Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. We're on vacation, but that doesn't mean.
Speaker 2: We don't have a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: Adam Becker stops by to talk about his new book
Speaker 1: More Everything Forever, AI Overlord, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's
Speaker 1: crusade to control the fate of humanity. But first we
Speaker 1: have a senior White House reporter for The Washington Post,
Speaker 1: Isaac Arnsdorf, on his new book twenty twenty four, How
Speaker 1: Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Isaac. Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: having me, Molly.
Speaker 1: So the book is called twenty twenty four How Republicans
Speaker 1: Took the White House and the Democrats Lost America. I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask you a passover question. How is this
Speaker 1: book different than all other books?
Speaker 2: This is really the the defining, definitive inside account of
Speaker 2: the election that we just had from start to end.
Speaker 2: Some books have have covered just one campaign or the other.
Speaker 2: Some have started just kind of with the debate and
Speaker 2: and in the final stretch. But this really goes back
Speaker 2: to the beginning in terms of for both Trump and
Speaker 2: Biden the decision to run again, which was not not
Speaker 2: inevitable for either of them, or that neither party would
Speaker 2: would would let or that both parties would let that happen, right,
Speaker 2: that no one would be able to get their respective
Speaker 2: parties to move on from those septuagenarians, and then seeing
Speaker 2: that story develop throughout both primaries, through the debate, through
Speaker 2: the Democrats switch, and then finally with the result that
Speaker 2: we all saw in November.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's keep going with this. What made Biden lose?
Speaker 1: If you could give me sort of two reasons why
Speaker 1: Biden lost.
Speaker 2: The first answer is the most obvious one, which is age.
Speaker 2: Most Americans thought he was too old to do the job,
Speaker 2: and they couldn't get past that. The mistake that his
Speaker 2: advisors made was viewing that as a perception problem rather
Speaker 2: than a reality problem. Right. The case that they were
Speaker 2: making with is, well, he can do this job as president.
Speaker 2: He doesn't communicate that well, he doesn't campaign that well,
Speaker 2: he doesn't debate as well as he used to, remember,
Speaker 2: that was the line. But when he's in the situation room,
Speaker 2: when he's in the oval office, he can do the job.
Speaker 2: And what that argument really fatally overlooks is that communicating
Speaker 2: is the number one job of the president. If you
Speaker 2: cannot communicate about your agenda and your accomplishments and your leadership,
Speaker 2: then you cannot do the job. There is no difference
Speaker 2: between doing the job and being able to communicate about
Speaker 2: the job. The second factor for Biden is that the
Speaker 2: Democrats were not able. They acknowledged during the campaign that
Speaker 2: they needed to come up with a winning economic argument,
Speaker 2: and they never got there. They never got there with
Speaker 2: Biden and they never got there with Harris. There's actually
Speaker 2: some great reporting in the book. During Harris's debate prep
Speaker 2: and I asked about Biden.
Speaker 1: I just want to I want to square the circle
Speaker 1: with Biden for a minute. I was told by Jake
Speaker 1: Tapper that Biden ran a cover up about his age.
Speaker 1: So how did Biden run a cover up about his age?
Speaker 1: And also the American people didn't vote for him because
Speaker 1: he was too old? Is it, as Jake Tapper tells
Speaker 1: us again and again and again, a cover up? Or
Speaker 1: was it that people thought he was too old? Are
Speaker 1: you on team cover up? I just I'm curious.
Speaker 2: Our reporting is that Biden and his staff were completely
Speaker 2: aware of his limitations, completely aware of the political problems
Speaker 2: that those limitations posed. They thought that they could muscle
Speaker 2: through them. They thought that they could choreograph events to
Speaker 2: downplay them. And they thought that when push came to
Speaker 2: shove and Americans were forced to choose between that and
Speaker 2: Trump and Trump, je's Biden and they were wrong.
Speaker 1: But the polling suggests that there.
Speaker 2: Was not a cover up because Americans pursue sounds like
Speaker 2: Americans knew exactly what his administration knew. So is that
Speaker 2: a cover up? I'm just curious. To me, a cover
Speaker 2: up means a secret that was hidden, and Biden's age
Speaker 2: was not a secret that was hidden. I'm just curious.
Speaker 1: Look, I love Jake Taber and I have so much
Speaker 1: respect for how many books he sold.
Speaker 2: So talk to me about Harris.
