WEBVTT - Book: Tech Billionaires Threaten Free Speech 0:00:02.520 --> 0:00:08.959 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. You're listening to Bloomberg 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:13.560 Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:15.880 In the meantime, we've got a great read on what 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:17.800 is going in the world of consumers. 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:19.560 Yeah, let's talk a little bit about payments, because I 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:21.200 got to tell you, Carol, not so hard to pay 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:23.520 for things in my daily life. Got venmo, I can 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:25.919 send a few bucks to Bloomberg News. Colleague's doing something 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:26.920 fun for the Super Bowl. 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:27.720 Yeah. 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:29.760 If I win, nice, Yeah, yeah I win. 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:30.960 I don't take us all out for pizza. 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:32.839 You got automatic bill pay, you got Apple pay or 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:35.400 Google Wallet on the subway. Online you can use Apple pay, 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:38.479 Google Wallet, Shopify. If those failies, sometimes you got to 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:39.800 pull out your credit card, You got to type in 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:41.640 all the info. I don't love to do that. When 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:42.960 that happens, you still got to do that. 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:43.320 Yeah. 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:45.240 One area that I think is still challenging for a 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:47.320 lot of people is cross border. So if my friend 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:48.960 comes to the US, we go to a concert, hard 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:50.840 for him to send me money to pay me back 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:54.120 for that ticket. The question when does that get easier. 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:56.480 It's something that Ken Moore thinks a lot about he's 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:59.320 Chief Innovation Officer of MasterCard. He joins us from Mastercard's 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:03.480 tech up in Dublin, Ireland. Ken here, you know, as 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:05.280 I was preparing for this and we were talking about this, 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:08.800 it's not that hard to part with money these days. 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:10.760 Companies have made it very easy. But where do you 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:13.240 see the big challenges that still remain in twenty twenty five. 0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:17.600 Well, first of all, Carol, Tim, thank you for having 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:20.000 me on the show. And Tim, thank you for really 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:22.039 helping prop up the world payments. 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:22.440 With all that. 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:26.440 Yeah, it's not so great, Well it is. 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:31.400 It depends on your perspective. I mean for us, Tim, 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:35.160 it's really like when people think about MasterCard, they sometimes 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:37.479 think about us as a cards company. You described as 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.160 there as a cards company, But actually, whilst that's been 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:42.720 a part of our past and will always be a 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:44.759 part of our future, it's very important to us. We're 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:47.160 actually a lot grower than that. Today. We really see 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:51.080 ourselves as a technology company operating more broadly in commerce. 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:53.320 So it's not just the card payment rails we have. 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:57.280 We've got rails in blockchain and fast ach, and we've 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:00.720 got services like cybersecurity and solutions for park and SMEs. 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:03.560 So really, you know, for me in my role and 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:07.080 what I do in MasterCards, and it's really about trying 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:09.160 to lean into the world of change, right, So we'll 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:11.919 come to twenty twenty five in a second, but it's 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:14.040 really about trying to anticipate changes in the world of 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:16.120 commerce and then building the products and services that are 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:20.079 going to help us and more importantly are the partners 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:22.200 and the clients that we have actually thrived. 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:22.600 Right the world. 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:25.280 Well, Ken, something interesting happening right now here in the 0:02:25.400 --> 0:02:28.119 US is Elon Musk, who has a history in payments 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:31.880 with PayPal and even the company before PayPal believe it 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:35.680 was called zip two, and he wants to make x 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:39.680 dot com, you know, a payment center. Watching what's happening 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:42.040 in the federal government, what he's doing at the Department 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:45.239 of Government Efficiency, does that change the way you're thinking 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:46.720 about the future of payments? 