if you made wealth and you're accumulating it and investing it, even if it's passive, that's the American way, but it ought to be taxed. And that's why I support a wealth tax. And here's what I don't understand. The first argument, how many times have you heard this argument against the wealth tax? Well, if you have a wealth tax, everyone will just buy art and they'll buy things that will hide

their income. And how are you going to tax it? Give me a break. Do you really think people worth 50 to 100 million are suddenly going to go and buy all of art and aren't going to invest in Apple or invest in the next startup? They're going to still invest in the wealth generation activities. They may put 10% in art. Fine. We're not going to have 100% compliance. No tax has 100% compliance, but you would start to generate a lot of revenue. And I don't think the vast majority of people would mind. And we ought to be figuring out how you step up basis, which the president has proposed. And when you give your estate to your kids that you're taxed on the capital gains appreciation. So you are in favor of a wealth tax? I am in favor of the wealth tax. By the way,

the people who would pay for wealth tax the most are all in my district and in the nearby districts. I mean, it should say something to you that the congressman from Silicon Valley, who has a lot of the support of a lot of these entrepreneurs, public record, is advocating a wealth tax. I mean, it should show that it's probably not that hard of a case to make if I can advocate it being from my district. And what would a wealth tax look like? Would it be, give us a sense loosely, a half a percent a year of your increase in your wealth

as assessed by some third party? What would be the mechanics of it? Yeah, I think it would have to be that the Treasury Department would have to set up something to assess your wealth. A lot of the wealth is accessible fairly easily. People know what this person's stock portfolio is worth. People know what a person's public companies are worth.

They know even what private companies are worth. And that would be, there would be an assessment. I think, you know, the way Elizabeth Warren had said it is if you're over 50 million, you pay a percent on your initial net worth, and then you pay a percent on the appreciation of that every year. We'll be right back. What software do you use at work?

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Oh, right. Yeah, says the guy who's been elected to Congress. Yeah, anyways, that's not where I was headed, but thank you. Tell us about your book. Well, it comes out in February. It's Dignity in a Digital Age, and it actually discusses a lot of what we're talking about. But the central thesis of the book is that we have to decentralize

the innovation economy, that if you have this kind of wealth generation in a few places, that's not sustainable, and that the promise of technology was actually you could live in communities without being uprooted and be able to access opportunity. And post-pandemic, we may be able to create that kind of opportunity with the right policies. But what do you think the biggest opportunity is? I think about this a lot. What do you think is the biggest opportunity in terms of technology post-corona to make America a better place?

I think the biggest opportunity is to realize you don't all have to be in Silicon Valley and Boston, that we can have people in the communities they grew up in or smaller communities and that they can be stable. They can live with their parents or their grandfathers next to them so that they can raise kids, that we value those communities, and they can participate in modern jobs. Let me just give you two statistics that I was fairly blown away by.

25 million digital jobs by 2025, and that is more than manufacturing and construction jobs combined. And right now, most of them are being done in a very few number of cities. Well, what if we made those jobs far more accessible? And by the way, I was talking to PayPal CEO, and he said that 25 million number seems loaded. And those jobs aren't all go work for Google. It could be in manufacturing. It could be in farming.

We figure out what those digital skills are. And I think we incentivize companies to create jobs in rural communities and black and brown communities. The second thing is I would have the HBCUs or land-grant universities become digital-grant universities, prepare people for some of these skills. The worst thing, Scott, I think people do is they say, oh, you can't tell someone to code. As if all these jobs require coding, they don't. 60, 70% of the jobs don't require coding. They actually are just the use of technology to solve business problems or design. And so I think we've created this intimidation around jobs that are going to exist and should be more broadly accessible. I want to talk a little bit about the environment in DC.C. Do you guys, okay, grab pizza, beer, and wings together, hate each other, constantly plotting how to undermine each other's credibility.

Where on the spectrum, and you've been in D.C. not a long time, but you've been there, what's the vibe like behind closed doors among you and your colleagues? Scott, can't you do both? Get pizza and platter. There you go, over a beer. Let's destroy this person over a beer. I just, sometimes I think, sometimes occasionally I get encouraged.

I go down there and I see people across the aisle kind of hugging each other and they seem to actually get along. And then other times I just can't get over how vicious people are to each other. What have you found? What surprised you around the general I'll call collegiality or comity of man in DC? I think there's more collegiality than people would expect, but that's because of the nature of, think of who gets elected, a politician. Usually you have to be fairly likable. I mean,

yes, you have the exceptions, but usually people who are politicians, you know, I think back to F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel in The Great Gatsby, where he says people thought he was a politician because he would listen and people liked him. That's usually the temperament. So you get a lot of people like that in Congress and they try to be liked by their colleagues.

