Economic Protests, Social Media on Trial, and Big Tech Earnings

This usually shocks people. I have run 27 marathons plus a few ultramarathons all while fueling my body with plants. Yes, I get plenty of protein. I'm Robin Arsone, BPI Fitness Programming and Head Instructor at Peloton. And this week on my podcast, Project Swagger, the fundamentals of a plant-based life with nutritional takeaways for you to apply to your own life, no matter what your preferred diet is. Follow Project Swagger wherever you get your podcasts. I'm going to stuff your corpse and have it next to me. I'm doing taxidermy. Yeah, I'm doing taxidermy. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Before we do anything, I'd like to point out that as of this episode drops, it's been 42 days since the deadline passed for the DOJ to release all the Epstein files. Though we do have an update. The DOJ officials said in a court filing this week that they expect to release the files, quote, in the near term, but they did not provide a specific date. Pam Bondi, get on it. Anyway, Scott, after Sunday's bonus episode about the violence in Minnesota, we've gotten a mountain of responses to our discussion of the economic strike that you suggested. I know you're working on something and we'll talk about that in a minute, but first, here's what some of our listeners had to say. I'm seeing online some suggestions of people stop paying their income tax by updating their W-2. I and many of my colleagues are watching with sadness, a lot of anxiety and anger at the escalating violence. And I keep wondering what if anything people outside the U.S. like me can do that's actually useful. Reportedly, Vanguard, BlackRock and Fidelity hold half of the shares in two companies, GEO Group and CoreCivic, which run nearly 90% of ICE detention facilities. If investors divested from these collaborators and others, could that put a stop to ICE's worst abuses? And given a lot of you have been writing in wondering what you can do personally, we asked Financial Educator Vivian Tu, host of Net Worth and Chill, to give some tips on how to make an impact. Let's hear what she had to say. Hey, Scott and Cara. Heard you guys were talking about an economic blackout. I've got a couple personal finance tips. For our friends with a lot of financial discipline, you could consider changing your W-4 withholding for your taxes. You'll pay fewer taxes throughout the year and then pay them all in one lump sum come tax time. You're not going to get to pay fewer taxes overall, but why let the government hold your money and do stuff with it for longer than they need to? Make sure you are taking advantage of time value of money. Up next, everybody talks about shopping local versus corporate, but another thing you can do is pay in cash. These local businesses oftentimes might even give you a small discount for doing so because then they have to give less up as well. And last but not least, for the economic blackout, money that you aren't spending on buying stuff, make sure you're putting towards a really smart strategic cause, things like paying down your debt so you aren't so heavily tied to financial institutions, but also causes that you care about that might support things like immigration or human rights. The main takeaway is this. Economic boycotts do not work if a small population stops spending cold turkey for one to two days. What we're actually going to need is a critical mass of people to scale back their consumerism over weeks and months. And even if they can only do it to 70 or 80% of their ability, that is going to have a bigger impact. Scott, you should know Vivian's upcoming book is called Well Endowed. I thought you'd like that. There you go. She did not interview me. She did not interview me. So tell me what we talked about this that a lot of people were talking about. Go for it. Well, last night I was about to make love to my sweet, sweet lady and she put my penis in her hand and then it was dark out and she said, I'm sorry, don't smoke. National economic strike. Yeah, great. You're stepping on your penis there, Scott. My bluff has been called here and that is I think that America fills a lot of anxiety around its government not providing security and prosperity, but terror and anxiety and I've thought a lot about this and if you look at where Trump and the administration respond, they don't respond from citizenry and co-equal branches of government or even the Supreme Court where they do respond really crisply is from markets. And within 24 hours, he backed off of terrorists, annex and Greenland, pressure on interest rates, tariffs when one thing has happened. The S&P has gone down or the bond market has started to get wobbly. So then the question becomes if that's the fastest blue line path to getting ice out of cities or to putting in more protocols or just flexing that we're watching. The fastest way to do that. What you want is the most impact with the least amount of sacrifice from the citizenry to make it easy and also maximum impact. I think not buying groceries is not a lot of impact because these companies are very low margin. They're not companies, CEOs that he listens to or cares about. So I bifurcated into two types of companies, what I call ground zero. Big tech controls 40% of the S&P. They are growth companies that are very, very highly valued right now. So any, any slowdown in growth could potentially have a disastrous effect on them. So that's kind of the soft tissue of the economy right now and where our consumer economy, which is 70%, consumer spending could have the greatest impact with the least amount of effort. So I've listed a series of big tech companies and launching the site probably on Sunday. What's it called? It's called, thank you for asking. Well endowed? It's called, it's called resist and unsubscribe. Oh, look. So if you like what we're saying, don't like and subscribe, resist and unsubscribe. I've also got the URL unsubscribe February because to Vivian's point, it can't be one day or a week. It has to be sustained and there has to be a viral component to it. So the companies and what I call ground zero or Amazon and I have instructions on how to unsubscribe from Amazon Prime, Audible, Amazon Music, Prime Video, Anthropic, Apple. So you can pick what you want, right? Well hopefully all and not only that, I don't want to tell people what to do and what not to do. Right, exactly. People have different means. People have different means and ideas on how they can participate and I'm not going to tell anyone to not buy groceries or not show up for work. If you want to have the biggest impact possible, I've tried to identify those companies, Disney, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, OpenAI, Uber and Meta. And then you've given the argument why, why, what they've done so you can decide what you think is acceptable or not. The reason why I really do think this idea is so powerful is you get a couple free gifts with purchase. Not only do you achieve the Clone Code economic slowdown, but you have an outsized impact unsubscribing specifically from these companies that are driving the market right now. Two, it just so happens that the majority of the CEOs of these