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:50.519 No, I mean not really a tim if I'm honest, 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:55.440 because we believe in offering consumer's choice, and we honestly 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:58.520 believe that that payments is evolving anyway, so we probably 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:02.440 welcome that more than feel threatened by it. We found 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.120 incredible ways to partner with a diverse set of companies 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:07.600 from Apple through to FinTechs over the years, and I 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:10.880 have no doubt that, and indeed with many crypto companies, 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:12.320 so I have no doubt but that we will five 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:15.040 ways to partner in this one as well. I think 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:18.200 for me, if you start looking at and maybe why 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:20.480 is he doing this, it's really the world is starting 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:23.079 to move faster and faster. And sometimes when we look 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:24.520 at that, we tend to look back and we go, 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:26.320 oh my god, it's so much faster today than it 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:29.680 was yesterday. But really we all know changes exponentially. It's 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:33.520 going to be faster again tomorrow. And if you research 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:35.600 tells us that by twenty forty, when we look outside 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:37.640 our window, the world is going to be moving four 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:40.200 times faster. So if you extrapolate back and you bring 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:43.040 it to something that's a bit more reasonable, so twenty 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:45.400 thirty five years from now, it's going to be about 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:47.360 one and a half or twice as fast as it 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:49.760 is today. And that's an awful lot of change, and 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:52.520 that gives us some real kind of challenges, but also 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:55.760 some opportunities in payments. And that's really why we wanted 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:58.440 to lean in because our clients don't just buy a 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:01.320 product or service from US today by a partner that's 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:03.720 willing to invest ahead of them and partner with them 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:06.200 to kind of help them realize those changes in the 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:08.440 right way because they know we care about the same 0:04:08.520 --> 0:04:10.760 things that they care about. And that's going to be 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:13.240 true for Elon and his company as well. So that 0:04:13.400 --> 0:04:16.440 pace of change is really going to accelerate, not just 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:19.719 in crypto, but much more broadly across a whole bunch 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:21.440 of different of trends. 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:23.000 Hey, Ken, one thing I do want to ask you, 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:25.279 and just playing off of Elon Muskin, you know, we've 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:27.480 spent a lot of time today and certainly over the 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:31.120 last few weeks about his involvement in the US government 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:34.200 and access to a lot across various departments, and you 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:37.279 do wonder about, you know, what he's learning, what it 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:41.960 means to kind of have that inside position, and do 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:45.279 you feel like that that potentially puts a company like yourself, 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:48.760 whether it comes to fintech, innovation or payments and so 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:53.200 on and so forth, that his initiatives could have an 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:55.480 advantage over what you guys might be doing. 0:04:57.240 --> 0:04:59.320 Now, I have to be honest, we don't really think 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.599 about that, Caroly and Tim, I mean, we trust the 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:06.360 elected officials of governments to do the things that are 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:08.839 right for them, and we want to partner and we 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:11.400 want to respond to them. So we don't, if I'm honest, 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:14.400 give too much thought to that just now, because honestly, 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:16.479 there's so much going on in payments that there's a 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:19.560 lot of opportunity for lots of actors, be they you know, 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:22.240 semi state, be they government, be they FinTechs, or be 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:25.320 they established kind of players, to actually all have a 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:27.400 role in it, because that pace of change is coming 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:30.040 at us so fast and we see it playing out 0:05:30.080 --> 0:05:33.880 in so many areas. Right you know, we've got we've 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:35.839 got a report which we just pushed out in the 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:40.840 MasterCard newsroom today which really talks about seven trends that 0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:43.320 we really see playing out between now and the end 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:45.760 of the decade. And crypto and others are part of them. 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:48.320 So those are part of those trends, as are you know, 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:51.280 the role and the rollout of new payment networks themselves. 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:54.400 But really when and that report is really available for 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:56.800 you for all of your guests, and hopefully you've had 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.359 a chance to take a sneak preview at it. 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:01.880 I mean, I saw the cross border payments was a 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:02.400 theme there. 