WEBVTT - Ryan Mac

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<v Speaker 1>We welcome Welcome back, Bob left the podcast. My guest

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<v Speaker 1>today is Ryan Mack, co author of the book Character Limit,

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<v Speaker 1>How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter? Ryan, what does the average

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<v Speaker 1>person not know about Elon Musk?

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<v Speaker 2>Oh Man? Where to start? Gosh, so much, especially in

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<v Speaker 2>the last couple weeks days that he's been in the news,

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<v Speaker 2>But I don't know. One of the things that I've

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<v Speaker 2>found very interesting is explaining to people how much power

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<v Speaker 2>he has now, especially with this position he has close

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<v Speaker 2>to the White House. But even before then, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>he's you know, one of the most successful menstionneurs of

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<v Speaker 2>his time. He controls these major companies in Tesla and SpaceX,

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<v Speaker 2>and in some ways he is the second most important

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<v Speaker 2>person in the White House next to Donald Trump. Now,

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<v Speaker 2>so yeah, we can get into all that, but there's

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<v Speaker 2>a lot to unpack.

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<v Speaker 1>Well, why don't we start there, because that's what's happening

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<v Speaker 1>right this second. He is working with the Department of

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<v Speaker 1>Government Efficiency. You know a lot of people say, oh,

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<v Speaker 1>the guy cut all these people at Twitter, It's gonna

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<v Speaker 1>be great. What might we anticipate in his work there?

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<v Speaker 2>It's actually kind of crazy reporting out what happened at

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<v Speaker 2>Twitter and seeing almost the exact same playbook being talked

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<v Speaker 2>about with this Department of Government Efficiency. I think first

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<v Speaker 2>of all, what should be made clear is that we

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<v Speaker 2>really don't know what this DOGE is. Obviously it's a

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<v Speaker 2>reference to a meme cryptocurrency, which is the abbreviation of

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<v Speaker 2>Department of Government Efficiency. But we don't know what this

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<v Speaker 2>is gonna do. They've talked about it, you know, cutting

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<v Speaker 2>two trillion dollars, you know, Elon and Vivek Ramaswami his

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<v Speaker 2>co head of this department, making decisions over hiring and firing.

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<v Speaker 2>But what they've talked about, we've compared to what we

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<v Speaker 2>reported on it in Twitter. You know, for example, at Twitter,

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<v Speaker 2>he cut more than at this point eighty percent of

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<v Speaker 2>the staff then, you know, compared to when he what

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<v Speaker 2>he when he took over, that's thousands of jobs. You know,

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<v Speaker 2>if he applies that to the federal government, that's tens

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<v Speaker 2>of thousands of jobs that could be that could be removed.

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<v Speaker 2>You know. He slash costs kind of ruthlessly at Twitter

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<v Speaker 2>as well, cutting things from rent payments to janitorial services,

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<v Speaker 2>to food services, to systems that help make the website run.

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<v Speaker 2>And we could see that kind of kind of slash

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<v Speaker 2>and burn technique play out in the government to an

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<v Speaker 2>extent we've ever seen before. So, you know, we have

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<v Speaker 2>to talk very generally about what he's saying he's doing.

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<v Speaker 2>And of course Elon is someone that makes a lot

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<v Speaker 2>of promises, but the precedent has been kind of set

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<v Speaker 2>with what he did at Twitter.

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<v Speaker 1>Let's start from the beginning. What is your gig? What

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<v Speaker 1>is your purview with The New York Times?

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<v Speaker 2>Sure, so, I'm a I'm a reporter on our tech desk.

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<v Speaker 2>We have people around the world who cover the technology industry.

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<v Speaker 2>On that desk, I do what we call accountability accountability reporting,

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<v Speaker 2>you know, a lot of investigative work, a lot of

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<v Speaker 2>deeper dives into the movers and shakers of the industry.

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<v Speaker 2>I've covered Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg in the past. I've

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<v Speaker 2>covered Jack Dorsey, and I've covered Elon not only in

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<v Speaker 2>this job but in previous gigs. I've worked at BuzzFeed

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<v Speaker 2>News before this, at Forbes magazine as well, and my

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<v Speaker 2>rem at The Times is to, you know, find these stories,

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<v Speaker 2>dig deeper into these guys, and you know, report out

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<v Speaker 2>these monumental business decisions or happenings in the industry. So,

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<v Speaker 2>you know, two and a half years ago, when Elon

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<v Speaker 2>decided to buy Twitter, I was one of a couple

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<v Speaker 2>of reporters that was thrown head on into covering this

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<v Speaker 2>kind of unprecedented transaction, this transaction of one man, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>the world's richest man worth two hundred billion dollars at

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<v Speaker 2>the time, buying a whole company for forty four billion dollars,

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<v Speaker 2>and one thing led to another. I was teamed up

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<v Speaker 2>with Kate Conger, my co author now in the book,

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<v Speaker 2>and we were reporting two or three stories a day

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<v Speaker 2>to the point where we couldn't fit everything into the

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<v Speaker 2>pages of The New York Times. And you know, that's

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<v Speaker 2>where we got this book and kind of continued it

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<v Speaker 2>from there. But at the Times these days, I effectively

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<v Speaker 2>cover Elon full time. You know, there he is someone

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<v Speaker 2>that is incredibly powerful, incredibly interesting, and I'm one of

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<v Speaker 2>a couple of reporters where are dedicated to, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>following him and understanding what he's up to, whether that's

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<v Speaker 2>a Tesla or SpaceX or now in the White House.

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<v Speaker 1>Okay, let's go back a step. How did you get

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<v Speaker 1>the gig at the New York Times?

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<v Speaker 2>Gosh, I guess I have to start from the very beginning.

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<v Speaker 2>Go for it, Let's do it. Coming out of college, I,

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<v Speaker 2>you know, in college, didn't really know what I wanted

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<v Speaker 2>to do.

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<v Speaker 1>And where'd you go to college?

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<v Speaker 2>I went to Stanford, to Stanford, and like a good

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<v Speaker 2>immigrant son, you know, son of immigrants, I was on

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<v Speaker 2>the med school track and looking to become a doctor

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<v Speaker 2>and realizing that the life sciences weren't necessarily for me.

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<v Speaker 2>But I was always doing the school paper in school

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<v Speaker 2>and having a lot of fun with it and realizing,

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<v Speaker 2>you know, maybe I could pursue this as a profession.

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<v Speaker 2>You know, I started doing internships while in school. I

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<v Speaker 2>worked for the half Moon Bay Review in half Moon Bay, California.

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<v Speaker 2>I worked at the Orange County Register, my hometown paper

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<v Speaker 2>where I grew up in Orange County. I ended up

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<v Speaker 2>working for The Times as an intern and in Bloomberg,

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<v Speaker 2>and eventually, you know, you know, what the heck, I'll

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<v Speaker 2>give this a shot. And after school I went to

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<v Speaker 2>Forbes worked there for five and a half years as

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<v Speaker 2>a staff writer on the magazine covering Silicon Valley. I

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<v Speaker 2>was based in San Francisco, so it made it a

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<v Speaker 2>lot easier and actually at Forbes, I started on this

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<v Speaker 2>thing called the Wealth Team, which is the team that

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<v Speaker 2>puts together these kind of Forbes ritualists, you know, the

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<v Speaker 2>Forbes billionaires, the Forbes four hundred riches, Americans, And actually

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<v Speaker 2>it's a great place to start. As a cub reporter,

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<v Speaker 2>you are essentially doing these calculations that ever one sees

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<v Speaker 2>of you know, so and so is worth billions of dollars.

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<v Speaker 2>But behind the scenes, as reporters, you are doing the

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<v Speaker 2>nitty gritty of those calculations. You are tallying up SEC

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<v Speaker 2>documents and looking at the financial filings. You are valuing

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<v Speaker 2>things like megayachts and wine collection and art. You're talking

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<v Speaker 2>to you know, some of these people talk to us

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<v Speaker 2>and like, you know, say, you know, I'm actually up

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<v Speaker 2>this year. You're missing my picasto that I just bought,

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<v Speaker 2>or you know that that wine collection is too low

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<v Speaker 2>for me. Actually it should be higher because the price

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<v Speaker 2>of burgundy went up. So as a twenty two year

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<v Speaker 2>old reporter who was making peanuts thirty five thousand dollars

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<v Speaker 2>a year talking to the richest people in the world,

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<v Speaker 2>it was kind of surreal for me. And actually that's

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<v Speaker 2>where I developed kind of my early network, my rolodex.

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<v Speaker 2>As a reporter, you know, you're as good as your

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<v Speaker 2>sources and the people you talk to, and it was

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<v Speaker 2>kind of a start for me, kind of a because

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<v Speaker 2>you know, you're that young, you don't usually get introduced

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<v Speaker 2>into those circles. And from there I kind of built

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<v Speaker 2>a platform, you know, I moved off that team. I

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<v Speaker 2>was able to generate my own story ideas, did a

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<v Speaker 2>lot of profiles of CEOs and those types. I actually

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<v Speaker 2>covered music briefly with zach O Maalley Greenberg at Forbes,

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<v Speaker 2>who was a business music business guy, and kind of

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<v Speaker 2>learned from him as well. And uh yeah, moved to

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<v Speaker 2>BuzzFeed a couple of years later, kind of pivoted a

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<v Speaker 2>little bit to do more investigative type reporting, where I

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<v Speaker 2>reported quite a bit on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and

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<v Speaker 2>won some awards there and ended up at the Times

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<v Speaker 2>three and a half years ago.

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<v Speaker 1>Now, so, okay, are you just working at BuzzFeed and

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<v Speaker 1>The Times calls you also BuzzFeed took an ax to

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<v Speaker 1>their news department, So how did the transition happen?

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<v Speaker 2>Very very sad. Yeah, because BuzzFeed, if you remember that

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<v Speaker 2>kind of optimist era of digital media. Right, you have BuzzFeed,

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<v Speaker 2>you have Vox, you have all these startups popping up

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<v Speaker 2>with the promise that they could figure out, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>how to put things online better than the legacy publications.

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<v Speaker 2>And you know, ultimately what we learned is that they

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<v Speaker 2>were at the whims of these tech platforms. These giants,

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<v Speaker 2>right and Facebook, you know, love that content initially and

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<v Speaker 2>then didn't like it so much and turn off the spigot,

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<v Speaker 2>and that's what caused the collapse. But in that kind

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<v Speaker 2>of heyday, which I kind of joined towards the end of,

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<v Speaker 2>you know, the venture capital fueled digital media revolution, it

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<v Speaker 2>was great. You had these amazing resources to pursue these

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<v Speaker 2>long term stories. You know, you didn't have to deal

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<v Speaker 2>with the nitty gritty day to day coverage your news cycle.

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<v Speaker 2>I could kind of pull out and do a three

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<v Speaker 2>month investigation into Facebook or Google or I covered a

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<v Speaker 2>lot of Peter Tiel, for example. It was a billionaire

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<v Speaker 2>who was on the Facebook board. And I kind of

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<v Speaker 2>built my name on those stories. And BuzzFeed had the

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<v Speaker 2>resources to do that and gave the opportunity to kind

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<v Speaker 2>of mid career or early to mid career reporters like myself.

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<v Speaker 2>So it was a great place to work, super collegial.

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<v Speaker 2>Everyone is like friends and sharing each other's work, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>and just an amazing place to be a great energy. Unfortunately,

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<v Speaker 2>what we learned is that that model wasn't a great business,

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<v Speaker 2>you know, And when this bigot was turned off by

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<v Speaker 2>the digital platforms, there were layoffs and quite a few

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<v Speaker 2>until the point where the news division is effectively dead.

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<v Speaker 2>I left before the very very end of BuzzFeed News Buzzy.

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<v Speaker 2>The New York Times saw my work and liked it

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<v Speaker 2>and recruited me. But yeah, that's that's kind of how

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<v Speaker 2>that played out.

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<v Speaker 1>Okay. At this late date, in the wake of the election,

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<v Speaker 1>the New York Times the paper of record irrelevant of the truth.

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<v Speaker 1>It is seen as more of a left wing publication

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<v Speaker 1>in light of the election and the election of Trump.

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<v Speaker 1>Has there been any wee valuation or adjustment at the

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<v Speaker 1>Times in general?

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<v Speaker 2>You know, I don't want to speak for the paper.

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<v Speaker 2>I've only been there for three and a half years.

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<v Speaker 2>I know that the paper has focused so much on independence,

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<v Speaker 2>you know. Obviously there's a perception of bias one or

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<v Speaker 2>the other. I mean, you could talk to progressives, for example,

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<v Speaker 2>that I think the paper is actually conservative, but I

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<v Speaker 2>think above all it's this idea of editorial independence that

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<v Speaker 2>the paper values more than most. And honestly, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>that could sound like me blowing smoke up people's asses,

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<v Speaker 2>but in reality, you know, there is no political bent

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<v Speaker 2>to the paper that I've experience, and you know, on

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<v Speaker 2>my desk, you know, I'm I cover technology. There's no

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<v Speaker 2>remit to go after whatever, report on certain targets, whatever.

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<v Speaker 2>But you know, we for me, it's always been about

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<v Speaker 2>interrogating power. That that for me has kind of been

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<v Speaker 2>my north star, regardless of political affiliation. And you know,

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<v Speaker 2>I think my career has kind of proven that that

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<v Speaker 2>I have focused on the powers, the titans of industry,

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<v Speaker 2>you know, the powers that be, you know, the richest

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<v Speaker 2>people in the world, the people that control these platforms,

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<v Speaker 2>that control these companies that shape our daily lives. And

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<v Speaker 2>that's how I hope I continue to report, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>and and you know, I think that's that's kind of okay.

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<v Speaker 1>Point in time. The mainstream media is a pejorative. Yeah,

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<v Speaker 1>what do people not understand about The New York Times? Hm?

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<v Speaker 2>Hm, you know, that's a that's a good question. I mean,

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<v Speaker 2>the mainstream media has it's it's so easy to criticize, right,

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<v Speaker 2>And my world of looking at social media and seeing

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<v Speaker 2>people that criticize the New York Times, particularly like when

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<v Speaker 2>when I'll use Elon Musk as an example, right, who says,

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<v Speaker 2>you know, you shouldn't get your your news from the

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<v Speaker 2>New York Times or the wash Journal or the Washington Post.

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<v Speaker 2>Everything is actually going to be on X. You know

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<v Speaker 2>you could X is the news source. You are the

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<v Speaker 2>news source because it's it's people feeding X. Well, a

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<v Speaker 2>lot of that news comes from mainstream media. You know

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<v Speaker 2>that that we're the ones reporting it that is then

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<v Speaker 2>aggregated into those tweets or or or shared in those videos.

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<v Speaker 2>And I think that's the kind of uh, shortsightedness. I

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<v Speaker 2>think in all this that like when when I when

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<v Speaker 2>I cover social media, for example, when people talk about

0:13:55.360 --> 0:14:00.760
<v Speaker 2>social media replacing newspapers or CNN or whatever, a lot

0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:03.400
<v Speaker 2>of what they draw from is is what we work

0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:06.160
<v Speaker 2>on every day. You know that information couldn't come out

0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:08.280
<v Speaker 2>without a reporter at the New York Times calling someone

0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:12.320
<v Speaker 2>up and writing up a story which then gets aggregated

0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:15.120
<v Speaker 2>or pulled out into a tweet or put on TikTok,

0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:19.320
<v Speaker 2>for example. And it's that ecosystem that I think people

0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:26.600
<v Speaker 2>don't understand. And yeah, it's it's it's kind of sad

0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:31.760
<v Speaker 2>because Elon Musk and Lynda Akarino, the CEO of X

0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:34.000
<v Speaker 2>now it's called X because that's what they've changed the

0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:38.120
<v Speaker 2>name to have made this kind of antagonistic point that

0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:40.800
<v Speaker 2>like X is actually the replacement for the New York

0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:44.680
<v Speaker 2>Times or for whatever fill in news source. You know.

0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:48.600
<v Speaker 2>But the last two decades of Twitter I have shown that,

0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:52.080
<v Speaker 2>you know, the platform has been super reliant on news

0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:57.240
<v Speaker 2>generators and reporters, and to alienate them seems pretty shortsighted.

0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:00.760
<v Speaker 2>And not to understand that that ecosystem seems kind of

0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:01.800
<v Speaker 2>absurd to be.

0:15:09.800 --> 0:15:16.200
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so you're working at the New York Times, can

0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:20.360
<v Speaker 1>you literally follow anything you want? Or do they say

0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:21.160
<v Speaker 1>stay on this.

0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:25.640
<v Speaker 2>It's a bit of give and take. You know, I'm

0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:29.080
<v Speaker 2>hopefully you know, if I wake up one morning, I'm

0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:31.600
<v Speaker 2>editor is like, you know, we should pay more attention

0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:35.960
<v Speaker 2>to this. I'll definitely listen. You know, It's it's not

0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:42.720
<v Speaker 2>completely me generating everything, but there's also a give and take.

0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:44.760
<v Speaker 2>And if I say, like, look, we should be paying

0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:48.200
<v Speaker 2>attention to this more. I think this is undercovered. I

0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:50.640
<v Speaker 2>have that freedom, and it's a it's a nice place

0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:53.920
<v Speaker 2>to be in your career. I don't necessarily have a

0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:56.040
<v Speaker 2>beat at the company. You know, we have we have

0:15:56.080 --> 0:15:59.600
<v Speaker 2>reporters that cover Tesla. We have reporters that cover X. Kate,

0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:03.120
<v Speaker 2>my co author, covers X on a full time basis.

0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:06.640
<v Speaker 2>We have reporters that cover Google and you know, name

0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:12.360
<v Speaker 2>whatever company. I help those reporters, I'll supplement them. But

0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:14.400
<v Speaker 2>if there's a deep dive that we need to go

0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:19.360
<v Speaker 2>into or you know understand you know, musk relationship with

0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:21.160
<v Speaker 2>the White House, for example, which is something we've been

0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:23.600
<v Speaker 2>trying to do over the last couple weeks to months,

0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:26.640
<v Speaker 2>you know, the deploy me on that and I'll kind

0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:28.760
<v Speaker 2>of shift my resources and my efforts to that kind

0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:29.200
<v Speaker 2>of story.

0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:32.640
<v Speaker 1>So you've been covering starting and forwards, you and covering

0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:36.920
<v Speaker 1>the wealthy, forgetting people who inherit their wealth, people who

0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:40.680
<v Speaker 1>make their wealth. What similarities to all these people have.

0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:47.800
<v Speaker 2>That's something I've always thought about, and I don't think

0:16:47.800 --> 0:16:51.680
<v Speaker 2>there is one unique characteristic. You know, it's actually really funny.

0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:55.760
<v Speaker 2>I've I've I have been around them. I guess I've

0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:58.520
<v Speaker 2>been around them more relative, more around more rich people

0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:02.160
<v Speaker 2>relative to the average person. But there's all types, you know,

0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:06.680
<v Speaker 2>there's all types of people I can like there. For example,

0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:09.400
<v Speaker 2>some folks do not want to talk to us about

0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:11.120
<v Speaker 2>their wealth at all. You know, they would they would

0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:12.680
<v Speaker 2>hang up the phone as soon as I called, never

0:17:12.720 --> 0:17:17.120
<v Speaker 2>return my emails, that kind of thing. Some people want

0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:19.560
<v Speaker 2>to get down to the every last detail. You know,

0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.320
<v Speaker 2>you miss this. I think my holding over here in

0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:24.439
<v Speaker 2>these stocks and you know, I'm actually up by one

0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:28.359
<v Speaker 2>hundred million over here and down, and it's it's like

0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:32.479
<v Speaker 2>it was like such an exercise in egos in a way,

0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:36.760
<v Speaker 2>and you start to realize that, like it's gonna sound

0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:40.040
<v Speaker 2>like weird, but like, you know, they're normal people like us,

0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:45.439
<v Speaker 2>you know it. They have the same hang ups or

0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:53.880
<v Speaker 2>you know, same motivations in some ways, same fears. And

0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:58.560
<v Speaker 2>that's actually really like it took me a while to

0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:02.120
<v Speaker 2>understand that, Like there wasn't like one gene, for example,

0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:05.520
<v Speaker 2>that causes you to become super wealthy. I think there's

0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:08.160
<v Speaker 2>a lot of luck at play, a lot of where

0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:13.600
<v Speaker 2>you start in life. Sure there's things like hard work

0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:17.200
<v Speaker 2>and that kind of thing and effort, but Yeah, there's

0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:21.480
<v Speaker 2>there's no one characteristic that I could ascribe to, or

0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:23.639
<v Speaker 2>else I would have followed that and made myself a

0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:24.560
<v Speaker 2>billionaire myself.

0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:28.040
<v Speaker 1>Okay, we live in an era where money is everything,

0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:31.639
<v Speaker 1>and people who have money are seen in comp usually

0:18:31.680 --> 0:18:35.159
<v Speaker 1>they made the money in one specific vertical, and people

0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:40.000
<v Speaker 1>who have made money there's a conception by the hoyploy

0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:44.640
<v Speaker 1>that these people are experts in all areas. Having covered

0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:49.280
<v Speaker 1>these people, are they experts in all areas or are

0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:51.840
<v Speaker 1>they just super smart in the one area they're in

0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:54.879
<v Speaker 1>and they're as blind as the next person in another area.

0:18:55.720 --> 0:18:58.520
<v Speaker 2>Well, I've read your review of our books. I think

0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:01.240
<v Speaker 2>we're aligned on this. But one of the findings of

0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:04.680
<v Speaker 2>our book. Let's let's talk about Elon specifically here, right,

0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:08.680
<v Speaker 2>I mean a generational entrepreneur like that that I'm not

0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:12.359
<v Speaker 2>going to deny that by any means. He brought in

0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:18.159
<v Speaker 2>the electric car revolution. He foresaw this industry to privatize

0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:23.399
<v Speaker 2>space and get things into into orbit, which now he

0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:25.960
<v Speaker 2>has a virtual monopoly with the US government and getting

0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:29.560
<v Speaker 2>things into space, you know, to see that and be

0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:34.000
<v Speaker 2>successful in that not once but twice, because there's a

0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:37.640
<v Speaker 2>lot of credit at the same time, it doesn't necessarily

0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:41.560
<v Speaker 2>make him, you know, smart in another area. He is

0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:46.040
<v Speaker 2>not a epidemiologist, you know, when he was making comments

0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:52.160
<v Speaker 2>about COVID, for example. He is not by any means

0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:53.840
<v Speaker 2>an expert in social media and how to run a

0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:58.280
<v Speaker 2>social media platform, which I think is in some ways

0:19:58.280 --> 0:20:01.639
<v Speaker 2>the original sin when he bought Twitter, right, it's this

0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:04.720
<v Speaker 2>idea that he had been so successful in these other

0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:08.760
<v Speaker 2>areas that, you know, how hard could it be. This

0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:12.280
<v Speaker 2>is a social media company. It's you know, in his view,

0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:16.119
<v Speaker 2>servers and a website. You know, you're just plugging it

0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:19.399
<v Speaker 2>in and letting it go and keeping it online. How

0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:23.880
<v Speaker 2>hard could that be compared to you know, developing autopilot

0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:29.480
<v Speaker 2>or making a rocket land on a ship in the

0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:33.359
<v Speaker 2>middle of the ocean. And I think that is the

0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:36.840
<v Speaker 2>original sin because what he didn't realize is social media

0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:40.080
<v Speaker 2>isn't a tech problem. It's actually a human problem. You are,

0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:43.040
<v Speaker 2>it's a societal problem. It's a social problem. You're connecting

0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:47.840
<v Speaker 2>people online and figuring out ways for them to communicate

0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:52.120
<v Speaker 2>without killing each other or you know, causing huge disturbances

0:20:53.040 --> 0:20:55.680
<v Speaker 2>and making everyone feel at least most people feeling like

0:20:55.720 --> 0:21:01.520
<v Speaker 2>they're welcome to exhibit and express themselves, and yeah, so

0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:05.440
<v Speaker 2>I mean that that kind of central understanding which powered

0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:08.720
<v Speaker 2>our book is one that I come back to a

0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:11.880
<v Speaker 2>lot that oftentimes there are people that are very successful

0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:15.320
<v Speaker 2>that think because they've reached such success in one area,

0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:18.000
<v Speaker 2>they can be successful in another, and oftentimes that's not

0:21:18.040 --> 0:21:18.440
<v Speaker 2>the case.