companies have been especially sycophantic and played a really large role in enabling all this bullshit, whether it's Tim Cook showing up and prostrating himself for the Melania documentary, whether it's Amazon green lighting a $30 million documentary that made no fucking sense. It was just pure grift or bribery, whether it's obviously Meta, whether it's Sachin Adela sitting there and trying to communicate to people, I don't like it, but I'm going to continue to do it. I just want to remind everybody that back in the early 30s, Hitler's rise was largely enabled by corporate CEOs who basically said, if you destroy our trade unions, we won't speak up against this democratic slide into fascism. And once it got out of hand, it was too late for them to do anything. So we have been to this place before where people use the excuse of shareholder value to enable and basically not provide any friction to what is the type of terror and anxiety being levied. Can I can I ask you a question because I think a lot of people want to decide, like one of the things that's good is where Scott's, I've seen some of it is going to give you information to make your own decisions. For example, with me, I got rid of arcade. I got rid of the one thing I got rid of a bunch of. But enough buying an iPhone. Not buying an iPhone. So cancelling Apple Music, whatever it might be. Yeah, whatever. But if you want to do that and keep Apple Music, like we don't want, we don't judge you. It's just, here's your, the tools, right? Here's the tools. Stop doing Prime. If maybe if you don't want to cancel Prime completely, you can stop buying on it for like people should decide. Just a month. People should decide what to do. And it's not forever, by the way. It's not, I shall never use it again, right? Like orange juice people still drink after the boycott of Anita Bryant. That's 100 years ago, kids. But that's what you're trying to get at is giving people tools on. Does it have links to where you, where you can do these things or just instructions? It's name of the company, all the different services you can unsubscribe to, a link to where you unsubscribe, the unsubscribe page, and a brief prescription of why we're doing this. So the ground zero is big tech companies. And also the truth has a nice ring to it. I'm going from two LLMs to one. I don't need anthropic and open AI. I'm going, and this is the one that hurts, I'm going from six streaming platforms to one. I'm not giving up on all streaming platforms, but I'm going to pair it way back. And the free gift with purchase here when you start looking at this stuff, I found out, for example, I have three HBO Max accounts. I didn't realize I had three. It's not a bad idea to take some time to think, where am I just spending money every month? Unbeknownst to me, we're quite frankly, I probably could pair back a little bit. So there's the ground zero. That's the big tech companies who have an outsize impact on your absenteeism. By the way, the most radical act in a capitalist society, hands down, is non-participation. And then the second group of companies I list is called the blast zone. And these are companies that are directly working with ICE. AT&T awarded 90 million to provide ICE with IT and network projects, Comcast, Charter Communications, Dell Technologies, Deloitte FedEx, UPS. I list how you can leverage your economic muscle against them and how they are participating. You may decide that this is not for you or it's too big to give up, but I'm giving you a ton of options. There's ground zero, outsize impact, and then there's the blast zone that is companies directly working on them. And I want to be realistic. I am not going to give up telco, but I've switched to Noble Mobile from AT&T. I'm going to go from five streaming media platforms to one. And I think you can have a lot of impact here. I'm trying to make it as social as possible and hope that people join in. But I think if we're looking for the lowest tax way on citizenry to get the administration to pay attention, it's about markets. It's not about ideology. It's about math. And it's about not participating. And it's the easiest thing I could come up with to have an outsize impact. This is great. We get a lot of stuff about people not knowing what to do. And maybe they don't want to go to protest or fly to Minneapolis. If you don't want to do that or you don't want to just sit around and do scroll and hacktivism, this is one of the many, many, many ways. And I think it's great that you're doing this, Scott. Good for you. What streaming service did you keep? Netflix. Oh, I can't say. Oh, okay. But I was talking about how we had a family, you know, one of those family meetings. I don't want to play favorites because I've already heard from some of the CEOs of these companies, word is already out. And they're, by the way, they're not thrilled about this. No, they're not. I've gotten some. But that was the only, that was really a ha ha moment. We had a family meeting and I said to my kids, we're going to cancel streaming media platforms. And I literally got that look like memo to self, smother dad and sleep. So I said, I said, we can keep one. And it's only for February. And there's a huge argument because one kicks into Premier League football and that's Paramount Plus. And the other's like, Paramount Plus, are you fucking high? I mean, it just cost a near riot. I had a discussion with one of my children about Apple music. I'm still in the middle of the discussion about it. Oh, yeah. So they're like, okay, I'm off Apple music, Amazon music, but they're keeping Spotify. It was an interesting consumer preference. It came down to Netflix or HBO Max with the two we distilled down to. And I won't tell you which one we picked. But it's interesting to think about. It is. I was surprised by the pushback from one of my children. They're like, wait a minute on my list. I was like, oh, you know, but anyway, you have those discussions. It's actually then it ended up being a really interesting discussion about economic boy cuts and what you can do. So it's a great opportunity to talk to your kids and your and your spouse or whoever about the economic choices you make in life in general. Anyway, to be clear, the site isn't up today, but but Scott will let us know over the next couple of days. And we will know activists around the country are calling for no work, no school and no shopping today on Friday, January 30. There are people to stop funding ice. There'll be lots of activities like that. But not just Scott Galloway, the great economist Scott Galloway, but Robert Reich is talking about this idea. It's really catching on the idea of it. And it's well beyond just a temporary thing. It's like, you take a minute and look at your life and what you're where you're putting your money and your money is important. Anyway, I have an announcement now on to me. Guess what? We've named my show on CNN that is coming in the spring. I can't say the exact date. Well, it's called Kara Swisher wants to live forever. What do you think? I think the tagline should be up. Fuck. Is it really Kara Swisher wants to live forever? It is. It is. It's called Kara Swisher wants to live forever. But what if you have a