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:06.359 Yeah, it really is, and you know you've given some 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:09.160 great examples already on the call here today where you know, 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:11.640 the world we've really been focused on kind of you know, 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:15.880 giving consumers both choice and flexibility both domestically and you 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:18.000 know that's true of every country around the world. And 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:21.080 whilst that's been fantastic, it's also meant that we have 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:25.000 some challenges in interoperability. So if you take real time payments, 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:27.560 you take crypto, the example you gave and the example 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:29.720 that you're using in some of your earlier conversations as well, 0:06:29.760 --> 0:06:32.080 if you take open banking, there's there's just a lot 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:35.120 of different payment rails out there. And also we're moving 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:40.000 more than just fiat currency these days, cryptocurrencies, ata identities, 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:41.919 there's there's a whole lot of stuff. So what we 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:45.160 really see is that first trend being around moving that 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:48.359 this kind of fragmented payment system to much more of 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:52.000 a global intectable system by standards and regulator. 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:54.480 We get a run Ken Moore, thank you so much, 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:56.640 Chief Innovation Officer. Over at MasterCard. 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:59.400 We've heard the twenty twenty four election be called the 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:02.520 podcast Indeed, both Trump and Harris made their case directly 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:06.800 to voters, Trump obviously more effectively. The fragmenting of media, though, 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:08.679 has been happening for years. A lot has been written 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:10.880 about it newspaper editors. They're not the ones who call 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:14.360 the shots anymore. You've got influential individuals going directly to 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:18.600 their audience using social media, podcast platforms like stubstack and more. 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:22.239 What is a newer phenomenon, though, according to our next guest, 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:25.720 is to how conservative Silicon Valley billionaires such as Elon Musk, 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:29.200 Peter Tiel, David Saxon Moore have used media in recent 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:33.760 years as influence. Owen Higgins is a journalist, author, and historian. 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:37.640 His new book, owned How Tech Billionaires on the Right 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:40.600 Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left is out today. 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:42.960 He joins us from Wyndham, Maine. Owen, good to have 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:45.680 you with us. Congratulations on the new book. We were 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:48.239 talking about this on our editorial call earlier. Carol pointed 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:51.120 out that the wealthy and the media nothing new. Think 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:53.240 Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post and before that, the 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:56.600 Graham family, the Murdochs, the Sulzbergers, the list goes on, 0:07:57.200 --> 0:07:59.560 what is new about the phenomenon that you write about? 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:04.400 Well, thanks for having me, guys. I think that what's 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:09.680 new about this phenomenon is these are wealthy individuals within 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:13.840 the Silicon Valley sphere who have decided that they would 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:17.640 prefer to have a more subservient media, and so they 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:23.560 have worked to destabilize institutional media to the benefit of 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:27.440 alternative media ecosystems that they control or they at least 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:29.600 have some investment in. I don't mean to make this 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:33.440 sound conspiratorial or as if there's some kind of you know, 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:38.880 cabal all kind of planning this together. Silicon Valley's theory 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:42.520 has often been to move fast and break things, and 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:44.200 I think that's kind of what they tried to do 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:48.640 here with independent and alternative media and what it's had 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:52.280 this knock on effect, a positive effect, I think from 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:57.319 their perspective of damaging and deteriorating these more institutional mainstream 0:08:57.520 --> 0:09:02.800 and critical independent media institutions to the benefit of an 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:06.599 alternative media ecosystem that, as I said, is more subservient 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:11.520 or at least will put forward the kind of ideological 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:15.200 points of view that they want and not challenge them 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:17.720 in the ways that they would not like to be challenged. 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:21.440 You know, Owen, Elon Musk, Peter Tiel, They're in your book. 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:24.319 You mentioned them. But there's two names that for some 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:27.120 might not be as familiar, and that is Matt Tayibe 0:09:27.200 --> 0:09:30.560 and Glenn green Wall. They are featured prominently in the book. 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:33.360 Remind folks who they are and why they are front 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:35.880 and center. And I remember Matt Tayibe certainly a lot 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:38.760 of reporting here in New York City many many years ago. 