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Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And Cara, this is Europe, and I'm here to beg that Facebook don't leave. We would have missed the job destruction, the weaponization of our elections, the tax avoidance, the photoshoots, I'm the next of Indian and Scottish, and the other Indian.
Just go with it, just go with it. No, I'm not the one. We missed the photo shoots, the white watch, Gerald Samberg's reputation. So please Facebook, take, take our eyes, but don't leave us.
Don't explain what you're saying. Explain why you're doing this. Facebook, I love big tech. Big tech is literally like Lao Lovett telling Julia Roberts that he's going to leave her.
And it's like, no, you're not. I'm Julia Roberts. Lao Lovett is not leaving although they did get divorced, which is tragic. It's tragic.
Anyway, they're saying if they implement some of their data privacy regulations, that Facebook is going to leave an economy or uproot their business in economy that's bigger than the United States. You know what it reminds me of? I love big tech and I'm going to take my ball and go home bullshit. Yeah.
And Amazon came into New York, etc. Right. Despite the fact we want to build facilities in the borough that has the greatest concentration of union membership in the nation, we're not going to allow union members into our factory. Right.
Right. And we want $2 billion transferred from local municipal fire police and school districts into the coffers of Amazon as we've gamified the entire Commonwealth. And then Senator Gianaris AOC and Corey Johnson said, well, let me think about this. Fuck you Amazon.
And, and said no to the $2 billion. And what do you know? Amazon is on pace to hire more people than they initially promised in exchange for that $2 billion. And the mother of all midlife crises is unfolding two to three days a week on the up-re side.
Jeff Bezos was always coming to DC. Yeah. And then oh, the second big. I'm leaving.
They're not leaving Europe. Yeah, that's my point. Okay. Hold on.
I'm on around here. The latest one. The latest one. The Dara Kastra Shah is saying, well, if you don't, okay, so maybe AB5 is the law of the land.
Maybe the courts have upheld it. But if you actually try and enforce the law, we're going to shut down Uber in the midst of a pandemic and through a quarter of a million people vulnerable people onto the street. Despite the fact we have about $14 billion on our balance sheet because we have to. We have no choice.
Did they shut down? No, and the latest one, Facebook's going to leave Europe. I've never threatened people. I never do.
I just killed them. So I don't threaten. They're just dead. I don't make the rats.
I make promises. Oh my God. Got you. You are the Steve Seagull podcast is what you are.
That's what I decided. I used to watch all the Stephen Seagull movies until he got really crazy, but I still like how I watched one of the other. I he was in a great movie. Tommy Lee Jones.
I can't remember the run up on a ship. It was fantastic. It was like overacting extreme anyway. Listen, we have a lot to talk about.
This book also took down fake pages pushing information about the US like in China, which showed that there is publicly just goes instance of Chinese interference, but it was not as widespread, of course, as the Russian interference, which sort of went to the argument that Trump administration was using that the Chinese are there, you know, as a counter to the Russians who helped the Trump administration. So that was interesting. That was interesting that there was a really, also Nick Lleg, the head of Facebook, comms and policy said that they had it. They had like a emergency poll button.
If something happened with the election, I'm assuming what he's referring to Trump saying. Something like that. He was like, he had an emergency. Is that like a state board when he's having that great?
It's a concept thing if things go right. They have a plan. They have a plan to save our planet. I'm just saying instead of an interview.
Not so much better. I think it was. So Facebook will save us, Scott. The other thing that was interesting this week was we're going to talk about Battery Day and Gavin Newson's announcement about banning gas vehicles, but Microsoft, fresh from it's a fee in doing the TikTok deal, is buying a video game company, Zenimax Media for 7.5 billion.
It's a lot of money just weeks before the Sony releases its new video game consoles. So Microsoft's really doubling down in gaming, which they're already strong, which I thought was interesting. So they're willing to buy things just not to not TikTok, I guess. The thing that popped out to me is that they're just buttressing their subscription video game platform and moving to, I mean, think about it.
It's just a video game, which is just an outstanding, it's probably the strongest industry that we don't talk about that much. They move from consoles to the cloud or streaming and they move from buying those games at Best Buy to subscription. The industry is really well run. It's about, I think it's something like 15 times the size of the domestic, basically the domestic film theater business.
Maybe it's very much owned by China, by the way, along with the porn industry, apparently. Really? China, apparently. It's like Epic and some other ones.
He looked down the list of owners. There's a lot of Chinese investment in this area. And again, also someone pointed out to me in the porn industry when I was talking about Grindr being foresold to a US company. Interesting.