stroke in the middle of the tree? Exactly. It's brilliant. Don't you think? That's what Amanda said. Amanda said that too. She's like, oh, well then it would work people and watch it. Right? I think it should be what if we live forever? Question mark with Kara Swisher. I wouldn't make it. Well, it's already done. Done, done, done. Oh, well then. I love it. I love it. Anyway, let me just say, let me just very briefly say for far too long, the longevity space has been captive. This is the idea behind it of Rich Tech Bros. Rich Tech Dude Influencers, non-sense sellers of useless supplements and some lady who sells candles that are named after her private parts. Sorry, Gwyneth, but you started it. She's lovely, by the way. I know. I know you talked to her, but I'm taking, there's a new sheriff in town. After enduring endless conversations over the years how to live forever, I can't tell you how many dinner parties I've been in with Tech Bros telling me all manner of things, none of whom are doctors. I want in, except I'm going to show you the way for the rest of us. It will be grounded in science and facts about the best and most affordable ways to say healthy, happy and smart. Also, I took ketamine so you don't have to and Scott takes a nap in it just so you know. That's what's coming for you. So a couple things. One, I think the market was screaming for another person without medical training to tell us how to live our lives. Excellent. I think that's what the market was telling us. I talked to experts, unlike some of these people. I talked to experts. But the second thing is an honest question. Say you're not, I'm all over this shit. I now have too much money and too little time. I've never noticed that you like to focus on your health and beauty. Way too into this. So the question I would have is, assume you're an average income household, you know, 80, 90 grand. Maybe living in a city, maybe doing a little bit better than that. And you have insurance, but you don't have a ton of money to spend on stuff. What are the two or three biggest learnings around changes in lifestyle that you would recommend to just the average American? I'd be happy to. Just so you know, it's only six episodes, maybe we'll have another season because there's so much stuff out there. And there's so much bad stuff, by the way. I was hoping it was five. No. I'm sorry, go ahead. Kara's Fisher wants to live part of our lives. Yeah, Kara's Fisher wants. Everyone else wants this series to end. Anyway, that's okay. You can make fun of it. I love it. I would say, well, obviously the main thing about longevity is don't be poor. Like I hate to say that, but it matters a lot of people. Well, that's good advice. That's not going to make anyone feel bad. Okay, well, it's not, but I'm just, longevity is now going up. Make more money. That's the same advice I've gotten from every girl I've met before season four. Make more money. So one of the main things oddly enough, you know, sleep is important. Obviously diet and exercise are important. And there's lots of things, you know, that everybody understands, fermented foods, stuff like that and eating, you know, the protein debate has gotten out of hand. Those are like around the edges of saving you minutes of your life. I think one of the things I took away was one, there's amazing stuff going on around cancer research, using AI, cancer and also mobility, like robotic stuff where people are going to be sick. And the addition of AI is going to change drug discovery, cancer research. It's like astonishing. That is really a gene editing. All that stuff is really moving fast. And that will make a big difference in longevity or at least health span, right? That you'll live longer and not die of these terrible diseases. The second one is, this is the science part, GLP ones, Scott. I think you had one of the early people to this, but the benefits around just obesity is what counts a lot. I think it's a miracle drug. It's a miracle drug. It's a miracle drug. And every doctor we talked to talked about this and it now has follow on advantages. And so, you know, in very small amounts too and that's a micro dosing. I know a bunch of people do micro dosing GLP one. Yeah, I'm going to start doing that. I related to my stroke actually, which is interesting. Yeah. So anyway, so there's a lot of around GLP ones, really important and everyone vaccines and mRNA vaccines. I know they're controversial, but they're not there. They're going to have a vaccine for cancer. There's that kind of stuff is really amazing. But I have to tell you the abs and there's all, you know, all that other nonsense. The red lights, none of that works really like some of the stuff you do doesn't. But fine, whatever. Can I go through the stuff I do and you tell me what you think? Okay. I didn't do everything. So I may not have an answer, but go ahead. Testosterone therapy. Probably good for you. This is that thing they did with Peter out. Yeah. Red light, you don't know. No, there's no scientific vitamins, vitamin supplements. Some of them. Some of them and some not like vitamin D, vitamin K, some of the super EPA stuff. Yes. Creatine. Yes. Some of them ridiculous. I do creatine every day. Yeah. Creatine is very good. What else? What about NAD, either infusions or the pills? Most people think there's no scientific yet. Not to push them out. Not to push them out. You know, peptides is a big moment here, but unfortunately a lot of people are using them ineffectively or dangerously. But is there evidence that peptides might actually... We don't know yet. We don't know. Not yet. Not yet. That's a nice... There's a lot of stuff. We'll see. It's just how you use it and how it's deployed. Like at the beginning of GLP ones, a lot of people are getting shitty compounds and getting really sick, right? So don't do compounded. These things compounded. So it's a matter of... One that is... Keep going. Go ahead. What else? Cold sauna or cold plunges or... Sauna. Hot sauna, yes. Cold plunges. Hot sauna, yes. There's a lot of new science, so it may be really problematic on people, although I know all the bros love it, but there's all these issues around the shock and different things. Hot sauna is absolutely... One of the things... Let me tell you the number one thing, both scientifically and both causally and correlation, is friends and family. A hundred. I want to come back to that. So next one, getting plowed by six hockey players and rethinking everything. Just rethinking everything, Kara. Is that good for my health or not? It is good for your health. Just be careful. Just rethinking. But you mentioned the one thing, the only thing I went at, the absolute key to longevity. You just referenced it. Key to good health and longevity. Relationships. Relationships. 