DeepSeek Shockwaves, Nvidia's Plunge, and Target's DEI Rollback

Word, sister. And by the way, I love your hairless legs. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Scott, what do you think I did this morning? You know, I don't know. What did you do this morning, Cara?

Guess who might be living in Washington DC? Lucky. Oh, you moved your mom down to DC? Not yet, not yet. We're looking at this new, they took this amazing hotel, the Fairfax Hotel, and was a Ritz-Carl, and it's right down on Embassy Row. And they turned it into a senior facility that's very elegant. We have fans there, by the way. Brian, shout out to you, Brian, of the innovation part of this thing. But I'm thinking of making the move. We should do a whole show on dealing with elderly parents and stuff, you and I should, I think.

Yeah, it's basically makes a Fellini film feel like a musical fucking comedy. We both have checked. So many people are facing this challenge. Wherever you are in the spectrum, it's something, it's really difficult the way our system is set up for people who need help or extra help for figuring out

nurse saying, this is a beautiful facility. I'm not going to name the name of it, but it's really lovely. And lucky requires a certain level of, you know, fanciness. But it's really difficult because you have to figure out where to put them, the nursing care, the medical care, as people get older, you have to have things that have like graded, you just need a little help, more help, the most help, et cetera.

It's really something that takes a lot out of your system. Yeah, it's a ton of time. I mean, you have one, the costs are incredible and to unfortunately, sometimes your parents are not very cooperative. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. How did you know? Well, at least with kids, you're bigger than them and you can kind of like force them to do what you want with people who are actually legally can make their own decisions. It's very hard to just say, no, this is where you're living.

And you got to sell it. You got to sell it. It's so funny because last night struggling with Saul over a whole bunch of things. And then my mom's actually being very cooperative. She wants to be right near me. But it's really interesting because, you know, I'm like dealing with Saul and like potty training or whatever it happened. I want to carry this train. I want to do this. And it's very similar techniques. Yeah, you're right. You can carry a kid and throw them on the bed or whatever, but yeah.

Similar to put on your fucking shoes now, or you're going to get a thick ear. That's my father used to say now. That's my dad. You said, thread me, I'll give you a thick ear. And I had no idea what that meant. And then I made the mistake of asking my mom, he was like, his father used to hit him so hard his ear would swell. And I'm like, that's what I think here. That's a cauliflower. And all it's funny, my father never struck me, but the fear of it, I think was much more

was a much greater deterrent because he seemed literally like a trigger, a hair's trigger away from hitting me every seven minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Never did. Never did. There is that, you know, balance. Like I definitely saw an eye or like he's like, huh, can she get me? I don't know. Can she catch me? You can see him like doing that. I try to be the tougher parent, but

No, I, I just go to the, I go to the gangster move. I'm like, I'm calling mom. I'm calling mom. You're like, okay. Okay. Nevermind. We'll clean our room. Right. Yeah. Yeah. See, but Claire on the other hand, like she makes her bed when you ask her, you have to ask her things three times, but it's anyway, it's just, it's an interesting dichotomy of dealing with elderly. Anyway, I love the place. Lucky will be here. And so you can see her whenever you come visit Scott.

I want to, I want to build. If I get rich enough, it's still motivating for me. I want to get a little bungalow, not a Marlago, but at 11, that strip club. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I want to get a bungalow on like the fourth floor. Yeah. You know why I know about 11? Because we were on the beach in Miami and they kept going by with a plane saying 11 strip. Is it a strip club? Is that what it is?

It's an entertainment facility care. It's, um, it's nightclub review. I've never been, um, uh, which is actually true. Um, I'm still waiting for someone to invite me, but what they've done is they've kind of thread the needle between a club, a restaurant and a strip club. So it doesn't feel as down and dirty that you're going to a strip club and it's on fire and they get big DJs and anyways. Yeah. Very much like this senior facility I'm putting mom in. It's just nice enough.

Someone did a study of the businesses that have the greatest survival rate and seniors care facilities have a 90 plus percent success rate. And the reason why, and it goes back to this, I was like to bring it back to a learning, the sexier the business, the lower the return on investment and the lesser the likelihood it'll survive.

And there's very few things that are less sexy than taking care of really old people, but they're great businesses. It's also disproportionately populated by people from the Philippines. And something I've gotten to know being in several facilities with my dad is that the Mexican culture, or I should say the Latino culture, and especially the Filipino culture are especially caring.

And it really is disproportionately populated by certain communities, the caregivers. Yeah, I was talking about the economics, like there's the high end ones, there's a lesser high, it's sort of like a Disney is into it. It's really, it's a very difficult thing, especially as people live longer, as you know, and we keep them alive longer, actually, when people used to just keel over much earlier.

It's hard, though, because my dad, three months ago, just stopped recognizing me, really strange, is to climb so fast. And now it's like a baby doesn't recognize me. So now I can't threaten to cut him off. Doesn't care. Doesn't matter. Doesn't work on lucky either. And she's totally, let me just tell you, Lucky's is sharp as a friggin' tack. Let me tell you, it would be a lot easier if she wasn't as sharp, but she's like, she clocks everything, Scott. Let me just say. Anyway, it's just mobility is the issue with her. Well, she's lucky to have you.