It's an interesting, yeah, it's a great business. You're right. We had a reporter who covered it at, when I did all things D and it just didn't pick up the story. People didn't read the stories as much, but I agree.
It's a big industry that gets much ignored and we don't talk about it. We're not experts on it. But it's important that they add to their run bill, which I think is video games. There's not someone who's really consolidated, I guess, Apple and Amazon and Google have tried, but Microsoft really has quietly done a very good job in this sector.
Okay, we're going to go on to big stories. Let's talk about battery day, which is Tesla's day to talk about batteries. They did not release a battery. And at the same time, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, who I haven't interviewed with this morning, a very long one and a substantive one about climate change and also this new executive order to be out.
That sounds like a page learner. I'm just telling you it is. It's a really good one. I'm sorry, pretty hard to tell that is compelling.
Unless he's doing, unless you use video and you don't have a shirt on, I am not tuning in. All right. Okay. Listen to me.
You should listen to it because it's important to be out. I'll drink a lemonade. He's a governor. I'm not banning gas cars, so gas.
Whatever. It was married to Kimberly. I can't take my answers to it. You are literally just, you are America.
You are America. That's what you are. This is America. This is a long way to battery.
Elon Musk shares in full vision. For the company, he unveiled a roadmap for the company called better cheaper and more vision batteries. Is that low? Low electric car prices.
They announced a future $25,000. Two fully autonomous car within three years. They had promised this before, I think, but finally the announcement Tesla stocks up the morning. I'm actually didn't roll out of battery.
So talk about these twin things going on in California. It was a pretty cool event. He had all the Tesla cars there and he was they were honking at him. It was pretty surreal and funny.
So what do you think? This is how a huge run up, Tesla's had a huge run up, but this is the most important part of the equation of electric cars, these batteries and the reforms. We go into the technology of it, but let's not. Why do you think investors responded this way?
Was it because they were waiting for it or what? Well, I get Tesla stock. I mean, I've been very good at predicting predictions around Tesla stock. I don't remember a year and a half ago.
I said that Tesla was at 323, and I said it was gonna go down. And now it's at 370, so it really has a movement. Oh wait, it's split five for one. It's split five for one.
So Tesla stock. You'd like to revisit your, so it's so true. Thank you, Napoleon. The key isn't to be right.
It gives the catalyzer conversation. I catalyzed a lot of conversations. Let me just say, this particular water dude for you is fascinating, but what do you think about this? He's trying to focus in on this issue.
And I think it's an important issue. He just didn't have the battery itself. Yeah, so look, battery, first off, everyone said, it's not looking for a reason why the stock went down. Everyone's looking for a reason to take the stock down, because it's just crazy town right now.
And it doesn't need a lot of reason to deflate a little bit. And really doesn't say much. What's interesting about this is that batteries, battery technology and essentially the scale around battery manufacturing is really exciting because it's ringing the cost down dramatically. Batteries have come down from about $1,200 per kilowatt to $150.
Basically every three years, the price gets cut in half. And if batteries become less expensive, and then you add on top of that the savings, not only the economic savings, we're not having to put gas in your car, but the psychological savings are never having to go to the worst retail in the world. And that's a gas station. Really, I don't mind gas stations.
Oh, gas, that is definitely where you're going to get shot by a shotgun or something. That is where you get thrown in a van and we never hear from you again. Oh, sorry, I didn't mean that. Anyways, gas stations are, I think the gas station is the most dangerous place.
It's a weird thing you have to do. Yes. It's awful. It looks like it.
Yeah. It looks like it. It looks like it. Anyways, not having to go to a gas station is something I don't miss, but as they get stale here, and as the costs continue to come down, you could, for the first time, what it felt like when you started to pencil out the numbers, that electric cars might be economically advantageous in addition to the technological environment, and even changes.
So I thought it was actually pretty interesting. I think he's a jealous, I think they're all jealous of each other and he's jealous of Amazon Prime Day. So we decided to have a battery day. You're right, they didn't announce, well, hell of a lot, but what was the learning?
What was the learning? The learning of the thing that struck me about this day is that there has been a dramatic shift in the automobile industry and manufacturing industry in general, and that is any company that is trying to create an aspirational brand or create differentiation through product by unlocking what different digital technologies is going increasingly vertical. And after an unbundling and outsourcing, the auto industry were effectively automobile manufacturers, but really not manufacturers as much as they were assemblers, and the most talented people in the industry were people who understood not supply chain as much as the ability to take 3,800 different parts and get them to one area and assemble something and roll it off the line. Tesla and a lot of manufacturers are going increasingly vertical, and that is they're producing and manufacturing on products and producing and manufacturing your own battery instead of Panasonic is another example of verticalization.