100, a million percent, and related to that is the use of social media and synthetic relationships. The wrong way. The wrong way. Lack of friction for your brain, brain plasticity, play games with people, do different things, talk to people you don't know. It has real health effects. Argue. You and I are going to live forever because of our relationship. I'm just saying, it was really surprising, the number one thing. And not trying to be like all happy friends, talk to people you don't know. Do things that challenge you. Be involved in the community. The more you are in the online space with synthetic relationships, the quicker you're going to die. I interviewed Timothy Snyder yesterday. He's great. The guy who's a protest expert. And we were talking about, and I challenged him. I said, are protests the new door knocking? And that is their losing effectiveness. And he pushed back really solidly. He had a couple really strong points. He said, one, when people organize, it creates an infrastructure for other activities. He said, what's happened in Minneapolis? People organize. And then they get a database of people. They figure out how to communicate with each other. And they've been turning out on a dime to observe ice raids. And a lot of that is because the infrastructure that's been built through protest. And he also said something very powerful, very simply said, you feel better when you do something with other people. And it was so simple, but so puncturing. You feel better when you do something with other people. Yeah. And it's good for your health as it turns out. It's very good for your health. And it's great to bring back community. Again, neuroplasticity anyway. Moving on, we've got a lot to do. Anyway, we're very excited. Scott Sight, what's the name of it again? Resist and unsubscribe or unsubscribe February. If you like this idea, don't like and subscribe. Resist and unsubscribe. And also please post, I'll be posting my receipts. Ideas. Please post your own ideas, your own receipts. If you've unsubscribed from Amazon Prime for the month or whatever it might be, please post it to your social and try and drive people to the notion of resistant unsubscribe. Yes, you can do something. And mine is Kara Swisher wants to live forever. There you go. Only Megan Kelly thinks that's not a good thing. Anyway, moving on, we've got a lot to get to today, including big tech earnings and major social media trials going on. So let's dig in. White House borders are Tom Homan, he of the bag of money. Just gave a presser in Minneapolis a little while ago noting he's on the ground to quote regain law and order. Tom says he's made a lot of progress since he got there like three days ago. This follows Trump saying he would deescalate a little bit earlier in the week, but the violence hasn't stopped. Representative Ilan Omar was attacked with an unknown substance out of town hall on Tuesday. It's the latest instance against a member of Congress, Representative Max Frost was physically assaulted on Sunday and last week in both our Democrats, just so you know, and quite more on the liberal end of everything. Meanwhile, the two federal agents who shot at Alex Freddie have been put on administrative leave. Border control commander Greg Bovino has left Minnesota, but Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is hanging onto her job for now. She's now, there's a lot of pictures of her and a head of lettuce going on, three court and there's a lot of infighting in them between and among all those people. Three quarters of House Democrats are backing her impeachment and a couple of Republicans in the Senate are calling for ouster Tom Tellis who's leaving, doesn't give a fuck anymore as finally found his balls. What do you make of the changing of tact and also note Amy Klobuchar has just officially announced her bid for Minnesota governor, your thoughts? Oh, it's interesting. I didn't know that that Senator Klobuchar was trying for governor. I think that's a great idea. I think, you know, I've called this before and I've been wrong. I do think this is a turning point and when I was in high school, my mom gave me a bunch of John Irving books, you know, the world according to Garth and they made me feel, they made me feel a lot better about myself when I realized everyone else was fucked up and erotic and having weird thoughts and it had a big impact on me. One of the books that also had a big impact on me was George Orwell's 1984. I think in some ways it kind of might be the reason I kind of went down the progressive path, but there's a line in there and I'll get it wrong, but it's basically and the last act of the government was to ask us to ignore or deny our, our, what we saw and what we heard. Basically, all of a sudden the government had gone to no longer trust your faculties of observation. It was the last and most important. There you go. Thank you. And I was like, oh, I have to one up. I'm just saying, I read the book. Why does Kerstich want to live forever? Anyways, so. I can be with you. But down, oh yeah, there you go. I'm going to stuff your corpse and have it next to me. Like, I'm doing taxidermy. I'm doing taxidermy. Go ahead. But that moment, that literally that quote just popped into my mind when Kristi Noem or Secretary Noem got up right. We generally have these Judeo-Christian values and I imagine there are also other, other religions that don't mean to limit it, but it says when someone dies, you don't desecrate them. And when she got up and was so disrespectful of Alex Prattie and then also claimed he was a domestic terrorist. Yeah, that's right. And that he was there and that he was there to massacre. He was brandishing a weapon and was there to massacre federal agents. I think that was Stephen Miller. That was, that was a moment where I thought, oh my gosh, I've never seen, I've seen people spend shit. I've seen people exaggerate. I've seen them lie. But I've never seen the administration feel confident that it could just look people in the eyes and say, you know, ignore your faculties of observation and trust, just believe what we say because we're saying it. What's left for me was, that felt very weird and chilling and like a turning point. And I think if you look to the Americans' credit, the majority of people and a lot more Republicans have said, okay, this has just gone too far. And you know how far it's gone when all of a sudden, when all of a sudden a guy who took $50,000 in a brown lunch bag feels like the adult in the room. He does. People have relieved that he's there. I know. When he said regain law and order, I actually think he's probably talking about the cops themselves or these border patrol people with the masks. Let me just say I had a very interesting discussion with my mom, of course. I turned her to CNN because she decided, Caitlin Collins dressed as well. She likes it and thinks she's adorable. I think that's a good reason to watch these people. I'm fine with it. So one of the things that was interesting is she did not like those things, you know, that. And one of the things that bothered her was the meanness. It was, I don't know, my mother could be very mean. She didn't love it. And one of the things I'll tell you is she zeroed on none of the masks. Why are they muring masks? I said, no, police don't wear masks. That was the first tell. Judges that put away cartel. Yeah. She was asking a question, you know, and I was like, well, because they're private police and they want to hide. And she's like, well, they're worried about people knowing who they are. I said, yes, because of the things they're doing. And so it was an interesting conversation. Well, it's, I