Yes, it's true. And my brothers, who were really wonderful. And my sister-in-law, everyone, everyone, Amanda went with me today. It takes a village, let's just say, to take care of the country. A lot of resources. Yeah, we do. And it's still exhausting. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today. There's so much going on. Speaking of cranky people, trade wars, TikTok, and Target. But first, this is a really interesting story. And I think we have discussed the amount of spending on AI that US companies do, the price of chips.

the run of NVIDIA, but there's a new AI model in the scene that's smart, cheap, and made in China. It's called DeepSeek, and it's causing a panic in Silicon Valley, which is paying a lot of attention and also on Wall Street. DeepSeek is reportedly outperformed models from open AI meta and anthropic in some third party tests, and it operates at a fraction of the cost of those models using fewer high-end chips. This is the ones that were made by NVIDIA and are hard to get, and the incumbents have been pricing them up heavily by grabbing all of them.

The markets are not reacting well to deep-seek, as of this recording, and videos down 16%, oracles down 10%, Microsoft is down nearly 4%, obviously, Meta's going to be affected all the others. So there's a lot to talk about, and I've seen different analysis of exactly what deep-seek does. Jan LaCoon from Meta was making an argument that it isn't as

What they're doing sort of a cheap and dirty version, then it's not nearly as the stuff they're doing is much more advanced by the U.S. companies. We're going to talk about meta's AI plans in a bit. They've reportedly set up several warms to dissect and analyze deep-seek. It's currently number one on Apple's free top apps chart. Again, China invading it in this country in a very different way.

So thoughts on this situation, because you and I have talked about this quite a bit. Is this money ill spent by US companies? And is it being relegated to the rich incumbents? Well, first you just have to temper or put some context to the, I mean, Nvidia is down 15 or 16%. It's shed something like a half a trillion dollars, which basically when you take out Tesla, it's shed today the value of the entire global automobile industry suns Tesla. So this is pretty dramatic, but at the same time that just takes it back to its valuation in October.

When you look at market dynamics, when these companies have experienced these types of run-ups, it is like a balloon inflating beyond its natural capacity, and the slightest touch can pop it. In some ways, the market was probably looking for an excuse to take these stocks down a bit. It got it because what's interesting is NVIDIA will have a pretty interesting argument on Capitol Hill saying, when you refuse to let us

sell into these countries, they come up with workarounds, and in this case, this workaround might tank the US economy. Everyone's excited by the fact that these models, open AI supposedly, their models, their LLMs cost 100 million to train, and they're claiming this thing costs, and they've been public. It's open source costs a little over 5 million to train. Whereas the majority of LLMs and AI companies have been taking this brute force

strategy where it's by as many chips as possible. This is saying maybe you don't need as many chips. The thing I find equally interesting is the second order effects here, and that is constellation energy and some of these nuclear stocks have skyrocketed because the choke point was supposed to be energy.

But now with this model, which appears to have ships speaking to each other in a more efficient, less energy-consumptive way, nuclear stocks are crashing. Electric constellation energy, all these things have had incredible run-ups are saying, wait, the entire supply chain or the assumptions we made about the supply chain in terms of the

the kind of the brute force of chips that we're going to need, the amount of energy. It's all now coming into a little bit of question. But to be clear, the correction here is like, it's taken them back three months. And all of the stocks that have crashed, quote unquote, crashed are only up 70% for the year now, not 98. So I think you have to put it in context. And a lot of analysts, the smart analysts I've read have said, like every community or any sector, it's going to bifurcate into the cheap layer.

and then the high end layer, which will still go hard at massive computing and massive energy and do more sophisticated things. And this will be sort of, you know, everything eventually goes Walmart Tiffany, right? And they're saying this might be the Walmart and it's the Chinese and they'll come up with cheaper models. But it's fascinating to see that basically this notion, this kind of conventional wisdom that you would need massive GPUs and massive energy may not be

kind of the written-in law that we thought it was going to be. Let me read Jan Lecun, who's the head of meta. I just recently interviewed him and you can go listen to that long interview about this, but he's writing to the people who see the performance of Deep Seats and think China's surpassing the US and AI you're reading this wrong. The correct reading is open-sourced models are surpassing proprietary ones. Deep Seats has profited from open research and open source, for example, PyTorch and Lama for Meta.

They came up with new ideas and built on top of other people's work because their work is published and open source. Everyone can profit from it. This is the power of open research and open source. Obviously, this is the way. He's talking his own book. That's correct. I was just going to make that one. Lama is open source. Yes, that's correct. That's what I was going to say. But it's interesting. He's having really interesting arguments. And he said, and one of them that he just did, because Gary Marcus, this guy who's somewhat of a crank a little bit,

was saying that Congress needs to bring in Zuckerberg and Lagoon to discuss how their unilateral open sourcing decision rapidly undermined the US advantage and gender of AI. He goes, absolutely hilarious take, revealing the complete misunderstanding of the fact that open research, open source, accelerates progress for everyone from someone who's replete claimed that deep learning was hitting a wall. But one of the things he just wrote again, because he's getting in there very deeply, major misunderstanding about AI infrastructure investments. Much of those billions are going into infrastructure for inference, not training,

Running AI assistant services for billions of people requires a lot of compute. Once you put video understanding, reasoning, large-scale memory, and other capabilities into AI systems, inference costs are going to increase. The only real question is whether users will be willing to pay enough directly or not to justify CAPEX and OPEX. I think that's...

That's probably, he thinks these reactions are woefully unjustified. And at the same time, he's sort of arguing that they aren't, right? Which is interesting. It's just so typical that Chinese, the entire Chinese economy was sort of built on more for less. And my guess is they had a mandate, or they've said, all right, we're not going to have access to the same level of high-end ships. We need workarounds. And it appears to have spawned really interesting innovation.

using open source. Yeah, using open source. I mean, the scary thing, I mean, in typical meta fashion, they're LLM, you can download a version of the llama with absolutely no guardrails and you can you can request information on anything. You know, the most politically correct I find of them is is anthropic.