And I was kind of going vertical around its batteries. They've actually purchased the mineral rights to some area in Nevada so they can mine their own lithium. So the verticalization of corporate American businesses is such a U-turn from where we all thought we were going in the 70s. Well, he's going to continue to buy batteries and Panasonic.
And I think if you look at the statistics with Japan, nobody has announced it. Japan. Just walking up just until he has gone. This is a critical part of his thing.
What's interesting is if you look at who's ahead, and by the way, the US government's inability to be investing here is crazy because it's the future. But Japan, China, there's all these countries ahead of the US in terms of battery development. So I think it's a really promising area. Whoever moves into this area in a strong way, and it could be Elon because he's been obsessed with batteries.
I can tell you for a lot. He's talking about batteries to me constantly. That's what he discusses often. And what's interesting about that is that can he add, do as much manufacturing of key elements in the key cost, which is the batteries.
It's possible and can he'll then innovate on batteries? Can he take out? There was some things he was, again, I'm not going to speak to it because I read up on it. I could speak to it from notes.
But making the batteries more efficient is really the goal here and cheaper. And so I would think he would want to do this. Again, he didn't show up a battery, and he did promise these cars would be cheaper. So what I think Elon tends to do is he makes a promise to people, which people think, oh, that's just a lie because he didn't do it.
But I think it's a promise to himself. He wants to put himself on record so he can be not attacked. It's not really, I think he does it because he wants to see things out loud and he says it out loud. And some people see that as a sort of a PT bar and kind of thing.
And sometimes it is, but I think in this case, he's quite committed to this technology. And I think that's really, and it's also important and existential for his company, in real terms. If you want to backfill the evaluation they have. And so I like that he was focusing on this, even though it's, I like that he was focusing on this topic.
I like that he called it Battery Day. He tried to make it interesting. Same thing with Gavin Newsom. You can go on about his looks, which are quite substantive.
But he's like in announcing this, he's laying a mark in the sand just like he did with gay marriage. And everyone at the time that he did, this is very akin to what he did with gay marriage. He said he did it, it was illegal when he did it. It fought it all the way.
And he lost a lot of political capital at the time. He really did. But guess what? You know, of course, now we're looking at court that could push back some of these rights, probably not marriage.
But at the time, no one thought it was a crazy thing to say and do. So that's the only thing with the court. You've got it. Some points say, this is the way we're going.
And this is what we're aiming for and through change the discussion. And so I do admire when people do things like that. That's my feeling on a lot of this stuff. Goals are important.
And the best way to predict the future is to make it. And I think it was a World Health Organization said we're going to cut out poverty in half and 20 years. And it took them 10 years. But goals and metrics are important.
I mean, I think at some point, Jerry Brown, or Edmund Brown, the governor of California said, we're going to reduce emissions by a certain amount of ice-urntate. And I grew up in Los Angeles. I remember going to the beach, taking the RTD bus down to the beach and going to Black Art Station 19. And by the time I got home, I had trouble breathing.
And now the air in Los Angeles, or at least my understanding, is cleaner. And of course, Trump administration is fighting the emissions standards to count on the economy. What's interesting is Newsome, I think car companies see this. They actually went along.
A lot of them, many of them publicly, someone privately, they're not sitting awake for the government to do this. They know around the world they're being pressed on emission standards. And so they're just going to go there. Why not just go where the business is going?
Same thing with this. Now everyone's like, oh, car companies are going to fight it. No, they're not. This is the future.
Like, why would you hold on to a technology that's gas and fossil fuels? When it's so clear what Elon's doing, what others are doing. And if you're the governor of California, why not say this is where we're going to do it, and this is where you should locate your company, and this is where it has so many follow-on ideas that if you don't state this goal, and even though a lot of people think it's not enough, because European countries have said in 10 years, or less than his in a timeline. And so it just puts a mark in the scene that says this.
And you didn't have to do it by executive order. And the other thing you did was fracking, which he wants the legislature to work on. But I don't know. I feel like if you don't start talking about these things, it's so easy for the press to say PR.
I remember the gay marriage thing, and everybody saying this is PR, this is this, and it was actually started the whole thing. I can't trip it twice. Yeah, but it was illegal, and then it was pushed back, and it hadn't been in the middle of it. It was illegal, you did it, and then it was, I literally got married, and then I got a letter from the after-prope, not prope, after the Supreme Court.