mean, think about, think about how ironic it is. We're now deploying and coordinating unbelievable firepower and assets in Iran or in the Gulf claiming that, okay, we need to do something because the government is executing people in the street. Well, our government is executing people in the street. So that irony, granted, it's not on the same scale, but that irony is not lost. No, no, let me point something out. They're headed to Ohio to do this with Haitians. Let me, they're not stopping. They raided an election site to try to fit, try to pretend that the election was stolen in Georgia. Very dangerous. They're going to do this thing in Ohio. These people aren't going to stop. I just don't, I know we're like, finally we've got him. This guy, finally we never get him. Whoever's controlling him. And I think he's not, from what I understand, he doesn't work very much during the day. Someone high up in the Trump administration told me he works five hours a day. So they're another 19 hours is someone else. And so I think that they're going to keep going. They're going to go. Stephen Miller has no shame and they will go to Ohio and JD Vance has talked about this. But I'd love to, when I think about this on a metal level, I think about the Trump administration of MAGA, a key philosophy or cornerstone is that they believe if we could just turn back the clock and go back to 50s America where white people and males were largely in charge of everything, that this would be a better place. And they're just uncomfortable with the browning of America. They're uncomfortable with more progressive values are uncomfortable with women's rights and they just want to take us back. And it's almost sort of a poetic, so wrong word, but ironic, but look at the two famous or, you know, Renee Good and Alex Pretty. So okay, what do we have here? I mean, it's just so, I don't know if you've noticed this, we have, and I don't want to be reductive, but I'm going to be really lovely gay parents and a male ICU nurse. It's almost as if they said, how do we find what represents the future and push back on it in the most heinous way possible? I mean, these two people in a lot of ways and ISIS ability to sniff out really good people. There was a story about Renee Good and her partner the day before circling the school block two or three times because their kids struggles with social anxiety and waving at the kid to make the kid feel more comfortable. The send off the video you found of Alex Pretty. I mean, these are really good. They're not only really good people, but in a weird way, I look at them and I think that's the future of America and that's what MAGA hates. Well, they will keep going and let me just say they do in particular, let's not take the focus there. They have been targeting people of color like the immigrants who are hardworking. They're going for the Haitians now. The people they're trying to weed out are very hardworking. I think this is accidental or not strategic. They didn't say go find a white ICU nurse, but doesn't it strike you as just very ironic and almost like out of a play kind of? It does. The picture that got me the most was that kid. I think his parents were five-year-old was just like his parents are immigrants and that got me the most. I have the hat and then the sitting. They're so inhuman that it's really, the visuals are quite something. Now, there have been visuals before whether it was the attacks during the Civil Rights era, if you remember the dogs and the hoses on people of color down in the South. Then there was the Vietnam photo of the girl running. I was just thinking about the corpse photo. The corp photo. The one the child dead on the beach. There's a lot of very strong imagery. I remember that. Yeah, there's a lot. This is coming at you so hard. That's what I was talking about last week is that. Speaking of photos and impact, Tim Cook is finally speaking out in Minnesota calling for de-escalation thanks to him. It's like as bland as the quinoa you enjoy. After facing a backlash for attending the White House, Melania Premier the same day as Alex Pretty, the shooting, Cook noted an internal memo that he had a good conversation with the president where he shared his views. Sam Altman also weighed in telling Open AIs that ICE was going too far, you think, that we said President Trump is a very strong leader and I hope he'll rise to the moment in the United Country. Both of them had to compliment Trump and spent very little time talking about the victims, in fact, not at all. Very, I think, weak sauce responses from, and then Altman managed to get a slap in at Zuckerberg at some point in one of his statements. Talk a little bit about this because I'll tell you internally at Apple it's crazy. People are really furious. I can tell you that from talking to lots of Apple employees and all levels of this company. Of all the companies, it's really interesting. Apple feels the most betrayal if you look online at least and I know that doesn't represent everything, but it certainly is not a good look for him to be standing next to Brett Ratner who has his own issues. In a tuxedo, by the way, no one's ever going to see this Melania. One of the more enjoyable things is people showing pictures of theaters that sell zero tickets because Amazon. Why aren't they more mad at Amazon who paid $40 million, spent $35 million marketing this? There were several Amazon executives at the event. What do you think about this? I think we love Apple. That's why, right? I guess. I don't know. I think Tim Cook is the new Bob Iger and that is he's going to take an incredible career and put a giant shit stick at the end of it. There is an unfortunate but necessary lesson in life around the intersection between your participation in time and other people. That is the last five minutes are the most important five minutes. When you're out of party and you're leaving, do your best to be as fucking charming as possible and go around and say hi. There's that famous study where they're giving dudes colonoscopies and one is just 45 minutes and the other is 50 minutes, but the last five minutes they don't move it around so it's not as uncomfortable. The men who had the device inside of them for 50 minutes said it was much more pleasant because all they remember is the last five minutes, which was not that unpleasant. When you leave an organization, when you quit or you've been fired, you swallow everything and you could not be more fucking charming because that is how they will remember you. Shockingly, that's how I leave places, but go ahead. You think I go, ha, how dare you? Or just on a more serious level, if you're getting divorced, do everything you can to be as gracious and generous as possible on the way out. Even if it means taking some lumps, being treated unfairly, this is, if you've been married five, 10, 40 years, everyone, your partner, their parents, your friends, your kids will remember who was the bigger person. And Tim Cook, unfortunately, he's been an amazing CEO. And I also, from everyone I know that knows him, including you, I don't know them, they say he's a good man. But here's the thing. This will be this small period towards the end of his tenure where he