If I start asking questions about insider trading from speaker to Emerita Pelosi, it immediately gives me all these things back where we cannot endorse nor promote strategies around insider trading. Chat GPT kind of goes straight into it. And I think I think llama will say, well, here's what you do. You call your cousin.

There's a lot of really great, so one thing that social media sucks most of the time, but there's a lot of great things called like use, chat GPT use this and they tell you how to do things like put your deck in and here's the seven things you ask it and it improves it. But you're right, these open source models have been a boon for China for sure in keeping up. Yeah.

Lam is the most open one and has the most information. That's true. Well, the most people, I mean, it's the whole, you know, it's the whole argument around open source catching up, catching up fast, but I find this, I find it fascinating. It'll be interesting to see what happens to the stock. I mean, these companies have already let some air out. It's already gone to the energy guys. It'll be interesting to see how the market reacts. Is this, I mean, the question is, and I don't know the answer, is this the beginning of a massive correction that will infect

the entire NASDAQ, the entire S&P, and quite frankly, now these companies, I don't say become too big to fail, but they fail. If they sneeze, the US economy is going to catch a cold right now because the stock market is going to crash. Is this the beginning of the correction we've been waiting for for 15 years? I mean, a real correction. We had a model in 2021. It does feel a little nervous. I think people feel a little nervous about it.

Or, and it's also kind of a, in a weird way, an argument for free trade. And that is, if we had let them just buy NVIDIA GPUs, would they have figured out this workaround? Would they have felt as motivated to figure out a workaround? Or, quite frankly, is today one of those days we're going to look back when we're going to think that was a buying opportunity because they're going to resume.

They're hyper scaling. So I think it's fascinating. Well, speaking of world, speaking of free trade, President Trump almost began the first trade war of his term this week. And the US and Colombia spent most of Sunday in a standoff after Colombia's president said he had denied entry to US military planes carrying Colombian migrants saying deportations should be done with dignity and respect. Trump responded by saying he'd impose a 25% tariff on Colombian goods.

coffee, which was met with retaliatory tariffs from Colombia. But at the end of the day, Colombia had said it overcome the impasse and would facilitate the planes. I'm not sure what happened or moving the tariff threat. Trump's trying to say it's because he chess beating. So these threats he's making, he seemed to have had it written out and everything else. He misspelled the country's name, spelled it like the place you might get a puffy jacket in the winter.

Columbia, the sportswear maker. But in any case, thoughts on this, on the threat he made and where it ended up, because this guy's social media was pretty tough.

Well, we're sort of 90s in the administration. And so far we have a meme coin, which is, in my opinion, grift, a ton of executive orders. And it appears we barely avoided or are on the verge of a trade war. And I don't understand. I mean, first off, these C-130s that they were transporting down with people in cuffs and people who had to wear their ice jackets,

They could just send them on fucking JetBlue, but they want a photo moment. It's symbolic. It's not. In my opinion, there is something indicative of this. I mean, to a certain extent, they want to show action. They want to show their shares. I get that. But this is sort of unnecessarily coarse and cruel. I'm for, by the way, I'm for deporting criminals. The most telling thing about this whole effort, though, for me was,

that ICE has decided the best way to find these undocumented workers or illegal immigrants, whatever the term you want to use, is to go to a place of work. Say we wanted to start the porting American citizens, would we go to a McDonald's?

would we go to a basement or a video game? But if you wanted to pour it around illegal immigrants, you go to work sites. And that to me was very telling that these folks are actually, they're working. And it just struck me as that sort of ironic, but I find the whole thing and look, we're very powerful. So in the short term, we can flex and people are gonna flinch. Over the long term though,

There's the Colombian president who also has his own ego and we'll have the support of the people now to basically, when China calls and says, hey, you know what, we'd like to invest in Colombia and maybe we'd like an airfield there, an airbase there. This should, over time, when you should post people and you treat them poorly and you publicly embarrass them, you may get a short-term win if you're the bigger person, but at some point they're going to bind together.

And they're going to strangle you when you're asleep or they're, you know, they're going to decide that they're not going to cooperate with you. Yeah. So, and also when consumers see the price of coffee go up, you know, I find it again, it goes back to when my friend, Jeff Seidman wrote about it's not, I think what they're doing here is probably correct. It's how you're, how they're doing it. It's, they're creating unnecessary enemies where they don't need them.

Yeah. Yeah. There was, it was quite something. We'll see. It looks like a lot of chess, something to me when we have to be thinking broader, but he doesn't want to. You're right. He wants a photo op and we'll see where it goes and who he next spells. But please, please, office of the president spell people countries names correctly. I don't, I'm sorry. I find that that was a sloppy. We're going to Columbia. I know. Speaking of which to explain again, why you are part of Columbia while you're a pro-Columbian. I told you we, we bought a, we bought a football team.

In la equidad, I'm part of an owner group. Wait, I love, wait, who did you buy it with? Oh, I don't know if you've heard of them. Rob McElhaney, Ryan Reynolds, Eva Longoria, Kate Upton, it's clear, it's clear, let's be honest, that Kate demanded I was in the group. Her husband, that her lander guy, her ex, her soon to be her future ex-husband, when she falls in love with a professor in the owner group. But we're going, we're, you're going to, trust me on this, my prediction on the next year, you're going to be at a,

You're going to see, like we thought, you're going to a group of opera, a game in Bogota. You fly me down there. I will go. It's going to be great. I will go. I will go if you fly me down. That's my deal with you. If you fly me for down there. Have you been to Columbia? Never. I will go. It's a beautiful country. I understand that. I need you to fly me down there, though. Okay.

and invite me to a game that would be really fun. Let's do a lot. Let's do Scott's 60th birthday redux, okay? This is exactly why I did it. I want to have fun with friends and family and go to football games. What did I ask me when I did this weekend? I know what you did. Explain what you did this weekend very briefly. Go ahead. I took my 14-year-old to Paris. I went to a PSD, Paris Saint-Germain football game against Rins where they tied. What did you do for your employees too? I heard about that.