There was all kinds of legal wrangling, but I got a letter saying, oh, your fee has been returned. My marriage was ended, my fee has been returned, because it was a fee that you had. That's weird. I know it was weird.
But then it went forward, and then it was prope, then your grandfather did, and then there's Supreme Court. It starts off a rolling pebble to these things. And I think this is the wildfires in California, a perfect backdrop to we have to do this now. Like, stop it.
Like, that kind of thing. So whatever you think about the PR of both these things, I'm on board for this kind of PR. And to be the cynical when the president is talking about not leaving office and saying stupid things about tunicans, and just come on, this is important stuff. This is existential for our children.
Thank you. It's a nice thing. Well, you said it last week, and you quote an RBG, and she said that the center has become mainstream. If they do it with leadership, with courage, and they don't pour salt in the earth behind them, and alienate people, and something I always coach on people around is there's a difference between being right and being effective, and you need to be both.
And people just focus on, well, I'm right, so everyone should fall in line behind me. But there's something I'm thinking a lot about. And I think the Biden administration would be well reversed to start a narrative around. We're all talking about the downside and the mistakes we've made around COVID-19.
But what are the opportunities, or specifically, what are we going to leave behind? And the thing that strikes me the real opportunity is let's leave behind 20% to 30% of our emissions. And that is if we can figure out a way to give people the ability to work from home, if we can figure out a way to incorporate into the workforce more seamlessly, working mothers, that's not to commute as much, if we can figure out a way to reduce right from business travel, could we leave 10%, 20%, 30% of our emissions behind? Because I don't think it was any accident.
I remember going out, during the real lockdown, when the actually with a real lockdown. And a couple times in Florida, going outside of the thing, this is the most beautiful day I have ever seen. And I went on, I forget it was the National Atmospheric Association, or whatever. And it showed that Florida emissions, or carbon over, over our atmosphere, had gone down substantially.
And so a lot of it, this is a huge opportunity, professionally, personally, from a societal standpoint, to sit down and say, OK, this is an opportunity. I've shaken the edge of sketch. What are the lines? Do I need to draw back the lines the same way that we're?
What are we going to leave behind here? What goes away? Well, I think it's true. I think it's true.
Do you remember the movie, I'm thinking the Jake Gillen Hall movie I always talk about it. I thought it had such an impact of me. It was such a corny movie. Brokeback Mountain?
I liked it. No, no, the one where he really, where the climate, he's in the thing in New York with Emmy Ross and his father, Dennis Guey, comes to look for him, I'm totally blank. No, that's extreme weather. Extreme weather.
And the, I don't know why it got me. The astronauts are up in space, and they're safe from the whole global, whatever everything that happened. There was a freezing of most of the most half of the world, essentially. And he looked down, and he said, it's never been clearer.
You know what I mean? And I think that was because there was no nobody was doing anything. And nobody, the world had been cleaned up again. And so there is something to the idea of not moving or finding technological ways to work at home, of consuming less.
And I think one of the things in the interview with Gavin, which is substantive, and you should listen to it. You're not going to listen. That's all right. I talk about you doing the whole time.
So maybe I'll tell you that. Really? Well, I'll have to tune in all the time. No.
But what I think is was substantive about it is we've done a lot on the demand side. Now we have to do a lot on the demand side. We have to do a ton more on the demand side. And even though they've done a lot on emissions, they've done a lot on this, and whatever they do with batteries or car selling, they have to do it on the demand side.
And that's where they, whether it's agriculture, whether it's anything else. And he's going to get there was already a trending among the conservatives hashtag recall Gavin. And I said, what do you think about that? He says we have 55 lawsuits with the federal government right now.
And this is the 20th time they've tried to recall me. So good frigging luck. Anyway, all right. Scott, we're going to do a quick break.
We're going to talk about DOJ's antitrust case against Google and a listener male question. Hey, I'm Appi Shell, comedian, writer, and floating head. You may or may not have seen on your 4U page. And I'm starting a brand new podcast.
Wait, wait. Don't swipe away. It's called That Sounds Like A Lot. As in, that feeling when you check your phone in the morning, you read three headlines and you immediately think, oh, that sounds like a lot.
I can't deal with all this. But guess what? I can deal with it. And I'm going to get into it every Friday.
I'll break down whatever chaos is happening in the world. Then I'll sit down with the comedian. You can be progressive and not be like fucking annoying. Maybe an actor.