0:21:19.280 --> 0:21:25.040
<v Speaker 1>Okay, when Elong makes the offer to buy Twitter to

0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:28.400
<v Speaker 1>what did we were you on the Elong beat?

0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:37.240
<v Speaker 2>Hmmm? I started covering him, like really covering him in

0:21:37.280 --> 0:21:42.919
<v Speaker 2>twenty eighteen at BuzzFeed. There were some issues at his factories.

0:21:42.960 --> 0:21:46.880
<v Speaker 2>This is a period of turmoil for him, and there

0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:50.480
<v Speaker 2>were some kind of investigative stories, and he was a

0:21:50.480 --> 0:21:52.840
<v Speaker 2>subject I would return to every now and then, but

0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:56.119
<v Speaker 2>it wasn't by any means like my main focus. And

0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:58.479
<v Speaker 2>by the time he made the offer for Twitter in

0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:03.119
<v Speaker 2>April of twenty ti twenty two, I don't think I

0:22:03.160 --> 0:22:05.760
<v Speaker 2>had written a single story on him for The Times

0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:09.879
<v Speaker 2>I had joined gosh, I think the year prior, year

0:22:09.920 --> 0:22:12.760
<v Speaker 2>and a half prior, I hadn't written about him for

0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:17.800
<v Speaker 2>The Times, but they had known my pastwork and covering him.

0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:20.280
<v Speaker 2>There's actually a trial we can talk about that I

0:22:20.320 --> 0:22:24.439
<v Speaker 2>was kind of in some ways involved with with him,

0:22:24.520 --> 0:22:26.600
<v Speaker 2>but at the times. You know, they saw my past

0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:30.160
<v Speaker 2>work and they're like, Okay, this is a pretty monumental event.

0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:33.640
<v Speaker 2>That's actually take some time and understand how serious this is,

0:22:34.280 --> 0:22:36.000
<v Speaker 2>because what you have to remember is when he actually

0:22:36.040 --> 0:22:38.600
<v Speaker 2>made the bid, people didn't know if he was serious.

0:22:38.640 --> 0:22:41.560
<v Speaker 2>You know, it was he made a reference to a

0:22:41.560 --> 0:22:44.920
<v Speaker 2>weed joke, you know, for fifty four twenty fifty four

0:22:44.880 --> 0:22:47.840
<v Speaker 2>to twenty per share was his offer amounted to forty

0:22:47.880 --> 0:22:52.040
<v Speaker 2>four billion dollars. His offer letter was pretty thin when

0:22:52.080 --> 0:22:54.719
<v Speaker 2>he when he made the offer, it wasn't clear if

0:22:54.720 --> 0:22:56.040
<v Speaker 2>he was going to go through. And then obviously he

0:22:56.600 --> 0:23:00.159
<v Speaker 2>tried to pull out of it a couple weeks later later.

0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:04.359
<v Speaker 2>But they had me spend a lot of time trying

0:23:04.359 --> 0:23:06.639
<v Speaker 2>to interrogate whether or not this thing was going to happen,

0:23:06.840 --> 0:23:10.240
<v Speaker 2>and you know, what was the mindset and what was

0:23:10.280 --> 0:23:13.640
<v Speaker 2>the thinking. So I started to dig in and work

0:23:13.680 --> 0:23:16.960
<v Speaker 2>closely with Kate. And when he finally did take over

0:23:17.000 --> 0:23:20.199
<v Speaker 2>the company after all the kind of legal wrangling in

0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:24.040
<v Speaker 2>October twenty twenty two, it was kind of all hands

0:23:24.040 --> 0:23:25.959
<v Speaker 2>on deck. You know, it was two or three stories

0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:29.160
<v Speaker 2>a day. You know, it was, oh my gosh, he's

0:23:29.200 --> 0:23:31.160
<v Speaker 2>laying off people over in this part of the company,

0:23:31.280 --> 0:23:34.120
<v Speaker 2>or he stopped paying rent over here. At one point

0:23:34.200 --> 0:23:37.120
<v Speaker 2>we heard the janitorial services were cut, so like I'm

0:23:37.160 --> 0:23:39.280
<v Speaker 2>in a toilet paper in the offices. But everything was

0:23:39.280 --> 0:23:42.359
<v Speaker 2>like a fire. Every day. We'd wake up when we

0:23:42.400 --> 0:23:45.120
<v Speaker 2>have two or three things to report on about his takeover.

0:23:46.560 --> 0:23:48.600
<v Speaker 2>And since then, it's kind of hasn't stopped. You know,

0:23:48.880 --> 0:23:51.320
<v Speaker 2>it's led from one thing and the other into the book,

0:23:51.960 --> 0:23:54.280
<v Speaker 2>into our coverage of him now as a political figure,

0:23:55.920 --> 0:23:59.520
<v Speaker 2>and that kind of that roller coaster hasn't stopped.

0:24:00.200 --> 0:24:03.040
<v Speaker 1>Okay, there's a legendary story before you were at the

0:24:03.080 --> 0:24:08.680
<v Speaker 1>New York Times where a reporter Drove Tesla wrote a

0:24:08.800 --> 0:24:12.920
<v Speaker 1>review Elon mark Back said, hey, there's data. I checked

0:24:12.920 --> 0:24:16.640
<v Speaker 1>the data in the car and he contradicted you're reporting.

0:24:17.680 --> 0:24:21.200
<v Speaker 1>Are you hearing from Elon? You or Kate or somebody

0:24:21.240 --> 0:24:22.720
<v Speaker 1>else saying you got it wrong.

0:24:25.400 --> 0:24:29.639
<v Speaker 2>Actually, I've had a couple interactions with Elon, so we

0:24:29.640 --> 0:24:32.600
<v Speaker 2>can start from beginning, and actually I know that anecdote,

0:24:32.600 --> 0:24:37.280
<v Speaker 2>and what I would say about that is like fighting

0:24:37.320 --> 0:24:41.280
<v Speaker 2>against the media has been core to Elon's beliefs since

0:24:41.920 --> 0:24:45.200
<v Speaker 2>he started his companies. You know, you guys, remember there

0:24:45.240 --> 0:24:47.880
<v Speaker 2>was a lot of doubt about his companies, particularly Tesla,

0:24:48.880 --> 0:24:52.600
<v Speaker 2>where he in some ways relied on the media to

0:24:52.600 --> 0:24:55.080
<v Speaker 2>get at his message. He was very big on getting

0:24:55.080 --> 0:24:58.879
<v Speaker 2>on magazine covers and in stories, to the point where

0:24:58.960 --> 0:25:00.800
<v Speaker 2>we were talking to folks used to work with him,

0:25:01.760 --> 0:25:03.760
<v Speaker 2>and he'd be up at three am reading like some

0:25:03.840 --> 0:25:07.480
<v Speaker 2>obscure Belgian blog, you know, trying to understand like every

0:25:07.520 --> 0:25:09.320
<v Speaker 2>piece of coverage was near and dear to him. He

0:25:09.320 --> 0:25:12.520
<v Speaker 2>had a Google, earned his own name. He cared so much,

0:25:12.800 --> 0:25:16.639
<v Speaker 2>you know. And on the other hand, he battled with

0:25:16.680 --> 0:25:20.840
<v Speaker 2>the media anytime they got something wrong. And so that

0:25:21.160 --> 0:25:24.359
<v Speaker 2>story you reference actually is very telling, and it was

0:25:24.440 --> 0:25:27.920
<v Speaker 2>it kind of in some ways proved his belief that

0:25:28.240 --> 0:25:31.879
<v Speaker 2>there was this kind of media force against him and

0:25:31.920 --> 0:25:34.560
<v Speaker 2>against his success, and he was out to kind of

0:25:34.600 --> 0:25:38.240
<v Speaker 2>prove them wrong, which in some ways you can see

0:25:38.280 --> 0:25:42.840
<v Speaker 2>the line that's drawn to the Twitter acquisition. In terms

0:25:42.840 --> 0:25:49.200
<v Speaker 2>of my interactions with him throughout my career, I don't

0:25:49.200 --> 0:25:55.880
<v Speaker 2>think he's ever denied a story I've reported. My famous

0:25:55.960 --> 0:25:57.479
<v Speaker 2>run in with him was that when I was at

0:25:57.480 --> 0:26:01.640
<v Speaker 2>BuzzFeed in twenty eighteen, and do you remember when those

0:26:01.720 --> 0:26:05.400
<v Speaker 2>kids got caught in the cave and time of course, man,

0:26:05.480 --> 0:26:10.720
<v Speaker 2>the whole bit exactly. So for the listeners, like, you know,

0:26:10.840 --> 0:26:13.640
<v Speaker 2>cave rescuer gets involved, a British guy living in Thailand.

0:26:14.520 --> 0:26:17.480
<v Speaker 2>Elon then gets involved. It's like this crazy thing. He

0:26:17.480 --> 0:26:19.879
<v Speaker 2>builds a submarine to get these kids out of this

0:26:19.960 --> 0:26:24.119
<v Speaker 2>winding underwater cave. They don't end up using the submarine,

0:26:24.160 --> 0:26:26.320
<v Speaker 2>but Elon gets a lot of press out of it,

0:26:26.880 --> 0:26:30.119
<v Speaker 2>and one of the rescuers goes on CNN and says, like,

0:26:30.200 --> 0:26:33.240
<v Speaker 2>you know, that didn't work, like he can stick that

0:26:33.320 --> 0:26:35.520
<v Speaker 2>sub up his butt, you know, and you know kind

0:26:35.520 --> 0:26:39.119
<v Speaker 2>of was like it was a complete distraction and he

0:26:39.160 --> 0:26:42.000
<v Speaker 2>didn't help at all. And in return, Elon calls this

0:26:42.040 --> 0:26:45.280
<v Speaker 2>guy a pedo guy you know, on Twitter, and it

0:26:45.320 --> 0:26:47.359
<v Speaker 2>was like this kind of I mean, those reactions now

0:26:47.359 --> 0:26:50.719
<v Speaker 2>were kind of part and parcel of who he is

0:26:50.720 --> 0:26:52.720
<v Speaker 2>on Twitter, but at that point in time, it was

0:26:52.800 --> 0:26:56.880
<v Speaker 2>kind of a insane accusation to call someone a pedophile

0:26:56.920 --> 0:27:04.359
<v Speaker 2>on Twitter with no basis. So in that process I

0:27:04.440 --> 0:27:08.879
<v Speaker 2>ended up emailing Elon asking him why he thought this

0:27:08.920 --> 0:27:12.560
<v Speaker 2>guy was a pedophile. Elon emails me back with this

0:27:12.680 --> 0:27:16.440
<v Speaker 2>kind of screed. Bear in mind I'd never really talked

0:27:16.440 --> 0:27:19.720
<v Speaker 2>to him. The screed of why this guy was a

0:27:19.760 --> 0:27:22.159
<v Speaker 2>quote child rapist who had a twelve year old bride.

0:27:22.600 --> 0:27:24.439
<v Speaker 2>Since she's trying to get me as a reporter at

0:27:24.440 --> 0:27:28.840
<v Speaker 2>BuzzFeed to write a story about this guy being a pedophile,

0:27:30.960 --> 0:27:33.520
<v Speaker 2>we actually didn't did not end up doing that. We

0:27:34.160 --> 0:27:36.040
<v Speaker 2>reported it out a little more, and it turns out

0:27:36.040 --> 0:27:39.199
<v Speaker 2>that Elon was kind of making all this up and

0:27:39.240 --> 0:27:41.840
<v Speaker 2>trying to get a reporter to dump this out into

0:27:41.840 --> 0:27:45.160
<v Speaker 2>the world, and so we ended up publishing Elon's email

0:27:45.200 --> 0:27:47.760
<v Speaker 2>in full, to kind of show his state of mind,

0:27:47.960 --> 0:27:50.679
<v Speaker 2>you know, to show that he was willing to destroy

0:27:50.720 --> 0:27:57.240
<v Speaker 2>someone's reputation and to show that this, you know, was

0:27:57.320 --> 0:28:00.359
<v Speaker 2>kind of a typical behavior for anyone, much less us

0:28:00.520 --> 0:28:02.879
<v Speaker 2>someone who runs, you know, a major company in Tesla.

0:28:04.840 --> 0:28:09.119
<v Speaker 2>Fast forward that that that cave Rescuer ends up suing Elon.

0:28:09.920 --> 0:28:15.480
<v Speaker 2>Elon tries to depose me in court to for the case.

0:28:16.440 --> 0:28:19.399
<v Speaker 2>But you know, that was a that was a crazy

0:28:19.400 --> 0:28:21.080
<v Speaker 2>interaction in my career and one of the times that

0:28:21.119 --> 0:28:22.840
<v Speaker 2>I've ever gotten to interact with them.

0:28:22.880 --> 0:28:27.520
<v Speaker 1>So, Okay, a lot of these people can push back

0:28:27.840 --> 0:28:34.080
<v Speaker 1>very hard, accurately or inaccurately. I've dealt with some reporters

0:28:34.119 --> 0:28:38.800
<v Speaker 1>who laugh I know in my own particular cases, sometimes

0:28:39.200 --> 0:28:41.840
<v Speaker 1>you know, you hold your ground, but you shake when

0:28:41.880 --> 0:28:44.480
<v Speaker 1>these people push back. Do you ever feel any personal

0:28:44.520 --> 0:28:47.760
<v Speaker 1>anxiety where you say, no, I'm a reporter, I'm getting

0:28:47.760 --> 0:28:49.360
<v Speaker 1>it right. I work for the New York Times, Or

0:28:49.400 --> 0:28:52.640
<v Speaker 1>sometimes you say, well, shit, do I really have it right?

0:28:55.160 --> 0:28:58.480
<v Speaker 2>That? That's I think about that every day. And you know,

0:28:58.480 --> 0:29:01.360
<v Speaker 2>as a reporter, the worst thing that can happen is

0:29:01.400 --> 0:29:03.360
<v Speaker 2>for you to get something wrong, especially in such a

0:29:03.400 --> 0:29:08.320
<v Speaker 2>key story where the people that you're reporting on have

0:29:08.440 --> 0:29:13.280
<v Speaker 2>unlimited resources to challenge you or to possibly sue you,

0:29:13.720 --> 0:29:16.560
<v Speaker 2>or you know, one of the biggest scoops in my

0:29:16.640 --> 0:29:19.760
<v Speaker 2>career was finding out that Peter Teele was funding the

0:29:19.760 --> 0:29:24.280
<v Speaker 2>Gawker case, the whole cloaging Gawker case that took out Gawker.

0:29:24.360 --> 0:29:27.760
<v Speaker 2>You know, I broke that story, and you know, I

0:29:27.800 --> 0:29:30.440
<v Speaker 2>was a cub reporter at Forbes, a younger reporter at Forbes,

0:29:30.480 --> 0:29:33.400
<v Speaker 2>and before we publish, you know, there was a doubt

0:29:33.600 --> 0:29:35.680
<v Speaker 2>in my mind that flash. You know, I was so

0:29:35.680 --> 0:29:38.800
<v Speaker 2>solid on the reporting, it's spent months doing it, but

0:29:39.280 --> 0:29:41.600
<v Speaker 2>was like, you know what if that point zero zero

0:29:41.600 --> 0:29:44.000
<v Speaker 2>one percent chance is right? You know what if I've

0:29:44.000 --> 0:29:48.280
<v Speaker 2>been duped the whole time into reporting this out what happens,

0:29:48.320 --> 0:29:52.040
<v Speaker 2>you know, and like that that feeling never goes away.

0:29:52.080 --> 0:29:54.360
<v Speaker 2>And I think being paranoid in some ways as a

0:29:54.360 --> 0:29:57.480
<v Speaker 2>reporter helps you because that will lead you to make

0:29:57.520 --> 0:29:59.640
<v Speaker 2>the next call, right, You'll be like, actually, you know

0:29:59.680 --> 0:30:01.920
<v Speaker 2>I have sources. Maybe I'll go for six or seven,

0:30:02.360 --> 0:30:05.120
<v Speaker 2>or maybe I'll make that extra send that extra email.

0:30:07.560 --> 0:30:09.320
<v Speaker 2>You know, It's helped in my career that I've been

0:30:09.360 --> 0:30:14.120
<v Speaker 2>supported by major publications that have great resources, in Forbes,

0:30:14.120 --> 0:30:19.040
<v Speaker 2>in the New York Times. But you know that that

0:30:19.160 --> 0:30:21.640
<v Speaker 2>fear stays with you. And I don't know, I could

0:30:21.680 --> 0:30:24.960
<v Speaker 2>be eighty years old and you know, have worked the

0:30:24.960 --> 0:30:29.200
<v Speaker 2>New York Times for fifty years. I'd be worried if

0:30:29.200 --> 0:30:31.440
<v Speaker 2>that fear wasn't part of me still, you know, because

0:30:31.480 --> 0:30:34.600
<v Speaker 2>you always want to have a little bit of paranoia,

0:30:34.640 --> 0:30:39.320
<v Speaker 2>I guess. And yeah, when when when it's someone like Elon,

0:30:40.520 --> 0:30:43.360
<v Speaker 2>you gotta you gotta do everything by the book, You gotta,

0:30:43.520 --> 0:30:46.720
<v Speaker 2>you gotta, you gotta be so solid on your reporting.

0:30:47.560 --> 0:30:54.680
<v Speaker 2>And I've always led with that, you know, my I yeah,

0:30:54.680 --> 0:30:56.960
<v Speaker 2>I've always relied on the reporting and the like you know,

0:30:57.000 --> 0:31:02.280
<v Speaker 2>my source saying and everything like that, and yeah, but

0:31:02.360 --> 0:31:04.240
<v Speaker 2>you know, if someone tries to intimidate us at the

0:31:04.280 --> 0:31:07.240
<v Speaker 2>same time, like, I'm not going to back down. You know,

0:31:07.280 --> 0:31:09.240
<v Speaker 2>if we know something is right, we're gon we're gonna

0:31:09.280 --> 0:31:13.320
<v Speaker 2>go with it. And it's kind of that weird balance.

0:31:21.120 --> 0:31:25.760
<v Speaker 1>Okay, it's a summer of twenty twenty two. Yeah, elon

0:31:26.240 --> 0:31:29.800
<v Speaker 1>trying to wiggle out. We know there's gonna be a

0:31:29.960 --> 0:31:34.320
<v Speaker 1>case in the Delaware Court. You're in the New York Times.

0:31:35.480 --> 0:31:38.160
<v Speaker 1>I agree with you one hundred percent. New York Times

0:31:38.240 --> 0:31:41.080
<v Speaker 1>has boots on the ground everywhere, whereas all these other

0:31:41.120 --> 0:31:46.160
<v Speaker 1>people's just opinion at the source. Do you think, hey,

0:31:46.160 --> 0:31:48.320
<v Speaker 1>this is going to close based on the history of

0:31:48.320 --> 0:31:51.560
<v Speaker 1>the Delaware Court? And to what degree are you penetrating

0:31:51.600 --> 0:31:55.200
<v Speaker 1>the company in terms of sources such that when the

0:31:55.240 --> 0:31:57.600
<v Speaker 1>case goes down, you're prepared.

0:31:59.160 --> 0:32:01.760
<v Speaker 2>You're doing everything. You You're calling the people on the deal.

0:32:01.800 --> 0:32:07.320
<v Speaker 2>You're calling the lawyers, the bankers, the pr people, you know,

0:32:07.440 --> 0:32:09.160
<v Speaker 2>people who you might think might be in the room.

0:32:09.200 --> 0:32:12.200
<v Speaker 2>You know, these are very high level conversations too, So

0:32:12.400 --> 0:32:16.720
<v Speaker 2>when you're talking about sourcing, you're talking about C suite level.

0:32:16.880 --> 0:32:18.800
<v Speaker 2>You know, those are the people that are having conversations,

0:32:19.720 --> 0:32:22.280
<v Speaker 2>and what we realize is that on the Twitter side

0:32:22.280 --> 0:32:25.160
<v Speaker 2>of things, they had no idea what to expect from Elon.

0:32:25.440 --> 0:32:28.920
<v Speaker 2>You know, they had some meetings about what it would.

0:32:29.480 --> 0:32:31.400
<v Speaker 2>Bear in mind as he was backing out, there were

0:32:31.480 --> 0:32:34.160
<v Speaker 2>still some meetings that were going on between him and

0:32:34.200 --> 0:32:38.560
<v Speaker 2>the company over there was a calculat there was that

0:32:38.600 --> 0:32:40.840
<v Speaker 2>bot argument, for example, and there were they were trying

0:32:40.840 --> 0:32:47.000
<v Speaker 2>to assuage him concerns about bots because the company was

0:32:47.000 --> 0:32:48.680
<v Speaker 2>bound by it's pretty sure your duty to make this

0:32:48.720 --> 0:32:50.760
<v Speaker 2>deal happen, right, which is why they sue the company.

0:32:52.320 --> 0:32:56.640
<v Speaker 2>But you know, gosh, that was it was a crazy period.

0:32:57.920 --> 0:33:00.640
<v Speaker 2>Kate was ready to go to Delaware and and spend

0:33:00.680 --> 0:33:03.360
<v Speaker 2>like weeks there. I was having to read up on

0:33:03.440 --> 0:33:06.160
<v Speaker 2>chancery court, which I knew very little about until that,

0:33:06.280 --> 0:33:10.640
<v Speaker 2>until that kind of moment. But that's kind of the

0:33:10.680 --> 0:33:14.200
<v Speaker 2>beauty of reporting, right, Like you're thrown into the deep

0:33:14.320 --> 0:33:17.160
<v Speaker 2>end of these weird situations you might have never been

0:33:17.160 --> 0:33:19.600
<v Speaker 2>in before, you might have never thought about the court

0:33:19.600 --> 0:33:24.080
<v Speaker 2>of chancery, and suddenly you're making calls to trial lawyers

0:33:24.080 --> 0:33:29.000
<v Speaker 2>who have you know, practiced there or represented other companies

0:33:29.000 --> 0:33:33.240
<v Speaker 2>who're trying to find comparisons to maybe legal precedents that

0:33:33.280 --> 0:33:36.280
<v Speaker 2>I played out similar to this, where you know the

0:33:36.320 --> 0:33:38.720
<v Speaker 2>court has compelled someone to buy a company like that.

0:33:39.840 --> 0:33:41.160
<v Speaker 2>What did you think did you think it? Did you

0:33:41.160 --> 0:33:42.360
<v Speaker 2>think it was going to happen at that time?

0:33:42.400 --> 0:33:45.280
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely? Because of the Delaware Court. It blew my mind.