shows up to the White House for a ridiculous premiere where he says he can't wait to spend time with Milani when he shows up with a handwritten disk drive and literally just as a sycophant to the president. And then in the statement adding the president. That's how he's going to be, unfortunately. Why did he even put that in? Why could he just not this time? I was like, oh, come on, leave that out, that one sentence. I just, what did you call our relationship with Apple in that book when I met you? What was Apple, a lover or? Google is God. Pray to it, ask it for an answer, comes back with something. Amazon is your gut, never consumption, more or less. Apple is your genitals. The billion people of iOS are the most attractive potential mates in the world. That's the most subtle way of saying you should have sex with me. Well, I would argue more so. People love Apple. Incredible products. No, but they have a relationship with it, the whole think different. They have marketed to you in a values way, right? Privacy. He's had a more shareholder value than any individual in his history with the exception of Jensen Hong. And unfortunately. But I'm just saying, people are like, why did you attack Apple when Meta is through? I was like, because we don't like him, we like Apple, right? Apple feels like more of a betrayal. Yes, that's right. We thought if there was one person who was going to stand up and say, I have been a huge beneficiary of rule of law and the progress of rights in America, and Apple's been an enormous beneficiary of competition and rule of law, and what's going on here is directly contrary to everything that's given me incredible opportunities and created four trillion dollars in shareholder value. We are not down with this. But instead, he's like, well, I'd love to hang out with Melania. Just make sure that we're exempt from those China, those pesky China tariffs. Deescalate, the word this statement was such weak sauce. It was deescalate. Like I also thought, and as Stephanie Ruhl actually correctly pointed out, it was bland and the one from the Minneapolis commerce. I was like, let's deescalate, let's all get along. I'm like, there is a side here, and it's not with the police at this moment or not the police. The police are doing great in Minneapolis. It's these thugs from. They have given Tim Cook and the rest of tech a very easy way to say how dare you talk about people like that, which you were just talking about, Kristina Ohm. They have gone to a ghoulish place. One person who did speak out, let me just say, Vinod Kozla went, distant himself or something, Keith Ramboy was saying about the shooting because Keith was wrong as always. He also got into a beef with Elon Musk, very public about racism, which I'm not surprised Vinod is like that, but it didn't cause Vinod anything to do that. Vinod and I don't agree on lots of stuff. Sometimes he says things like, are you kidding me? He was a person. These statements by Cook and Sam Altman and the rest of them, you're not people. Stop acting like you're not people. Having to throw in President Trump as a very strong leader or I had a discussion with President Trump, how rich do you have to be that you can't- What's the point of having all this money? What is the point of being this powerful and having to be such a weak person and a weak moral person? That to me, I just don't understand. People ask me what job is safe from AI? I say, I personally think if I were to bet on one job, it's only going to increase in importance. Things around communication, strategic communications, investor relations, PR. The two biggest communications mistakes of the last, probably quarter happened in the last week. On a corporate level, whoever the fuck didn't literally body block Tim Cook from not only going to that dinner, but getting a picture with Brett Ratner. I'm not going to make a judgment on Brett Ratner's past. Please go read about it. But that's just not a good look to be at the Melania premiere. Any PR person who has any intelligence and Apple thought, okay, I'm about to get fired and I deserve to be fired. The second biggest communications mistake or rookie move was for the administration to create a talking point that, oh, you show up with a gun, you're looking for trouble at a protest. It's like, well, let me get this. Kyle Rittenhouse. Kyle Rittenhouse shows up with an AR-15. He gets invited to the Republican convention. Also, the NRA came out and said, look, and there's some data here. If you have the training that Alex Pretty had and you have a license to carry and conceal and you've never committed so much as a misdemeanor, you're seven to 10 times less likely to commit a crime. There is something to the notion of safe, well-trained, registered carry loss. For them to come out and say, anyone going to the protest is looking to get in trouble is like, okay, so you're denying people's right to protest. First Amendment. Second Amendment. And now you decide in one fell swoop to talk about violating the Second Amendment, claiming the people that have guns are looking for trouble and more deserving. The entire Second Amendment is meant to prevent this. We need to arm as a citizenry in case tyranny takes over from the government. But that's not what he was even doing. He wasn't even brandishing. The word brandish, he was brandish. Noam said that. He was brandishing a gun. He didn't brandish anything. He never touched his gun. He just self-summed Christie. But that was just such a huge error on their part because quite frankly when the NRA weighs in and says this is bullshit, it becomes a very bipartisan issue. Well in any case, Tim Cook, bad show. Bad show all around. I think you should do an interview with Kara Swisher and then see if you can make it through that. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Big Tech goes to court over addictive products. Scott, we're back with more news. This is a really interesting Big Tech trial taking place that we haven't really paid attention to. It's kicked off in LA this week where plaintiff is suing Meta TikTok Snap and YouTube claiming personal injury through addictive products. The suit claims features like infinite scrolling and algorithm recommendations lead to compulsive use resulting in problems like depression and anxiety. Executives including Mark Zuckerberger are expected to testify with nine cases, likely to be heard. TikTok and Snap settled with the first place where the trial began. It's kind of a little bit of a big tobacco moment. And I know these trials, you never know where they're going to go, but really people have not been paying attention to this trial. And it's in an area you and I talk about a lot. And there's plenty of texts back and forth about obsession and addiction. And there's a lot of discovery here that should be really interesting of these executives talking about what they're doing, very similar to big tobacco. Yeah, we know when they smoke it, they love it. Like, we know they're addicted, that kind of stuff. And so I think it should be a really, I mean, we know they know this. And someone like Tristan Harris has been talking about it for years. I've been talking about it. You've been talking about it. And now it's got to the dangers of suicide with young people too. So any thoughts? We're going to look back on this era and decide that letting a 16-year-old on Snap or on Instagram on TikTok is probably more harmful than if we'd let 16-year-old smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol. 6% of teens qualify as being addicted to drugs or alcohol. 