And so usually you actually have this overly genteel politeness in person where you say, let's get a beer, let's get coffee, let's work on some bipartisan legislation. The problem is that doesn't translate into the structural incentives when it comes to actually getting big stuff done. Too many people are following their own self-interest saying, well, we don't want to give the Republicans or the Democrats a win. We don't want to give President Biden a win on infrastructure. So they may be polite. They may meet with him. They may go out to pizza with the Democratic senators. By the end of the day, are they working towards a common patriotic objective?

And that's really what's been missing in our country, a guiding common objective that propels action on the big issues. The only place I've seen it so far is on China, this threat of China. And my concern is that it shouldn't take a foreign adversary or a Cold War-like rhetoric to mobilize Americans for a common purpose. But otherwise, that's what's lacking. Okay. So, we have a very young and very male listenership. And the stuff that is always really well-received is when we talk about being a good parent, being a good partner. I mean, you're in the worst district from a time management standpoint, right? I mean, you have a serious commute to work. You two kids. Any advice for being a good partner, a good husband, and a good dad?

Well, I don't know if I'd get that review from my wife. I've been lucky in who I've married. I would just say that for me, the time with my family and my kids in particular are a complete joy. And it's the one time where I tune off. And I don't do it always well, but one of the things that was helpful for me is my wife insists that when I'm with the kids, when I'm with

the family, I don't have my phone on. And sometimes I will break that rule and that doesn't go over well. And I often always regret it. But just getting in a space, whatever that time is, to be totally present and totally in the moment. And I'm not perfect at it by any stretch, but I found that that to be really, really important. Let's do a bit of a lightning round here. What were the biggest influences on you as a young man? My grandfather, he spent four years in jail with Gandhi.

He was a larger than life figure in my family. Everyone told stories of his time in the Indian independence movement, and he was then part of India's first parliament that had an enormous influence on me growing up. And then, of course, my parents had a big influence on me. My brother was always more athletic, but sort of pushed me to play in the neighborhood and all Little League baseball and basketball had a big, big impact. Biggest disappointment or most kind of crushing blow at the time? My first campaign, I got 19%. The incumbent got 73%. But it was the campaign, I actually am

proudest of. I ran against the war in Iraq. But at the time, I figured, wow, I mean, it was a humbling experience to get beaten that badly. Okay. And you cannot answer being a dad or the job I have now, if in 10 years someone could snap their fingers and you have to pick the job, what would it be? What seat would you like to be in in exactly 10 years from now? I suppose what I want to do is continue to have a bigger and bigger impact in politics. I'm not being coy about it.

I'll go as far as the people will allow me to go and my work will take me. And obviously I'd like to have a bigger impact even one day than being in Congress. But the reality in politics is you can't predict things. I mean, you can't, if you have your heart set on a particular race, that rarely turns out. So I would just say having an impact on issues I care about. And are you more leaning towards a kind of an executive role like governor or Senate? What appeals to you more, an operational role or a legislative role?

It depends on the role. I mean, I know this sounds counterintuitive, and I looked at the Senate race in 2022. My name was floated from the appointment, and I'm sure it'll be floated again if Feinstein retires. And it's something I would look at, but I honestly believe that representing Silicon Valley is actually one of the most important legislative jobs in the country, and if not the world. I think it is an incredibly important area. I don't think enough people understand the technology, understand what needs to be done regulation-wise. So the next opportunity has to be something where I think I'd have more of an impact. And, you know, in the Senate race, if a candidate in the state is as big as California, you probably have a one out of three chance of winning at best. So you have to weigh the odds.

And last question, advice, 25-year-old, advice to young men and women listening to the podcast. What, if you, one piece of advice that you kind of wish you'd taken more to heart? Don't get as discouraged by the setbacks. I mean, I think things at 25, 26, 27 seem like the end of the world. They rarely end up being the end of the world. If you're persistent at stuff, usually you will find a way of having an impact. And then think about the opportunity and the obligation you have to our country, that we actually need people going into public service.