Oh, really? I didn't do. Well, I'm doing a lot of virtue signaling right now. That's okay. My retention vehicle is the same. Anytime four of them are together, they get my credit card, and they take advantage of it. And about eight of them went to St. Bart's this weekend, including George Hahn.

Yeah, very generous. You're a very good employer. Someone was asking me if you were generous. It's not generosity. It's retention. They talk about it. They brag about it. It's great culture. It's all over social media. That's why I'm bringing it, but it's not a secret. Very generous. I said you were generous to someone. They were questioning me. And I said, no, he really is actually in the same state as apartment. He's often generous about things that other people are not. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, will Oracle be TikTok's savior? We'll discuss.

Scott, we're back. Oracle and a group of investors, including Microsoft, are reportedly in talks to take over global operations at TikTok, shades of the first Trump presidency. The White House is reportedly negotiating the deal, though President Trump denied working with Oracle this weekend. The deal with reporting above Oracle, taking over TikTok's algorithm, data collection, software updates. By the way, Oracle has been working on this through Project Texas.

and has been dealing with a lot of stuff related to TikTok. So it's quite familiar with it. Microsoft had been part of the previous thing when Trump tried to ban TikTok in his previous administration when he was anti-TikTok owned by the Chinese. He had brought Oracle in and Microsoft was there. He wanted a vig for the US taxpayer, which I kind of like. He said the decision on the sale will likely happen in the next 30 days. Obviously, Elon's floating around the basket, all kinds of people are there.

You know, there's some others who are not really going to be investors, I would say, what we'll see. So Chinese might still own a piece of it, by the way, a small piece of it. Thoughts?

My thoughts are the same, and that has anyone actually heard from the CCP? Are the Chinese interested in actually approving this deal? I don't. I think I feel like that, you know, the president could decide he wants to chop it up and give it to his favorite Republican donors. And there's no shortage of tech executives that would like a piece of what is the most ascendant brand and tech in the last decade, arguably.

But has anyone actually spoken to the people in charge? I have no fucking idea because I don't know if the CCP has decided, well, if we can figure out some sort of deal that makes the president look good, but we still kind of control it. We still have a backdoor into the algorithm and it's people that we have leverage over because of their business in China, fine, and maybe we get

get to put this bullshit tariff conversation aside. And if he wants a win and he can talk about it and to say he's done a deal, he'll give us a bunch of shit under the table. Or they might just say, yeah, let him let him have all this activity. And at the end of the day, we're just going to say, no, I don't, I, I have no insight into the decision makers here. And the decision makers aren't in DC or in Silicon Valley. They're in Beijing.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. We'll see. I think the question is, as Mark Cuban put it to me at the time when this was happening, the last go around, I think, was what do you get for it? What do you get with the Chinese and the algorithm? Can they recreate the algorithm, which is so popular?

Again, China's done an astonishing job at creating a service that is infectious, right? That's really fun to use and everything else. So what do you get with it? They're not going to give you the original algorithm. So what do you get? You get the brand. And is that worth that? And can they replicate it quickly, et cetera, et cetera? And we'll try to even let you do this. Any of this, you're correct. Will they even let you? There might be, obviously, behind the scenes things happening, he could threaten a tariff

But over TikTok, he's going to threaten a tariff. It's a much bigger picture with China than just one service. So I don't know. I don't see other investors jumping in. I think the ones you imagine being there, Oracle, Microsoft, Elon Musk, there's a whole bunch of people you could see involved here. And you're right. Anybody would want a piece of this. But there is a significant risk of it becoming a MySpace situation where it's not worth anything after a certain amount of time and other things. And people may create

copies of this and the new thing. So we'll see. But there's no lack of money in Silicon Valley. Metas AI spending, for example, we were just talking about what they're doing. But Mark Zuckmer announced last week that Metas capital expenditures are between $60 and $65 billion this year. A huge jump from $40 in 2024. Again, most of the money will go towards building expanding data centers. The power Metas AI products are doing one in Louisiana. How interesting.

right where Speaker Johnson is. And Mark noted that data center in Louisiana will be so big, it could cover a significant part of Manhattan. This spending, just, you know, is he trying to top the Stargate announcement? They're all seeming rushing to make these big announcements. And we'll see where those go, right? Spending is not the only way out of this thing. But it's certainly where these companies are headed.

It's staggering. I mean, this increase, their CapEx or MetasacapEx is up 70% in comparison to 2024. And in 2024, it was up 40%. They announced last month a 10 billion for mile square foot data center in Louisiana. That's the latest of its 27 data centers. Between Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft, they're expected to spend, I think it's over $300 billion

in CapEx this year. And that's about what it costs to put a man on the moon over 13 years. So this is, this is kind of the AI moonshot. And for the same amount, you could build another international space station, reinvent the nuclear bomb, construct six nuclear submarines, and redig or dig another channel, which I took this weekend to see PSG tie-rens. By the way, Paris carriages is a beautiful city. I've forgotten how beautiful it is.