Speaker 1: So Harris gets one hundred days in, Biden finally drops out,
Speaker 1: Harris gets run for president, but she doesn't get to
Speaker 1: run for president as if she were a new candidate.
Speaker 2: So explain to us that, yeah, that's exactly right. That
Speaker 2: was one of the one of the things that I
Speaker 2: learned from doing the book was how much Harris. You know,
Speaker 2: she didn't do everything that she could to escape Biden's shadow, right.
Speaker 2: You know, she was repeatedly given the option to distance
Speaker 2: herself and she wouldn't take it. Now, based on our reporting,
Speaker 2: some of that is honestly her position, right, Like, she
Speaker 2: was part of his administration and she didn't feel like
Speaker 2: she could honestly run from that. The other factor is
Speaker 2: Biden made that harder for her because he actually came
Speaker 2: out and told her, even on the day of the debate,
Speaker 2: came to her and said, don't distance yourself from me.
Speaker 2: It would be bad for you. But right, no daylight. Right,
Speaker 2: that's the famous no daylight. That particular word choice is
Speaker 2: not the phrasing that we have in our reporting, But
Speaker 2: there was a conversation where he told her that it
Speaker 2: would be politically bad for her to distance herself. Do
Speaker 2: you agree with that? Well? From reporting, right, I mean
Speaker 2: not based on what the voters wanted to see, and
Speaker 2: that certainly wasn't what wasn't the Republican sense of it.
Speaker 2: And in hindsight or even at the time, a lot
Speaker 2: of her advisors admitted that the way that she bungled
Speaker 2: that question at the view was the biggest mistake of
Speaker 2: the campaign. You know, rivaled only by the trans AD,
Speaker 2: but the trans AD was something that was from years earlier,
Speaker 2: whereas that was a mistake that was made during the campaign.
Speaker 2: But even beyond that, a lot of people were obviously
Speaker 2: critical of the campaign that Harris ran in twenty nineteen
Speaker 2: for the twenty twenty primary, and a lot of people
Speaker 2: had a low view of her potential or had concerns
Speaker 2: about her potential as a candidate. But the reality is,
Speaker 2: you know, whether she could have run a better campaign
Speaker 2: for herself or not in twenty twenty four, she really
Speaker 2: never got the chance. I mean, basically it was with
Speaker 2: one hundred days out, there was no time to do
Speaker 2: any of the kind of strategic and tactical thinking that
Speaker 2: you have to do to run a campaign that actually
Speaker 2: fits the candidate, where the messenger and the message worked together.
Speaker 2: There was just no time to do that. They just
Speaker 2: ran moved forward with the Biden campaign as it was,
Speaker 2: including with a lot of the same advisors who were
Speaker 2: Biden people who had come up with the policies that
Speaker 2: the Biden administration was struggling to defend. So, you know,
Speaker 2: how is she supposed to she just there was there
Speaker 2: wasn't a chance for her to do a complete, a
Speaker 2: complete ruboot. She never got the chance to run her
Speaker 2: own campaign and see if she could have gotten farther
Speaker 2: on her own.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could talk about this sort of
Speaker 1: consultant class and where they got involved in like you
Speaker 1: certainly saw moments like I saw Tim Walls, and maybe
Speaker 1: because I also am friendly with him, I feel a
Speaker 1: little responsible for this.
Speaker 2: On some level.
Speaker 1: But like Tim Walls, whenever I interviewed him, I thought,
Speaker 1: this guy is really got a little bit of political magic, right,
Speaker 1: Like when he speaks, he's pretty good. He's got very likable,
Speaker 1: very midwestern, like I just sawt There were a lot
Speaker 1: of elements about him that I thought were really good,
Speaker 1: and he had a number of really good speeches. And
Speaker 1: then something happened when I was watching him and he
Speaker 1: stopped and they didn't let him out. And there was
Speaker 1: that with her too.
Speaker 2: She sort of had a lot.
Speaker 1: Of fire, and then there was like a month in
Speaker 1: the middle where you just didn't see her, And I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could talk about that and what that
Speaker 1: was and what you sort of saw that to be.
Speaker 2: So that month you're talking about where she didn't do
Speaker 2: any interviews, that's another mistake that the team will acknowledge
Speaker 2: in hindsight privately whose idea was that and why? Well,
Speaker 2: the thinking was, you know, for Walls, that he couldn't
Speaker 2: do an interview until she did an interview, and with her,
Speaker 2: they wanted to wait until the convention to introduce her.