They go, communism is gone too far. You go, why? Does the Sadie Hawkins dance? It happens.
Maybe a filmmaker. Since leaving that show, I'm challenged, sparing. I just got to hang out and try to do stuff. You're the one with a charmed life.
Could be a politician, basically anyone who responds to my cold DMs. We're recording the whole thing in a beautiful studio, so yes, you can watch it on YouTube, or you can listen wherever you get your podcast. This is not the place to get the news, but it is the place to feel a little better about it. That sounds like a lot part of the Vox Media podcast network.
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OK, Scott, we're back. Google, the Department of Justice, is outlining to state officials. It's antitrust inquiry on Google, expected to focus on search, which is what a shock is one of the final steps for filing the landmark case against the company. The case is expected to focus on Google's search business, and whether the company's used its dominant search position to block rivals and harm consumers.
This would be the first major action against big tech companies forever. I mean, since for a long time, I would count 18 to 10 others. So this is a long time coming. I went through my archives this week, and I found literally a 2008 article where I talked about this.
Like, why isn't the FTC acting here when Google was trying to take over Yahoo's search, for example? What do you think about this? You think it's a win for the Trump administration? A lot of those prosecutors don't want it to go forward so quickly because they feel like they don't have enough of a case.
But there's a lot of hubbub inside the Department of Justice. What do you think? I do think it's a win for the Trump administration, because we've been talking about this a while. When one organization controls 93% of all searches, 93% of $150 billion industry called Search.
Yeah, it's clear that this requires more scrutiny. And the lawyers around the DOJ were somewhat recalcitrant. And I don't think it was, they said, there's no merit here. They said, we need more time to bulk up and get in shape for this, because you know that Google's going to throw about 7 billion lawyers at this.
So I do think it's actually a win for the administration. I also think that focusing on Search dominance is opposed to like, either EU's looking at Fitbit in their antitrust probe of Google. And I think you focus on what's going to be, you focus on the key here. And it's Search, 93%.
Although I do think, you know what? I think it's a little bit of a wrench in the FTC or the DOJ's plan. I think Apple will be going back to this notion of vertical. I think Apple's going to launch a fairly competent search engine and they're going to start blocking.
He's saying this. Well, it just makes, I just think it makes a lot of sense. Anyway, my point, I think it is a win for the administration. I think it's too bad that DOJ doesn't have more resources.
I hope they can increase funding. I think it's the brightest legal minds in the world with the DOJ. But yeah, it's an October surprise. I think they have, in somewhere in the Trump administration, there's a list of a dozen or two dozen things that are like, we're going to announce these things.
Whether we do them or not, whether they make any sense, we're going to announce these things before November 3. And this is one of them. But I think this is one of those things that will continue even if Trump is booted from office. What do you think?
I think I have to do credit. I mean, here's the thing. Here's why I'm worried about these prosecutors pulling out. Because I do think prosecutors can be a little too cautious.
And I was looking at that book by the Mueller guy who was number two to him. And they were too cautious. They're always too cautious and worried. And so what I'm worried is that they're not prepared to fight Google.
And so worry when I see a hear noise of people within the Justice Department thinking we don't have the case yet. We haven't got it yet. Sometimes they can be over. We haven't got it yet.
We all know what the problem is. And we've known it for a decade. And I think the failure of the Obama administration act in any of these areas over all this time was just a real knock on them. I talked about it with Jean Spirling and some others before.
But I do think they need to take action. I think they're doing it politically, which is, I wish they would have done it before and really prepared it and really put the resources into it. Same thing with the FTC. If they really cared, they would have funded the FTC properly.
If they really cared, they would have really talked about this instead of talking about tuna cans, like whatever ridiculous bullshit they talk about. And so just like the executive order around 230, just like this TikTok thing, it could be another debacle. And they then missed the shot at Big Tech. They're missing the shot at China right now.
They missed the shot at executive 230 from. And if they hit the shot because they're incompetent, and by the way, they're incompetent, that's really the problem. If they don't have the buy-in from those real career justice department officials because Bill Barr's decided to become this strange henchman of Donald Trump, that's my problem with them. So I like that they're doing it.
I just want them to do it well so that it doesn't fail. And so we'll see. And I think what do you Google is doing right now? I mean, they have to see this coming for a decade.
Google is lining up. They're testing their armaments in Spain. They're getting their funding, their measurements, their panzer tanks. They are lining up so many resources the board of the scariest thing about this.