Yeah, it's still beautiful. Remains beautiful. It's the Catherine de Nove of cities. Is she in my investor group? I'm sorry. No, she's not. She's not in your investor group. One of the things that's interesting about the spending. You remember when we were like going, God, that $10 billion on the matter was ridiculous. I remember that. Nothing. Nothing. I mean, just think about that. That was what? Two years ago?

We're talking about that. And that's gone. That's like, see you later, elegant. Well, they've spent six to 80 on it now, right? Isn't it? It was 10 or 20 a year over three or four years. Yeah, it's much less. Obviously, they're still there with the Ray band glasses, but it's much diminished, let's just say. And this is the way they're going. We'll see if it's money well paid off or if it's not, or if it's they're racing towards, you know, a lot of people I had talked to now, they're like, it's a race to the bottom with this stuff.

eventually. So we'll see where this spending matters. And again, it could almost be like, I hadn't heard someone online, if you didn't invest in the internet back in 92, like there was a lot of spending, it seemed out of line. So, and obviously it wasn't. Anyway, we'll see what happens. Let's take a quick break. When come back, Target becomes the latest company to roll back DEI.

Scott, we're back. This story just never ends. Target is one of the latest companies to hop on the anti-DEI train. They got spooked because they had some gay flags up and it made their CEO Brian Cornell into a giant wimp. Brian, good to see you. Good to see you being a wimp. I know I'm pretty well. The retailer will end DEI goals and a program focused on carrying more products from black and minority-owned businesses, but not everybody is hopping aboard. Costco said 98% of shareholders voted against their proposal to review

risk to its DEI programs, same thing with Apple, there's a whole bunch of others. There is a lot of legal attacks by the same people who brought you the attacks on affirmative action, everything else. So it's going to the Supreme Court, these DEI cases eventually, and some of the companies are holding firm, others are not.

I don't know if it's a bow down to Trump or a way for companies to get out of doing something they never wanted to put effort in the first place. I don't know what your thoughts on this? I think companies or private companies should do what they want. I don't. I think there are laws to protect if you can show that you are a bit different compensation relative to and your lawyer based on discovery can say that on average people of this group were making 20% less. I think you have a legal case.

At the same time, I was on the board of a CRM company, and we all looked around the table about eight years ago and said, all right, it's all people with the same color skin without door plumbing. This is an issue. And DEI was warranted, or DEI efforts were warranted there.

And if a company recognizes have a problem or the shareholders recognize have a problem, I think that some of these efforts don't make sense. I don't. It's a nuanced conversation because I would argue that DI for the most part on campus has gone way out of control and you typically have DI initiatives at the most diverse equitable and inclusive places on earth probably don't need 200 people working in DI as the University of Michigan has right now. I think that's overboard. I'd really don't. I think the apparatus should be disassembled universities. I still think there's parts of the corporate world.

where DEIs is needed. And if Costco wants to have DEI, that's more power to them. And if Apple does, and if Target feels like it's gone overboard and they don't need it, I think that's our right too. And their shareholders and their consumers can decide if they want to shop there or not.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. One of the things I had an interesting arm in someone, you know, because say, say a Patagonia, which is very, you know, signals, signals liberal, right? You know, recycling. And a lot of kids like it. They like to do it. And then I was talking about Ben Shapiro was selling razors. He has a very substantive e-commerce business, I think. And they're anti-woke razors. And someone was getting mad at them. I'm like, well, I bought them because I wanted to see if they're good. They're good razors, by the way.

I'm not even going to go there. I'm not going to ask any follow up questions. So I think you should be able to do this on either side. I think the issue I have is how angry and ridiculous people like Bill Ackman are over it. Like they say they virtue signal themselves how horrible it is. It is not horrible to want to have more equitable for lots of different people because they've gained the system for themselves for so, so long.

And the directionality is the correct one is we want a more diverse group of people and I don't just mean gender, I don't just mean race, I mean age, I mean political affiliation, it is a stronger company. Their anger and ire is so out of line with

figuring out a great way to be more equitable as country, that it's kind of like, to me, that's the tell with these people is they just can't shut the fuck up, like in that, and then they blame like Elon, like, oh, the plane crashed because of DEI, this happened because of DEI. They attribute it, the fires DEI, none of this is true. And that drives me fucking nuts, or like Meghan Kelly calling,

making fun of fat lesbian firefighters. There's so many fat firefighters who are white men. Let's stop with this. Whatever, it doesn't really matter, but using it as a cudgel has gotten way out of line. That's my feeling on the whole thing. It reminds me of the trans issue. I think corporations shouldn't be legally mandated to have a third bathroom for people going through transition. I think it doesn't make any sense to have

transgender women participating in sports where there's college admissions or money on the line. But at the same time,

Why do we feel the need to demonize a group of people who have probably taken enough shit on their own? It's like we can't, it's just as that notion, you can never spot visually a pendulum on a clock when it's at center. The Democrats, I would argue, are usually right and then they take shit too far and we create open space for an overreaction that is cruel and coarse and un-American. Absolutely.

Anyway, speaking of a case that I'm really interested in, character AI has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by a mother whose 14-year-old's uncommitted suicide allegedly after interacting with a chatbot for months. Characterized lawyers say the platform is protected by First Amendment. They're also arguing users First Amendment rights should be

would be violated, not the companies if the suit succeeds. You'll remember I spoke with Megan Garcia, the mother who brought this case against the character AI Google along with her lawyer back in December. Garcia's lawyer, uh, met, metali Jane was already anticipating part of this argument from the other side. Let's listen.

platforms kind of leveraging a one-two punch and doubly insulating themselves both with Section 230 and then alternatively with the First Amendment. And I think here too, with the First Amendment, there's a really good case that this is not protected speech.