Speaker 2: They wanted to be able to divide to find that
Speaker 2: story for themselves. Harris also, that.
Speaker 1: Was it, by the way, a huge mistake. I think
Speaker 1: we can all agree.
Speaker 2: Well, the Trump campaign certainly used that time to get
Speaker 2: out ahead to start this storyline that she was hiding,
Speaker 2: and that contributed to this sense that you were hearing
Speaker 2: from voters that they didn't know who she was. That
Speaker 2: was that was valuable time that that the Trump campaign
Speaker 2: was able to capitalize on instead of the Harris campaign.
Speaker 2: The other reality that we learned in our reporting is
Speaker 2: that Harris personally, this kind of comes from her prosecutorial training.
Speaker 2: She requires a lot of prep Ye, I've heard that
Speaker 2: how she works, and so the amount of time that
Speaker 2: it took her away from the trail to prepare for
Speaker 2: every one of those interviews, you know, there was a
Speaker 2: trade off there also, and at first that wasn't a
Speaker 2: trade off that they were as willing to make And
Speaker 2: it was later on that they that they that they
Speaker 2: decided either that they were going to take that time
Speaker 2: away to do the prep or that she was going
Speaker 2: to start doing interviews with less prep.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, that I had heard that she
Speaker 1: really I mean, what I had heard was that she
Speaker 1: didn't really like doing interviews, that she was much better
Speaker 1: with debating, which you could I mean, she's a really
Speaker 1: good debater. I thought she was a really good debater,
Speaker 1: and that she took a long time to prep. That
Speaker 1: she really wanted to prep like a prosecutor, which is
Speaker 1: totally insane because you can't prep for an interview. You
Speaker 1: just have to go in there and talk, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think anyway, and certainly Donald Trump has
Speaker 1: never prepped for anything in his life. What do you
Speaker 1: think I want? Let's talk about the Trump campaign. It
Speaker 1: strikes me that they really just put him in the
Speaker 1: culture and took the idea that politics is downstream of
Speaker 1: culture and just got him in everywhere. My sense is
Speaker 1: that he just did everything and it worked. But was
Speaker 1: there some method to the madness?
Speaker 2: Yes, that was one of the one of the specific
Speaker 2: things that they sent out to do. They called it
Speaker 2: making him a cultural icon instead of a political figure.
Speaker 2: And you know that very naturally to Trump. You know,
Speaker 2: that's who he was for most of his life. He
Speaker 2: was a celebrity. He was not a politician. And you
Speaker 2: could see this as early on as the primary. You know,
Speaker 2: he went to a frat house for a pregame before
Speaker 2: a football game in Iowa. You know, do you know
Speaker 2: a lot of seventy seven or seventy eight year old
Speaker 2: politicians who could just show up at a frat house
Speaker 2: and flip burgers. I mean, those kinds of settings really
Speaker 2: played to his strengths based on the kind of personality
Speaker 2: that he was for most of his life, and that
Speaker 2: was actually an opportunity for younger, younger voters, younger audiences
Speaker 2: to introduce them. You know, they didn't know that, they
Speaker 2: don't remember Trump before he was the politician, and so
Speaker 2: that was a really powerful way to reintroduce him.
Speaker 1: You know what's funny is that I actually think that
Speaker 1: a lot of politicians could do that if they let
Speaker 1: them do that. But democratic politics, for whatever reason, and
Speaker 1: I'd love you to like square this circle, because you
Speaker 1: guys just wrote this book about the two campaigns. It
Speaker 1: strikes me that the level of carefulness in the Biden Harris,
Speaker 1: you know, like keep them cloistered, keep them safe, keep
Speaker 1: them from speaking, is the largest sort of fuck up
Speaker 1: because like, had you sent here's just I'm gonna give you.
Speaker 1: This is my own hobby horse. But I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you I'm torturing you. I know, I'm sorry first the
Speaker 1: tap re question, now this but but it's my podcast.
Speaker 1: So but it strikes me that if you had led
Speaker 1: Tim Walls or Harris do the number of interviews and again,
Speaker 1: maybe they weren't THEO Vaughn might not have wanted to
Speaker 1: have Harris on or and Joe Rogan may have. You know,
Speaker 1: I've heard conflicting stories about what happened with the Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan thing, whether he wanted her, whether that was too
Speaker 1: far away, whether I mean, who knows, somebody told me that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so tell me. Let's tell me what tell me.