The initial brief that they're going to file is supposedly has 40 lawyers on it. That is nothing. That is literally kissing in the ocean of this battle. And then you've left.
And if they don't do it well, it's not the momentum of mine. They risk that state AG is not joining in. The other thing is people aren't really mad at Google or Amazon. That's going to be one of the biggest things.
People like these companies, right? They don't like Facebook so much. And they have a vague sense that there's problems around tech. But they haven't built a case that why we should hate.
I mean, I think one of the things Microsoft was well-disliked when they took on that case. It was including by the industry. They'll have to have compelling testimony by the Yelps and whatever the Fitbits or whoever it is. And so they've got to build a PR case out here.
And when it's coming at you from Bill Barr, anything that that guy says, I'm lying, lying, lying, lying. And so that's one of the things I don't even want to look forward to his press conference, because I'll just be like, I just can't look at them. So that's one of the big issues. And they're so well-liked these companies.
And I think I wouldn't just hear from that. I think there's a general on these around Big Tech. And you have a coalition of- By the normals, not by you and me. By the norm.
I do think that people have an uneasy feeling about income inequality and can't exactly connect the dots. But do have a feeling that Big Tech's dominance is not a good thing for America. And you've seen all 50 states support antitrust action and informed a coalition against Google. And that's red.
That's Mississippi to Oregon. Everybody's like, yeah, this is just not- Let me come up and be seeing, like, here's a Mahoney pot. Come on, they're not necessarily- Anything is money. I do.
I just think it's going to be a much more difficult thing. And I'm worried that this administration is incompetent to the task, even if they're doing it. And they've proven to be so sloppy everywhere else, sloppy and political. And so both those things together.
It'll be interesting to see who will take proactive action. I think Apple might. Even though they've publicly been sort of insulting the Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, and that company, they've been pretty aggressive pushing back. I think some company like Apple is going to be like, all right, here's what we'll do.
Here's- Throw us in the Briar patch, please. And I think that's the smarter move here. I'm not sure what Google can do except fight it, right? And make them prove their case.
That's- They'll throw everything back. That's what I mean. I think if I was Google, I would be a little bit like, no. No.
Oh, they've already said no. They've already said no. They've said nine. I mean, they are coming for these guys.
Like, are you kidding? I would hate to go up against Google. And everybody, when I met with Senator- As soon as seems so nice. When I met with Senator Valsim, I said the point.
No, they don't. When I met with Senator Warner, you gotta go out there. How about your lean meetings with the people of- You go up there a lot. You're always with those guys.
Well, they get it. These guys are good. I actually feel better about our country when I meet with our elected representatives. Yeah, you do.
Senator Warner, I was with his two top legislative aides. And they said, well, what would you do? I'm like, you gotta have to go with anti-competitive identity, section 230. And you could just see the age is like, Lord, they're heading.
They're like, we're out of gun. Yeah, to try and take on these things, we have a lot. We would just, if we even breathe that way, we're poking a bear the size of Godzilla. And that's the problem, is that a key step to tyranny is when government no longer becomes a countervailing force, but a co-conspirator.
A co-conspirator. And we talk about this on Holy Alliance between this unwritten agreement between the Zuck and Trump. Where Zuck and Trump were saying, OK, don't break us up. Don't fuck with us.
And I'll continue to weaponize the platform. You know it was a really unholy alliance from about 2008 to 2016? The Alliance between Obama and Google. I agree.
And we as liberals don't like to talk about it. But reality is, I'm in Kara Swisher. I like that with Eric Schmidt and everything else. It was ridiculous.
By the way, who's interviewing Eric Schmidt for his podcast this week? Oh, he's all over the place. That's interesting. What are you talking about?
If he's on my pot, it means he's selling something pretty. No, no, no, no, no, no. What we're talking about? He literally, he or his people reached out and said we'd like to come on your pot.
So I'm just going to say, from 2008 to 2016, I think we don't like to admit this, but there was a very strong relationship between Obama campaign and Google. And my sense is Obama told his DOJ kind of, you know, back off of Google. Because this has blown by any reasonable litmus test for antitrust investigation. This should have happened a decade ago.
And now this will be a key test. We've been overrun. Your point is that we need to do it well, because we only get one bite of the apple here. Don't screw this up.
The good news is it's not going to take fair. I mean, there's just not much time between it. It's unlikely they can foul the waters in 30 days, right? Yeah.
This is going to go on its question, whether the Biden administration has, if it wins, or the Trump administration has the wherewithal. They'll just drop it. That's my feeling. They're just going to drop it.