0:33:45.320 --> 0:33:47.800
<v Speaker 1>All these people. You know, I got a book up

0:33:47.840 --> 0:33:50.640
<v Speaker 1>my ass about Kara Swisher anyway, Oh no, no, no,

0:33:50.640 --> 0:33:53.040
<v Speaker 1>no, no no, there's law involvement that happened to be a

0:33:53.120 --> 0:33:55.640
<v Speaker 1>lawyer or whatever. And if you know anything about why

0:33:55.720 --> 0:33:58.800
<v Speaker 1>all this stuff is in Delaware. But let's go back

0:33:58.800 --> 0:34:02.960
<v Speaker 1>to your story. You're saying, you're yeah, will everybody talk

0:34:03.000 --> 0:34:05.680
<v Speaker 1>to you? And to what degree is the fact that

0:34:05.720 --> 0:34:08.040
<v Speaker 1>you're writing for the New York Times to your advantage

0:34:08.080 --> 0:34:09.040
<v Speaker 1>or disadvantage?

0:34:12.080 --> 0:34:14.359
<v Speaker 2>It goes both ways, actually, and I've been on both

0:34:14.400 --> 0:34:16.319
<v Speaker 2>sides of it. When I was at BuzzFeed, I used

0:34:16.320 --> 0:34:18.120
<v Speaker 2>to think, you know, those reporters of the New York Times,

0:34:18.160 --> 0:34:20.319
<v Speaker 2>they must get everything handed to them on a silver

0:34:20.400 --> 0:34:23.319
<v Speaker 2>platter because they're the New York Times. Who wouldn't want

0:34:23.360 --> 0:34:25.960
<v Speaker 2>to talk to them? And then now being on this

0:34:26.000 --> 0:34:29.640
<v Speaker 2>side of things, there are instances where people are like, sorry,

0:34:29.640 --> 0:34:31.760
<v Speaker 2>you guys are too big, Like I'm worried about my reputation.

0:34:31.800 --> 0:34:33.239
<v Speaker 2>I want this information to be out there, but like

0:34:33.280 --> 0:34:36.040
<v Speaker 2>in a smaller setting. And so it's kind of funny

0:34:36.360 --> 0:34:42.080
<v Speaker 2>seeing that play out in a way. That being said,

0:34:42.080 --> 0:34:45.880
<v Speaker 2>when you're at the New York Times, you know, it

0:34:46.000 --> 0:34:48.960
<v Speaker 2>carries the gravitas that has the name, the rename recognition.

0:34:49.239 --> 0:34:52.400
<v Speaker 2>When you call someone, they're not asking you to spell

0:34:52.440 --> 0:34:55.280
<v Speaker 2>out you know what do you who does that mean? BuzzFeed?

0:34:55.360 --> 0:34:57.200
<v Speaker 2>Can you spell that for me? You know, you're at

0:34:57.239 --> 0:34:59.080
<v Speaker 2>the New York Times, You're like, oh, okay, I get it.

0:34:59.160 --> 0:35:03.799
<v Speaker 2>You know, you know where you're coming from. But in

0:35:03.840 --> 0:35:07.360
<v Speaker 2>those moments, it's it's it's kind of you kind of

0:35:07.400 --> 0:35:09.600
<v Speaker 2>have to be lucky, and sometimes people don't want to

0:35:09.600 --> 0:35:11.520
<v Speaker 2>talk to you at all. You bear in mind, you know,

0:35:11.600 --> 0:35:15.319
<v Speaker 2>the people around the Twitter deal are especially on the

0:35:15.320 --> 0:35:19.279
<v Speaker 2>Twitter side, are scared. Are scared shit lists. You know,

0:35:19.320 --> 0:35:20.600
<v Speaker 2>they don't want to ruin the deal. They don't want

0:35:20.600 --> 0:35:24.239
<v Speaker 2>to say anything to report that could scupper this, this

0:35:24.320 --> 0:35:29.560
<v Speaker 2>monumental deal, this payout for shareholders and whatever. But in

0:35:29.600 --> 0:35:32.840
<v Speaker 2>writing a book, what I found is that oftentimes after

0:35:32.920 --> 0:35:36.480
<v Speaker 2>the fact, if you say, you know, actually my book

0:35:36.520 --> 0:35:37.799
<v Speaker 2>is going to come out in a year or two

0:35:37.840 --> 0:35:41.439
<v Speaker 2>years time. You know, people might be open to talking

0:35:41.440 --> 0:35:43.120
<v Speaker 2>to you for that because it's going to be past

0:35:43.280 --> 0:35:47.160
<v Speaker 2>the period where it's sensitive for them. You know, this

0:35:47.200 --> 0:35:48.960
<v Speaker 2>is something that is for history in a way. It's

0:35:49.000 --> 0:35:52.120
<v Speaker 2>not just a daily story, and so we use that

0:35:52.120 --> 0:35:54.880
<v Speaker 2>to our advantage for the book. You know, some people

0:35:54.920 --> 0:35:57.320
<v Speaker 2>that that didn't talk to us for these stories in

0:35:57.360 --> 0:36:01.080
<v Speaker 2>the New York Times came back to us or towards

0:36:01.080 --> 0:36:02.640
<v Speaker 2>the very end of the process they were like, actually,

0:36:02.680 --> 0:36:04.440
<v Speaker 2>I want to make this one thing very clear and

0:36:04.520 --> 0:36:07.640
<v Speaker 2>just the specific thing. But it ended up being very helpful.

0:36:09.760 --> 0:36:13.600
<v Speaker 2>So you get all types. I'll say it. In the moment,

0:36:13.640 --> 0:36:17.040
<v Speaker 2>it's quite hard to get people to speak immediately, but

0:36:17.080 --> 0:36:18.960
<v Speaker 2>if you give them a little time, if you work

0:36:18.960 --> 0:36:21.560
<v Speaker 2>on them a little bit, you keep reminding them there's

0:36:21.560 --> 0:36:25.440
<v Speaker 2>always a chance. And I've learned that kind of perseverance

0:36:25.560 --> 0:36:28.319
<v Speaker 2>is kind of the you know, one of my most

0:36:28.320 --> 0:36:29.520
<v Speaker 2>important traits as a reporter.

0:36:30.600 --> 0:36:32.800
<v Speaker 1>Okay, I dealt with the press a lot, calling me

0:36:32.960 --> 0:36:36.480
<v Speaker 1>for stuff. Yeah, like being on television news like the

0:36:36.520 --> 0:36:38.640
<v Speaker 1>classic story of the Today Show. They provide you a

0:36:38.680 --> 0:36:43.560
<v Speaker 1>limo there, but not back. You're just fodder. You're just

0:36:43.680 --> 0:36:46.280
<v Speaker 1>hit and run. I've had a lot of people forget

0:36:46.280 --> 0:36:48.839
<v Speaker 1>a lot of times. You know, music is a you know,

0:36:49.520 --> 0:36:51.520
<v Speaker 1>a lot of these papers have already fired all the

0:36:51.600 --> 0:36:53.839
<v Speaker 1>music people. You know. This is a lot of times

0:36:53.880 --> 0:36:56.960
<v Speaker 1>I'll put some junior person who's ignorant on the issue.

0:36:57.280 --> 0:37:01.040
<v Speaker 1>But if you get a reporter from an publication, a

0:37:01.080 --> 0:37:04.839
<v Speaker 1>lot of times they're aggressive. And most people who deal

0:37:04.840 --> 0:37:07.160
<v Speaker 1>with the press deal with the press and frequently what

0:37:07.320 --> 0:37:08.440
<v Speaker 1>is your style?

0:37:11.920 --> 0:37:14.640
<v Speaker 2>I tend not to be aggressive, largely because I am

0:37:14.719 --> 0:37:20.160
<v Speaker 2>not a beat reporter, like I don't have to file

0:37:20.280 --> 0:37:23.880
<v Speaker 2>tomorrow about you know, the news of the day that

0:37:24.000 --> 0:37:26.799
<v Speaker 2>happened at Facebook or Twitter or you know X you

0:37:26.800 --> 0:37:30.960
<v Speaker 2>know or Google. I have time to like build relationships,

0:37:30.960 --> 0:37:34.560
<v Speaker 2>and any good reporter is doing that. And everyone has

0:37:34.560 --> 0:37:36.840
<v Speaker 2>their own style. But I've never found the kind of

0:37:37.880 --> 0:37:40.399
<v Speaker 2>you know, give me the information before everyone else, or

0:37:41.360 --> 0:37:44.719
<v Speaker 2>some people use kind of like a bullying you know,

0:37:44.800 --> 0:37:46.839
<v Speaker 2>why why did you talk to the Washington Posts over there,

0:37:46.920 --> 0:37:49.839
<v Speaker 2>Wall Journal and not to me? Next time? I want

0:37:49.880 --> 0:37:52.200
<v Speaker 2>you to come to me first. I've never found that

0:37:52.239 --> 0:37:55.960
<v Speaker 2>works for me. Some people it works great, and it

0:37:56.000 --> 0:38:01.080
<v Speaker 2>makes them really dogged reporters. My style is to talk

0:38:01.080 --> 0:38:05.240
<v Speaker 2>to people NonStop. You know, if I think the worst

0:38:05.280 --> 0:38:08.680
<v Speaker 2>thing for someone to feel like is for someone to

0:38:08.719 --> 0:38:13.120
<v Speaker 2>feel used in a way. And I don't know, maybe

0:38:13.160 --> 0:38:15.960
<v Speaker 2>the social engineering is like the wrong word here, but

0:38:16.040 --> 0:38:20.040
<v Speaker 2>something lighter than that. But I want to make people

0:38:20.040 --> 0:38:22.399
<v Speaker 2>feel like they can talk to me about anything, and

0:38:22.520 --> 0:38:26.120
<v Speaker 2>so you know, it's not just me checking in for

0:38:26.200 --> 0:38:28.000
<v Speaker 2>information when I need it. You know, I'm talking to

0:38:28.040 --> 0:38:31.040
<v Speaker 2>them about their holidays or you know, what do you

0:38:31.040 --> 0:38:34.280
<v Speaker 2>have for Thanksgiving? And you know, how is your Christmas break?

0:38:34.840 --> 0:38:37.480
<v Speaker 2>You know, how is your soccer team doing. I'm building

0:38:37.480 --> 0:38:41.560
<v Speaker 2>those relationships. I'm meeting people for drinks to the point

0:38:41.560 --> 0:38:46.239
<v Speaker 2>where when it comes to talking about something that is

0:38:46.280 --> 0:38:48.560
<v Speaker 2>relevant to my reporting, it feels natural for them to

0:38:48.880 --> 0:38:52.480
<v Speaker 2>talk to me about it. And that isn't like a

0:38:52.640 --> 0:38:56.120
<v Speaker 2>unique finding like that could a banker could do that

0:38:56.239 --> 0:38:58.520
<v Speaker 2>or a lawyer. You know, it's just a relationship building

0:38:58.520 --> 0:39:01.879
<v Speaker 2>and people building. And it took me a long time

0:39:01.920 --> 0:39:04.440
<v Speaker 2>to realize that. You know, I wasn't the biggest chatterbox

0:39:04.480 --> 0:39:07.480
<v Speaker 2>in college and I still am not. But like, you

0:39:07.560 --> 0:39:10.520
<v Speaker 2>don't ever want to make people feel like you're just

0:39:10.560 --> 0:39:13.560
<v Speaker 2>pumping them for information, and then you'll never sty'll never

0:39:13.560 --> 0:39:16.719
<v Speaker 2>see you again, and you know I and that just

0:39:16.719 --> 0:39:19.440
<v Speaker 2>feels weird and not human to me anyway, So I

0:39:19.440 --> 0:39:22.359
<v Speaker 2>guess yeah, playing the human card is actually is actually

0:39:22.400 --> 0:39:23.200
<v Speaker 2>pretty important to me.

0:39:24.480 --> 0:39:27.160
<v Speaker 1>Okay, let's talk about the deal now. The first thing

0:39:27.200 --> 0:39:30.880
<v Speaker 1>that is striking in the book that comes back to

0:39:30.960 --> 0:39:35.960
<v Speaker 1>haunt Elon is he makes a deal with no due diligence.

0:39:36.360 --> 0:39:37.359
<v Speaker 1>Tell us about that.

0:39:39.120 --> 0:39:41.160
<v Speaker 2>It's one of the it's one of the crazier things

0:39:41.160 --> 0:39:45.759
<v Speaker 2>about this whole thing. You know, these mergers or takeovers

0:39:45.800 --> 0:39:52.320
<v Speaker 2>take months, sometimes years to close, and that's because bankers

0:39:52.360 --> 0:39:56.600
<v Speaker 2>and lawyers are haggling over every small detail. They're running

0:39:56.600 --> 0:40:00.239
<v Speaker 2>their fine tooth combs through every legal filing and findancial

0:40:00.320 --> 0:40:05.680
<v Speaker 2>filing and making sure everything is up to standard. And

0:40:05.719 --> 0:40:09.800
<v Speaker 2>in this case, Elon wanted to bouldoze a deal through

0:40:10.000 --> 0:40:13.240
<v Speaker 2>in days as fast as he could. After the after

0:40:13.360 --> 0:40:17.200
<v Speaker 2>the after his offer letter. Remember he was on the board,

0:40:18.080 --> 0:40:20.319
<v Speaker 2>he had bought this this chunk of the company. He

0:40:20.360 --> 0:40:22.279
<v Speaker 2>was on the board because Twitter brought him in to

0:40:22.360 --> 0:40:26.120
<v Speaker 2>be closer to them. He ended up kind of getting

0:40:26.120 --> 0:40:28.239
<v Speaker 2>into a fight with the CEO and offering to buy

0:40:28.239 --> 0:40:31.719
<v Speaker 2>the company kind of in this huff, right, and right

0:40:31.760 --> 0:40:35.040
<v Speaker 2>after that, he wants the deal to close immediately, so

0:40:35.200 --> 0:40:38.280
<v Speaker 2>much so that he tells his his bankers and his lawyers,

0:40:38.760 --> 0:40:41.040
<v Speaker 2>you know, we don't need to I don't need to

0:40:41.080 --> 0:40:43.680
<v Speaker 2>look at the books here, I don't need any non

0:40:43.680 --> 0:40:46.680
<v Speaker 2>public information. I don't need to sign an NDA to

0:40:46.719 --> 0:40:49.720
<v Speaker 2>get that non public information. I just want the company,

0:40:49.960 --> 0:40:51.919
<v Speaker 2>and you're gonna You're going to force that deal through

0:40:52.000 --> 0:40:54.719
<v Speaker 2>for me, so I have that company by the end

0:40:54.760 --> 0:40:57.400
<v Speaker 2>of the month. And that's what he did. There was

0:40:57.520 --> 0:41:02.120
<v Speaker 2>no diligence. You remember when he steps on stage at

0:41:02.120 --> 0:41:04.680
<v Speaker 2>the TED conference in I think it was a Vancouver

0:41:05.360 --> 0:41:08.759
<v Speaker 2>in the day after his offer letter comes out, he

0:41:08.840 --> 0:41:11.279
<v Speaker 2>makes all these grand pock proclamations. You know, he says

0:41:11.280 --> 0:41:13.040
<v Speaker 2>he's going to get rid of the bots, He's going

0:41:13.080 --> 0:41:19.120
<v Speaker 2>to say free speech, and that was said without any

0:41:19.400 --> 0:41:24.480
<v Speaker 2>understanding of the business. So yeah, there was no there

0:41:24.520 --> 0:41:27.480
<v Speaker 2>was no looking under the hood effectively, and that was

0:41:27.520 --> 0:41:30.360
<v Speaker 2>one of the major quirks of this deal that caused

0:41:30.440 --> 0:41:33.920
<v Speaker 2>him a lot of problems down the line. Basically immediately

0:41:33.920 --> 0:41:37.360
<v Speaker 2>as soon as soon as the merger agreement assigned.

0:41:39.719 --> 0:41:43.920
<v Speaker 1>Is that evidence of how Elon works, and he's impulsive.

0:41:44.520 --> 0:41:47.880
<v Speaker 1>Let me move forward. Worry about the repercussions after.

0:41:49.880 --> 0:41:53.799
<v Speaker 2>Totally. I mean, I'll reference something he said about the

0:41:53.840 --> 0:41:57.400
<v Speaker 2>Department of Government efficiency. He said something to the effect of,

0:41:57.480 --> 0:41:59.839
<v Speaker 2>you know, if something we cut and it goes wrong,

0:42:00.120 --> 0:42:02.080
<v Speaker 2>just put it back. You know, it's not like I'm

0:42:02.080 --> 0:42:04.560
<v Speaker 2>gonna learn about this and what this thing does. I'm

0:42:04.560 --> 0:42:08.600
<v Speaker 2>gonna cut it. See if something breaks, something some people suffer,

0:42:09.239 --> 0:42:11.160
<v Speaker 2>and if it's enough pain, then I'll just put it back.

0:42:11.880 --> 0:42:15.200
<v Speaker 2>And this kind of impulsiveness is how he's operated through

0:42:15.200 --> 0:42:21.200
<v Speaker 2>his whole career. It's very gut instinct, it's very primal

0:42:21.239 --> 0:42:24.360
<v Speaker 2>in some ways, and it served him well. You know,

0:42:24.520 --> 0:42:27.440
<v Speaker 2>he's going to look back on his successes. Is net worth,

0:42:27.560 --> 0:42:30.440
<v Speaker 2>you know, he's worth more than three hundred billion dollars.

0:42:30.480 --> 0:42:33.480
<v Speaker 2>He has two major companies. He's gonna be like, what

0:42:33.760 --> 0:42:36.759
<v Speaker 2>this has served me so well throughout my life. You know,

0:42:36.800 --> 0:42:40.560
<v Speaker 2>why why shouldn't I do things this way? And in

0:42:40.600 --> 0:42:42.759
<v Speaker 2>this case, in the Twitter case obviously came back to

0:42:42.760 --> 0:42:47.120
<v Speaker 2>bite him because he doesn't do the due diligence. He

0:42:47.160 --> 0:42:49.919
<v Speaker 2>signs the merger agreement and then he starts to get

0:42:49.920 --> 0:42:52.759
<v Speaker 2>really cold feet and tries to find ways to back out.

0:42:52.840 --> 0:42:55.880
<v Speaker 2>You know, he starts to name issues around bots, for example,

0:42:58.600 --> 0:43:03.680
<v Speaker 2>and you know that's kind of the source of his pain.

0:43:03.760 --> 0:43:08.280
<v Speaker 1>Now with this deal, Okay, since you cover Elon in general,

0:43:08.360 --> 0:43:11.120
<v Speaker 1>let's go to Tesla for a second. So we have

0:43:11.200 --> 0:43:14.560
<v Speaker 1>the Tesla self driving. They're the first movers in that area.

0:43:15.040 --> 0:43:18.680
<v Speaker 1>He gets rid of light ar relying solely on cameras.

0:43:19.400 --> 0:43:25.279
<v Speaker 1>The competitors go to lightar. Okay, Meanwhile, the government is

0:43:25.320 --> 0:43:30.080
<v Speaker 1>investing for crashes. Is he doubling down based on his

0:43:30.239 --> 0:43:34.080
<v Speaker 1>personality saying fuck you? Well, do you think he really

0:43:34.160 --> 0:43:38.040
<v Speaker 1>evaluates a cameras are enough or is he convinced himself

0:43:38.120 --> 0:43:38.959
<v Speaker 1>cameras are enough?

0:43:39.800 --> 0:43:42.080
<v Speaker 2>I think in these beliefs, he's convinced himself. I think

0:43:42.120 --> 0:43:44.759
<v Speaker 2>it's very key to understanding he's not just saying things right,

0:43:44.800 --> 0:43:48.799
<v Speaker 2>he fundamentally believes them. And the thing with lightar is

0:43:48.840 --> 0:43:52.160
<v Speaker 2>that he believes that cars should see like humans do,

0:43:52.520 --> 0:43:55.359
<v Speaker 2>and and and cameras will be enough, and cameras are

0:43:55.400 --> 0:43:58.600
<v Speaker 2>much cheaper than a light r you know that being said,

0:43:58.760 --> 0:44:04.040
<v Speaker 2>look at the progress of where Tesla is relative to Weimo.

0:44:04.200 --> 0:44:06.560
<v Speaker 2>For example, Wemo actually has cars on the streets that

0:44:06.600 --> 0:44:10.160
<v Speaker 2>are taxing people around with no drivers, and Tesla is

0:44:10.200 --> 0:44:14.640
<v Speaker 2>still kind of making these half promises about full self driving.

0:44:14.719 --> 0:44:16.799
<v Speaker 2>Oh actually it's not full self driving. You have to

0:44:16.880 --> 0:44:21.480
<v Speaker 2>be engaged with the driver. And he's kind of jerked

0:44:21.480 --> 0:44:26.840
<v Speaker 2>people around on the meeting of Autopilot. You know, he

0:44:26.920 --> 0:44:30.560
<v Speaker 2>had that Robotaxi event a couple months ago. I'm sure

0:44:30.600 --> 0:44:33.520
<v Speaker 2>you saw it right where he had. You know, it's

0:44:33.560 --> 0:44:35.920
<v Speaker 2>a staged event. You're on a literally on a movie

0:44:35.960 --> 0:44:39.840
<v Speaker 2>set in Burbank, driving people around these pretend cities on

0:44:39.880 --> 0:44:44.840
<v Speaker 2>these supposedly autonomous vehicles. And he's selling that to people

0:44:44.880 --> 0:44:48.160
<v Speaker 2>as if it's like the next revolution, when if you

0:44:48.280 --> 0:44:52.160
<v Speaker 2>walk over to Hollywood you can find a Waimo, you know,

0:44:52.239 --> 0:44:56.840
<v Speaker 2>going up and down the street with no driver. So yeah,

0:44:56.920 --> 0:45:00.600
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I think the one thing understand a boy

0:45:00.640 --> 0:45:03.279
<v Speaker 2>Elon is that one of his superpowers, if not his

0:45:03.320 --> 0:45:07.560
<v Speaker 2>most super important superpower, is his ability as a salesman,

0:45:07.680 --> 0:45:10.000
<v Speaker 2>his ability to sell you on a mission and a vision.

0:45:10.760 --> 0:45:14.360
<v Speaker 2>And people love that, you know, because you know, we

0:45:14.440 --> 0:45:18.480
<v Speaker 2>can we can debate whether or not he hits his

0:45:18.480 --> 0:45:23.120
<v Speaker 2>his his goals or his his projections. You know, he said,

0:45:23.200 --> 0:45:25.600
<v Speaker 2>for example, we get to Mars by twenty twenty five.

0:45:26.400 --> 0:45:30.680
<v Speaker 2>I don't think that's going to happen. But you know,

0:45:31.800 --> 0:45:34.160
<v Speaker 2>you look at this robotax event and me as a report,

0:45:34.200 --> 0:45:36.560
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, I'm very skeptical, like this is. But you

0:45:36.640 --> 0:45:39.880
<v Speaker 2>have people that are screaming and cheering and posting online.

0:45:40.239 --> 0:45:42.319
<v Speaker 2>You know, they're loving the robots that are serving the

0:45:42.360 --> 0:45:45.120
<v Speaker 2>beers and everything, and you're like, wow, he really has

0:45:45.120 --> 0:45:48.960
<v Speaker 2>sold this to people. People really believe him on this stuff,

0:45:49.120 --> 0:45:54.680
<v Speaker 2>and I don't. Uh, yeah, I don't know. It's it's

0:45:54.719 --> 0:45:56.320
<v Speaker 2>it's an interesting quality that he has.