Speaker 2: So it is so Walls had a lot more success
Speaker 2: getting on podcasts than Harris, it's all.
Speaker 1: Did they not want her?
Speaker 2: Yes, they got a lot of no's, a lot a
Speaker 2: lot of of of non political podcasts that have left
Speaker 2: leaning audiences said no because they didn't want to bring
Speaker 2: politics into the space. Like who the Travis and Jason
Speaker 2: Kelsey podcast said no, That Bill Simmons podcast said no.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, they couldn't get on Hot Ones either, Wow,
Speaker 2: the Hot Sauce show, Hot Ones show. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 2: a podcast person. And and then you know, with Rogan,
Speaker 2: it was a lot of back and forth, and Rogan
Speaker 2: wanted her to come do it in Texas, and so
Speaker 2: they set up that rally in Texas. But then they
Speaker 2: actually by the time they and they didn't really give
Speaker 2: Rogan's team a heads up that they were doing that.
Speaker 2: So then by the time they scheduled that, it was
Speaker 2: almost too late. And finally Rogan offered the campaign of
Speaker 2: time and they didn't take it. So it's a it's
Speaker 2: kind of a missed connection. But yeah, it's a.
Speaker 1: Fuck up on their part. Subway Takes guys said, he
Speaker 1: thought she was so bad they killed it. They only
Speaker 1: aired walls the Subway Takes guys, that's a podcast too,
Speaker 1: so she so wow. Okay, yeah, so.
Speaker 2: You know, you've you've you've heard democrats talk about this
Speaker 2: asymmetry in the in the manosphere or the podcast right
Speaker 2: that that you know, the the those those right wing
Speaker 2: so called manosphere podcasts. You know, we were really happy
Speaker 2: to bring Trump on and to get political in ways
Speaker 2: that kind of either there aren't equivalents on the left
Speaker 2: or the closest thing to equivalent equivalents on the left,
Speaker 2: we're not willing to do.
Speaker 1: This is such a crazy I had no idea. At
Speaker 1: some point did they know they were going to lose
Speaker 1: in Harris world, and when.
Speaker 2: Our reporting is that their internal tra backing polls never
Speaker 2: showed her ahead, They showed it very close in the
Speaker 2: swing states up until the end. And she personally, you know,
Speaker 2: she didn't write a concession speech. She was not expecting
Speaker 2: to lose. They it did not feel to Harrison Walls
Speaker 2: up through the last night, it did not feel like
Speaker 2: a losing campaign. And that has to do with why
Speaker 2: you didn't see her on election night.
Speaker 1: Wow, I would love you to talk about something that
Speaker 1: I have written about, have saw and have and am
Speaker 1: really interested in. Would is this idea that people and
Speaker 1: John mcgrache what a really good piece about this that
Speaker 1: Trump voters wouldn't believe that Trump was going to do
Speaker 1: the things he said he would do on the campaign,
Speaker 1: that there was a suspension of disbelief among the voters.
Speaker 1: Can you sort of talk to me about if you
Speaker 1: saw reporting that spoke to this.
Speaker 2: I think you have to distinguish between different parts of
Speaker 2: the Trump coalition. You know, if you're going to a
Speaker 2: Trump rally and talking to diehards, they absolutely take him
Speaker 2: literally and they're absolutely thrilled about that. But you know, abortion,
Speaker 2: you know, there are other issues and and other you know,
Speaker 2: more persuadable voters that the Trump campaign was able to
Speaker 2: to convert and and you know, we could look at
Speaker 2: abortion as a good example of this, where you know,
Speaker 2: the Democrats would attack him as supporting as being responsible
Speaker 2: for overturning Robe Wade and and wanting to impose a
Speaker 2: national abortion ban. And Trump came out with this position
Speaker 2: of leave it to the states, and when presented when
Speaker 2: when they presented that to these persuadable voters, they were
Speaker 2: targeting those voters liked that position. So so there was
Speaker 2: you know, there was an ability for voters to compartmentalize
Speaker 2: with Trump. I think you know that they could that
Speaker 2: they could vote for him because of immigration, or they
Speaker 2: could vote for him because of the economy, and pay
Speaker 2: less attention to the rougher edges that they weren't as
Speaker 2: they weren't as focused on so interesting.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us, Isaac.