24% qualify as addicts to social media. And the heaviest users are twice as likely to have suicidal intent. They're also, the group in the highest usage, are more likely to express poor body image more than the lowest use group. The bottom line, this is, to say this is like kid smoking is unfair to tobacco. When, I mean, this is going to sound, I've said this and I got a ton of shit for it a few years ago. It was the first time I was featured on late night TV, not in a good way. No, let's do it again. Let's say it again. Go ahead. Well, I said I'd rather give my 16-year-old a bottle of Jack and some weed than a TikTok. No, no, I agree too. But go ahead. And they played that and said that was so ridiculous. I hung out with a Mormon kid all through and a great athlete in high school and neither of them drank. I actually think I could have benefited from easing into alcohol. Anyways, this social media, I've said this, the thing we're going to regret most, we're going to look back and think, how did we let this happen to our kids? And even outside of hardcore addiction, I'm not exaggerating. 60%, maybe 70% of the family anxiety. My family registers arguments between me and the kids, arguments between the kids and their mother, arguments between me and their mother, revolve around the fucking phone in social media. I feel you, Scott. And when we leave our kid alone and we go on vacation and we're checking Q-Studio and he calls us and he's not at school and we find out he was on social media all night and people say, well, that's bad parenting, you're in control. Yeah, that means you don't have kids. Exactly. If it's not a collective movement, if you take your kid off a snap, he is then further depressed because he's ostracized because this is how these kids communicate with each other. It needs to be a collective action. There should be no synthetic relationships. Speaking of collective actions. Can I add, I have to say, one of the greatest moments of my parenting is when my son, without unbeknownst to me, used Amazon to order a box to put his phone in, Alex did it and lock it away to do his homework because it was distracting him. You know what I mean? Like, this was when he was in high school. I was really proud of him. He understood the issue easily. And one of the things that's really hard is, including for adults, it was at one work meeting and I made everyone put the phone in the middle of the table. It was very uncomfortable. I'm addicted. Let me be clear. I'm addicted. I was like, put them in the middle. Don't touch them. Like, oh, I have to. My kid. I'm like, it'll be fine. Nobody's going to get an emergency. And if it is, I'm sorry in advance. But it probably isn't. Let's pay attention to this trial because it's really important. But we're going to read out some of the texts and emails that these people know exactly what they're doing and they relish it. They relish the hold they have on people. They relish the hold they have on teens. And they are very aware, just like big tobacco, of what they're up to here, no matter what they say in public. And so that will be stuff. We'll be doing dramatic readings of that. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk big tech earnings. Scott, we're back with more news. The S&P 500 crossed the 7,000 mark for the first time ever on Wednesday ahead of major tech earnings. Tech, of course, fueled it. Let's walk quickly through the results. Matt posted a strong quarter with fourth quarter sales up 24% year-over-year. That's really impressive. His AI spending spree continues with a projected capex of up to $135 billion in 2026. Probably a lot of that will be dedicated, hopefully, to advertising for them because that's where they'll get the most bang for the buck. Microsoft also shows no sign of pulling back on AI spending $37.5 billion on capex in the latest quarter. 66% increase from last year. The picture was less rosy for Tesla, which reported a 61% drop in net income for the quarter down 46% of the year. The stock is still soaring inexplicably. Tesla is also scrapping the Model S and X cars using the factory space to build robots. He's coming all in on robots. One thing I say about him is when he goes for it, he goes for it. One I've heard is some of his robotic stuff is very impressive, but nonetheless, he's betting the farm on it again. It's investing about $2 billion in X AI. The combination of robotics and AI, to me, is really important. I've talked about this before. Also, there's layoffs at Amazon and related to AI and Pinterest, very large layoffs. They're all sort of using AI to cut labor costs. What jumps out the most? Well, I think AI is going to add a lot of shareholder value, but not where we think. I think the AI and native companies are overvalued right now. I think the NVIDIAs, the open AI, the anthropocs of the world are probably overvalued. I do think you'll see an increase in shareholder value as the application of it, specifically autonomous. I think Waymo is going to be a trillion-dollar company on its own, targeting of ads and making the consumer experience better and creating a better advertising stack. I think Instagram and Threads get better every day. I think they're fantastic. I think the consumer experience and also- So does Gemini on Google, by the way. I've done a little poking around how an advert... I just don't see why. I can't imagine what it's like to be selling ads for MSNBC right now when the person from Meta or Google show up and show you what they can do. Oh, you're targeting kids who just got their driver's licenses in Montclair, New Jersey? No problem. We can reach them one at a time at scale. And with perfect ads that are AI. Yeah, at the right moment, it ends up people want to buy life insurance at 7 p.m. right after... I mean, anyways. So Meta's earnings incredible revenue up 24% year on year. It's a big company. And only that, their employee base wasn't up 24%. I don't have the number, but I think it was barely up. And then the one that was down 6% or 7%, they were up 7%. The one that was down was Microsoft because Azure didn't let up. Its cloud company didn't. It had growth of 39%, which still topped analysts' expectations. But unfortunately, the new expectations is that you blow away expectations. But still, Azure cloud computing, the demand is so great, the Microsoft's backlog of commercial bookings were up 110% to 625 billion. There's some concerns about over-reliance on open AI, where as a whopping 45% of this backlog is attributed to their court of a trillion dollar agreement they made in October. And also, it's gross margins because the increase in catbacks is the lowest... It's been in three years coming around 68%, which spooks some people. Tesla, I can't even begin to understand what the fuck is going on there. I think the stock should be down 90%. It's become a meme stock. It is. That's all. I suspect