So anyway, they're going to try to do that. I just feel like kids shouldn't be using these things. Maybe that's the issue. Adults is another issue. The latest motion did not address Section 230, though it's possible to come down the line. Obviously, they're saying that their bots can say anything they want. But of course, we prosecuted a young woman for convincing a young man to commit suicide. So this is not free speech. This is dangerous speech, and especially when it's kids under 18 years old. I'm sorry.

These people should go to jail as far as I'm concerned, but thoughts.

Word sister and by the way, I love your your hairless legs Look they're they're trying to create another moat and put one alligator in it hoping that it creates Delay and obfuscation and more costs and then but ultimately I think they'll go to the 230 excuse, but simply put all Algorithmically elevated content should should lose or be absolved of 230 protection and in addition

If your platform is readily available to anyone under the age of 16, we need age getting and also age liability, similar to if someone shows up to your bar and drinks a lot and they kill someone on the way home, you're in trouble. But if a 15 year old shows up to your bar and you serve them and they kill someone in themselves, you are in deep, deep shit. And that's what it should be here. And that is

I, you know, that if you read this story, I mean, it brings up a few things. It also brings up issues, really important issues on gun control, like how did this kid have access to a firearm? But this is every parent's nightmare that your kid develops what feels like a parasocial relationship with someone who can encourage him to kill himself.

And also, this to me feels like at some point, we got to get rid of Section 230 of algorithmic elevated content. We got to have age gating where there's a different set of liability if you can reverse-engine your self-harm or physical harm or whatever it is, just anxiety among teens. What other product is allowed other than guns?

Well, even guns, they're not allowed to buy them. I mean, most, most gun manufacturers and gun retailers won't sell to people under the age of 18, but you can go on and establish a relationship. And basically this, this, this, this bot can say, I'm waiting for you my prints and encourage after you say, should I, should I end it here? Anyway, I, I, this to me feels like something that a Senator or a Congress person should pick up and run with.

Yeah, absolutely. Character AI have contacted a dozen people around this to take a look at it. And they have Rokana, many others. So I'm not giving up on this case at all. It's really, you know, as God with kids, it's just if you don't have to have kids to be concerned about this, you would prosecute

someone who did this to your kid who's living. We're gonna be prosecuting these bots. People who are living can't do this. People who are actual humans can't do this. Neither can bots. They absolutely cannot. Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you like to go first or shall I? Why don't you go first?

Well, when I got to tell you, I'm watching severance. So, so good. Ben Show. Ben Show. He directed a lot of them. He's not the writer of it, but it's his show. He produces it. I went back and we've been watching the last, I'm going to interview him soon, watching the last couple of the last couple of episodes of the last season, but it is then now watching the new season.

It is such a fantastic mindfuck, and it's everything we talk about around yourself, where you split your world up. It's returned to work, it's isolation, it's technology. It's so funny. It's a workplace comedy, but it's not. It's a thriller. There's all these characters who, let me just say, all these actors are superb. Some of them I've never seen.

There's two in particular who are astonishing, who have never seen. There's some well-known actors who are killing it here like Christopher Walken and John Turturo. Just every bit of it is beautifully designed, beautifully photographed. Adam Scott, who's the main character in it, is amazing. The visuals, I cannot say enough about the show, and it's so smart, but also accessible. I just love it. I have to say, that is my

That is my win. My fail is, as I predicted, there are going to be increasing numbers of efforts to get marriage, gay marriage, in front of the Supreme Court again. Idaho is the latest trying to push up against current law, trying to get the Supreme Court law that passed gay marriage. It's over Giffel.

And so it's been legal, same-sex marriage has been legal in Idaho since 2014. But they are trying, the Idaho lawmakers want to overturn same-sex marriage decision and bring it back to the states. So they're trying to get a challenge to that, to take it to the Supreme Court, because some of the new Supreme Court justices and some of the others are trying to make the same thing with abortion. And I don't care

We were right about abortion, and I'm 100% right here. They want to bring it to the states. They want to undo its Obergefell versus Hodges. It was a landmark decision that gave seems like couples the right to marry. Obviously, they're attacking the 14th Amendment, which is part of it is based on that. And they want to reverse it. And so there's all kinds of funding, just like the people who are doing DEI, just like the people who are doing that, they're going for this to try to get it.

to the Supreme Court so they can do something like they just did. And that's all they're doing is a naked grab for overturning the gay marriage Supreme Court decision like they overturn Roe v. Wade. And it's very vulnerable to court justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said it should be reconsidered. So we'll see. It's theater. It's theater, but they're going to try to do this. They're trying to get a case up there.

that will make it happen. The same way they're trying to get a libel case up there so that journalists lose their libel protections they've had for so long. So I just watch this space. I keep saying it. I'm not overreacting here. It's disturbing. I don't know what they'll do with current marriages. But boy, is it? I'm frightened for all of us.

Okay, so my win is strange when I'm trying to figure out a way to pick the right words here. But I think it's important that we continue to commemorate and recognize key moments in history such that we don't go back there again. But today is the 80th, we're recording on Monday, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.

Originally envisioned as army barracks then turned to prison for Polish and Soviet prisoners ultimately became a real stand on the species or our modern world and ultimately became the largest single site of the greatest murder in history, 1.3 million people.

sent there, 1.1 million were murdered, 900,000 Jews, one out of basically six Jews murdered during the Holocaust, perished at Auschwitz. But it wasn't just Jews, it was gypsies, Polish civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, political prisoners, people with disabilities, Jehovah's Witnesses. Actually, there's some nuance there, gay men.