Speaker 2: That flew by, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Adam Becker is the author of More Everything Forever, AI Overlords,
Speaker 1: Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Faith
Speaker 1: of Humanity.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Adam.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, Molly, it's great to be here.
Speaker 2: So you write about AI. It's great and we're not
Speaker 2: going to have any problems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly that's the message of my book, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The book is called More Everything Forever because that's something
Speaker 3: that we can have and it's a totally reasonable dream.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So talk us through this book.
Speaker 3: So the basic idea is there's horrible and unrealistic visions
Speaker 3: of the future that tech billionaires are taking very very
Speaker 3: seriously as a roadmap for what we as a species
Speaker 3: should do, or more properly, where they should steer us
Speaker 3: with their power to control the rest of us. And
Speaker 3: these ideas generally involve going to space and living forever
Speaker 3: under the watchful eye of an AI god.
Speaker 2: Why do we have to go to space?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a really good question. There's essentially no reason
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I mean, I like Europe, I like Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: I like Chicago, But I don't want to go to
Speaker 1: space particularly. I mean, I just don't even get it. Like,
Speaker 1: am I stupid? Is that what's happening here?
Speaker 3: No, you're not stupid. They want to go to space
Speaker 3: because that's where they think the future is. Because that's
Speaker 3: the future. Well, because that's what science fiction told them,
Speaker 3: and they've confused science fiction.
Speaker 2: For you, that makes sense, okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so you know, Musk says that we need
Speaker 3: to get off of Earth in order to save this
Speaker 3: species and preserve the light of consciousness. And so he says,
Speaker 3: you know, he wants to put a million people on
Speaker 3: Mars by twenty fifty and have that be a completely
Speaker 3: self sufficient colony. That's not going to happen. There's just
Speaker 3: no way it's going to happen. Mars is a terrible place.
Speaker 3: The gravity is too low, the radiation's too high, there's
Speaker 3: no air, and the soil is made of poison. It's
Speaker 3: a terrible place. Yeah, and Mosco wants to put a
Speaker 3: million people there.
Speaker 2: Can he be one of a million people?
Speaker 3: I mean, I would like him to be the first one.
Speaker 1: You know, remember when Elan was like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: dig a tunnel between New York and DC and it's
Speaker 1: going to take seven minutes to get there. And I
Speaker 1: was like, yes, my man, because I would take a
Speaker 1: tunnel that takes seven minutes to get from New York
Speaker 1: to d C.
Speaker 2: What happened with that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the hyperlop. He later essentially admitted that this
Speaker 3: was an idea that he put out there because he
Speaker 3: wanted to kill the high speed rail project in California.
Speaker 1: Let the record show, I'm giving you a ironic thumbs up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he doesn't like public infrastructure, that's why he's
Speaker 3: destroying it.
Speaker 1: Oh good, good, just checking. Why doesn't he like public infrastructure.
Speaker 3: Because it's harder to monetize and harder to control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good, just checking. Yeah, it makes me feel
Speaker 2: much better.
Speaker 3: I'm glad.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Basically this is all the fault of science fiction writers
Speaker 1: in the seventies, like my father.
Speaker 3: Uh sorry dad, Yeah, it's all you do a little bit. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean I'm a huge science fiction fan. I love
Speaker 3: science fiction. I grew up reading enormous amounts of old
Speaker 3: science fiction, the same stuff that these tech billionaires read.
Speaker 3: I think that sure, part of it is the fault
Speaker 3: of the science fiction itself, but a lot of it
Speaker 3: is also bad readings of that science fiction, like misunderstanding
Speaker 3: it really badly.
Speaker 2: Say more on that.
Speaker 3: So, for example, Peter Thiel, everybody's favorite person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we love him. Yeah, he's a very are you
Speaker 2: sweaty guy? Have you ever seen him?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Very sweaty? Go on? Hopefully you won't sue me for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You never know with Peter Diel, No.
Speaker 2: You absolutely don't. We actually don't. For a long time,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't say his name on this podcast.
Speaker 1: We would just say that guy who sees a lot
Speaker 1: of people like Devin Nuna's all right, go on, go on?
Speaker 3: Yeah, When Devin Nunas sued his fake cow love that
Speaker 3: yeah No. Teal said in an interview with Maureen Daud
Speaker 3: that he preferred Star Wars to Star Trek because he
Speaker 3: thought that Star Wars was capitalist and that the plot
Speaker 3: of Star Wars was driven entirely by Hans Solo owing
Speaker 3: money to job of the Hut. This is not what
Speaker 3: Star Wars is about.