And we're going to be in the exact same thing. I have a question for you. Senator Harris, do you see her? Complex, complex, my friend.
Her relationship with Big Tech. Do you see her coming in and being an apologist for Big Tech because she's taking money there? Or that she'll go after them? What do you think's going to happen there?
She has gone up in a minor way, I would say. And she's also been friendly with them. You know what I mean? She knows them all.
She's not going to say friends, but she's friendly with them. And you would be. You're a center from California. You're going to be friendly with the tech industry.
She never goes for the jugular. She goes for jugulars. And she doesn't go for the jugular here. She goes around the edges, which are important.
The edges are the privacy stuff support. But she doesn't go for the this is terrible. Although she tried during one of the debates around Twitter, if you remember, and it didn't land. Like we have to stop Twitter.
There was a thing where she. I don't remember that. She did that. She went like about we have to do this.
And it just didn't. Nobody cared. And that's the other thing is it just doesn't. You know what polls?
Well, health care. You know what polls? Well, saying you're going to overturn abortion rights. What Nancy Pelosi actually did point out to me, and I hadn't thought about this, although it's kind of basic, was the Trump administration had the Senate in the House for two years, and they didn't do any abortion legislation.
Like why not? She goes, when they had power, they did nothing. It's all for the base. It's all noise.
It's all like. Yeah, my sense is Republicans aren't really. At least I would. You don't want to use it to get everyone out.
It's an leave it to the courts. It's right. But they don't want to be the ones that actually make it difficult for your daughter or to actually get, you know, have family plans. So I think Kamala Harris will not be.
She does stuff around the edges. And I don't know what would prompt her to do anything else. You know, I don't know. I don't know what you have to be prompted, right?
And it's not her nature. She's very canny strategically. You know, so it just doesn't. What does it get her?
I think everything that she does is that. What does it get her? I think it's going to be Amazon. Facebook they'll never touch.
Maybe the Biden administration will do that, but not anybody else. I think it's I actually do think it's Facebook because I think they'll be more political, wind or support. And I think Amazon is a tough one because the consumer harm is much more difficult to prove there. And they have a very if you look at the risk of industries, whether it's the cloud, whether it's retail, they don't have the same type of market share that these other firms to make an easier market.
Right. And the one that will go last, it will be regulation, it won't be antitrust, will be Apple. But that that's a rational argument. And I have not seen rational constructs be injected and get this so far.
Yeah, I think big tech once again slides away. Slides away. I do think some of the emails of both Google and especially Facebook, just even the ones that David Sisling put out are like, oh, that's uncomfortable. But that doesn't mean- Give us an example.
What other kinds of things? You know, land grab and we're going to neutralize people like the idea that they're trying to take out competitors. I think that's the, he was starting to go in the direction I go. It's like, look what they're doing to American innovation.
Look what they're doing to small companies. That's the case you make. And he was starting to release those and we'll see, you know, small businesses, that's like that's a winning argument versus these people. These big, they're the richest people in the world.
Jeff Bezos has 200 million dollars. That's, you know, Mark Zuckerberg is ruining democracy. That's the way you go. And I think it takes a lot of guts for someone to do that.
We'll sit on- Representative Sislingi oversaw the other chair of the best here in a long time. He just needs to stop lying. He's a total Joey from Hong Kong, Long Island. That guy's not from Maryland or wherever he says he's from.
He's that guy Long Island or what? That guy's like the really smart guy on Long Island. That guy's from somewhere else, Scott. Oh, come on.
Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota. Yeah, she's from Minnesota. She's not super real estate broker Joan from Atlanta. She's the best real estate broker in the world.
Where are you from? Where are you called from? I don't know. I haven't really thought about that.
My people come from West Virginia, my people. That's not where I would have gone. West Virginia. Well, I can't help it.
That's where my dad was born. My family is there. My friend outside of the family. I don't see that situation.
Where in West Virginia? Cara. Morgantown. And then the hills and hollers.
I'll tell you, I met a couple of cousins up in there. Morgantown. Morgantown. West Virginia.
They made a stranger face when they met you Cara. They're like, who the fuck is this? Yeah, they did. I had my famous girl.
She writes about Google. No, that was right. And it was during the, it was the first Trump thing. And they had all been Trumpies.
And they were like, Cara, you sure did the, you know, our candidate one. We're winning. We won this and then we won this. And then I said, you know what?
Let me just review it for you. I said, I make 4,000 times more than you guys do. I'm going to benefit from this from a financial point of view. And you're going to get screwed because that's the way it's going to happen.