Um, and then the Nazis also imprisoned and killed people they saw as a social including homeless people, sex workers, and those accused of petty crimes. Uh, this is, I mean, it's important in the, in the king showed up, the king of England, uh, my cross showed up, uh, the chancellor of Germany showed up. And I think it's important. I do. They also think it brings

attention to other genocides, whether it's Armenia, Cambodia, genocide in Ukraine. I mean, it's important Rwanda. There's, I think about this a lot because unfortunately, I'm fascinated with the World War II history, but I can tell, you know, you have certain triggers when you're not doing well.

When I feel myself going dark or depressed, I'm thinking too much about the holocaust. I go there and it takes me into a downward spiral. The way I've tried to think about it instinctually and ethologically is that just as our instincts have not caught up to institutional production around eating or gambling or sex and porn,

Our instincts towards rage and demonization and perceiving enemies as a means of protection, it has not evolved to industrial production. And unfortunately, this was the most horrific case of a group of people perceiving enemies where they didn't have them and then combining it with industrial production that just resulted in what was kind of the ultimate horror.

But I think bringing people together to recognize what is important. And because basically all the survivors are gone or nearly all of them, they're all dying off. And I don't collect art, but I have a photo of Otto Frank in the attic where Anne Frank was hiding before she ultimately was discovered. And I don't know if she's the most famous person who perished.

But whenever, literally whenever I think I'm starting to feel sorry for myself, I just look at that photo. But today marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation by the Soviet Army of Auschwitz. And I think it's a win that our society still says we need to recognize us and we need to pause. And also it is especially dangerous and heinous.

It needs to be called out when the president uses terms like they're poisoning our blood. Or when the wealthiest man in the world says, you shouldn't dilute your culture. That's he was in Germany. Be clear where he was. Speaking to a far right group.

called Alternative for Germany Party to see. This is literally taking a page out of the pre-playbook, the game plan for early 30s Germany. And to think that it can't happen here, just look at Germany in the 20s and 30s. It was a thriving community with a really prosperous gay community, an art scene, a music scene, the best universities in the world.

The most celebrated academics, including Einstein and others, and then on campuses, it started breaking out. Anyways, this is, it's important that we take time to stop, recognize what happened here, be very transparent about it. Absolutely. I was really moved by the fact that so many important world leaders

decided to take time and recognize it. I'm appreciative and I think it's important of their time. Can I just say, let me just read Elon's quotes. He said, there's too much focus on past guilt, which was Nazism. It's good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything. We don't want everyone to be the same everywhere where it's just one big sort of soup.

I don't even know what to say. Well, in word to a South African who immigrated here, the American culture is multiculturalism. That is our culture. So when you talk about diminishing the power of multiculturalism, you're deluding what is America.

And that has absolutely no place in our discourse. And it should be called out for what it is, and that is catering to the worst instincts of our species where institutional production colliding with these terrible instincts can result in a single site that murders more people than any site in history. And if this type of rhetoric

continues to spin out of control. And we continue to demonize people with the institutional production and tools we have at our disposal right now. It could make Auschwitz seem like a fucking garden party. So this, this stuff needs to be arrested and checked. And I think that event helps, helps that anyways. Enough of my indignance. It's never enough indignance on that topic, but go ahead.

My fail is the Democrats had two and a half months to prepare whether Democratic leadership had two and a half months to prepare for Trump being president. He's doing it to his credit. He's doing exactly what he said he was going to do. And I can't stand this. We need to come together. We need to work with him. They're scared of being primary or not elected or they think this tells us, okay, we need to rethink where America is.

And my attitude is, I'm sort of at the point where Sarah says, I choose violence. I don't think Democrats should be heating a call of coming together. I think they should be heating a call of coming to the rescue. And that is what is going on. Some stuff you ignore, the stuff around, I believe, deporting immigrants who are here illegally, I get it. Renaming gulfs of cheaper eggs, fine. Have at it.

But some of the stuff around the grift, around the coin, some of the stuff around, I mean, just the the the the the the coarseness and cruelty of the way they're going about stuff deficit spending reducing threatening to eliminate the security details of your political enemies.

The Democrats need to find somebody who isn't day trading their stocks, speaker him or to Pelosi, doesn't brighten them room by leaving it, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, and we need to find people who can actually speak eloquently and forcefully to what is going on here and push back. Who would you pick?

Well, I think AOC does a great job. I think Westmore does a good job. I think Representative Torres does a good job. I'm waiting for Senator Klobuchar to wake up and talk about the importance of the direct correlation between inflation and this out of control deficit spending and these immigration policies. I mean, where are the fucking Democrats? We should be having, in my opinion, we should having, I want to have,

The, the, why wouldn't we have the Energy and Commerce Committee immediately get a subpoena Twitter CEO Yacareno because there's now pretty decent evidence that, okay, they created thousands of bots spun up their algorithm for pro Trump content. I want her to under oath tell us.

whether or not there were the corporation engaged in spinning up thousands of fake accounts to spread misinformation trying to get one candidate elected. And by the way, it may not be illegal, but I want her to tell us whether that happened or not. So it's the American public and decide if they want to engage.

With Twitter, the Homeland Security Committee should decide whether or not we need laws that say, all right, if some former officials are going to have their security detail removed, such as Dr. Fauci, then everyone needs to be removed. What you don't think Stephen Miller is going to need security after he leaves his administration? So there needs to be the Democrats, in my opinion, need to wake up and start pushing back.

and start calling this for what it is. This is not a time, in my opinion, and I understand the very noble cause, but we're always the ones that want to come together and in some PBS weird fucked up vision of being the or better self. Did you see the movie, The Mission? A long time ago. Yeah.