0:45:56.440 --> 0:46:09.080
<v Speaker 1>So okay. You also say that he has these advisors

0:46:09.200 --> 0:46:12.319
<v Speaker 1>that he trusts in the deal. They really have no

0:46:12.480 --> 0:46:17.439
<v Speaker 1>portfolio that have no expertise in this area whatsoever.

0:46:18.960 --> 0:46:22.680
<v Speaker 2>Aside from having large Twitter followings. You know, he's yeah,

0:46:22.719 --> 0:46:24.879
<v Speaker 2>he's in the room with some of these venture capitalists,

0:46:25.239 --> 0:46:27.920
<v Speaker 2>people that have had good careers in technology, have built

0:46:28.320 --> 0:46:31.680
<v Speaker 2>massive fortunes investing, but in terms of running a social

0:46:31.680 --> 0:46:34.759
<v Speaker 2>media company something to the scale of Twitter, which few

0:46:34.760 --> 0:46:40.440
<v Speaker 2>companies are. You know, there's Facebook, there's Instagram, Reddit, But

0:46:41.160 --> 0:46:44.040
<v Speaker 2>these guys don't have an understanding of this, and they

0:46:44.520 --> 0:46:48.080
<v Speaker 2>again view this as a technical problem as opposed to

0:46:48.080 --> 0:46:52.840
<v Speaker 2>a people problem. And so he's taking advice from people

0:46:53.680 --> 0:46:55.600
<v Speaker 2>of his same background of the same ilk you know,

0:46:55.680 --> 0:47:01.000
<v Speaker 2>like David Sachs, Jason kalakhanis of these investors that have

0:47:01.040 --> 0:47:03.040
<v Speaker 2>put money into this deal. He at one point takes

0:47:03.080 --> 0:47:08.000
<v Speaker 2>advice from his own biographer, Walter Isaacson, and he and

0:47:08.160 --> 0:47:11.600
<v Speaker 2>also in that process decides to fire people that have

0:47:11.920 --> 0:47:14.560
<v Speaker 2>worked at the company for years studying this stuff and

0:47:14.600 --> 0:47:19.400
<v Speaker 2>working on it, largely because he believes they're inept or

0:47:19.440 --> 0:47:25.080
<v Speaker 2>they're too woke or whatever. And that's I think that Hubris.

0:47:25.600 --> 0:47:28.040
<v Speaker 2>Again we talk about these kind of gut decisions that

0:47:28.080 --> 0:47:32.560
<v Speaker 2>he makes, but that is what has hampered him throughout

0:47:32.560 --> 0:47:36.080
<v Speaker 2>the deal and throughout the takeover to the point where

0:47:36.080 --> 0:47:39.600
<v Speaker 2>the company is, you know, valuation wise is crashed. It's

0:47:39.640 --> 0:47:42.120
<v Speaker 2>advertising as crashed, the user numbers have crashed.

0:47:43.840 --> 0:47:47.800
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but even his lawyer, you know, even the people,

0:47:47.880 --> 0:47:50.840
<v Speaker 1>you know, the the he's not using blue chip people

0:47:51.080 --> 0:47:52.160
<v Speaker 1>even to make the deal.

0:47:54.000 --> 0:47:58.000
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Alex Alex Spiro, who is his I'm sure you've

0:47:58.040 --> 0:48:00.879
<v Speaker 2>come across me as a is a big celebrity lawyer.

0:48:00.880 --> 0:48:05.640
<v Speaker 2>He represented Megan the Stallion and Robert Kraft. He's a

0:48:05.719 --> 0:48:09.200
<v Speaker 2>Jay Z's lawyer and actually becomes Elon's lawyer in the

0:48:09.239 --> 0:48:12.080
<v Speaker 2>Pedal Guy case where he defends them successfully against deformation,

0:48:13.800 --> 0:48:16.240
<v Speaker 2>ends up being one of the kind of lead lawyers

0:48:16.280 --> 0:48:20.319
<v Speaker 2>on this deal, and also someone who ends up like

0:48:21.560 --> 0:48:24.160
<v Speaker 2>somewhat leading the legal department in the early days of Twitter.

0:48:24.960 --> 0:48:27.239
<v Speaker 2>You know, this is a trial lawyer. This isn't you know.

0:48:27.680 --> 0:48:31.319
<v Speaker 2>He may be wildly successful, but does he have the

0:48:31.360 --> 0:48:35.040
<v Speaker 2>expertise to understand what it means when an FTC consent

0:48:35.120 --> 0:48:38.680
<v Speaker 2>decree comes in from the FTC? Does he understand what

0:48:39.160 --> 0:48:43.279
<v Speaker 2>happens when the EU demands information? And does he have

0:48:43.320 --> 0:48:48.080
<v Speaker 2>international law expertise to under like to grasp that. I

0:48:48.080 --> 0:48:50.920
<v Speaker 2>don't think so, you know. And Elon fired a lot

0:48:50.960 --> 0:48:52.959
<v Speaker 2>of the people or got or encouraged them to leave,

0:48:53.719 --> 0:48:55.880
<v Speaker 2>folks that have kind of specialized in these areas and

0:48:55.920 --> 0:49:00.440
<v Speaker 2>working in it for their whole careers. And again, that's

0:49:00.480 --> 0:49:02.160
<v Speaker 2>just kind of one of the wilder things of this,

0:49:03.280 --> 0:49:06.799
<v Speaker 2>of this whole thing. There was really no transition in

0:49:06.880 --> 0:49:10.160
<v Speaker 2>place to understand how Twitter operated when he took over

0:49:10.200 --> 0:49:12.799
<v Speaker 2>the company. There were a handful of meetings, but there

0:49:12.880 --> 0:49:16.799
<v Speaker 2>wasn't like a transition plan. There wasn't like, Okay, these

0:49:16.880 --> 0:49:19.319
<v Speaker 2>these people work over here. I understand that this is

0:49:19.320 --> 0:49:22.160
<v Speaker 2>how the advertising business works. Let me understand that that

0:49:22.200 --> 0:49:24.759
<v Speaker 2>came after he took over the company and after he

0:49:24.840 --> 0:49:31.520
<v Speaker 2>laid off hundreds and thousands of people, and that has

0:49:31.560 --> 0:49:32.920
<v Speaker 2>fundamentally damaged to the company.

0:49:34.000 --> 0:49:37.160
<v Speaker 1>Okay, let's since you mentioned let's stay with the FTC

0:49:37.280 --> 0:49:41.479
<v Speaker 1>for one second. There was the lawsuit where Elon said

0:49:41.520 --> 0:49:46.640
<v Speaker 1>he was going to take the company private. This is Tesla. Okay,

0:49:46.800 --> 0:49:49.160
<v Speaker 1>the government sued him. He made an agreement that he's

0:49:49.200 --> 0:49:53.319
<v Speaker 1>been bitching about ever since, trying to overturn. You make

0:49:53.360 --> 0:49:55.520
<v Speaker 1>a point that there are certain deals with the FTC.

0:49:55.840 --> 0:50:00.480
<v Speaker 1>The FTC keeps asking for compliance and they don't imply.

0:50:01.560 --> 0:50:04.360
<v Speaker 1>Does this basically say, if you're one of these guys,

0:50:04.400 --> 0:50:07.200
<v Speaker 1>you have these balls, the real rules really don't apply.

0:50:09.040 --> 0:50:14.160
<v Speaker 2>So the yeah, so the the the UH funding secured

0:50:14.200 --> 0:50:16.400
<v Speaker 2>stuff that that Tesla take private, that was the that

0:50:16.440 --> 0:50:19.640
<v Speaker 2>was the securities in the Change Commission sec But that

0:50:19.640 --> 0:50:24.960
<v Speaker 2>that case, I feel like he is where he draws

0:50:25.040 --> 0:50:29.000
<v Speaker 2>his understanding of how unaccountable he is. There is nothing

0:50:29.000 --> 0:50:32.359
<v Speaker 2>that can hold him accountable. And I'll explain why, which

0:50:32.400 --> 0:50:34.440
<v Speaker 2>is in twenty eighteen, he tweets that he has the

0:50:34.480 --> 0:50:38.799
<v Speaker 2>money to take Tesla private funding secured. It has at

0:50:38.840 --> 0:50:40.759
<v Speaker 2>four hundred and twenty dollars a share. He's going to

0:50:40.800 --> 0:50:43.560
<v Speaker 2>take Tesla private, take it off the public market where

0:50:43.560 --> 0:50:45.800
<v Speaker 2>it's not doing well because he's not hitting his numbers

0:50:45.800 --> 0:50:48.640
<v Speaker 2>with the Model three rollout, and he says, screw it.

0:50:48.800 --> 0:50:50.279
<v Speaker 2>You know, I don't need the public market. I have

0:50:50.320 --> 0:50:52.600
<v Speaker 2>my private investors. You know, he didn't have that money,

0:50:52.840 --> 0:50:54.960
<v Speaker 2>so I was going to come from Saudi Arabia wasn't coming.

0:50:55.920 --> 0:50:59.600
<v Speaker 2>And the SEC sues him because he puts out a

0:50:59.600 --> 0:51:05.240
<v Speaker 2>statement that manipulates the markets and offers a false promise

0:51:05.320 --> 0:51:10.400
<v Speaker 2>to investors. YadA YadA. They sue him. He fights it,

0:51:10.440 --> 0:51:15.319
<v Speaker 2>briefly settles what is what is he? What does he

0:51:15.360 --> 0:51:17.120
<v Speaker 2>have to pay for that? You know, he personally pays

0:51:17.120 --> 0:51:19.319
<v Speaker 2>a twenty million dollar fine. Testa pays a twenty million

0:51:19.360 --> 0:51:23.280
<v Speaker 2>dollar fine. He's no longer able to be chairman, whatever

0:51:23.320 --> 0:51:26.279
<v Speaker 2>that means. But what is a for What does forty

0:51:26.320 --> 0:51:30.720
<v Speaker 2>million dollars mean to someone who's worth one hundred billion dollars?

0:51:30.800 --> 0:51:33.000
<v Speaker 2>You know it it's a parking ticket for you and me.

0:51:33.960 --> 0:51:39.520
<v Speaker 2>And his fundamental understanding of that that he could either

0:51:39.560 --> 0:51:43.239
<v Speaker 2>fight something or simply pay the fine is crucial to

0:51:43.280 --> 0:51:46.280
<v Speaker 2>how he operates now because when you get to something

0:51:46.360 --> 0:51:49.800
<v Speaker 2>like operating Twitter and complying to an FDC consent decree,

0:51:50.760 --> 0:51:52.439
<v Speaker 2>He'll be like, you know, I don't care about that,

0:51:52.600 --> 0:51:54.080
<v Speaker 2>Like what are they going to do to me? Like

0:51:54.680 --> 0:51:55.920
<v Speaker 2>are they going to They're not going to take the

0:51:55.960 --> 0:51:59.000
<v Speaker 2>company away from me. They'll levy a fine. What is

0:51:59.000 --> 0:52:01.240
<v Speaker 2>the fine going to be? Tens of millions dollars? Hundreds

0:52:01.239 --> 0:52:03.239
<v Speaker 2>of millions of dollars? You know, I'm now worth two

0:52:03.280 --> 0:52:06.239
<v Speaker 2>hundred billion dollars. And not only that, I'm going to

0:52:06.320 --> 0:52:11.000
<v Speaker 2>fight on every level using the legal system to really

0:52:11.000 --> 0:52:15.640
<v Speaker 2>clog this process up. Right now, he is being asked

0:52:15.760 --> 0:52:20.360
<v Speaker 2>to sit for a deposition by the SEC in a

0:52:20.440 --> 0:52:23.279
<v Speaker 2>in a related securities cases. He's simply not showing up

0:52:23.280 --> 0:52:27.440
<v Speaker 2>to his depositions, you know, and he's flaunting the SEC.

0:52:27.640 --> 0:52:29.239
<v Speaker 2>He had a tweet the other day which is a

0:52:29.239 --> 0:52:33.000
<v Speaker 2>play on something. He's kind of childish thing he said,

0:52:33.000 --> 0:52:37.759
<v Speaker 2>but he says, the SEC stands for you know, the

0:52:38.200 --> 0:52:41.239
<v Speaker 2>E stands for Elons, So you know S, you know,

0:52:41.680 --> 0:52:44.279
<v Speaker 2>suck Elon's blank. You know that's what the s. You

0:52:44.280 --> 0:52:46.839
<v Speaker 2>know that that was his tweet the other day, And

0:52:47.080 --> 0:52:49.880
<v Speaker 2>you start to realize that in some ways he's he's

0:52:51.520 --> 0:52:54.799
<v Speaker 2>blown past the gravitational pool of accountability. You know, he

0:52:54.880 --> 0:52:58.840
<v Speaker 2>is so rich, he has so many resources. The government

0:52:58.920 --> 0:53:02.440
<v Speaker 2>is so reliant on him with that, you know, he

0:53:02.480 --> 0:53:06.080
<v Speaker 2>doesn't care, and that I think is a crucial understanding

0:53:06.200 --> 0:53:08.360
<v Speaker 2>understanding how he operates.

0:53:09.280 --> 0:53:12.840
<v Speaker 1>Okay, to make the deal. It's not all his own money.

0:53:12.880 --> 0:53:16.400
<v Speaker 1>He raises some Silicon Valley money, raises some Wall Street money.

0:53:17.080 --> 0:53:22.080
<v Speaker 1>Anybody who followed this closely knew that was a bad deal.

0:53:23.520 --> 0:53:26.040
<v Speaker 1>Why did they put the money in and it's been

0:53:26.080 --> 0:53:29.200
<v Speaker 1>proven to be a bad deal. They can't lay the

0:53:29.239 --> 0:53:29.759
<v Speaker 1>money off.

0:53:30.680 --> 0:53:34.400
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he raised what was publicly just goes about seven

0:53:34.480 --> 0:53:38.600
<v Speaker 2>billion dollars of external capital, not including the debt, which

0:53:38.600 --> 0:53:40.080
<v Speaker 2>we can talk about later, which is kind of a

0:53:40.960 --> 0:53:46.400
<v Speaker 2>millstone around the company's neck. But the external this external

0:53:46.480 --> 0:53:49.640
<v Speaker 2>venture capital. Some of it came from Qatar, for example.

0:53:49.680 --> 0:53:53.000
<v Speaker 2>Some of it came from Kingdom holding the Saudi Prince,

0:53:53.040 --> 0:53:58.399
<v Speaker 2>who is effectively overseen by MBS Mohammed bin Salman, who

0:53:58.480 --> 0:54:03.080
<v Speaker 2>rolled over his steak from he already owned past Twitter share,

0:54:03.080 --> 0:54:05.160
<v Speaker 2>so he just rolled over his investment about two billion

0:54:05.200 --> 0:54:08.719
<v Speaker 2>dollars into into Elon's deal. But a lot of these

0:54:08.719 --> 0:54:11.879
<v Speaker 2>were blue like leading venture Capital from the Silicon Valley.

0:54:11.880 --> 0:54:17.000
<v Speaker 2>We're talking about Siquoy Capital, Andreas and Horowitz, you know,

0:54:17.080 --> 0:54:20.960
<v Speaker 2>and these and these firms believe in him as an entrepreneur,

0:54:21.239 --> 0:54:23.920
<v Speaker 2>you know, they they see him as a generational talent.

0:54:24.600 --> 0:54:26.840
<v Speaker 2>He has done so much with SpaceX and with Tesla

0:54:27.440 --> 0:54:29.200
<v Speaker 2>that they're just going to take a punt on this

0:54:29.280 --> 0:54:33.919
<v Speaker 2>Twitter deal. And even if it's a money loser, they're

0:54:33.960 --> 0:54:37.240
<v Speaker 2>still close to him. They've they've it's it's especially buying

0:54:37.280 --> 0:54:40.080
<v Speaker 2>loyalty in a way where on his next deal they

0:54:40.160 --> 0:54:42.440
<v Speaker 2>might come to him. And so I think about this

0:54:42.560 --> 0:54:45.160
<v Speaker 2>message that we reported in the book from Mark Andreesen,

0:54:45.200 --> 0:54:49.720
<v Speaker 2>the head of Andresen Horowitz, who was offered to invest

0:54:49.800 --> 0:54:51.919
<v Speaker 2>I think to initially two hundred million dollars. The number

0:54:52.000 --> 0:54:55.360
<v Speaker 2>changed after but the emails, the messages came out. He's like,

0:54:55.360 --> 0:54:57.080
<v Speaker 2>you know, two hundred million. Sure, we don't even need

0:54:57.160 --> 0:55:00.200
<v Speaker 2>to do dilig just whatever he wants, he gets the check.

0:55:01.239 --> 0:55:04.560
<v Speaker 2>And that's the level of influence he has over these people.

0:55:05.480 --> 0:55:07.880
<v Speaker 2>And if you actually think about this deal, yes, it

0:55:08.080 --> 0:55:11.200
<v Speaker 2>individually it's a money loser for the Sequoia Capitals of

0:55:11.200 --> 0:55:13.560
<v Speaker 2>the world, for the and recent Horowitz of the world,

0:55:14.560 --> 0:55:18.279
<v Speaker 2>but these same firms invested in this ai company that

0:55:18.320 --> 0:55:21.880
<v Speaker 2>Elon spun up off of the data from Twitter Xai.

0:55:23.280 --> 0:55:26.880
<v Speaker 2>And yes, it's funny money, but that company was recently

0:55:27.000 --> 0:55:32.040
<v Speaker 2>valued at fifty billion dollars in a private venture round.

0:55:32.800 --> 0:55:35.440
<v Speaker 2>So you know, if you're looking at the plus minuses

0:55:35.520 --> 0:55:38.719
<v Speaker 2>here Twitter goes down, it's now about eight to nine

0:55:38.719 --> 0:55:41.360
<v Speaker 2>billion dollars if you believe Fidelity's valuation of the company.

0:55:41.880 --> 0:55:44.000
<v Speaker 2>But he's been able to create xai out of zero

0:55:44.320 --> 0:55:47.600
<v Speaker 2>zero to fifty and so you're like, you know, maybe

0:55:47.600 --> 0:55:51.760
<v Speaker 2>they have a point. You know, maybe they've they've gained

0:55:51.760 --> 0:55:54.680
<v Speaker 2>the system enough where they understand that just being close

0:55:54.719 --> 0:55:56.800
<v Speaker 2>to Elon begets more wealth.

0:55:57.719 --> 0:56:00.080
<v Speaker 1>And what about the banks that loan them the money?

0:56:00.800 --> 0:56:04.200
<v Speaker 2>Do they think that? Yeah? Those that's where it gets.

0:56:05.640 --> 0:56:05.920
<v Speaker 1>Rough.

0:56:06.239 --> 0:56:08.480
<v Speaker 2>You know. I have to look back on the actual

0:56:08.680 --> 0:56:13.279
<v Speaker 2>debt that was raised. I think it was gosh, I'm

0:56:13.480 --> 0:56:16.359
<v Speaker 2>off top of mad, like twelve thirteen billion dollars. It

0:56:16.400 --> 0:56:20.879
<v Speaker 2>amounts to a billion dollars in interest payments alone a year,

0:56:22.120 --> 0:56:27.080
<v Speaker 2>and those I mean, it's it's it's it's the worst

0:56:27.120 --> 0:56:30.799
<v Speaker 2>deal since the Financial crisis for these banks. These banks

0:56:30.800 --> 0:56:33.160
<v Speaker 2>are whole, They weren't able to sell on this debt,

0:56:33.760 --> 0:56:40.120
<v Speaker 2>and they're holding these this horrible you know, this horrible debt.

0:56:40.120 --> 0:56:42.600
<v Speaker 2>You know, it's just like they're getting crushed by it.

0:56:43.960 --> 0:56:45.960
<v Speaker 2>These are the Morgan Stanley's, the Moral Think Bank of

0:56:46.000 --> 0:56:51.320
<v Speaker 2>America had some of the debt Mizuno as well, and

0:56:51.719 --> 0:56:55.840
<v Speaker 2>for them, I think the calculus is is somewhat even similar.

0:56:56.000 --> 0:56:59.399
<v Speaker 2>You know, maybe we take this hit, really ugly hit

0:56:59.760 --> 0:57:03.000
<v Speaker 2>on our books from this this Twitter deal. But let's

0:57:03.000 --> 0:57:06.440
<v Speaker 2>say SpaceX goes public in the next couple of years,

0:57:06.680 --> 0:57:08.759
<v Speaker 2>we want to be on that i PO. You know,

0:57:08.840 --> 0:57:11.360
<v Speaker 2>that's a that's a billion dollar i PO for us

0:57:12.320 --> 0:57:15.160
<v Speaker 2>and so and you know what happens with Neuralink and

0:57:15.320 --> 0:57:20.640
<v Speaker 2>Boring Company. You know, they're probably doing the plus minus

0:57:20.680 --> 0:57:23.080
<v Speaker 2>calculation and thinking, actually, they will still come out on top,

0:57:23.120 --> 0:57:26.680
<v Speaker 2>even if even if Twitter is a historically bad deal.

0:57:27.800 --> 0:57:31.200
<v Speaker 1>Okay, one of the reasons he wanted to buy what

0:57:31.400 --> 0:57:37.040
<v Speaker 1>was then called Twitter was because of content moderation. Okay,

0:57:37.160 --> 0:57:40.760
<v Speaker 1>he felt it was too tight. He comes in and

0:57:40.800 --> 0:57:45.160
<v Speaker 1>he immediately blows out everybody involved in content moderation.

0:57:47.240 --> 0:57:47.280
<v Speaker 3>It.

0:57:47.600 --> 0:57:51.400
<v Speaker 2>Uh yeah, he's he's he doesn't hide what he wants

0:57:51.400 --> 0:57:54.400
<v Speaker 2>to do, you know. Uh, he was mad about the

0:57:54.400 --> 0:57:57.720
<v Speaker 2>Babylon Bee being suspended, if that that that kind of

0:57:57.760 --> 0:58:01.880
<v Speaker 2>right wing satirial satirical account. He was upset with Trump

0:58:02.000 --> 0:58:05.000
<v Speaker 2>not being on the platform, even though he technically didn't

0:58:05.120 --> 0:58:08.960
<v Speaker 2>like Trump. He thought it was a bad implication for

0:58:09.000 --> 0:58:11.880
<v Speaker 2>free speech whatever, you know, and we'll talk about what

0:58:11.920 --> 0:58:17.440
<v Speaker 2>he means by free speech. But yeah, well, actually, actually

0:58:17.480 --> 0:58:20.120
<v Speaker 2>what happened was he tried to play nice with some

0:58:20.160 --> 0:58:22.640
<v Speaker 2>of the content moderation folks. You remember this guy Yoel Roth.

0:58:23.640 --> 0:58:26.960
<v Speaker 2>We ended up like severely harassing on the platform, to

0:58:27.000 --> 0:58:31.120
<v Speaker 2>the point where Roth had to sell his home because

0:58:31.120 --> 0:58:35.880
<v Speaker 2>he was being chased in real life by this online harassment.

0:58:37.160 --> 0:58:41.080
<v Speaker 2>They were trying to get along. Elon was taking advice

0:58:41.120 --> 0:58:43.240
<v Speaker 2>from this guy Yoel Roth ahead of Trust and Safety.