Speaker 2: Speak for yourself, I mean.
Speaker 3: George Lucas said that he based the rebels in Star
Speaker 3: Wars on the Viet Cong right and Teal is saying
Speaker 3: that that's a capitalist story, so what is easy identifying
Speaker 3: with the empire. He's also said that, you know, we
Speaker 3: should base our plans for things on science fiction of
Speaker 3: their fifties and sixties, and that the message of that
Speaker 3: science fiction is that we should develop space, develop the oceans,
Speaker 3: develop the deserts. I don't know. I read Dune a
Speaker 3: couple of times. I don't think the message of Dune
Speaker 3: is developed the deserts any more than the message of
Speaker 3: Star Wars is build a death star and blow out planets.
Speaker 3: That's awesome, And Teal is not the only one, right,
Speaker 3: Musk has a long history of publicly misunderstanding science fiction
Speaker 3: and sort of the rest of these guys.
Speaker 1: Yes, I have to tell you that the idea that
Speaker 1: they're reading science fiction wrong, it reminds me of Doge.
Speaker 2: Right, so we have Doge.
Speaker 1: They're cutting government contracts, and it turns out they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're like reading the numbers wrong. They're publishing billion instead
Speaker 1: of million. Right, they saved eight billions and million. You
Speaker 1: know that they're just moving so fast and making a
Speaker 1: lot of mistakes. Is that what's happening here? Or is
Speaker 1: it this sort of intentional misreading in order to I mean,
Speaker 1: like Peter Teal say what you will, is actually quite
Speaker 1: smart and has done a lot of things that have
Speaker 1: helped him, right, like suing Gawker. Again, I don't like
Speaker 1: it for any number of reasons, but it was like
Speaker 1: money that got him huge returns, right, it crushed Gawker.
Speaker 1: It was like the beginning of the foray into destroying
Speaker 1: the mainstream media. So he is very good at what
Speaker 1: he does, whatever that is, I mean, in some ways.
Speaker 1: But my thinking with him is that he's always just
Speaker 1: so profoundly ideological that he can't see the forest from
Speaker 1: the trees.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's probably right. I think that these
Speaker 3: readings of science fiction, these misunderstandings of science fiction, are
Speaker 3: appealing to them because they allow these guys to believe
Speaker 3: stuff that they already wanted to believe and do stuff
Speaker 3: that they already wanted to do. Right, It's very very
Speaker 3: easy to hang on to a misunderstanding of It's one
Speaker 3: that justifies everything that you want to do and makes
Speaker 3: you a lot of money. And I also think that
Speaker 3: there's a reading comprehension problem. So I guess the answer
Speaker 3: to your question is sort of both. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think that for a lot of these guys, they don't
Speaker 3: think clearly anymore. They have their own self interest and
Speaker 3: these dreams that they have that are wildly unrealistic, and
Speaker 3: they just sort of aim toward those and anything else
Speaker 3: that they think of. It's just very easy for them
Speaker 3: to fool themselves into thinking that they're being profound, that
Speaker 3: they've understood what's going on around them, as opposed to
Speaker 3: living inside of a bubble of their own creation. And
Speaker 3: I sort of wonder if this is one of the
Speaker 3: reasons why they're so easily taken in by the idea that,
Speaker 3: you know, text generation engines chatbots like chat GPT are
Speaker 3: actually thinking because they just string words together in a
Speaker 3: way that sounds good to them, and that's what they've
Speaker 3: confused for thought at this point, because they don't need
Speaker 3: to think carefully in order to make their way through
Speaker 3: the world anymore.
Speaker 2: I can't tell them I'm being stupid.
Speaker 1: I'm very old, and I've been around long enough to
Speaker 1: see the blockchain. Everything's going to go on the blockchain.
Speaker 1: Here's why things are going to go on the blockchain.