And so you really want good luck. I find that people from West Virginia respond really well to their cousins coming down. Yeah, I'm a secret. Their lesbian cousins coming down from York and talking about how much more money they make than them.
I find that that's just a way to warn yourself to their hearts. I just like a sore winner. I just didn't like a sore winner. So you're a sore winner.
I'm not even. You're the sore winner. I really pointed out that they were not exploring the entire situation. And I of course would be happy to pay more taxes in that regard.
You should absolutely begin every email with Sick of All This Winning question Mark, love from DC. Sick of All This Money. I like some lovely relationships there. Anyway, let's go onto a listener mail question.
You've got, you've got, can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. Hey, Karen Scott, this is Rebecca. You're producer.
I'm coming to you from my studio apartment in Brooklyn where I've been producing Pivit since March. With the Supreme Court top of mind, what issues in tech and data privacy do we expect to see coming up to the bench? Do you expect a conservative leaning court to deal with those issues differently? And if the Democrats do take the Senate in November, how will that affect Silicon Valley?
By the way, if you're a listener and working in tech and want to flag an issue that you think is underreported, email us at Pivot at boxmedia.com Thanks guys. I think if the Democrats take the Senate in November, I think they'll be tougher on Silicon Valley. I don't know if it'll be effective. I mean, in this interview with Nancy Pelosi, she called Facebook disreprudible.
She said they were gonna take action. I don't know. She'd have that power to do so. We'll see.
It depends if they will say, I don't know. There's nothing really coming on the pipe. It's a privacy legislation antitrust finds stronger FTC with the courts. I don't think there's any cases that I'm aware of that are coming up from below.
I think it will be all cultural cases, culture and society cases. I don't know, Scott, what do you think? Yeah, I don't know. I'm not a judicial scholar, actually, not a scholar, but on anything.
But I think this happens most likely. I'm saying this from a while from the state agencies, specifically California, New York and also from Europe. Yeah. But I'm hopeful.
And obviously, I think a Democratic administration would be, I mean, you kind of hit the nail on the head. To pick your issues across Trump is a little bit of a kabuki dance because they're just so incompetent. Right. And they have, I think, the trade war made a lot of sense, at least from an attention standpoint, or reasons behind it, which has been so poorly executed.
I actually think that banning TikTok, if you had decided to ban over time all Chinese internet companies, I think there was legitimacy around that concern. Yeah. There was risk, legitimate risk concerns. But they've just been so bad at this.
The boring stuff is what changes America, the number of judges at every level that have been appointed over the last four years, have probably been the most damaging thing if you're progressive over the long term. Yes. But when you talk about, you've been talking about my favorite. We have, we've overturning Obamacare, we have a new healthcare plan.
There's no healthcare plan anywhere. I mean, they don't have health care is really hard and requires smart people to do smart work. And that's just not the hard work that Trump administration wants to do right now. And it's just, I don't feel it's so hard for us to imagine a Trump amendment.
You know, we have such PTSD or whatever you call it, a Trump syndrome. I just, it's hard for me to even envision what might happen if Trump is reelected. But the only thing that. No tests for four years.
Well, to a certain extent, the Trump, the, the, I don't want to say the same in grace, but one of the things that makes the Trump administration a little less scary is their incompetence on certain things because they don't make a lot of progress around stuff and more competent. Well, they do. Like Dick Cheney was both scary and very competent. I think Dick Cheney was scarier in some ways than Donald Trump because he was very competent and smart and elegant and smooth and understands constituencies.
So anyways, what are your thoughts? I think that that they, it's a bipartisan and not nonpartisan, a bipartisan issue about big tech. I think that's one thing for sure. And so that's, that's where there's a good chance something can get done and why not.
But it's why would you do it? First of all, everyone's got to clean up this country, the economic recovery. There's so much stuff to happen. No one's going to get to it.
This is kind of a, it's not a must do. It's a would like to do. And so that's the issue. There's so many other things to fight about and just recovery is going to be the first couple of years of whoever or else more destruction if it's Donald Trump, I think.
The second thing, the only area that I think would be interesting is this is access to cell phones and encryption. I think that's a really, that was a really interesting thing. And as Rebecca pointed out in our notes here, when the Supreme Court ruled on the warrant to access cell phone location data, all the dissenters in case Republicans. So they're very, that is the encryption could be an interesting situation and that most Republicans tend to lean the Jim Comey way, which was much was much more hand over your stuff, kind of stuff.