0:58:44.240 --> 0:58:48.640
<v Speaker 2>Yoel eventually resigns, I think in the two or three

0:58:48.680 --> 0:58:52.080
<v Speaker 2>weeks after the deal closes, and then kind of all

0:58:52.080 --> 0:58:54.520
<v Speaker 2>hell breaks loose. He goes after you Wel he continues

0:58:54.520 --> 0:58:59.720
<v Speaker 2>to fire Trust and Safety people. But yeah, content moderation

0:59:00.120 --> 0:59:04.400
<v Speaker 2>for Elon was one of his big bugaboobs begaboos, and

0:59:04.480 --> 0:59:07.240
<v Speaker 2>like it still is to this day. You know, he's

0:59:08.120 --> 0:59:11.880
<v Speaker 2>he still thinks that Twitter was or the previous administration

0:59:12.120 --> 0:59:18.600
<v Speaker 2>was influenced by progressive woke wokeism or whatever, and that

0:59:18.720 --> 0:59:22.919
<v Speaker 2>everything flowed from that, and uh yeah, now you kind

0:59:22.920 --> 0:59:26.000
<v Speaker 2>of that's that's kind of how you can understand or

0:59:26.080 --> 0:59:28.080
<v Speaker 2>the content that's on Twitter now these days.

0:59:28.440 --> 0:59:31.720
<v Speaker 1>Okay, it's not only the United States of America. There's

0:59:31.760 --> 0:59:33.480
<v Speaker 1>been the recent thing with Brazil.

0:59:34.600 --> 0:59:35.960
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, is he just.

0:59:37.760 --> 0:59:41.600
<v Speaker 1>Flying naked or is this is it at some point

0:59:41.760 --> 0:59:46.720
<v Speaker 1>with no content moderation team in place? Is it gonna

0:59:46.840 --> 0:59:52.800
<v Speaker 1>ultimately impact Twitter just as a business negatively in a

0:59:52.960 --> 0:59:55.880
<v Speaker 1>huge way. I Mean, we had the situation in Brazil

0:59:56.480 --> 0:59:59.560
<v Speaker 1>and the person said, I'm standing up for everybody else

0:59:59.560 --> 1:00:00.640
<v Speaker 1>who will stand up?

1:00:01.440 --> 1:00:04.760
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So a couple of things there. There is still

1:00:04.760 --> 1:00:06.920
<v Speaker 2>a little bit of content moderation. There's automated processes in

1:00:06.960 --> 1:00:11.080
<v Speaker 2>place that at at X there's still people. There's there's

1:00:11.120 --> 1:00:14.360
<v Speaker 2>still some humans in the building. He's gotten rid of

1:00:14.360 --> 1:00:18.120
<v Speaker 2>a lot of them, but there's still some around with

1:00:18.240 --> 1:00:21.040
<v Speaker 2>content moderation. A couple there's there's a couple things you

1:00:21.080 --> 1:00:23.680
<v Speaker 2>have to understand, which is that advertisers have been driven

1:00:23.720 --> 1:00:26.439
<v Speaker 2>away by the lack of content moderation, right like it's

1:00:26.480 --> 1:00:32.600
<v Speaker 2>a It's caused major brands to leave or spend less money,

1:00:32.760 --> 1:00:35.320
<v Speaker 2>because why would they want their content to be next

1:00:35.360 --> 1:00:39.080
<v Speaker 2>to a white nationalist who's been let back on the platform.

1:00:39.120 --> 1:00:42.640
<v Speaker 2>Why would they want it next to tweets about Nazism

1:00:43.080 --> 1:00:48.200
<v Speaker 2>or you know, videos of violence, which are somewhat commonplace

1:00:48.240 --> 1:00:53.680
<v Speaker 2>on the platform. Now, the Brazil situation is very interesting

1:00:53.720 --> 1:00:58.200
<v Speaker 2>to me, and it goes back to Elon's political alliances

1:00:58.240 --> 1:01:03.000
<v Speaker 2>around the world. Elon was friends with Jayra Bolsonaro, the

1:01:03.040 --> 1:01:08.520
<v Speaker 2>previous president in Brazil who was voted out essentially and

1:01:08.560 --> 1:01:16.400
<v Speaker 2>replaced by the leftist president. But in doing you know,

1:01:16.440 --> 1:01:17.760
<v Speaker 2>and then there were they had their own kind of

1:01:17.840 --> 1:01:22.320
<v Speaker 2>January sixth moment where supporters of Bolsonaro storm government buildings

1:01:22.360 --> 1:01:26.240
<v Speaker 2>in Brazil, which led to these decisions by the courts

1:01:26.240 --> 1:01:32.240
<v Speaker 2>down in Brazil to essentially demand that Twitter ex remove

1:01:33.400 --> 1:01:37.120
<v Speaker 2>these voices that caused for people to question the election

1:01:37.600 --> 1:01:39.480
<v Speaker 2>and cause this kind of unrest. You know, we can

1:01:39.520 --> 1:01:42.720
<v Speaker 2>debate whether or not it's good for any government body

1:01:42.720 --> 1:01:46.280
<v Speaker 2>to get involved in online speech, but that was the

1:01:46.360 --> 1:01:50.360
<v Speaker 2>law of the land in Brazil, and Elon decided to

1:01:50.400 --> 1:01:55.880
<v Speaker 2>fight that in part because he was aligned with, you know,

1:01:55.920 --> 1:01:59.160
<v Speaker 2>the old president, and he made a huge think about

1:01:59.160 --> 1:02:02.040
<v Speaker 2>this to the point where X was pulled out of

1:02:02.080 --> 1:02:05.880
<v Speaker 2>the country for a couple of weeks and then ultimately folded.

1:02:05.920 --> 1:02:07.800
<v Speaker 2>You know, he complied with the orders and now the

1:02:09.880 --> 1:02:13.120
<v Speaker 2>platform is back in the country. He'd loved to make

1:02:13.640 --> 1:02:16.920
<v Speaker 2>if you analyze this case, he loved to make himself.

1:02:17.080 --> 1:02:19.080
<v Speaker 2>He loves to make himself kind of the free speech

1:02:19.160 --> 1:02:22.280
<v Speaker 2>advocate or seen as the free speech advocate. But let's

1:02:22.280 --> 1:02:24.640
<v Speaker 2>compare this to what's happening in India, for example, where

1:02:24.640 --> 1:02:27.479
<v Speaker 2>he's very close with the Prime Minister there in Arender Modi.

1:02:28.000 --> 1:02:32.400
<v Speaker 2>The Modi government has demanded that Twitter sensor content regularly.

1:02:32.640 --> 1:02:34.880
<v Speaker 2>I think of something like a documentary that was put

1:02:34.960 --> 1:02:38.880
<v Speaker 2>up by the BBC about Modi himself. It was put

1:02:38.920 --> 1:02:42.320
<v Speaker 2>on YouTube and shared across platforms. You know, Twitter complied

1:02:42.360 --> 1:02:45.960
<v Speaker 2>with those takedown orders. There was no standing up for

1:02:46.000 --> 1:02:50.760
<v Speaker 2>free speech in that case by Elon and opposing that

1:02:50.760 --> 1:02:54.960
<v Speaker 2>that government takedown requests. He complied very easily. He's complied

1:02:55.000 --> 1:02:57.760
<v Speaker 2>with government takedown requests in Turkey, for example, where he's

1:02:58.080 --> 1:03:03.320
<v Speaker 2>aligned with Erdawan. So this kind of free speech mantra

1:03:04.360 --> 1:03:09.320
<v Speaker 2>that he purports is very selectively applied and really depends

1:03:09.360 --> 1:03:13.320
<v Speaker 2>on the market who he's aligned with. As well as

1:03:13.320 --> 1:03:14.920
<v Speaker 2>his own kind of personal interests.

1:03:22.520 --> 1:03:26.600
<v Speaker 1>Okay, since we're doing a three D view on Elon. Yeah,

1:03:26.760 --> 1:03:30.439
<v Speaker 1>just one thing, a little lose gravel here. He makes

1:03:30.480 --> 1:03:33.280
<v Speaker 1>all these deals with these other car companies that they

1:03:33.280 --> 1:03:37.680
<v Speaker 1>can use his superchargers. Then he wipes out his complete

1:03:37.720 --> 1:03:41.120
<v Speaker 1>supercharger team. What was going on there?

1:03:43.240 --> 1:03:46.160
<v Speaker 2>Your guess is as good as mine. He was He

1:03:46.240 --> 1:03:50.280
<v Speaker 2>often he sometimes does this where he decides like there

1:03:50.320 --> 1:03:53.520
<v Speaker 2>needs to be a kicking the ass for a part

1:03:53.520 --> 1:03:56.600
<v Speaker 2>of his company, and he'll like severely jolt it, you know.

1:03:56.640 --> 1:03:58.200
<v Speaker 2>And again we go back to that idea of if

1:03:58.280 --> 1:04:00.919
<v Speaker 2>I if I break it, I can always bring him back.

1:04:00.960 --> 1:04:03.360
<v Speaker 2>I can always reintroduce it. And actually he did that.

1:04:03.440 --> 1:04:06.920
<v Speaker 2>He fired his whole supercharging team and they actually ended

1:04:07.000 --> 1:04:11.480
<v Speaker 2>up bringing a lot of them back, which he's done

1:04:11.480 --> 1:04:15.400
<v Speaker 2>this throughout his career. But if you're if you're GM,

1:04:15.760 --> 1:04:18.560
<v Speaker 2>if you're Chevy, if you're even Rivian, you know you're

1:04:18.720 --> 1:04:22.080
<v Speaker 2>you're probably raising your eyebrows and being like, damn, we really,

1:04:23.360 --> 1:04:25.640
<v Speaker 2>you know, do we want to reevaluate this relationship? We

1:04:25.680 --> 1:04:28.560
<v Speaker 2>got in bed with our main competitor and he is

1:04:28.680 --> 1:04:32.520
<v Speaker 2>completely erratic and we don't know why he did it.

1:04:32.640 --> 1:04:36.040
<v Speaker 2>Still like was it because he one day he woke

1:04:36.120 --> 1:04:37.800
<v Speaker 2>up and was like, actually, you know what, I don't

1:04:37.840 --> 1:04:40.960
<v Speaker 2>think I want my competitors to use my Like why

1:04:40.960 --> 1:04:43.360
<v Speaker 2>would I give away my secret sauce? You know, let

1:04:43.360 --> 1:04:46.520
<v Speaker 2>them build their own they you know, this is that's capitalism.

1:04:46.520 --> 1:04:51.720
<v Speaker 2>I should be able to control my own chargers. But

1:04:51.800 --> 1:04:56.760
<v Speaker 2>this kind of erratic nature and you know, unexplained decisions

1:04:56.840 --> 1:05:00.880
<v Speaker 2>are part and parcel of him. Uh and it is

1:05:01.360 --> 1:05:03.400
<v Speaker 2>it is fascinating to watch it play out over and

1:05:03.440 --> 1:05:07.880
<v Speaker 2>over again as a reporter. But yeah, if i'm if

1:05:07.920 --> 1:05:12.240
<v Speaker 2>I'm Mary Bara a GM, I'm I'm watching this with

1:05:12.240 --> 1:05:16.480
<v Speaker 2>with Rai's eyebrows and wondering what's going on and just

1:05:17.120 --> 1:05:19.480
<v Speaker 2>always seems like a master of five alarm fire with him.

1:05:20.200 --> 1:05:25.200
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so he'sh Twitter, he starts bringing people in. If

1:05:25.200 --> 1:05:28.040
<v Speaker 1>you don't tell him what he wants to hear, he

1:05:28.080 --> 1:05:32.000
<v Speaker 1>immediately gets rid of you. So is this also a

1:05:32.080 --> 1:05:35.120
<v Speaker 1>characteristic of his that he surrounds himself with the y

1:05:35.200 --> 1:05:37.040
<v Speaker 1>s people can hear a contrary opinion.

1:05:40.320 --> 1:05:43.760
<v Speaker 2>So it's a bit more nuanced. Actually in the book

1:05:43.800 --> 1:05:46.240
<v Speaker 2>we go into this a little bit, but one on

1:05:46.240 --> 1:05:49.640
<v Speaker 2>one he can actually be receptive to criticism and as

1:05:49.640 --> 1:05:52.120
<v Speaker 2>long as you have the domain expertise, you have the

1:05:52.200 --> 1:05:55.919
<v Speaker 2>numbers to back it up, the details. You know, if

1:05:55.920 --> 1:05:59.240
<v Speaker 2>he asks you a question, you're able to answer it.

1:05:59.400 --> 1:06:04.520
<v Speaker 2>And I the what we talked about. He likes to

1:06:04.520 --> 1:06:07.040
<v Speaker 2>break things down to what he called first principles, like

1:06:07.160 --> 1:06:09.840
<v Speaker 2>how do things operate? And if you're able to explain

1:06:09.920 --> 1:06:12.120
<v Speaker 2>things to him in those first principles, he'll appreciate that.

1:06:12.920 --> 1:06:15.920
<v Speaker 2>But what he doesn't tolerate is being criticized in a

1:06:15.920 --> 1:06:19.560
<v Speaker 2>group setting or being made to look like he is

1:06:22.880 --> 1:06:26.680
<v Speaker 2>dumb in a group setting. Essentially, we opened the book

1:06:26.760 --> 1:06:30.880
<v Speaker 2>with this with this instance. Actually was well, this is

1:06:30.880 --> 1:06:33.280
<v Speaker 2>a one on one thing, so it's kind of contradictory

1:06:33.280 --> 1:06:35.320
<v Speaker 2>to what I said, But of this instance of a

1:06:35.400 --> 1:06:41.200
<v Speaker 2>data scientist challenging him on why he tweeted out that

1:06:41.240 --> 1:06:45.360
<v Speaker 2>conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi. Do you remember that, yes? Yeah,

1:06:45.400 --> 1:06:49.320
<v Speaker 2>So Paul Pelosi was attacked Nancy Pelosi's husband on far

1:06:49.400 --> 1:06:52.200
<v Speaker 2>right media. It became this kind of rumor that he

1:06:52.280 --> 1:06:57.960
<v Speaker 2>was attacked by a jilted lover, and Elon actually shared

1:06:57.960 --> 1:07:02.440
<v Speaker 2>that came within days after the his acquisition. He shared

1:07:02.480 --> 1:07:09.920
<v Speaker 2>that conspiracy theory essentially and this data scientist who's already

1:07:09.920 --> 1:07:12.480
<v Speaker 2>going to quit, manages to get a one on one

1:07:12.480 --> 1:07:15.240
<v Speaker 2>meeting with Elon and tell him. He goes in the

1:07:15.280 --> 1:07:19.840
<v Speaker 2>meeting with the hope that he could maybe change him

1:07:19.920 --> 1:07:22.640
<v Speaker 2>or change his perspective. And this is a data scientist

1:07:22.920 --> 1:07:27.240
<v Speaker 2>who had studied misinformation and how it spreads on social platforms.

1:07:27.960 --> 1:07:30.240
<v Speaker 2>And he says, like, look, I can't believe you would

1:07:30.240 --> 1:07:34.400
<v Speaker 2>believe you know, you're in like the top tenth percentile

1:07:34.720 --> 1:07:37.840
<v Speaker 2>of folks who would fall for something this ridiculous, Like

1:07:37.880 --> 1:07:40.200
<v Speaker 2>how could you believe that you really need to like

1:07:40.880 --> 1:07:45.320
<v Speaker 2>understand online sources better and like how information flows and

1:07:45.520 --> 1:07:48.680
<v Speaker 2>really be more skeptical of what you read online. And

1:07:48.760 --> 1:07:51.520
<v Speaker 2>like they get into a shouting match. Elon says, fuck you,

1:07:51.520 --> 1:07:55.240
<v Speaker 2>you know, and the guy was going to quit anyway

1:07:55.280 --> 1:07:59.360
<v Speaker 2>with like you know, fires him, and you start to

1:07:59.400 --> 1:08:02.640
<v Speaker 2>realize that, yes, he doesn't he doesn't like to be

1:08:02.720 --> 1:08:05.560
<v Speaker 2>challenged very often. And there are other scenes of the

1:08:05.600 --> 1:08:07.560
<v Speaker 2>book where he fires people on the spot as well.

1:08:10.000 --> 1:08:12.600
<v Speaker 2>And we go back to, you know, operating on gout instinct.

1:08:15.800 --> 1:08:17.640
<v Speaker 2>It's worked for him in the past, It's worked for

1:08:17.720 --> 1:08:20.479
<v Speaker 2>him at Tesla. You know, he has worked people to

1:08:20.520 --> 1:08:22.519
<v Speaker 2>the bone, and if they don't get the things he

1:08:22.560 --> 1:08:24.880
<v Speaker 2>wants done for him, he'll just find the next person

1:08:24.920 --> 1:08:30.800
<v Speaker 2>who will. And he's built these major companies off those techniques,

1:08:31.000 --> 1:08:33.840
<v Speaker 2>and he has simply applied those to Twitter. And you

1:08:33.880 --> 1:08:35.360
<v Speaker 2>see that over and over again in the book.

1:08:36.400 --> 1:08:41.360
<v Speaker 1>Okay, he starts taking cost cutting to an extreme level.

1:08:41.840 --> 1:08:44.800
<v Speaker 1>You talk about getting rid of janitorial services. You talk

1:08:44.840 --> 1:08:49.200
<v Speaker 1>about him actually ripping out a server. Is this like

1:08:49.320 --> 1:08:52.400
<v Speaker 1>an emotional thing that he is setting. Let me put

1:08:52.400 --> 1:08:58.160
<v Speaker 1>it differently, is he setting an example or he's for

1:08:58.200 --> 1:09:00.400
<v Speaker 1>a guy who's worth two hundred north of two hundred billion.

1:09:00.840 --> 1:09:03.160
<v Speaker 1>Is he really trying to save every bedding?

1:09:04.920 --> 1:09:07.760
<v Speaker 2>We had this bit of reporting even before Twitter at

1:09:07.800 --> 1:09:13.000
<v Speaker 2>Tesla and one it was during the the I think

1:09:13.040 --> 1:09:16.880
<v Speaker 2>the model why ramp up, you know, one of the

1:09:16.960 --> 1:09:22.639
<v Speaker 2>crossover SUVs whatever, And he decides to motivate people by

1:09:22.720 --> 1:09:25.479
<v Speaker 2>removing the cereal from the offices and the factories. This

1:09:26.040 --> 1:09:29.000
<v Speaker 2>free cereal that people get, it's the only free food

1:09:29.000 --> 1:09:33.760
<v Speaker 2>that they get. And everyone's just lays like up in arms.

1:09:33.760 --> 1:09:35.920
<v Speaker 2>They're like, you're gonna starve the people in the factory

1:09:35.920 --> 1:09:38.240
<v Speaker 2>who are working for you, who like literally rely on

1:09:38.240 --> 1:09:41.920
<v Speaker 2>this for breakfast. And sustenance. And what are you saving here?

1:09:42.040 --> 1:09:46.000
<v Speaker 2>You're saving how much are Lucky charms? You know, mass

1:09:46.040 --> 1:09:48.759
<v Speaker 2>produce Lucky charms, you know, a thousand couple thousand bucks.

1:09:49.600 --> 1:09:51.839
<v Speaker 2>But it's for him, it's proving a point, right, it's

1:09:52.400 --> 1:09:55.639
<v Speaker 2>if I can endure this pain, you can endure this pain,

1:09:56.200 --> 1:09:58.519
<v Speaker 2>and I am willing to cut whatever we need to

1:09:58.560 --> 1:10:03.200
<v Speaker 2>cut to make this company successful, whether that's lucky charms,

1:10:03.400 --> 1:10:09.639
<v Speaker 2>whether that's servers, whether that's toilet paper, which I keep

1:10:09.680 --> 1:10:12.600
<v Speaker 2>referencing but actually happened. They didn't have toilet paper the

1:10:12.640 --> 1:10:17.240
<v Speaker 2>offices for a bit. But it's like a it's a

1:10:17.240 --> 1:10:22.840
<v Speaker 2>psychological thing, almost right. And what he believes is he's

1:10:22.880 --> 1:10:24.599
<v Speaker 2>going to be the one enduring this pain as well.

1:10:24.640 --> 1:10:27.160
<v Speaker 2>He'll be the one sleeping at the factory if he

1:10:27.240 --> 1:10:30.080
<v Speaker 2>can not eat and be on the factory line or

1:10:30.080 --> 1:10:31.679
<v Speaker 2>be on the factory floor. And if he can sleep

1:10:31.680 --> 1:10:34.720
<v Speaker 2>in the office, which he did set up be set

1:10:34.760 --> 1:10:38.720
<v Speaker 2>up a bed in one of the conference rooms, then

1:10:38.760 --> 1:10:41.600
<v Speaker 2>you like individual employees should be able to tolerate that

1:10:41.640 --> 1:10:44.760
<v Speaker 2>pain too. Now on the flip side of that, you know,

1:10:44.800 --> 1:10:46.720
<v Speaker 2>I talk to a lot of people about this, and

1:10:46.840 --> 1:10:49.880
<v Speaker 2>it does motivate a certain amount of people. But then

1:10:50.000 --> 1:10:52.120
<v Speaker 2>these people start to realize, like the upside for them,

1:10:52.600 --> 1:10:54.320
<v Speaker 2>like what is it in Like what do they get?

1:10:54.360 --> 1:10:59.000
<v Speaker 2>They get a couple shares, they get a good salary,

1:10:59.600 --> 1:11:03.960
<v Speaker 2>but his upside is, you know, millions of shares that

1:11:04.040 --> 1:11:05.920
<v Speaker 2>could increase in value. So he's the one seeing the

1:11:05.960 --> 1:11:10.760
<v Speaker 2>upside from the enduring of pain by these folks. And

1:11:10.800 --> 1:11:13.679
<v Speaker 2>whereas you know, the individual contributor to the individual employee

1:11:13.720 --> 1:11:17.880
<v Speaker 2>isn't seeing the same kind of payoff. I guess he

1:11:17.880 --> 1:11:21.920
<v Speaker 2>would argue, you know, he's made many people at Tesla millionaires,

1:11:21.960 --> 1:11:26.720
<v Speaker 2>but you know, the cutting has always been a part

1:11:26.760 --> 1:11:30.639
<v Speaker 2>of him and his identity, and it's something he's now

1:11:30.680 --> 1:11:32.479
<v Speaker 2>taking into to the White House.

1:11:33.720 --> 1:11:39.519
<v Speaker 1>Okay, he doesn't pay all these severance fees, etc. What

1:11:39.720 --> 1:11:42.960
<v Speaker 1>is the status of the people were owed money, both

1:11:43.000 --> 1:11:46.880
<v Speaker 1>in terms of severance, any stocked payouts, even people are

1:11:46.960 --> 1:11:50.519
<v Speaker 1>owed money for office space. Are those people continuing to

1:11:50.560 --> 1:11:53.200
<v Speaker 1>be stiffed or did anybody ever get paid?

1:11:54.479 --> 1:11:56.960
<v Speaker 2>So there've been a series of lawsuits that have been filed.