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:40.520 But why are they front and center for you? 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:45.240 Well, Glenn and Matt are kind of the way that 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:48.560 the book explores this phenomenon primarily, And the reason that 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:51.640 they are select why I've selected them is because these 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:54.200 guys were nominally on the left or at least allied 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:57.880 with the left for a long time, and they have 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:02.839 moved to the right in in kind of tandem with 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:07.320 them working with these alternative media companies that have been 0:10:07.320 --> 0:10:11.040 invested in and supported by the Silicon Valley billionaire. So 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:13.680 I thought that would be a good way to explore 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:15.439 that shift, to pick these two guys. But of course 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:18.760 I didn't just pick two random left wing or left 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:23.000 aligned journalists. These are pretty prominent individuals Glenn Greenwald was 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:27.720 the journalist who Edward Stone contacted when he first wanted 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:32.520 to reveal what the NSA spine scandal. And Matt tayebe 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:36.120 is A was has long been a prominent writer specifically 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:39.640 really really, I think that the peak was when he 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:42.960 wrote about the financial christ for Rolling Stone. So these 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:46.320 these are kind of not nobody's there. They are pretty 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:49.240 well known. And you know, if if if you're familiar with, 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:53.679 you know, the kind of the last twenty years, I 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:56.800 suppose of kind of alternative media or or at least, 0:10:56.800 --> 0:10:59.240 you know, like left wing aligned media, I think that 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:01.640 these would be too to names be pretty familiar with. 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:05.920 So enter substack because that's something that has emerged in 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:10.680 recent years interestingly enough, So the origins of substack or 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:13.120 interesting because you know, you got a guy who years 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:17.080 ago worked at Tesla many years ago and then left 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:18.720 Tesla and goes on to be one of the guys 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:23.040 who launches substack a few years later. Talk about substack 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:25.120 a little bit and how substack is featured in here, 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:29.440 because there are a lot of journalists on the left 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:33.360 also who used substack as a way to get out 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:34.000 to their audience. 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:38.400 Absolutely, I mean I used Substack. Many of my peers 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:43.160 use substack. I think it's substach kind of came about 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:46.800 as a newsletter service with a really good user interface, 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:48.200 I think is the way that I would describe it. 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:53.200 They filled a gap that was there. There were other 0:11:53.240 --> 0:11:55.120 blogging sites. I don't want to bory rottings too much, 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:56.800 but one of them was called Medium. That's kind of 0:11:56.800 --> 0:11:58.760 the one whose user interface I can kind of compared 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:01.600 to substack the most very easy, very easy to use, 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:05.080 looked really nice on the page, not very complicated. Substack 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:08.080 took this kind of model and exported it to the 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:11.720 newsletter service, where they gave you this easy user interface, 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:13.120 and if you were a writer, all you kind of 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:15.760 had to do was fill out a couple of you 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:18.680 know forms, so to speak on the website, and that 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:22.200 they would pretty much do everything else for you. So 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:25.560 and they would take a fee obviously from your newsletter subscriptions, 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:27.120 but if you didn't want to charge subscriptions, you could 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:31.720 just host it on there for free. Substack came to 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:37.439 prominence I think after Mark Andresen, venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, 0:12:38.120 --> 0:12:42.360 invested in it, and I believe twenty nineteen he led 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:46.400 a funding ground in Reson Horowitz his his company, and 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:50.800 after that, Substack had capital to burn, They had capital 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:55.640 to spend on other writers. They had capital to spend 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:59.319 on trying to get people to come over to Substack 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:04.200 from these sing institutional media. And if you kind of 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:05.840 think back to what I was saying before, right, like 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:09.520 they wanted to kind of damage institutional media and to 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:12.680 kind of shake the foundations I think of the mainstream 0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:15.280 and a critical independent media. Well, I mean one thing 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:17.760 one way you can do that is to invest in 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:20.360 this company