he's just decided cars aren't the way to do it, and then he has some advantages in robotics. And several people have called me and said, actually, he's doing a lot of really innovative stuff around robotics. It's just he's betting the farm on that everyone wants to have an optimist robot in their house, I guess. But he's done it before. That's the only thing I would say, but he hasn't shown. The other thing he's done before is say, we're going to land on Mars. He makes promises he never... His mouth makes promises he can't keep in reality. So the question is, the Model S and X cars were made by Rivian and Lucid and the Chinese. He's gotten out of this business. He's not in the car business anymore, it seems like. And so the question is, can this robotics business meet the challenge? We'll see. Well, to be fair, they did beat expectations, but let's talk about what those expectations were. The revenues are down. Of all the companies we talk about, no one is down. You know, what? Matt is up 23%. And then overall, a horrific quarter. They're operating margins, and that is the amount of money you get to hold on to was 7.2%. And last year in the same quarter, this year it was down to 46%. That's a meltdown. The free cash flow decreased 30%. Their gap net income decreased 61%. They realized they got a half a billion dollars in automotive regulatory credits that are going to be running out, thanks to the big, beautiful bill. People still believe in him. They're giving him money for X... I think he's going to merge it into X... Like I keep saying. He's now using Tesla as kind of nutrition for XAI. They disclosed that Tesla invested $2 billion in Musk's company XAI. So this is, you know, and he needs a new vision, a new distraction. And as you said, he's gone all in on Optimus, which I think is going to compete with the Cybertruck and the Segway and the Palm is the biggest flops in history, or maybe the mixed reality headset. The other thing that struck me was the layoffs in Amazon. Yeah. And then they laid off... And interest, by the way. Yeah, but it's for different reasons. Pinterest is doing it because Pinterest is fucked in subscale. I like Pinterest. I like the people there. It's subscale. It's going to have a very difficult time. Amazon laid off 16,000 people in their corporate workforce, which doesn't sound like a lot because I employ 1.6 million people, but the majority of those people in their factories. This is probably close to 10% of their corporate staff. And this really is, I've said for a long time that AI is corporate ozempic. All these guys are going, you know, I mean, Amazon has said they're going to double their top line retail revenue in the next five to seven years without a single increase in the number of headcount. That's AI. And then also, I think the place in Amazon's my big tech stock pick for 26, the collision and you've referenced this of AI industrialized robots, of which Amazon has a million industrialized robots. And the total number of industrial robots in America outside of Amazon is 400,000. So they have gone just as Musk is going all in on robots, no fucking sense. Amazon, Jaffe and Bezos are going all in on AI driven industrialized robots, which is Champagne and Coke. But they were there before. They bought a company called Kiva many years ago. But just seeing a recent Amazon layoffs plus October layoffs is 10% of the company. It's the pre, they had one. Oh, is it? Thank you. Yeah. The UPS cut 30,000 jobs. I mean, these guys are. Industrial robotics. That's AI. I interviewed David Solomon from Goldman Sachs on ProfG and he said, I mean, they're planning to grow their revenue substantially the next three years. Goldman's in a great spot right now. Great leadership. They're doing well. But he admitted employment will begin to flatten. You know, no CEO is going to come out and say, I'm going to reduce 10 or 20% of my workforce. Right? No, they can't say that because then everyone, the best people start leaving. But what he did say is it's going to flatten. So what we're looking at here is. Flat is a new up. Right. But what this takes their earnings and absolutely makes them go crazy. And then when these companies do well, everyone, you know, the S&P does well because the S&P is now kind of the S&P, you know, the S it's not the S&P 500, it's the S&P 10. Anyway, these companies on the whole continue to just be extraordinary. And that is until this movement called resist and unsubscribe came along. Anyway, one more quick break. This is absolutely true. Corporate Osempic. Take it away. We'll be back for predictions. Okay, Scott, I'm going to make one quick prediction. Okay. If you don't mind. The Super Bowl is just a few weeks away and go Seahawks. But I've already have a prediction for the best ad. Lady Gaga, did you see that singing Mr. Rogers Beautiful Day in Your Neighborhood in an ad for Redfin and Rocket Mortgage? I don't really care about the ad, but they released a teaser clip and she sounds amazing. She's got incredible voice. Oh, it's going to be the best ad. I mean, we'll talk about the ads later because that's always fun. It was not the prediction I was expecting. Okay. What was it? It's very similar to mine and that is we're about to engage in military strikes against Iran. So very similar predictions. Yeah, okay. Lady Gaga. It's just so strange that the Epstein files are now a distraction for me. It's like the ego keeps getting more and more depraved that we have to come up with the ad. The safest thing in America are the Epstein files, but go ahead. No, I've made this prediction before and I'm just making it again. It feels like I followed this. I love this guy, the Geo Hussar on TikTok. And I'm sold. I'm just fascinated with military equipment. And it just, it appears that all our assets are being coordinated in the golf for a pretty obvious reason. And I don't know if Trump is doing it for the right or the wrong reasons, maybe it's a distraction. But I think he absolutely loves the Tarzan flex of leveraging the best organization in history. And that's the military. And it appears to me that they are absolutely, even the planes that are playing in the area are like giant gas stations in the sky. I think Israel's on board because I think they think it would be good for their brand. So I think you're going to see a coordinated, some sort of coordinated strike around in the next seven to 14 days. I think you're going to see a coordinated strike against Ohio or wherever they're going to attack the Haitians who are not eating the cats and dogs. That's where I think you're going to see the next strike. So you don't think they're going to pull back at all? No. Yeah, you're probably right. Not these people. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com. Just submit a question for the show or call 85551pivot. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Scott, read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andertot engineered this episode of the Nolan Moreno edited the video. Thanks also to Drew Bros, Mia Severio and Dan Chalon. And the shot crew of OX media's executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Box Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. Have a great weekend.