1:11:57.160 --> 1:11:59.880
<v Speaker 2>When we talk about the employees, there's thousands of employees

1:12:00.080 --> 1:12:03.960
<v Speaker 2>that are currently awaiting arbitration. A lot of them had

1:12:04.040 --> 1:12:10.160
<v Speaker 2>arbitration clauses in their contracts. So they're fighting essentially to

1:12:10.200 --> 1:12:15.880
<v Speaker 2>get that severance paid to them, which is being overseen

1:12:15.920 --> 1:12:21.040
<v Speaker 2>by a couple of different legal firms. But Elon has

1:12:21.080 --> 1:12:23.800
<v Speaker 2>not relented. He has not signaled that he's just going

1:12:23.840 --> 1:12:25.800
<v Speaker 2>to simply settle and pay these things. He's going to fight,

1:12:26.000 --> 1:12:30.960
<v Speaker 2>which ultimately may cost him more, or you know, maybe

1:12:31.040 --> 1:12:33.200
<v Speaker 2>his calculation is that some people would simply give up

1:12:33.560 --> 1:12:37.599
<v Speaker 2>and forget about it. He's taking the same tact with

1:12:38.840 --> 1:12:41.479
<v Speaker 2>the four executives that he fired in like literally the

1:12:41.479 --> 1:12:46.040
<v Speaker 2>minutes after taking over, he fired the CEO, chief legal officer,

1:12:46.800 --> 1:12:51.000
<v Speaker 2>General counsel, and chief financial officer. That was literally his

1:12:51.000 --> 1:12:53.160
<v Speaker 2>first action upon taking over the company in October twenty

1:12:53.160 --> 1:12:57.040
<v Speaker 2>twenty two. And all these these four executives were do

1:12:57.200 --> 1:13:02.040
<v Speaker 2>golden parachutes on a change of on a transfer power, which, uh,

1:13:02.360 --> 1:13:04.679
<v Speaker 2>you know, any kind of merger or anything, they would

1:13:04.680 --> 1:13:08.639
<v Speaker 2>do these golden parachutes, which amounted to about I think

1:13:08.640 --> 1:13:10.519
<v Speaker 2>it's around one hundred and twenty million dollars total for

1:13:10.560 --> 1:13:14.720
<v Speaker 2>all four of them combined. So he's he's fired them

1:13:14.840 --> 1:13:18.960
<v Speaker 2>for cause, which allowed him to say, actually, you know,

1:13:19.000 --> 1:13:20.880
<v Speaker 2>I fired you for cause, Therefore you don't deserve your

1:13:20.880 --> 1:13:23.400
<v Speaker 2>golden parachutes or you're you're not, I don't have to

1:13:23.400 --> 1:13:26.600
<v Speaker 2>pay you those And of course those executives sued.

1:13:27.200 --> 1:13:27.679
<v Speaker 1>And.

1:13:29.240 --> 1:13:31.879
<v Speaker 2>You know, now they're paying millions of dollars to lawyers

1:13:31.920 --> 1:13:35.719
<v Speaker 2>to litigate that, and eventually they'll probably be a settlement

1:13:37.200 --> 1:13:40.599
<v Speaker 2>where those executives get tired and they maybe don't get

1:13:40.600 --> 1:13:44.400
<v Speaker 2>their full package, but they you know, they get some

1:13:44.520 --> 1:13:50.559
<v Speaker 2>part of it. And that's kind of his strategy. You know,

1:13:50.600 --> 1:13:54.720
<v Speaker 2>with rent as well, he stopped paying rent just you know,

1:13:55.120 --> 1:13:58.439
<v Speaker 2>just didn't write the checks and continued to occupy the

1:13:58.439 --> 1:14:02.200
<v Speaker 2>buildings until the real estate companies were forced to come

1:14:02.240 --> 1:14:06.880
<v Speaker 2>to table and negotiate with him. We often think about

1:14:06.920 --> 1:14:09.479
<v Speaker 2>like too big to fail, and we use that with banks.

1:14:10.200 --> 1:14:17.599
<v Speaker 2>Obviously the financial crisis. There's a quality of Elon. There's

1:14:17.640 --> 1:14:19.479
<v Speaker 2>a quality of that to Elon as well. You know,

1:14:19.600 --> 1:14:23.240
<v Speaker 2>this idea that he is too big that people have

1:14:23.280 --> 1:14:26.559
<v Speaker 2>to play on his terms. He's not going to simply

1:14:26.600 --> 1:14:30.559
<v Speaker 2>do things because he signed a contract or because he's

1:14:30.640 --> 1:14:34.200
<v Speaker 2>legally obligated to. But he can bend the rules and

1:14:34.240 --> 1:14:36.760
<v Speaker 2>get people to play on his playing field if he

1:14:36.760 --> 1:14:39.480
<v Speaker 2>wants to, and he's done that constantly with Twitter.

1:14:39.600 --> 1:14:42.439
<v Speaker 1>Okay, changes the name of the company, puts up a

1:14:42.560 --> 1:14:45.280
<v Speaker 1>huge sign which breaks the law, and has to take

1:14:45.320 --> 1:14:50.600
<v Speaker 1>it down. Is he aware that he's breaking laws and

1:14:50.680 --> 1:14:54.360
<v Speaker 1>regulations or is he just doing whatever he's doing because

1:14:54.400 --> 1:14:58.480
<v Speaker 1>he's blind to the rest of the world.

1:15:00.000 --> 1:15:02.080
<v Speaker 2>I think he just simply doesn't care. I mean his lawyer,

1:15:02.080 --> 1:15:04.400
<v Speaker 2>we had we quote his lawyer in the book. You know,

1:15:05.080 --> 1:15:09.960
<v Speaker 2>Elon does not care about FTC consent decrees. Now that

1:15:10.040 --> 1:15:17.200
<v Speaker 2>applies to building permits, it applies to whatever rules governed signage.

1:15:18.240 --> 1:15:25.200
<v Speaker 2>In San Francisco, the company, the city sent inspectors to

1:15:25.400 --> 1:15:29.800
<v Speaker 2>inspect the so called Twitter hotel in the building where

1:15:29.800 --> 1:15:32.200
<v Speaker 2>he built these hotel rooms for employees to stand because

1:15:32.240 --> 1:15:34.799
<v Speaker 2>he didn't want to pay for out of time employees

1:15:34.800 --> 1:15:37.559
<v Speaker 2>to stay in hotels, so they would sleep in conference

1:15:37.640 --> 1:15:41.840
<v Speaker 2>rooms on mixshift beds and shower in the office and

1:15:41.880 --> 1:15:45.080
<v Speaker 2>that kind of thing. So the city set investigators and

1:15:45.200 --> 1:15:47.800
<v Speaker 2>like you know, they continued to operate and have people

1:15:47.840 --> 1:15:53.320
<v Speaker 2>stay there. He just doesn't care, you know. And that

1:15:53.479 --> 1:15:58.479
<v Speaker 2>is a again going back to accountability. That's just a

1:15:58.560 --> 1:16:01.800
<v Speaker 2>key understanding that he has. He is bigger than any

1:16:01.880 --> 1:16:04.000
<v Speaker 2>law or any regulator or any agency.

1:16:04.800 --> 1:16:08.320
<v Speaker 1>If we pull the lens all the way back. Those

1:16:08.360 --> 1:16:12.160
<v Speaker 1>of us who were active on Twitter and we're aware

1:16:12.200 --> 1:16:16.720
<v Speaker 1>of the changes he made, expected a the service to

1:16:16.800 --> 1:16:19.000
<v Speaker 1>go down. There were a couple of hiccups, but nothing

1:16:19.080 --> 1:16:23.880
<v Speaker 1>significant and for the whole thing to collapse on some level.

1:16:24.240 --> 1:16:29.160
<v Speaker 1>It has not collapsed. So on some level do we say, hey,

1:16:29.320 --> 1:16:32.800
<v Speaker 1>by cutting the vast majority of employeing and costs, he.

1:16:32.960 --> 1:16:37.640
<v Speaker 2>Was right, You're right in that it hasn't collapsed, but

1:16:37.680 --> 1:16:41.960
<v Speaker 2>there's been some pretty severe outages. Australia in December twenty

1:16:41.960 --> 1:16:44.120
<v Speaker 2>twenty two was without it for a couple of days.

1:16:46.240 --> 1:16:48.160
<v Speaker 2>You know, he's taking down a lot of the tools

1:16:48.160 --> 1:16:53.160
<v Speaker 2>that oversee content moderation that have allowed you know, there

1:16:54.560 --> 1:16:56.599
<v Speaker 2>the bought problem is still a major issue, you know,

1:16:56.680 --> 1:16:57.960
<v Speaker 2>and there were there were a lot of tools that

1:16:57.960 --> 1:17:02.080
<v Speaker 2>he took out that were overseeing that. When we talk

1:17:02.120 --> 1:17:04.400
<v Speaker 2>about cuts, it's not just the platform itself, it's the

1:17:04.400 --> 1:17:08.640
<v Speaker 2>people that also oversee advertising and what happened with advertising

1:17:08.760 --> 1:17:14.799
<v Speaker 2>at the company. It's completely cratered. So yes, I think

1:17:15.360 --> 1:17:20.880
<v Speaker 2>at the time, all these speculator all the speculation about

1:17:21.040 --> 1:17:25.080
<v Speaker 2>Twitter collapsing after he did all the layoffs, I think

1:17:25.160 --> 1:17:30.880
<v Speaker 2>was a bit premature, and Twitter over the years had

1:17:30.880 --> 1:17:33.759
<v Speaker 2>built up a pretty robust infrastructure to keep itself online.

1:17:34.120 --> 1:17:36.920
<v Speaker 2>You know, obviously we all remember the days of the

1:17:36.960 --> 1:17:39.960
<v Speaker 2>fail well and you know those error messages that we

1:17:40.040 --> 1:17:43.280
<v Speaker 2>we get or during big events like the Super Bowl,

1:17:43.680 --> 1:17:46.160
<v Speaker 2>the site crashing or not the super Bowl, but the

1:17:46.240 --> 1:17:50.679
<v Speaker 2>World Cup and stuff like that. But by and large,

1:17:50.720 --> 1:17:53.400
<v Speaker 2>it's it's a bit a pretty robust system that Eleono

1:17:53.479 --> 1:17:55.519
<v Speaker 2>has been able to take over, and so it stayed online.

1:17:56.560 --> 1:17:59.320
<v Speaker 2>That being said, you know, it doesn't guarantee that it's

1:17:59.320 --> 1:18:04.839
<v Speaker 2>going to stay online forever. And who knows. I reserve judgment,

1:18:04.840 --> 1:18:05.880
<v Speaker 2>I guess, is what I'll say to that.

1:18:06.479 --> 1:18:09.360
<v Speaker 1>Okay, he has this vision of turning what is now

1:18:09.439 --> 1:18:14.439
<v Speaker 1>called next into a universal payment system, you know, akin

1:18:14.479 --> 1:18:17.680
<v Speaker 1>to what they have in China, in light of what

1:18:17.720 --> 1:18:21.040
<v Speaker 1>you were talking about self driving cars, et cetera. Is

1:18:21.080 --> 1:18:24.160
<v Speaker 1>this complete fantasy? He says? You know, that's what he

1:18:24.200 --> 1:18:27.360
<v Speaker 1>wanted to do with PayPal. Legend is that's why he

1:18:27.479 --> 1:18:30.880
<v Speaker 1>was squeezed out. Should we pay any heed to that?

1:18:33.600 --> 1:18:36.599
<v Speaker 2>Elan is a man that makes big, big promises. That's

1:18:36.600 --> 1:18:40.439
<v Speaker 2>been his whole career. He's going to get humans to Mars.

1:18:40.720 --> 1:18:46.080
<v Speaker 2>He's going to defeat climate change. He is going to

1:18:46.120 --> 1:18:48.880
<v Speaker 2>build the everything up, and that's what he has pitched

1:18:48.880 --> 1:18:51.559
<v Speaker 2>to investors. That's why he was in our book. We

1:18:51.600 --> 1:18:54.000
<v Speaker 2>go over as some of the projections that he had

1:18:54.080 --> 1:18:56.840
<v Speaker 2>for three years from now, five years from now, ten

1:18:56.920 --> 1:19:03.120
<v Speaker 2>years from now, and some of those numbers were, you know, fantastical,

1:19:03.240 --> 1:19:06.920
<v Speaker 2>you know, they were just fantasy looking at it now.

1:19:07.880 --> 1:19:10.320
<v Speaker 2>And he sold investors on this idea that he could

1:19:11.000 --> 1:19:14.040
<v Speaker 2>build the weed Chat of the US, you know, a

1:19:14.080 --> 1:19:18.040
<v Speaker 2>place where you could watch videos, you would hail your cab,

1:19:18.160 --> 1:19:21.320
<v Speaker 2>you would order your food, you would have your bank.

1:19:22.400 --> 1:19:25.160
<v Speaker 2>And by and large, that vision has not been achieved.

1:19:25.280 --> 1:19:27.879
<v Speaker 2>You know, they've been still working on those money transmitter

1:19:27.960 --> 1:19:34.240
<v Speaker 2>licenses in all those states. You know, there's really you

1:19:34.280 --> 1:19:36.880
<v Speaker 2>can't pay for anything with X at this point in time.

1:19:37.880 --> 1:19:42.799
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, it's it's again these promises that he continues

1:19:42.800 --> 1:19:46.160
<v Speaker 2>to make, and that's how he's operated as companies. It's

1:19:46.200 --> 1:19:48.439
<v Speaker 2>always on this idea of a vision, this mission that

1:19:48.479 --> 1:19:53.040
<v Speaker 2>we need it to and for for X, that mission

1:19:53.080 --> 1:19:55.880
<v Speaker 2>has been the everything app mean, by the way, he

1:19:56.280 --> 1:19:59.720
<v Speaker 2>hasn't mentioned that very recently. If you notice how we

1:19:59.760 --> 1:20:02.240
<v Speaker 2>talked about it, he doesn't really talk about payments anymore.

1:20:02.240 --> 1:20:04.960
<v Speaker 2>He doesn't talk about the everything app so maybe that

1:20:05.000 --> 1:20:07.920
<v Speaker 2>was a convenient message for him to raise capital at

1:20:07.960 --> 1:20:12.600
<v Speaker 2>the time. But yeah, I guess that's kind of a

1:20:12.640 --> 1:20:14.639
<v Speaker 2>wait and see moment still as well.

1:20:22.200 --> 1:20:25.400
<v Speaker 1>Okay, let's talk about Linda Yakarno. So we read all

1:20:25.439 --> 1:20:28.920
<v Speaker 1>about this stuff. I'm into a small conference where she

1:20:29.040 --> 1:20:37.000
<v Speaker 1>was spoke very unimpressive, a sales lady at best. You know,

1:20:37.200 --> 1:20:40.559
<v Speaker 1>the news was all about how much power she would

1:20:40.600 --> 1:20:42.479
<v Speaker 1>be given. I mean, I got to meet the woman

1:20:42.520 --> 1:20:44.360
<v Speaker 1>for three minutes to know you're not going to put

1:20:44.360 --> 1:20:47.479
<v Speaker 1>her in control? What was going on in with you?

1:20:47.640 --> 1:20:48.559
<v Speaker 1>Linda yak Arino.

1:20:50.960 --> 1:20:53.240
<v Speaker 2>Lynda Yakarino has passed over for the head job at

1:20:53.400 --> 1:20:58.800
<v Speaker 2>Mbcuniversal and was very successful what she did there. You know,

1:20:58.880 --> 1:21:04.720
<v Speaker 2>she's a big advertising person, pretty highp executive. It worked

1:21:04.720 --> 1:21:07.120
<v Speaker 2>a way up, but kind of saw the writing on

1:21:07.160 --> 1:21:10.400
<v Speaker 2>the wall when she didn't get the gig and had

1:21:10.439 --> 1:21:16.599
<v Speaker 2>always been angling for a top job. Her politics aligned

1:21:16.760 --> 1:21:21.040
<v Speaker 2>with Elon. You know, she was involved with some Trump

1:21:21.080 --> 1:21:26.040
<v Speaker 2>councils on the first Trump administration, and her Twitter feed

1:21:26.200 --> 1:21:28.479
<v Speaker 2>was pretty obviously right leading. There were a lot of

1:21:28.520 --> 1:21:30.920
<v Speaker 2>engagements with right wing accounts and that kind of thing,

1:21:31.880 --> 1:21:36.400
<v Speaker 2>and she saw an opportunity, so they began a conversation.

1:21:37.840 --> 1:21:41.960
<v Speaker 2>Remember Elon had that very bizarre period in December twenty

1:21:42.000 --> 1:21:43.920
<v Speaker 2>twenty two where he had a lot of self doubts

1:21:43.960 --> 1:21:46.360
<v Speaker 2>of whether he wanted to run the company, and he

1:21:46.400 --> 1:21:48.320
<v Speaker 2>tweeted out that thing about, you know, should I still

1:21:48.360 --> 1:21:53.120
<v Speaker 2>be CEO of Twitter. It's this dark moment in the book,

1:21:53.160 --> 1:21:56.559
<v Speaker 2>and it's I think one thing you realize about Elon

1:21:56.640 --> 1:21:59.080
<v Speaker 2>is this very human He goes through these very up

1:21:59.120 --> 1:22:03.240
<v Speaker 2>and down and in that point in time, our reporting

1:22:04.640 --> 1:22:06.559
<v Speaker 2>put him in like a very dark place. You know,

1:22:06.600 --> 1:22:09.400
<v Speaker 2>he had a lot of self doubts, and so there

1:22:09.520 --> 1:22:11.920
<v Speaker 2>was kind of some public chatter about, you know, maybe

1:22:11.960 --> 1:22:14.000
<v Speaker 2>he's looking for someone to like take the burden off.

1:22:14.840 --> 1:22:16.800
<v Speaker 2>And so Linda Yakarino comes in and they start to

1:22:16.840 --> 1:22:19.800
<v Speaker 2>have those conversations. She interviews him at a conference and

1:22:19.880 --> 1:22:23.559
<v Speaker 2>ads conference where they have decent rapport on stage, and

1:22:23.600 --> 1:22:27.080
<v Speaker 2>a couple months later she's named as the CEO. You know,

1:22:27.160 --> 1:22:29.679
<v Speaker 2>I think anyone looking at that company knows who calls

1:22:29.720 --> 1:22:34.320
<v Speaker 2>the shots. But also Linda oversees a lot of the

1:22:34.360 --> 1:22:37.720
<v Speaker 2>aspects of the business that Elon just has no care for,

1:22:37.880 --> 1:22:44.200
<v Speaker 2>and that particular part is advertising because Twitter, despite what

1:22:44.240 --> 1:22:46.559
<v Speaker 2>Elan has said about subscriptions and despite what he has

1:22:46.600 --> 1:22:51.640
<v Speaker 2>said about wanting to develop new revenue streams, is supremely

1:22:52.000 --> 1:22:55.439
<v Speaker 2>dependent on advertising, and so Linda is there to do

1:22:55.479 --> 1:23:01.559
<v Speaker 2>that but also carry his message. So you often get

1:23:01.560 --> 1:23:05.800
<v Speaker 2>this very weird dynamic where she has to speak out

1:23:05.840 --> 1:23:08.240
<v Speaker 2>of both sides of her mouth, or she has to

1:23:08.280 --> 1:23:13.679
<v Speaker 2>pairt what Elon says, and uh, yeah, it's it's it's

1:23:13.680 --> 1:23:18.040
<v Speaker 2>fascinating watching her and what she says online.

1:23:18.280 --> 1:23:22.320
<v Speaker 1>Okay, then you have the famous meeting with the advertisers

1:23:22.720 --> 1:23:25.840
<v Speaker 1>where Elon basically says, fuck you, we don't need you.

1:23:26.520 --> 1:23:30.920
<v Speaker 1>What's the status of advertising today on X?

1:23:32.560 --> 1:23:34.680
<v Speaker 2>So? I think you're referencing the deal Book conference where

1:23:34.680 --> 1:23:37.360
<v Speaker 2>he goes yes as go fuck yourself. Yes, he says,

1:23:37.360 --> 1:23:39.960
<v Speaker 2>Bob Igers in the audience, that kind of thing, you know,

1:23:40.160 --> 1:23:45.040
<v Speaker 2>just that that from I often forget about that moment,

1:23:45.400 --> 1:23:48.120
<v Speaker 2>but like I also now remember where I was for it,

1:23:48.160 --> 1:23:52.160
<v Speaker 2>and to think that felt like a decade ago now.

1:23:52.200 --> 1:23:57.880
<v Speaker 2>But the status of advertising on X is it's still declining.

1:23:58.560 --> 1:24:00.680
<v Speaker 2>We get kind of piecemeal numbers. Obvious they don't they

1:24:00.680 --> 1:24:04.120
<v Speaker 2>don't have to report those anymore. But I guess some

1:24:04.200 --> 1:24:07.920
<v Speaker 2>numbers internally in the US, for example, that it's it's

1:24:07.920 --> 1:24:11.559
<v Speaker 2>still declining after year over year, after a pretty bad

1:24:11.640 --> 1:24:15.280
<v Speaker 2>year in the in the previous twelve months, it's still declining.

1:24:16.080 --> 1:24:20.320
<v Speaker 2>And so Elon has wanted to put out this message

1:24:20.360 --> 1:24:25.360
<v Speaker 2>that actually advertisers are returning, but you should, we should

1:24:25.360 --> 1:24:29.160
<v Speaker 2>all be kind of skeptical about what returning means. Does

1:24:29.160 --> 1:24:31.880
<v Speaker 2>that mean they're returning and spending five dollars? You know,

1:24:31.880 --> 1:24:34.720
<v Speaker 2>what's the actual spend is actually the main question. And

1:24:35.600 --> 1:24:39.120
<v Speaker 2>like you can often I pay attention a lot to

1:24:39.160 --> 1:24:42.719
<v Speaker 2>what's on the Explore page that that on the training topics.

1:24:43.080 --> 1:24:46.240
<v Speaker 2>You see that not right? So that big like banner

1:24:46.320 --> 1:24:49.040
<v Speaker 2>ad is about a five hundred, it's anywhere from tw

1:24:49.080 --> 1:24:51.200
<v Speaker 2>hundred fifty to fi hundred thousand dollars a day to

1:24:51.280 --> 1:24:53.640
<v Speaker 2>take over that page and run that banner ad, and

1:24:53.680 --> 1:24:56.080
<v Speaker 2>it's often very empty. You know, that used to be

1:24:56.120 --> 1:25:00.360
<v Speaker 2>a place where artists promoted their new albums, or there

1:25:00.360 --> 1:25:03.719
<v Speaker 2>were movie promotions, or if there was a new Apple

1:25:03.960 --> 1:25:07.680
<v Speaker 2>you know, whatever, iPhone launch or whatever, they would take

1:25:07.720 --> 1:25:10.400
<v Speaker 2>over that space. And that goes empty a lot of

1:25:10.439 --> 1:25:13.479
<v Speaker 2>the time. And that just speaks to where the platform

1:25:13.560 --> 1:25:17.240
<v Speaker 2>is at with advertisers being very queasy about the content

1:25:17.600 --> 1:25:18.880
<v Speaker 2>and the people that remain on.

1:25:20.800 --> 1:25:26.160
<v Speaker 1>X okay. A month or two ago, Tim Cooked very publicly,

1:25:26.280 --> 1:25:31.120
<v Speaker 1>Tim Apple very publicly said, oh, yeah, we're advertising on

1:25:31.439 --> 1:25:34.840
<v Speaker 1>x So you'd talk about Andreese and Horowitch, talk about

1:25:34.840 --> 1:25:38.080
<v Speaker 1>Morgan Stanley, these people looking to the future. To what

1:25:38.240 --> 1:25:42.400
<v Speaker 1>degree are other companies afraid of Elong?