and to kind of see if they can 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:24.679 take some of the more prominent writers from those organizations 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:28.240 and bring them over to a place where they're independent. Sure, 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:30.080 and they do a lot of good work, sure for 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:33.280 a lot of them, but they're also kind of it's 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:35.160 a little decentralized. And I think that that was kind 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:38.160 of the point of it. Now Subsak kind of started 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:40.520 to tilt right, or at least there's a perception that 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:44.000 it was tilting right with who it was courting, and 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:47.880 it did it for both Matt Tyde and Glenn Greenwaald, again, 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:52.120 the two journalists who I use as the primary kind 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:55.959 of way to explain these phenomenons they allowed both of 0:13:56.000 --> 0:13:58.760 them to leave, Matt to leave Rolling Stone and Glenn 0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:01.280 to leave the Intercept and to come on to subseconds 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:02.960 and strike it up by themselves. 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:06.600 We're talking with Owen Higgins, journalist, author, and history and 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:09.120 his book owned How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:12.600 the latticed Voices on the Left? Owen, why are you 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:13.160 writing this? 0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:16.520 Yeah, you know, I was. I've written some things that 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:19.240 have been over the years. I've written things that were 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:24.040 critical of Greenwald and Tybee's shifts to the right. So 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:26.400 both type books reached out to me to ask me 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:29.360 to kind of write about how they shifted to the right, 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:31.840 and I said, you know, I want to do that, 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:35.280 but I would want to kind of merge it with 0:14:35.320 --> 0:14:41.280 this discussion of how media and how tech billionaires, specifically 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:45.720 like these Silicon Valley conservatives, have exerted their influence over 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:47.240 the media, because I find that to be a really 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:50.320 interesting story. I've written about it multiple times for years, 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:54.800 and so I think that I was eager to explore 0:14:55.640 --> 0:15:00.600 that the Silicon Valley angle, and I just as I 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:02.400 started to write it, you know, I wrote it between 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:06.880 primarily between i'd say September twenty twenty three and February 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:09.160 twenty twenty four, and then went through the editing process. 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:13.200 And obviously through the editing process, as you know, Trump rose, 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:16.960 his his political fortunes rose again, and you saw people 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:20.000 like Elon Musk and Peter Teel kind of align themselves 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:22.680 with him. It only became more relevant, and I think 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:24.440 that the you know, the tech side of it really 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:28.600 started to take over the narrative a lot more than 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:32.240 the kind of the media I don't want to say gossip, 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:36.160 but the kind of like the media minutia of the story. 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:38.400 And it kind of became more about tech. And I think, 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:40.600 you know, I write about tech for my day job. 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:43.040 I write about it. I don't write about so much 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:45.240 the business of tech, but I write about it. So 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:48.600 you know, I'm very interested in this world. And I 0:15:48.600 --> 0:15:52.840 think that the politics of Silicon Valley tech titans, these 0:15:52.840 --> 0:15:57.080 billionaires are you know, I think that's very important. You know, 0:15:57.120 --> 0:16:01.720 we saw the Pallenteer earnings that came out that note 0:16:01.720 --> 0:16:04.600 from Alex Karp saying a lot of these kind of 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:09.200 similar things to to what his fellow tech leaders in 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:12.240 Silicon Valley are saying. This this kind of sense of 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:15.480 ideology is kind of taking over a little bit how 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:21.000 they are presenting their earnings, how they're presenting their company 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:24.080 to the public. So I think for the Bloomberg audience, 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:26.600 I think that that kind of is a way of 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:30.720 examining the people behind these companies that that that you follow, 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.240 and looking at how they both kind of exist in 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:36.880 this world together and this like buying this kind of 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:40.200 media influence and pushing for how they get their message 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:44.160 across and also like what that message is now as 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:45.720 they kind of go further to the right. 0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:48.400 We're speaking. We're speaking with Owen Higgins. He's the author 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:50.360 of the new book Owned How Tech Billionaires on the 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:53.080 Right about the Loudest Voices on the Left of the 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:56.240 book is out today. Owen Money certainly features prominently in 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:59.840 the book. You talked about the billionaire backers. There's obviously, 0:17:00.240 --> 0:17:02.720 and what Elon Musk has done at the company formerly 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:06.320 known as Twitter. Back to though Matt Tayebe and Glenn Greenwald, 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:11.440 I'm curious about money motivating money as a motivation here. 