Speaker 1: All of this sort of fads, right Crypto the first
Speaker 1: time that producer Jesse the Voice of God and I
Speaker 1: have an ongoing dispute over like, is AI going to
Speaker 1: take all our jobs and ruin our lives or is
Speaker 1: AI just going to go on the blockchain like everything
Speaker 1: else that's trendy. That thing you just said about chat
Speaker 1: GPT makes me think that AI is not. That stringing
Speaker 1: words together is not. But do you think AI is
Speaker 1: going to take all our jobs and render us useless
Speaker 1: flesh puppets?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I don't think that AI can do the jobs
Speaker 3: that we do now particularly well. And I don't think
Speaker 3: that AI can replace humans the way that people who
Speaker 3: are saying that it will take all our jobs are
Speaker 3: sort of worried about or hopeful for, depending on where
Speaker 3: they are in the economy. But I also think that
Speaker 3: that may not stop it from taking a lot of jobs,
Speaker 3: because the decision about whether or not you replace humans
Speaker 3: with AIS is not based on reality. It's based on
Speaker 3: the perception of reality up in the executive suite. And
Speaker 3: so if there's a mass delusion or a mass you know,
Speaker 3: hysteria about losing the AI race or this thing can
Speaker 3: really do what all of the you know, people who
Speaker 3: work for me do, then the executives are going to
Speaker 3: try firing everybody and replacing them with AI and see
Speaker 3: if that works. And you know, they're already trying that
Speaker 3: and it's not working very well. You know, there their
Speaker 3: study after study showing that when companies try to use
Speaker 3: AI to replace humans, it doesn't go very well. And
Speaker 3: I think we're going to see more of that and
Speaker 3: hopefully that leads to a world where AI is, you know,
Speaker 3: a tool that is used for certain applications that it's
Speaker 3: you know, okay at or even good at, and you know,
Speaker 3: it doesn't doesn't end up permanently taking all of our jobs.
Speaker 3: But it's also being used as an excuse for these
Speaker 3: companies to do what they already wanted to do, right,
Speaker 3: just like the space stuff, And that's part of why
Speaker 3: the idea of this AI is so appealing. The companies
Speaker 3: don't much like their workers, right, I'm shocked. Yeah, they
Speaker 3: don't want to have to keep paying their workers. They
Speaker 3: don't want to have to deal with people who could
Speaker 3: perhaps I don't know, organize and form a union and
Speaker 3: start actually flexing their power. And so ideally what they
Speaker 3: would like is to cut their workers out of the loop.
Speaker 3: The AAI can't do that, but they'd like to believe it.
Speaker 1: Can't, right, and that makes a lot of sense. These
Speaker 1: tech role of arcs, billionaires whatever. Some of them are cowering,
Speaker 1: very fearful, like Mark Zuckerberg. Some of them are embracing
Speaker 1: Trump isam. I wonder if you could talk to us
Speaker 1: about like we're already seeing. I think some of a
Speaker 1: split between Musk and Trump. I think it's going to
Speaker 1: be more or maybe not. So what do you think
Speaker 1: is happening there?
Speaker 3: Not sure what's happening between Musk and Trump specifically. I
Speaker 3: think that Musk likes the idea of having that kind
Speaker 3: of influence and power over the president, and Trump likes
Speaker 3: that there's somebody sort of capering and cowering and meaning
Speaker 3: himself publicly, and also someone who can take the flack
Speaker 3: for the things that Trump and his people want to do.
Speaker 3: So as long as that relationship remains useful to both
Speaker 3: of them, I think it's going to go on. We
Speaker 3: may be seeing the end of its usefulness. Musk tried
Speaker 3: to buy the Wisconsin judicial election for Trump and it
Speaker 3: didn't work, And there's been a lot of blowback about
Speaker 3: Doge and the things that they've done, and they've led
Speaker 3: to a lot of court cases that the Trump administration
Speaker 3: is lost, and so you know, perhaps they see the
Speaker 3: others sort of coming to the end of their usefulness.
Speaker 3: I mean, certainly, Musk has already gotten a lot of
Speaker 3: what he wanted in terms of, you know, getting rid
Speaker 3: of the regulatory structures that were threatning his businesses because
Speaker 3: he does things that are illegal.
Speaker 2: But many people are saying.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, many people are saying that he does things
Speaker 3: that are legal. So that particular relationship I think could
Speaker 3: have run its course. I'm not sure, but in general,
Speaker 3: the tech brolgarchs are very comfortable with the idea of
Speaker 3: autocracy and fascism. They do not mind getting rid of
Speaker 3: democracy because they see it as irrelevant. And there has
Speaker 3: long been this dream in Silicon Valley of getting out
Speaker 3: from under the thumb of the government and using their
Speaker 3: technology to solve all problems.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a cock eyed optimist here,
Speaker 1: but I'm just curious, why do you think that they
Speaker 1: don't care more about science. Trump Ism has canceled all
Speaker 1: these government contracts there. I mean, Elon must made all
Speaker 1: his money on science, you know, and other people's ideas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good question. I think the answer is
Speaker 3: they think that they do. They just think that scientists
Speaker 3: aren't as good at science as they are. These guys
Speaker 3: think that because they're the wealthiest people in history, that
Speaker 3: makes them the smartest people in history. They think that,
Speaker 3: you know, they know a lot about science and technology
Speaker 3: because they run companies that build tech that's based on science.