1:25:43.680 --> 1:25:49.640
<v Speaker 2>Oh completely? You know Cook got in a fight with

1:25:49.680 --> 1:25:52.960
<v Speaker 2>Elon very famously and then had to like invite him

1:25:53.000 --> 1:25:55.600
<v Speaker 2>to headquarters to like smooth it over. And that was

1:25:55.640 --> 1:25:59.920
<v Speaker 2>over the thirty percent fee in the app store, right,

1:26:00.320 --> 1:26:07.120
<v Speaker 2>And you know, I think these these even the top

1:26:07.160 --> 1:26:10.360
<v Speaker 2>of the top, the Top Sea, Sundar Pichai, Sasha Nadella,

1:26:11.040 --> 1:26:14.360
<v Speaker 2>Reid Hoffmann, they don't want to be seen on the

1:26:14.400 --> 1:26:17.559
<v Speaker 2>other end of a shotgun blast from Elon Musk. You know,

1:26:17.600 --> 1:26:23.040
<v Speaker 2>it creates a huge headache for you. And on some level,

1:26:23.360 --> 1:26:25.880
<v Speaker 2>you know, like if he tweets value, you're just gonna

1:26:25.920 --> 1:26:30.360
<v Speaker 2>have millions of people coming after you and denigrating you,

1:26:30.479 --> 1:26:37.080
<v Speaker 2>and you know, a just criticizing you. And I think

1:26:37.280 --> 1:26:39.639
<v Speaker 2>all of them believe that it's just easier to play

1:26:39.720 --> 1:26:42.120
<v Speaker 2>nice with him. And so when Tim Cook says we're

1:26:42.160 --> 1:26:45.920
<v Speaker 2>still advertising on X. It's interesting, right, like they still

1:26:45.920 --> 1:26:48.200
<v Speaker 2>could be advertising an X, but what is the amount?

1:26:48.439 --> 1:26:52.080
<v Speaker 2>You know, how does that compare in the past. And

1:26:52.120 --> 1:26:55.880
<v Speaker 2>bear in mind that these companies are also very they

1:26:55.880 --> 1:26:57.519
<v Speaker 2>have to do it's best for their business as well,

1:26:57.560 --> 1:27:00.479
<v Speaker 2>and so if they are trying to break out of

1:27:00.520 --> 1:27:06.000
<v Speaker 2>the duopoly of Google and Facebook and online advertising, you know,

1:27:06.439 --> 1:27:11.160
<v Speaker 2>X offers a pretty reliable place, I guess, or at

1:27:11.240 --> 1:27:14.479
<v Speaker 2>least an alternative. And that's not new to Elon. That's

1:27:14.479 --> 1:27:16.880
<v Speaker 2>how it's always been. That's why Twitter was able to

1:27:16.880 --> 1:27:19.840
<v Speaker 2>survive as a kind of alternative to the kind of

1:27:19.840 --> 1:27:26.160
<v Speaker 2>two giants. But when when Tim Cook says something like that,

1:27:26.240 --> 1:27:28.920
<v Speaker 2>it definitely feels like a very placating move, right, it's

1:27:28.960 --> 1:27:33.240
<v Speaker 2>a it's a it's an olive branch to Elon.

1:27:34.080 --> 1:27:38.040
<v Speaker 1>Okay, you follow this very closely. What's the long term

1:27:38.560 --> 1:27:42.040
<v Speaker 1>maybe not that long term, not immediate, but short term

1:27:42.320 --> 1:27:48.720
<v Speaker 1>prognosis with X? Do they miss the debt payments? Is

1:27:48.760 --> 1:27:51.639
<v Speaker 1>it essentially like truth social it is gonna live forever?

1:27:51.880 --> 1:27:54.760
<v Speaker 1>Relevant to the economics, what's gonna happen here?

1:27:56.000 --> 1:27:58.759
<v Speaker 2>I don't think they miss the debt payments. I wouldn't

1:27:58.760 --> 1:28:01.640
<v Speaker 2>be surprised if elon Treasury Finance members some negotiation that

1:28:01.680 --> 1:28:04.760
<v Speaker 2>probably that's actually already happened that there's been reporting on

1:28:04.800 --> 1:28:09.599
<v Speaker 2>that X will operate as long as elon Ce's fit.

1:28:09.720 --> 1:28:12.639
<v Speaker 2>You know, it's his favorite toy. He's created the thing

1:28:15.360 --> 1:28:18.000
<v Speaker 2>that he wants the most. It's it's essentially his echo chamber, right.

1:28:18.240 --> 1:28:20.759
<v Speaker 2>It's the place where he's now become the most followed user,

1:28:21.240 --> 1:28:24.519
<v Speaker 2>he's the most engaged with account. This wasn't his intent

1:28:24.560 --> 1:28:26.200
<v Speaker 2>when he bought the company, but he's been able to

1:28:26.320 --> 1:28:31.599
<v Speaker 2>use it to leverage UH and get the presidential candidate

1:28:31.600 --> 1:28:35.760
<v Speaker 2>he's wanted into the White House. So for him, it's

1:28:35.760 --> 1:28:40.200
<v Speaker 2>been a you know, absent all the discussion about finances

1:28:40.200 --> 1:28:46.519
<v Speaker 2>and everything. It's been a great success, and he's shaped

1:28:46.560 --> 1:28:50.160
<v Speaker 2>it in a way. He's driven away the reporters that

1:28:50.280 --> 1:28:52.960
<v Speaker 2>used to thrive on there, the news outlets that used

1:28:52.960 --> 1:28:55.320
<v Speaker 2>to thrive on there, the people used to criticize them,

1:28:56.280 --> 1:28:59.960
<v Speaker 2>and recreated it to become this place where his favorit.

1:29:00.200 --> 1:29:02.679
<v Speaker 2>People have the blue check marks, they've bought them. They're

1:29:02.680 --> 1:29:05.880
<v Speaker 2>elevated in his replies. They're the ones being shared on

1:29:05.920 --> 1:29:12.559
<v Speaker 2>the for you page, the algorithmically curated page, and yeah,

1:29:12.680 --> 1:29:15.920
<v Speaker 2>I think you could be happier in some ways. You know,

1:29:16.360 --> 1:29:19.519
<v Speaker 2>his net worth has never been higher. You know, he's

1:29:19.560 --> 1:29:21.719
<v Speaker 2>now worth three hundred and twenty three twenty five billion

1:29:21.760 --> 1:29:25.080
<v Speaker 2>dollars give and take on any given day. So we

1:29:25.120 --> 1:29:29.559
<v Speaker 2>talk about the financial problems that Twitter has had, but

1:29:29.600 --> 1:29:32.320
<v Speaker 2>again in the plus minus column, like he's he's on,

1:29:32.479 --> 1:29:38.040
<v Speaker 2>he's up, you know, and uh so, Yeah, I think

1:29:38.160 --> 1:29:41.000
<v Speaker 2>I think X continues to exist forever, for however long

1:29:41.040 --> 1:29:41.600
<v Speaker 2>he wants it to.

1:29:42.280 --> 1:29:48.880
<v Speaker 1>If Elon doesn't buy Twitter, Elon doesn't put money into

1:29:48.920 --> 1:29:51.360
<v Speaker 1>the election process, does Trump win?

1:29:54.600 --> 1:30:04.280
<v Speaker 2>Oh man, I gotta get my DeLorean out. I don't know.

1:30:05.000 --> 1:30:06.560
<v Speaker 2>It's a bad place to be in a reporter to

1:30:06.600 --> 1:30:13.240
<v Speaker 2>make these kinds of predictions. Yeah. Maybe, maybe maybe. If

1:30:13.240 --> 1:30:18.400
<v Speaker 2>he doesn't buy Twitter, he doesn't become so steeped in

1:30:18.600 --> 1:30:23.600
<v Speaker 2>right wing culture. You know, after he buys Twitter, he

1:30:24.120 --> 1:30:28.760
<v Speaker 2>becomes really invested in immigration and starts pushing effectively the

1:30:28.800 --> 1:30:33.920
<v Speaker 2>great replacement theory. He starts caring about voter fraud and

1:30:34.080 --> 1:30:36.599
<v Speaker 2>you know, the thing that it has been talked about

1:30:36.600 --> 1:30:41.080
<v Speaker 2>ad nauseum on Fox News, And he starts engaging with

1:30:41.080 --> 1:30:43.479
<v Speaker 2>folks like Tucker Carlson and that kind of stuff. So

1:30:45.120 --> 1:30:50.439
<v Speaker 2>I view that process as radicalizing him towards Trump, because

1:30:51.160 --> 1:30:54.160
<v Speaker 2>you have to remember he was never a Trumper. He

1:30:54.240 --> 1:30:58.599
<v Speaker 2>supported Ron de Santis in as late as May twenty

1:30:58.680 --> 1:31:01.760
<v Speaker 2>twenty three. You remember that Twitter space he had where

1:31:01.800 --> 1:31:04.640
<v Speaker 2>he DeSantis launched his you know, his disastrous but he

1:31:04.720 --> 1:31:11.120
<v Speaker 2>launched his his presidential campaign on x with Elon, but

1:31:12.360 --> 1:31:17.599
<v Speaker 2>owning Twitter, engaging in that sphere really pushed him further

1:31:17.680 --> 1:31:20.920
<v Speaker 2>and further to the right, to the point where he

1:31:21.040 --> 1:31:25.960
<v Speaker 2>arrived on Trump's doorstep and they began a fast and

1:31:26.479 --> 1:31:29.120
<v Speaker 2>aggressive relationship that kind of continues to this day.

1:31:29.920 --> 1:31:34.479
<v Speaker 1>Okay, is this bro man that's going to continue? Really? Elon?

1:31:34.560 --> 1:31:38.799
<v Speaker 1>Although South African is a classic American one man job,

1:31:39.439 --> 1:31:43.600
<v Speaker 1>what do we know? Trump is uneducated, stupid, and impulsive.

1:31:44.320 --> 1:31:48.040
<v Speaker 1>So therefore, seeing over the overall landscape and being manipulative,

1:31:48.479 --> 1:31:51.160
<v Speaker 1>what you see is what you get. What we learned

1:31:51.280 --> 1:31:55.920
<v Speaker 1>with Trump is hey, barring you know, are worst fears.

1:31:56.640 --> 1:32:01.320
<v Speaker 1>He's constrained by the government. Also, he may not agree

1:32:01.600 --> 1:32:06.799
<v Speaker 1>with Elon on certain things. Also, Elon likes to move fast,

1:32:06.880 --> 1:32:11.559
<v Speaker 1>the government moves at a glacial piece. To continue would

1:32:11.600 --> 1:32:17.240
<v Speaker 1>absolutely require compromise on Elon's part. Is that going to happen,

1:32:17.800 --> 1:32:19.640
<v Speaker 1>or is Elon going to jump the rails at some

1:32:19.720 --> 1:32:22.400
<v Speaker 1>point say you know this is just fucked up. You

1:32:22.439 --> 1:32:24.160
<v Speaker 1>don't know what you're doing. I gotta I gotta lead.

1:32:25.320 --> 1:32:28.360
<v Speaker 2>I thinks a big question. I think Trump does want

1:32:28.400 --> 1:32:32.080
<v Speaker 2>Elon to break some of that those processes, right, That's

1:32:32.080 --> 1:32:35.080
<v Speaker 2>why he's brought him in for the Department of Government

1:32:35.120 --> 1:32:42.200
<v Speaker 2>Government Government Efficiency, Right. I think it's more analyzing it

1:32:42.240 --> 1:32:45.280
<v Speaker 2>on a kind of one to one relationship standpoint as

1:32:45.280 --> 1:32:51.280
<v Speaker 2>opposed to anything policy related, like can their egos exist

1:32:51.400 --> 1:32:54.599
<v Speaker 2>in the same space for however long? We've already started

1:32:54.600 --> 1:32:58.160
<v Speaker 2>to see reports about folks around Trump tiring of the

1:32:58.240 --> 1:33:03.280
<v Speaker 2>amount that that that Elon has spent at the president's

1:33:03.280 --> 1:33:06.960
<v Speaker 2>side in mar A Lago. That's the big question, you know.

1:33:07.360 --> 1:33:09.360
<v Speaker 2>I wish I was in the game of predictions, but

1:33:10.280 --> 1:33:14.400
<v Speaker 2>historically they have tended not to get along well with

1:33:14.479 --> 1:33:21.639
<v Speaker 2>other people that have similar egos, similar desires to take

1:33:21.640 --> 1:33:27.600
<v Speaker 2>control and be the leader. In my opinion, though, and

1:33:27.720 --> 1:33:29.960
<v Speaker 2>this is complete speculation, I think both of them are

1:33:30.000 --> 1:33:34.760
<v Speaker 2>aware of that, and they understand that like they're being

1:33:34.800 --> 1:33:37.800
<v Speaker 2>watched in this way, and so to do things as

1:33:37.800 --> 1:33:41.559
<v Speaker 2>they've always done them might not be the way to go.

1:33:42.560 --> 1:33:47.280
<v Speaker 2>But who knows. I mean, these guys make split decisions,

1:33:47.439 --> 1:33:51.880
<v Speaker 2>especially Elon, and one day you could wake up and

1:33:51.880 --> 1:33:55.599
<v Speaker 2>find himself on the other side of Trump's good list

1:33:55.680 --> 1:33:59.600
<v Speaker 2>or bad list, and it may lead to fireworks, but

1:33:59.640 --> 1:34:01.479
<v Speaker 2>hopefully were there to report it out.

1:34:02.439 --> 1:34:07.680
<v Speaker 1>Okay, So for two years Elon has been heavily invested

1:34:07.720 --> 1:34:12.639
<v Speaker 1>in x miyor to him becoming very right wing when

1:34:12.680 --> 1:34:17.080
<v Speaker 1>the lefties were still gun home on buying Tesla's question was,

1:34:18.240 --> 1:34:21.360
<v Speaker 1>and this was an issue for the stock who's running

1:34:21.400 --> 1:34:24.679
<v Speaker 1>the ship? He's so busy at X. Is the real

1:34:24.720 --> 1:34:28.559
<v Speaker 1>story that he's just a figurehead and these companies run

1:34:28.600 --> 1:34:29.480
<v Speaker 1>by themselves.

1:34:30.680 --> 1:34:34.120
<v Speaker 2>It's actually really interesting that he's developed these kind of

1:34:34.160 --> 1:34:38.040
<v Speaker 2>deep benches at these companies, and that's largely because he's

1:34:38.200 --> 1:34:40.720
<v Speaker 2>at Tesla and SpaceX has been able to shape them

1:34:40.720 --> 1:34:43.160
<v Speaker 2>from the ground up. You know, Tesla, he was an

1:34:43.160 --> 1:34:47.240
<v Speaker 2>early investor that took over at SpaceX he founded, but

1:34:47.320 --> 1:34:49.640
<v Speaker 2>he was able to mold these companies and put in

1:34:49.840 --> 1:34:53.960
<v Speaker 2>place the people he wants to oversee, you know, at

1:34:54.000 --> 1:34:59.360
<v Speaker 2>SpaceX rocket manufacturing or design. So all these people are

1:34:59.840 --> 1:35:02.400
<v Speaker 2>very very familiar with how he works and what we've

1:35:02.439 --> 1:35:05.640
<v Speaker 2>heard from people at these companies, is he's kind of

1:35:05.640 --> 1:35:09.479
<v Speaker 2>the troubleshooter. If there's a major problem that's happening at

1:35:09.520 --> 1:35:12.080
<v Speaker 2>Tesla or SpaceX, let's say in twenty eighteen, for example,

1:35:12.080 --> 1:35:16.000
<v Speaker 2>on the on the factory line manufacturing Model threes, you

1:35:16.040 --> 1:35:22.160
<v Speaker 2>know he'll get in and try and problem solve very

1:35:23.479 --> 1:35:27.160
<v Speaker 2>aggressively and spend all his time on that problem until

1:35:27.200 --> 1:35:31.360
<v Speaker 2>it's fixed. And so actually, if you think about it,

1:35:31.400 --> 1:35:35.439
<v Speaker 2>like people call elon the sun in these companies, and

1:35:35.520 --> 1:35:37.360
<v Speaker 2>you don't want to get too close to sunny get burned.

1:35:37.800 --> 1:35:40.120
<v Speaker 2>So like if he is, if he's working with you

1:35:41.439 --> 1:35:44.559
<v Speaker 2>on your part of the company or whatever project you're

1:35:46.000 --> 1:35:48.040
<v Speaker 2>you're probably fucked. Like you're probably in there, you're probably

1:35:48.080 --> 1:35:49.680
<v Speaker 2>in deep shit, right. You don't want to be in

1:35:49.720 --> 1:35:51.000
<v Speaker 2>that position. You don't want to be in the same

1:35:51.080 --> 1:35:55.120
<v Speaker 2>room with him. And so, by and large, these companies,

1:35:55.240 --> 1:35:58.680
<v Speaker 2>when there is no crisis, he's run themselves. SpaceX has

1:35:58.720 --> 1:36:02.000
<v Speaker 2>a very strong number too, and when shot well he

1:36:02.080 --> 1:36:04.559
<v Speaker 2>had he has other vps around him as well that

1:36:04.600 --> 1:36:08.880
<v Speaker 2>run that company and know about way more about rocket

1:36:08.920 --> 1:36:11.759
<v Speaker 2>science or manufacturing than he does, and he defers to them.

1:36:12.120 --> 1:36:16.679
<v Speaker 2>Same thing at Tesla with X, he didn't have that right.

1:36:17.200 --> 1:36:20.760
<v Speaker 2>This wasn't a company he built up from the ground up,

1:36:20.880 --> 1:36:23.439
<v Speaker 2>and so when he came in and fired everyone, there

1:36:23.479 --> 1:36:26.080
<v Speaker 2>was really no one he could trust. He couldn't he

1:36:26.080 --> 1:36:29.840
<v Speaker 2>couldn't leave and like let this thing operate week to week.

1:36:30.600 --> 1:36:33.439
<v Speaker 2>So that's kind of what explains why he spent so

1:36:33.520 --> 1:36:36.799
<v Speaker 2>much time there when after he took over, and explains

1:36:36.800 --> 1:36:41.519
<v Speaker 2>why he eventually hired Linda Ekerino. But that's that's just

1:36:41.520 --> 1:36:44.040
<v Speaker 2>an understanding of how it operates. So x is I

1:36:44.040 --> 1:36:46.080
<v Speaker 2>guess getting there to the point where it can maybe

1:36:46.080 --> 1:36:48.080
<v Speaker 2>be a little more self sustainable and he's not spending

1:36:48.120 --> 1:36:52.040
<v Speaker 2>all his time there. But yeah, that's just that's how

1:36:52.080 --> 1:36:52.479
<v Speaker 2>he works.

1:36:52.880 --> 1:36:59.479
<v Speaker 1>Okay. Steve Jobs the legendary entrepreneur before Elon Musk. It's

1:36:59.520 --> 1:37:04.640
<v Speaker 1>been well documented that the other Steve Wozniak was the

1:37:04.680 --> 1:37:09.960
<v Speaker 1>brilliant engineer, and Steve Jobs was an incredible marketer and

1:37:10.000 --> 1:37:15.840
<v Speaker 1>an incredible trends spotter. What is Elon's expertise? Is he

1:37:15.920 --> 1:37:17.480
<v Speaker 1>really that great an engineer?

1:37:20.160 --> 1:37:22.639
<v Speaker 2>As I said earlier, he's he's a great salesman. He's

1:37:22.680 --> 1:37:27.120
<v Speaker 2>a great person in pushing people towards a vision and

1:37:27.200 --> 1:37:31.280
<v Speaker 2>motivating them, collecting them in a room and getting him

1:37:31.439 --> 1:37:34.800
<v Speaker 2>marching in the same direction. And that's for the causes

1:37:34.880 --> 1:37:40.480
<v Speaker 2>of making humanity multiplanetary. It's for the causes of electrifying

1:37:41.280 --> 1:37:43.959
<v Speaker 2>cars and bringing up and bringing about the ev revolution.

1:37:46.000 --> 1:37:50.719
<v Speaker 2>And it's funny because Jobs and Musk are often talked

1:37:50.960 --> 1:37:54.960
<v Speaker 2>talked about as having this quote reality distortion field, right,

1:37:55.040 --> 1:38:00.040
<v Speaker 2>this ability to you know, if it's not real in

1:38:00.040 --> 1:38:02.880
<v Speaker 2>real life, they able to make it happen. You know,

1:38:03.600 --> 1:38:06.920
<v Speaker 2>no one saw the iPhone before Steve Jobs, no one

1:38:06.960 --> 1:38:11.160
<v Speaker 2>saw self landing rockets before Elon, And they're able to

1:38:11.200 --> 1:38:14.599
<v Speaker 2>push people and the boundaries to get them working towards

1:38:14.640 --> 1:38:21.880
<v Speaker 2>these once impossible goals. And you know, I think I

1:38:21.880 --> 1:38:24.880
<v Speaker 2>think that's it's borrowed from Star Trek. I'm not a Treky,

1:38:24.960 --> 1:38:27.280
<v Speaker 2>but I think the reality distortion field is a Star

1:38:27.360 --> 1:38:29.720
<v Speaker 2>Trek thing. But we've talked to so many people that

1:38:30.240 --> 1:38:34.120
<v Speaker 2>say that about someone like Elon right, like that he

1:38:34.280 --> 1:38:39.040
<v Speaker 2>has that ability to make people believe. And you see

1:38:39.040 --> 1:38:41.439
<v Speaker 2>that quality not just that his companies, but outside his companies.

1:38:41.479 --> 1:38:44.599
<v Speaker 2>You talk about the Robotaxi event. Again, he got people

1:38:44.640 --> 1:38:48.000
<v Speaker 2>believing in this thing that's not even real. You know,

1:38:48.040 --> 1:38:50.519
<v Speaker 2>that is on a movie set you know, farrying people

1:38:50.600 --> 1:38:53.639
<v Speaker 2>around from fake city to fake city on a movie set.

1:38:54.720 --> 1:38:58.439
<v Speaker 2>And when we talk about like his greatest quality as

1:38:58.439 --> 1:39:00.200
<v Speaker 2>an entrepreneur, I think that that's it.

1:39:02.080 --> 1:39:03.880
<v Speaker 1>Okay, But is he a good engineer?

1:39:08.680 --> 1:39:13.880
<v Speaker 2>Uh? I guess it depends. Yeah, he's given himself the

1:39:13.960 --> 1:39:16.840
<v Speaker 2>chief engineer title. I think at some of his companies,

1:39:21.720 --> 1:39:23.080
<v Speaker 2>I don't know enough about his day to day at

1:39:23.120 --> 1:39:25.960
<v Speaker 2>Tesla and SpaceX. At Twitter, for example, he is not

1:39:26.080 --> 1:39:32.200
<v Speaker 2>in the code, he is not tweaking the algorithm. In fact,

1:39:32.320 --> 1:39:35.120
<v Speaker 2>what we reported is he barely even uses as a

1:39:35.160 --> 1:39:38.040
<v Speaker 2>computer that you know, he had. He had to have

1:39:38.080 --> 1:39:40.320
<v Speaker 2>an assistant that set up his computer for him whenever

1:39:40.360 --> 1:39:43.920
<v Speaker 2>he needed to really use a computer. But he views

1:39:43.960 --> 1:39:47.600
<v Speaker 2>everything on his iPhone. Presentations have to be delivered to

1:39:47.680 --> 1:39:50.240
<v Speaker 2>him so it's readable on a you know, whatever the

1:39:50.280 --> 1:39:53.599
<v Speaker 2>size screen of an iPhone is, and from there he's

1:39:53.600 --> 1:39:56.400
<v Speaker 2>able to dictate his vision and you know, tell people

1:39:56.520 --> 1:40:00.000
<v Speaker 2>and direct them. But I don't think he's doing much

1:40:00.080 --> 1:40:04.000
<v Speaker 2>engineering these days, particularly at Twitter or X.