It's not an automatic anymore for young people. Don't get discouraged. You can still do extraordinary things. And I hope some of your people listening will choose that route. Congressman Ro Khanna is serving his third term as the representative for Silicon Valley. He sits on the House Committees on Agriculture, Armed Services, and Oversight and Reform, where he chairs the Environmental Subcommittee. He's also the deputy whip at the Congressional Progressive Caucus, assistant whip for the

Democratic Caucus, and the Democratic vice Chair of the House Caucus on India and Indian Americans. He joins us from his office in our nation's capital. Representative Khanna, thank you for your service and stay safe. Thank you. algebra of happiness my sister called me and told me that they had to pull they came back to when I say sister it's my half sister about my dad's third marriage he just had his fourth divorce at the age of 90 high character person high character person anyways my sister called me or texted me and said that one of her kids had tested positive for COVID, as she did, despite the fact that they were vaccinated, had to pull the kids out of camp. They had come across the nation. So now we're looking at, you know, two kids thrilled to be in camp, pulled out unceremoniously, and a family of four heading across the nation in a shitty rental car because there's a run on rental cars right now because everyone's traveling.

And I can't help but feel some of this is an absence of citizenship and on the part of Americans who've decided to not get vaccinated and also some of the real damage from media companies who've decided to ignore science and see money and controversy and so have promoted or at least tolerated some of this conspiracy theory or this anti-science movement around vaccine hesitancy. And there was an interesting, or I think it was Macron said that absence from oppression is not absence from responsibility. And I think we've conflated the two. It strikes me that the nations that enjoy the most freedom from oppression take their citizenship and responsibility to one another very seriously. And I believe here in the US, we have decided or somehow we have the

fucked up notion where we conflate liberty with selfishness. And at the end of the day, I think all of us, and I think, okay, on the left, we have a tendency to suffer from both-sidedness where we say, well, understand the person who's hesitant around vaccines. You know what? Fuck that. There's so much science. There's so much data. We've had 300 million shots. We have 180 million people that have received these things, and they literally can't find people that have had really severe adverse reactions. But what we're finding every day is that kids are being pulled out of camp and much, much worse. In the state of New York, less than 0.15% of vaccinated people are getting breakthrough infections,

meaning for the most part, you don't get it. And it is hard to imagine in the last 70 years, something, if you look at the ratio of citizenship to any sort of sacrifice. It's hard to find anything, anything that is as patriotic and as easy as getting a fucking vaccine. And people say, well, I have a right not to have a strange substance injected into my body. I get that. But then boss, you don't have the right to cash a Medicare and unemployment or accept food stamps. You do not have the right to get on a plane. You do not have the right to go to restaurants because you are fucking it up for your fellow citizens. You have decided that freedom from oppression is different than freedom from responsibility. And here's the reality. Here's the sad part. Probably everybody listening to this show is like, okay,

great that you're ranting, but you're ranting to the wrong people. And I'm trying to think, how do we reach out to people who may, for whatever reason, have vaccine hesitancy? And it's like, well, shaming them as I'm trying to do here probably doesn't work. But I'm trying to think about, I'm trying to be thoughtful about being a little bit more reasonable, which isn't easy for me, and reach out to people I know who, for whatever reason, I actually have some friends from college who's claimed they're not going to get a vaccine and reach out to them and say, hey, what are your thoughts on this? Try and be as patient as possible and try and do a two-pronged sort of upward and downward approach. And that is talk to people I know that might be part of this vaccine hesitancy community. But also, I just don't think there's any getting around it. I think it's time for our government to step in

and show some leadership here. In 1941, we decided to draft young men into military service. And several thousand, tens of thousands refused. And you could understand it. You could understand it. Why? Because their fathers had gone over just 25 years earlier

and many of them had not returned or had returned severely injured, mothers widowed, financially impoverished. And they said, and you want me to go back just two decades later to fight another useless war? That was a justifiable disagreement. But we, as the United States, elected leaders who decided that that was the right thing to do. And what did we do? We stuck 5,000 young men in prison. And here, we're worried about their liberty. It is time to show some leadership here. There needs to be vaccination passports. And we need to ask that these individuals, regardless of the conspiracy theory or low IQ media that they want to engage in, and the lack of citizenship

they demonstrate, then fine, then you can engage in some of the wonderful freedoms and transfers that we appreciate in this country. Absence, absence from oppression is the opposite, the opposite of absence from responsibility. Our producers are Caroline Shagrin and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our assistant producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to The Prop G Show from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll catch you next week on Monday and Thursday. Support for this podcast comes from Klaviyo. You know that feeling when your favorite brand really gets you.

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