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:15.639 One thing that substack has allowed is for essentially the 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:20.200 ceiling on being paid for work to be limitless. Did 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:22.760 you in your investigation in your reporting get any idea 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:25.920 of how much money folks, individuals like those are able 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:28.920 to make with their substacks. 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:34.399 You know, I've seen, I've seen numbers thrown around. I mean, 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:37.720 all of this stuff is private, but you can kind 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:41.040 of get a sense probably somewhere between like half a 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:43.479 million and a million a year through substack I think 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:47.240 for Taybe. And now Glenn has moved off of substack, 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:50.600 he has moved to Rumble. So just to get a 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:54.000 little background on how that happened, so Teal and jd 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:57.000 Vance led a funding round for Rumble in May twenty 0:17:57.040 --> 0:17:59.720 twenty one. This was about six months after Glenn LEFTI 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:03.399 owners up and then in August twenty twenty one, Rumble 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:05.960 began to give paid deals out to people. So I 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:09.040 think in August some of the first people were I 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:11.320 think in the same day were announced Glenn Greenwald and 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:13.120 Tulsa Gabbard, right, So these were kind of the two 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:17.159 most prominent names. So Glenn now has moved all of 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:20.359 his writing from substack over to locals, which is substack, 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:25.439 which is sorry, which is Rumble's blogging platform. So I 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:27.680 don't know how much he makes from that. I don't 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:30.240 know the structure of right deal. I don't know. I 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:32.360 would assume though it seems to be a multi year deal, 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:35.320 so it's probably pretty good. I would assume that he 0:18:35.440 --> 0:18:38.840 was making even if we assume he was making equal 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:42.280 to what Matt was making from Susy, like he would 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:44.960 happen that they would pay him about that or more so. Oh, 0:18:45.080 --> 0:18:45.920 I would say, that's about what. 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:47.360 I want to make sure. We only have a few 0:18:47.359 --> 0:18:48.520 more minutes, so I want to make sure we get 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:50.480 in as much as we can. What would you say 0:18:50.480 --> 0:18:52.359 to someone who's listening or watching right now who says, 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:55.200 wait a second, we need this on the right as 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:58.919 an antidote to what's happened on the left with the 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:03.000 rise of the media being associated with the left. You know, 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:04.200 there are a lot of people out there who would 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:07.919 say the media is liberal, so there needs to be 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:09.160 sort of an antidote there. 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:15.320 How would you respond, Yeah, I mean, assuming that I 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:18.240 would agree with that, or at least like not contest 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:21.600 it that the media is liberal or on the left, 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:25.480 I would say that I don't have a problem with 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:29.680 conservative media existing. I think that's fine. I think that 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:35.840 there's a place for any kind of discourse. I think 0:19:35.880 --> 0:19:38.600 there's a place where right and left discourse in democracy. Certainly, 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:44.760 what I'm trying to bring attention to here is the 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:50.879 kind of decentralization of media and what that means for 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:54.400 professional ethics and how newsrooms are run or not run 0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:56.959 in the case of people who strike off on their own. Again, 0:19:57.080 --> 0:20:00.000 this is fine. Most of my career, I've been a freelancer. 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:00.600 I've been. 0:20:02.040 --> 0:20:03.520 I think, oh, and I want to jump in on that, 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:05.080 because we've only got a couple of minutes left here. 0:20:05.080 --> 0:20:07.280 I think that is an interesting point. I think a 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:09.480 bunch of us have grown up in a world of 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:11.800 journalism with there were layers over us, and we wrote 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:13.960 something and there were editors, and I mean, I can't 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:15.520 tell you how many times I would have like a 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:17.360 two minute piece that went on TV and how many 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:19.760 people looked at it and rewrote it and like, you know, 0:20:19.880 --> 0:20:24.200 you were questioned. And I do wonder about the layers 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:28.520 and so the idea of something being news and factually 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:33.080 checked multiple times versus just someone putting something out. There 0:20:33.080 --> 0:20:36.639