1:40:04.760 --> 1:40:08.839
<v Speaker 1>Okay, my dealings with Walter isaacs in have been relatively minimal,

1:40:09.560 --> 1:40:12.080
<v Speaker 1>but I got to bug up my ass based on

1:40:12.200 --> 1:40:17.120
<v Speaker 1>that dealing and the reverence this guy gets so he

1:40:17.160 --> 1:40:21.360
<v Speaker 1>writes a book on Elon. People who are not don't

1:40:21.400 --> 1:40:25.120
<v Speaker 1>follow this space, and we rave and then everybody follows

1:40:25.120 --> 1:40:28.640
<v Speaker 1>this space. Said this guy drank the kool aid. And

1:40:28.680 --> 1:40:33.559
<v Speaker 1>then reading your book where Elon literally asked Walter Isaacs

1:40:33.640 --> 1:40:36.880
<v Speaker 1>in advice, whether consciously what this will do for the

1:40:36.880 --> 1:40:42.040
<v Speaker 1>book or not, that compromises the entire reporting. But as

1:40:42.080 --> 1:40:44.760
<v Speaker 1>a reporter, I'm sure you've read the book. What do

1:40:44.840 --> 1:40:46.479
<v Speaker 1>you say about Isaacs in book?

1:40:47.400 --> 1:40:52.200
<v Speaker 2>I've read the book, and I'll say this, I really

1:40:52.240 --> 1:40:54.800
<v Speaker 2>loved the I read the Steve Jobs book cover to cover.

1:40:55.880 --> 1:40:58.680
<v Speaker 2>I loved it. You know, I learned so much about him.

1:40:59.000 --> 1:41:01.240
<v Speaker 2>But then I started to realize is that there are

1:41:02.080 --> 1:41:06.439
<v Speaker 2>issues with these kind of great man biographies. Right, You're

1:41:06.479 --> 1:41:11.200
<v Speaker 2>starting with this premise that these are great men and

1:41:14.840 --> 1:41:17.400
<v Speaker 2>that they can be forgiven in some instances because they

1:41:17.400 --> 1:41:19.519
<v Speaker 2>are such great men because have done such great things.

1:41:20.560 --> 1:41:23.800
<v Speaker 2>And I think as a reporter, like leading with that

1:41:25.240 --> 1:41:30.160
<v Speaker 2>is uncomfortable for me, particularly because I view my job

1:41:30.200 --> 1:41:33.479
<v Speaker 2>as having to interrogate power. Like Yes, on one hand,

1:41:33.520 --> 1:41:36.640
<v Speaker 2>I can understand that he's built great companies, but on

1:41:36.680 --> 1:41:39.840
<v Speaker 2>the other hand, if he is harming, if people are

1:41:39.840 --> 1:41:43.479
<v Speaker 2>getting hurt in his factories if he is breaking the law, like,

1:41:44.040 --> 1:41:46.439
<v Speaker 2>it's my job to report that and expose that and

1:41:46.479 --> 1:41:51.040
<v Speaker 2>show that and understand that there are costs to being

1:41:52.200 --> 1:41:56.519
<v Speaker 2>this supposed great man. And I think, you know, with

1:41:56.560 --> 1:41:59.160
<v Speaker 2>the Isaacson case, we'll just let a reporting do the talking.

1:41:59.200 --> 1:42:02.799
<v Speaker 2>You know, our reporting showed that he was providing advice

1:42:03.040 --> 1:42:07.280
<v Speaker 2>to Elon on Twitter Blue, the subscription service. He was

1:42:07.600 --> 1:42:09.880
<v Speaker 2>telling him that a lot of people will use a service,

1:42:09.920 --> 1:42:12.559
<v Speaker 2>how we should you know, he should price it low

1:42:12.640 --> 1:42:16.200
<v Speaker 2>because it's going to be such a game changer. He

1:42:16.400 --> 1:42:20.160
<v Speaker 2>was giving Elon advice on labeling. You know, there was

1:42:20.160 --> 1:42:23.720
<v Speaker 2>that kind of tiff with NPR and whether or not

1:42:23.880 --> 1:42:27.120
<v Speaker 2>it should be labeled as state sponsored media, and apparently

1:42:27.120 --> 1:42:31.120
<v Speaker 2>Isaacson got involved with that as well. And as a reporter,

1:42:31.280 --> 1:42:33.120
<v Speaker 2>that's just not a place I want to be in,

1:42:33.240 --> 1:42:36.080
<v Speaker 2>I don't, you know. I want my I want my subject. Yes,

1:42:36.120 --> 1:42:37.559
<v Speaker 2>I want to be in the room with my subject

1:42:37.600 --> 1:42:39.760
<v Speaker 2>if they allow me to. But I'm not going to

1:42:39.760 --> 1:42:43.960
<v Speaker 2>compromise my integrity as reporter. I don't want to be

1:42:44.000 --> 1:42:47.880
<v Speaker 2>an advisor to him by any means. And I think

1:42:47.920 --> 1:42:53.439
<v Speaker 2>that's the trap that he fell into, you know, Elon

1:42:53.560 --> 1:42:57.760
<v Speaker 2>is extremely influential. He he he has a gravitational pull.

1:42:58.000 --> 1:43:01.360
<v Speaker 2>We see this with all the people that come to

1:43:01.439 --> 1:43:04.320
<v Speaker 2>kind of kiss his ring, and you know a lot

1:43:04.320 --> 1:43:09.280
<v Speaker 2>of people described it as a king's court, and you

1:43:09.439 --> 1:43:12.160
<v Speaker 2>kind of if you guess, if you're around it long enough,

1:43:12.160 --> 1:43:15.800
<v Speaker 2>you fall into that. And we see that time and

1:43:15.840 --> 1:43:19.559
<v Speaker 2>time again in our book with Walter, and I think

1:43:19.600 --> 1:43:23.080
<v Speaker 2>that caloused your judgment when it comes to reporting. I

1:43:23.120 --> 1:43:25.479
<v Speaker 2>think one of my main issues with his book is

1:43:25.479 --> 1:43:29.040
<v Speaker 2>that he took Elon for face value on a lot

1:43:29.080 --> 1:43:32.560
<v Speaker 2>of reporting. You know, as a reporter, you want to

1:43:32.560 --> 1:43:39.280
<v Speaker 2>get multiple perspectives. And so for example, Elon's daughter has

1:43:39.320 --> 1:43:41.760
<v Speaker 2>come out as trans daughter and said, you know, you've

1:43:41.760 --> 1:43:43.720
<v Speaker 2>written about me a lot in your book, but you

1:43:43.840 --> 1:43:46.080
<v Speaker 2>never reached out to me to get my perspective, and

1:43:46.120 --> 1:43:48.320
<v Speaker 2>you just took my dad's and they don't have a

1:43:48.400 --> 1:43:50.920
<v Speaker 2>very good relationship effect. Elon has said that his daughter

1:43:51.000 --> 1:43:54.240
<v Speaker 2>is dead to him. So he simply took Elon's perspective

1:43:54.360 --> 1:44:00.600
<v Speaker 2>about the trans daughter and ran with it. And I

1:44:00.640 --> 1:44:04.120
<v Speaker 2>don't think that's good reporting. You know, that would that

1:44:04.160 --> 1:44:06.759
<v Speaker 2>would never fly in a basic reporting one in one class,

1:44:08.400 --> 1:44:10.320
<v Speaker 2>and yeah, that's that's kind of my view on it.

1:44:12.800 --> 1:44:16.960
<v Speaker 1>Okay, starlink, we have the issue in the Ukraine War,

1:44:17.760 --> 1:44:21.280
<v Speaker 1>we read about the plethora of satellites. No one has

1:44:21.280 --> 1:44:26.160
<v Speaker 1>ever made satellite communications profitable. What's the future of starlink

1:44:26.600 --> 1:44:30.400
<v Speaker 1>and to what degree do we have to fear Elon

1:44:30.600 --> 1:44:33.599
<v Speaker 1>Musk's actions on the world stage.

1:44:37.040 --> 1:44:41.360
<v Speaker 2>Starlink is another source of his power and one that

1:44:43.120 --> 1:44:49.960
<v Speaker 2>ah gosh, I mean, it makes him so influential. You

1:44:49.960 --> 1:44:52.960
<v Speaker 2>think about the Ukraine War and him essentially controlling the

1:44:52.960 --> 1:44:58.360
<v Speaker 2>communications and pipes for the Ukraine defense effort as he

1:44:58.760 --> 1:45:01.960
<v Speaker 2>simultaneously is calling for a cease fire and end of

1:45:02.000 --> 1:45:07.160
<v Speaker 2>the war and an appeasing of putin right, it's kind

1:45:07.200 --> 1:45:09.400
<v Speaker 2>of just nuts, Like we haven't really never seen this,

1:45:09.479 --> 1:45:11.680
<v Speaker 2>and I think starlink only will get more powerful, like

1:45:12.160 --> 1:45:16.599
<v Speaker 2>because Elon has a virtual monopoly on getting things into space,

1:45:16.600 --> 1:45:20.639
<v Speaker 2>at least in the private industry, Like he controls how

1:45:20.680 --> 1:45:24.800
<v Speaker 2>those satellites get up and he knows that and it

1:45:25.360 --> 1:45:27.200
<v Speaker 2>gives him a lot of power. I think of the

1:45:27.280 --> 1:45:32.840
<v Speaker 2>hurricanes that just hit, you know, the Southeast, and how

1:45:32.880 --> 1:45:37.200
<v Speaker 2>FEMA was reliant on starlink and getting communications to that region,

1:45:38.960 --> 1:45:45.000
<v Speaker 2>and Elon is is literally criticizing FEMA on on X

1:45:45.120 --> 1:45:48.960
<v Speaker 2>he is shitting on the federal government, He's shitting on Biden,

1:45:49.720 --> 1:45:51.599
<v Speaker 2>and yet FEMA has to play ball with him because

1:45:51.640 --> 1:45:56.840
<v Speaker 2>he controls Starlink like it's an incredible position to be in,

1:45:58.240 --> 1:46:02.120
<v Speaker 2>and I think Starlink will become more and more a

1:46:02.120 --> 1:46:03.800
<v Speaker 2>source of his power. I think I saw today in

1:46:03.840 --> 1:46:06.200
<v Speaker 2>the news that they had signed a contract with T

1:46:06.360 --> 1:46:13.400
<v Speaker 2>Mobile to provide I guess calling service, So you know,

1:46:13.400 --> 1:46:15.800
<v Speaker 2>we start to see more of those deals overseas. It's

1:46:15.880 --> 1:46:23.480
<v Speaker 2>quite influential as well. And yeah, yeah, it's it's definitely

1:46:23.600 --> 1:46:25.320
<v Speaker 2>an underrated part of his empire.

1:46:28.320 --> 1:46:32.240
<v Speaker 1>Okay, and the Boring Company, which he never really took

1:46:32.280 --> 1:46:37.800
<v Speaker 1>that seriously, but we almost never hear about it. Neuralink,

1:46:37.880 --> 1:46:42.240
<v Speaker 1>he had his press conference. Are those businesses or those hobbies?

1:46:44.840 --> 1:46:46.559
<v Speaker 2>I mean their businesses in the sense that they've raised

1:46:46.600 --> 1:46:51.879
<v Speaker 2>venture capital and they employ people, and you know, Neuralink

1:46:51.920 --> 1:46:56.759
<v Speaker 2>had its first patient that got something implanted. It's very

1:46:57.000 --> 1:47:02.240
<v Speaker 2>very developmental early stages. The Boring Company, I guess it

1:47:02.240 --> 1:47:05.360
<v Speaker 2>built that tunnel in Vegas that you know, shuttles people

1:47:05.439 --> 1:47:10.680
<v Speaker 2>mile cars can drive through it, but there hasn't been

1:47:10.760 --> 1:47:15.280
<v Speaker 2>very much from that from that company either, I would

1:47:15.320 --> 1:47:17.880
<v Speaker 2>say those are not his main focuses. You know, obviously

1:47:17.880 --> 1:47:20.080
<v Speaker 2>he'll dip into uralink stuff when they have an announcement

1:47:20.320 --> 1:47:24.000
<v Speaker 2>or things like that. But when we talk about those

1:47:24.080 --> 1:47:26.479
<v Speaker 2>kinds of teams that he's built up from the ground up,

1:47:27.040 --> 1:47:29.160
<v Speaker 2>those companies are good examples of that where they kind

1:47:29.200 --> 1:47:32.040
<v Speaker 2>of self operate without him. He'll dip in when he

1:47:32.080 --> 1:47:36.800
<v Speaker 2>needs to, and when there's a big announcement he can

1:47:36.880 --> 1:47:40.160
<v Speaker 2>draw attention to it. But it certainly adds to his lore,

1:47:40.320 --> 1:47:45.800
<v Speaker 2>right Like he he's the man that runs six companies ostensibly,

1:47:45.880 --> 1:47:49.680
<v Speaker 2>and it gives him a great legend. And oftentimes I

1:47:49.720 --> 1:47:51.559
<v Speaker 2>get asked, you know, does how is he able to

1:47:51.600 --> 1:47:54.559
<v Speaker 2>do this? Like I can't even do my own job,

1:47:54.600 --> 1:47:56.960
<v Speaker 2>how can you do six and like run all these companies? Well,

1:47:56.960 --> 1:48:00.760
<v Speaker 2>the truth is, like there's more to it, and he

1:48:00.800 --> 1:48:03.960
<v Speaker 2>certainly loves to profit off this this image. But it's

1:48:03.960 --> 1:48:06.240
<v Speaker 2>not like he is. He is going into New orlank

1:48:06.280 --> 1:48:08.200
<v Speaker 2>every day and working on that from a nine to five.

1:48:12.080 --> 1:48:16.920
<v Speaker 1>So what have you learned now that the book is out?

1:48:20.000 --> 1:48:26.960
<v Speaker 2>Hmmm. So we end our book in March when he

1:48:27.000 --> 1:48:28.920
<v Speaker 2>meets Donald Trump for the first time in a long

1:48:28.960 --> 1:48:31.760
<v Speaker 2>time and they go in there at Florida, at the

1:48:31.800 --> 1:48:35.120
<v Speaker 2>home of Nelson Pelts, the activist investory tried to take

1:48:35.160 --> 1:48:39.559
<v Speaker 2>over Disney recently, and it was purposeful one. We couldn't

1:48:39.560 --> 1:48:43.719
<v Speaker 2>get We couldn't continue the book forever, and we wanted

1:48:43.920 --> 1:48:47.280
<v Speaker 2>a clean kind of cut to understand. You know, I

1:48:47.280 --> 1:48:50.040
<v Speaker 2>think people understand like from that moment on is when

1:48:50.040 --> 1:48:53.760
<v Speaker 2>he when he you know, really got in better of

1:48:53.800 --> 1:48:58.479
<v Speaker 2>the Trump. But when we ended the book, I do

1:48:58.560 --> 1:49:02.639
<v Speaker 2>not think we could have predict did the extent which

1:49:02.680 --> 1:49:05.880
<v Speaker 2>with which with with which he would support Donald Trump.

1:49:06.640 --> 1:49:09.160
<v Speaker 2>You know, there is a different world in which I

1:49:09.160 --> 1:49:11.000
<v Speaker 2>thought it would have been a much more quieter support.

1:49:11.080 --> 1:49:13.960
<v Speaker 2>He would have maybe announced his endorsement a couple of

1:49:14.040 --> 1:49:17.840
<v Speaker 2>days before the election, and he would not have done

1:49:18.760 --> 1:49:20.880
<v Speaker 2>by any means what we saw happen, you know, which

1:49:20.920 --> 1:49:27.000
<v Speaker 2>is to pour two hundred million dollars into his campaign

1:49:27.200 --> 1:49:30.880
<v Speaker 2>and to literally go to rallies in Pennsylvania and stuff

1:49:30.920 --> 1:49:36.920
<v Speaker 2>for him and have this charity whatever lottery giveaway to

1:49:37.040 --> 1:49:41.480
<v Speaker 2>people who register to vote for him. That was unfathomable

1:49:41.520 --> 1:49:43.120
<v Speaker 2>to me, and I'd like, that wasn't even on the

1:49:43.160 --> 1:49:48.800
<v Speaker 2>cards for me. And what I've learned from that is

1:49:49.960 --> 1:49:53.160
<v Speaker 2>just his convictions, and what when you have that much money,

1:49:53.280 --> 1:49:56.800
<v Speaker 2>what you're able to do about those convictions. You know,

1:49:56.840 --> 1:49:59.479
<v Speaker 2>he spent two hundred million dollars on Donald Trump's campaign,

1:50:00.640 --> 1:50:03.720
<v Speaker 2>and that seems like a really smart bet considering what

1:50:03.800 --> 1:50:05.760
<v Speaker 2>he'll get out of that. You know, he'll be able

1:50:05.800 --> 1:50:09.479
<v Speaker 2>to appoint people that he wants the government. He might

1:50:09.600 --> 1:50:15.120
<v Speaker 2>he has the influence an ear of the president, and

1:50:15.200 --> 1:50:18.800
<v Speaker 2>so that two hundred million dollars looks incredibly cheap, where

1:50:18.960 --> 1:50:22.240
<v Speaker 2>whereas that's unfathomable. You know, who else could do that

1:50:22.320 --> 1:50:27.080
<v Speaker 2>in the world. And so yeah, I've learned, I've learned

1:50:27.080 --> 1:50:31.440
<v Speaker 2>how that works, I guess, or how that looks, and yeah, yeah.

1:50:31.120 --> 1:50:35.400
<v Speaker 1>So well, I'm actually also interested in what you learn personally.

1:50:35.960 --> 1:50:40.040
<v Speaker 1>You write a book, you're with your co author we

1:50:40.160 --> 1:50:42.240
<v Speaker 1>both work at the New York Times, comes out on

1:50:42.320 --> 1:50:47.479
<v Speaker 1>a major publisher, It comes out relative to your expectations

1:50:47.520 --> 1:50:49.360
<v Speaker 1>and feedback. What did you learn.

1:50:51.200 --> 1:50:54.080
<v Speaker 2>About writing a book or moving through the.

1:50:54.000 --> 1:50:58.639
<v Speaker 1>World there or writing this book? Yeah, writing this book,

1:50:58.680 --> 1:51:07.439
<v Speaker 1>in this book coming out, what do we learn? Let

1:51:07.479 --> 1:51:10.040
<v Speaker 1>me throw on a couple of things. Yeah, sure, sure, sure,

1:51:10.400 --> 1:51:14.880
<v Speaker 1>everybody's focused on their life. You're leading up to publication, date.

1:51:15.000 --> 1:51:19.080
<v Speaker 1>In your world, this is the most important thing since

1:51:19.120 --> 1:51:22.439
<v Speaker 1>your status, of the writer's subject matter of the book,

1:51:22.479 --> 1:51:27.360
<v Speaker 1>the publisher. There's a lot of ink media coverage around

1:51:27.360 --> 1:51:34.040
<v Speaker 1>its publication, then the media moves on. Okay, there's been

1:51:34.040 --> 1:51:37.519
<v Speaker 1>a lot of people have written books recently. I had

1:51:37.520 --> 1:51:39.760
<v Speaker 1>to listen to Kara Swisher write about her and talk

1:51:39.800 --> 1:51:43.120
<v Speaker 1>about her fucking book for over a year, came out,

1:51:43.479 --> 1:51:46.439
<v Speaker 1>was gone within like a week, and really no one

1:51:46.520 --> 1:51:48.679
<v Speaker 1>bought it. And there are a lot of other people

1:51:48.840 --> 1:51:53.200
<v Speaker 1>like that. Okay, your book certainly has a higher pedigree,

1:51:53.320 --> 1:51:57.599
<v Speaker 1>more interest. Do you find you're getting continued feedback? Do

1:51:57.640 --> 1:52:00.320
<v Speaker 1>you find that you're hearing from people that you didn't

1:52:00.360 --> 1:52:04.000
<v Speaker 1>used to hear from. Do you find that you're being criticized?

1:52:04.360 --> 1:52:07.200
<v Speaker 1>Are you stunned that the world has moved on what

1:52:07.320 --> 1:52:11.040
<v Speaker 1>has been your emotional experience in addition to what has

1:52:11.040 --> 1:52:11.719
<v Speaker 1>been incoming.

1:52:14.360 --> 1:52:17.879
<v Speaker 2>So I've been surprised because we've had a renewed interest

1:52:17.960 --> 1:52:21.000
<v Speaker 2>in our book after the election, because more people want

1:52:21.040 --> 1:52:23.120
<v Speaker 2>to understand what he's going to do with government, how

1:52:23.160 --> 1:52:27.960
<v Speaker 2>we operate, and people can read about that about in

1:52:28.040 --> 1:52:29.800
<v Speaker 2>like what he did with Twitter. So we just came

1:52:29.880 --> 1:52:32.000
<v Speaker 2>back from a tour of Europe actually to where we

1:52:32.000 --> 1:52:34.960
<v Speaker 2>talked about the book. We spoke at web Summit and Lisbon,

1:52:35.439 --> 1:52:39.840
<v Speaker 2>we did some events in London. So on that level,

1:52:40.080 --> 1:52:43.080
<v Speaker 2>I honestly thought I talked to a lot of authors

1:52:43.120 --> 1:52:44.680
<v Speaker 2>who are like, you know, enjoy it while you can,

1:52:44.840 --> 1:52:48.800
<v Speaker 2>because a week later, like, people aren't gonna talking about

1:52:48.800 --> 1:52:51.840
<v Speaker 2>your book. That's just the natural progression of things. And

1:52:51.880 --> 1:52:55.160
<v Speaker 2>for us to be continuing to talk to people two

1:52:55.160 --> 1:52:57.679
<v Speaker 2>and a half months out of publication, to people like yourself,

1:52:57.800 --> 1:53:00.960
<v Speaker 2>has been an incredible privilege. And so I'm just trying

1:53:00.960 --> 1:53:04.880
<v Speaker 2>to kind of ride that wave and enjoy it and

1:53:05.920 --> 1:53:11.160
<v Speaker 2>kind of impart the knowledge that we've learned about him too.

1:53:11.840 --> 1:53:14.640
<v Speaker 2>You know, people that are interested.

1:53:15.680 --> 1:53:19.559
<v Speaker 3>Well, Ryan, this has been incredibly edifying. You're a very

1:53:19.640 --> 1:53:24.439
<v Speaker 3>sharp guy. You're on the case. There's certainly a movie

1:53:24.760 --> 1:53:27.000
<v Speaker 3>unspooling in front of us. I know you will be

1:53:27.160 --> 1:53:29.720
<v Speaker 3>reporting on it. I want to thank you so much

1:53:29.760 --> 1:53:32.040
<v Speaker 3>for taking this time to speak with my audience.

1:53:33.200 --> 1:53:34.479
<v Speaker 2>Thanks so much, Bob. I want to say this has

1:53:34.479 --> 1:53:36.639
<v Speaker 2>been an honor. I know I've read you for so long.

1:53:36.800 --> 1:53:39.519
<v Speaker 2>You're such a time in the industry, So thank you

1:53:39.560 --> 1:53:39.840
<v Speaker 2>so much.

1:53:39.880 --> 1:53:44.080
<v Speaker 3>Having man till next time, This is Bob left st