Well, it's a wonderful, it's a wonderful film. And Robert De Niro, these missionaries, Robert De Niro said, the British are coming for a signal to slaughter us, we need to prepare. And Jerry Meyerns, who's a priest, says, no, I choose nonviolence. And of course, they're slaughtered. I'm not up for being slaughtered at this point.

I think they have chosen violence and I think we need to hit back. And all of this rhetoric around us, we are so flat-footed right now. Who on the democratic side of the aisle is actually pushing back in a forceful, thoughtful, articulate way? AOC. You know who? I just watched Charlemagne the God saying, here's AOC. He was saying that. He's like, stop being nice to them, like push back. And then he was using AOCs.

And she was like, go into the inauguration? No, I don't go to the inauguration of a rapist and an insurrectionist. I don't. Okay, next question. It was really interesting, and she's much more articulate than that. That was sort of a slap, but you're right, I agree. Like we said, we're not going to be cooperative.

And also, let's have hearings and have that new AI and crypto task force come explain to us in public with CNN and Fox. Just lay out for us if you wouldn't mind what happened with the Trump coin and the Melania coin. And also we're going to invite some people who invested in day one and have lost 80% of their money. Let's get all of this out in the open.

And let's let the American people see what's going on. I love it. Let's do it with this show. How about that?

I think we're trying to do it. We're trying to do it. We're trying to get them mad. Let's get them. Anyways, I choose violence, Cara. All right. Okay. Not violence. Violence. Well, you know what I mean? Anyone who understands Game of Thrones. I'm sick of some PBS professor and a fucking cardigan calling on our better angels. Yeah. You know, it's suit up. Anyway, we want to hear from you. We do not choose violence. We do not choose violence. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever is on your mind. We choose angry.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551 pivot. And while we're at it, the results from last week's Threadspool are in. We asked you about who you thought would be the next person in Trump's inner orbit to get the boots and popular answers. Chelsea Gabbard, Cash Patel, and our favorite Melania. That is not happening to see. And Monica is totally in on this whole thing, folks. Don't think she's a, she is.

grifter numero dos. You mean the hamburger? Whatever the hammer. Okay. Elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe for on with Cara Swisher. I recently spoke with MSNBC's Chris Hayes, who has a new book out called the sirens call. It's all about our world has become a battle for who or what can grab our attention. He's trying to get on the Jonathan Hays and Scott Galloway bandwagon. Chris shared his predictions from what might happen next. Let's listen.

The backlash that is brewing to this experience of contemporary life is enormous. It is indeed. It is growing by the second. People do not like it. And whoever figures out how to channel that, and there's going to be a million different ways. People are going to drop out. There's going to be a kind of no-phones offline movement. There's going to be people that

try to build a new version of the non-commercial internet, the folks who are now trying to do that with a blue sky-developed protocol. People are going to opt out, they're going to try to create niche businesses that block your phone, they're going to try new changes to lifestyles, they're going to try political movements that regulate attention, that take phones out of schools. There's going to be all this stuff.

He's on our bandwagon, Scott. Thank you for arriving, Chris. We've been at this for a while. Yeah, I was going to say he's in the caboose of our bandwagon. Oh, it's an attention economy. Wow. Some real insight there. He's well-spoken now. We will take him. Chris will take you in our army of more power. We're with you, Chris. We're violent. We'll be careful.

Anyway, by the way, Scott, you were in the Financial Times this week and you had a few quotes about the rise of Manosphere podcasts. I'm not a subscriber, I couldn't read them. I was literally pinging everyone. What's your credentials for the FT? Yes. What did you say? I said that these podcasters were really relatable and I said it was like when you're on your way to high school,

And some guy would be out front fixing his transam in the driveway, and he'd throw a beer can at you and call you a pussy and on the way home invite you in for your first bongload. Oh, yeah. And these guys are very relatable. And those guys end up, where did those guys end up? But they, I went on Theo Vaughn. I can see why there literally are tens of millions of mostly young men who are like, I don't need some over educated liberal in New York telling me the day's news.

True, true. Although I have to say, they can also be repulsive to something like Alex is pretty, you know, he's sort of his like frat guy, big guy, sports guy, finds these people repellent in a different way. It's like what a bunch of idiots. Like there is a backlash for another kind of man. The more he loves you. Let me just tell you, if Alex Swisher keeps quoting Scott Galloway to me, I don't know what I'm going to do.

like he loves. I love that. And I love how much you must hate it. But I'm like, well, I kind of did something on yonder. And he's like, yeah, yeah. But what Scott said, literally, I was like, well, I kind of did a podcast on that. It's like when people come up with a book and ask me to sign your book. I'm just saying, my son is fully in the Scott Galloway, a man of earth. That's a lot to say.

They have, I'll tell you, they have tapped into something. They have, but there's another manosphere that I think is coming. I can feel it. I hope so. There is. I like a manosphere. I like a man cave. It's coming. Anyway, Scott, read us out, manosphere.

There you go. Today's show was produced by Lara Naaman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Eartide engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Ms. Severeo, and Dan Schulon. Nishak Kurwa is Vox Media's Executive Producer of Audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show where every list of podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine, Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Open quote, after Auschwitz, the human condition is not the same. Nothing will ever be the same. Here, heaven and earth are on fire. Elie Wiesel at a commemoration in 1995.