Speaker 3: But that's not actually how the world works, and they
Speaker 3: are not scientists, and they actually don't know that much
Speaker 3: about science. And so I don't think they see what
Speaker 3: they're doing as an attack on science. They see it
Speaker 3: as an attack on an entrenched power structure that threatens that, namely,
Speaker 3: you know, the independence of academic science. They want science
Speaker 3: to serve them, and they believe that they know what
Speaker 3: real science will do. Mark Andresen one of these prologarchs, right,
Speaker 3: He has said that he had this manifesto that he
Speaker 3: put out about a year and a half two years ago,
Speaker 3: and in that manifesto he said that, you know, he
Speaker 3: and his fellow techno optimists were the keepers of the
Speaker 3: real scientific method as opposed to you know, unaccountable academics
Speaker 3: safe in their ivory tower. How does that work, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a great question. I don't think that there is
Speaker 3: a good answer there. I mean a lot of that
Speaker 3: essay was Andresen, one of the most powerful people in
Speaker 3: the world, trying to recast himself as the plucky underdog
Speaker 3: against you know, scientists who are famously wealthy and powerful.
Speaker 3: It's really a real misunderstanding of his place in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, just wild.
Speaker 1: What can people who are not billionaires do to protect democracy?
Speaker 1: If you were looking at this and you were saying, like,
Speaker 1: what would the song be in your head from what
Speaker 1: you know about this crow?
Speaker 3: I mean, the long term solution I think is stronger
Speaker 3: government regulation, stronger enforcement of anti monopoly laws. And I
Speaker 3: would like to see at some point a tax on
Speaker 3: wealth that you know, makes it impossible to a mass
Speaker 3: as much wealth as these people have. I would like
Speaker 3: to see a billionaire tax. You know that that says
Speaker 3: that if you have more than, say, I don't know,
Speaker 3: five hundred million dollars and the rest of that in
Speaker 3: everything you've got over that it's got to go to
Speaker 3: the government, because five hundred million dollars is enough for
Speaker 3: one person. So mean, yeah, I know, I know people
Speaker 3: think that I'm a Marxist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people won't like that.
Speaker 3: No, people won't like that, but I think it's a
Speaker 3: good idea.
Speaker 1: And what would you say, I mean, do you think
Speaker 1: that they're going to like end elections. Do you think
Speaker 1: that they're going to or you think this is a
Speaker 1: slower role than that.
Speaker 3: I think that they would like elections to go away
Speaker 3: or be irrelevant for them. I don't know how quickly
Speaker 3: that's going to happen. I think it's more likely that
Speaker 3: they're going to try to continue to put their thumb
Speaker 3: on the scale for the elections, right because because social
Speaker 3: media already does a lot of that for them, Right,
Speaker 3: Because the structure of social media makes it easier for
Speaker 3: misinformation to spread, makes it easier for very silly, lowest
Speaker 3: common denominator ideas to spread rather than having nuanced conversations
Speaker 3: that we'd like to have in an informed democracy. And
Speaker 3: then you throw in AI's ability to create misinformation on
Speaker 3: scale at demand, and you know it's bad. I think
Speaker 3: that they're going to keep doing more of that, and
Speaker 3: that they're going to find other ways to sort of
Speaker 3: use the levers of control of the government that they
Speaker 3: have right now to make it harder to have free
Speaker 3: and fair elections.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Because that's easier for them to do than try to
Speaker 3: end elections entirely. But I could be wrong. I wouldn't
Speaker 3: be terribly surprised if somebody tries to stage like a
Speaker 3: Reichstag fire type event to end elections. So I don't
Speaker 3: have an easy answer on that one. But I do
Speaker 3: know that the technology that these tech companies are building
Speaker 3: and have been building, erodes the fabric of democracy, and
Speaker 3: we're seeing the consequences of that now. Thank you, d
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me, Mollie. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
Speaker 1: minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.