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1:26

Hi everyone. This is pivot from the Vox media podcast network.

1:28

I'm Kara Swisher, and I

1:31

have figured out finally in my life what my calling is, Kara, what I have been called it is so clear.

1:37

It is so obvious. I will be portraying John McAfee in the upcoming Bible.

1:42

Oh my God. I give you. And you've our Google obvious kind of look like Him,

1:47

by the way. Just a little bit with a little hair, little, a little beard situation.

1:50

You kind of look like I'm a little bit. I'll be honest with you.

1:53

I do. Yeah. And I mean, let's be honest if you're gonna, if you're gonna really go really embrace the midlife crisis, you have to give John his props.

2:03

I mean, we have some guys going into space in dildos.

2:06

We have other guys, John McAfee, who ends up marrying a prostitute who was sent to kill him, does blow kills neighbors and fakes heart attacks to avoid extradition.

2:17

This guy was a gangster.

2:19

I'm sorry, this guy was a gangster.

2:23

I feel it's a tragic story of mental illness.

2:28

There isn't a network producer or someone with a, I found that is not planning.

2:33

That, that series. Yeah, He,

2:35

I knew him a little bit. He was through quite, yeah.

2:38

You know, he was around for, he was a, he was a troubled person.

2:42

Let me just say, I'm not going to like, yeah.

2:45

It just, it was sad.

2:47

He had figured out.

2:48

Maybe, maybe so, maybe so, but let me just say he, he, he kept tweeting.

2:53

He was going to be murder suicided essentially.

2:56

And you know, and now there's, there's a whole dairy on the internet, like is he's moved into Epstein territory.

3:01

Was he killed? Was he, this was he that he just, he was a paranoid something.

3:06

I'm not a doctor, but he was really quite mad.

3:08

And so I don't know what happened to him, but you're right.

3:12

It's going to be a movie. I heard, I heard that he found out that the trial was going to be 30 days trial, 30 days.

3:20

He's off too soon, too soon.

3:26

I'm going to, we know what people they're real people in trouble.

3:28

There's a chilling story from the wall street journal.

3:30

He detailed how the ant group, Jack MA's companies and talks with the Chinese government created a new credit scoring company that we result in a trove of data on Chinese citizens, finances being released to the state, this takeover of Jack mod.

3:40

That is to me the most chilling story, actually, you know, in terms of having been this entrepreneur, I've been celebrated in China, you, you and I have talked about this and then they're just like taking apart piece by piece.

3:53

I mean, it is, and he's such a fascinating character.

3:56

Talk about a story.

3:58

This is like, it's, I'd really love to know more about it, but like how it happened and what they decided to do when the decision-making here, because it's really, it's really chilling.

4:07

I find it, This,

4:09

this reminds me of one MSP as name MBS decided that there were too many people making too much money outside of the control of the ruling family or the kingdom.

4:20

And basically put them all on a Ritz Carlton and said, I'm glad you welcome.

4:24

I'm glad you could all make it today. Nobody's leaving until you give us X percent of your wealth and acknowledge, and also come to the recognition over the next 48 hours that we're in fucking charge.

4:36

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, this is somewhat similar.

4:39

These companies are so powerful.

4:41

I would like more coverage of China.

4:44

Like what's going on with the Bitcoin stuff with this, this, this like pushed this it's just explicit.

4:48

Autocracy is a really, it's an interesting move right now as our relations with them become more tense.

4:55

And I think that's, it's only going that direction.

4:57

And as they compete for internet hegemony at the same Time,

5:01

and it goes some very ugly places.

5:02

If you're, if the government has access to not only your financial records, but your credit score and can decide that maybe if your emails include anti-government rhetoric, they take your credit score down such that you can't buy airline tickets or you can't pay tuition.

5:19

This is all that you want to talk about.

5:22

Powerful and financial through.

5:26

I think it's Ali pay has a billion customers, which is the same as the thing that Chuck Todd is very excited about peacock, oh, wait, no, that's 10 million, 10 million.

5:35

So and financial and financial God who did not take me up on the invitation for drinks, decided about peacock.

5:44

He's excited about peacock.

5:46

Anyway, caucus give you a sense of scale.

5:50

He's out of China. There's another one in the times of another real estate company, moguls and their friend who put in jail for, I don't know, eight years for writing differ distributing one antitrust.

6:01

The answer Though, a billion people using use and financial 200 million use Netflix five times and financial has five times the customer base of Netflix.

6:13

I mean, these things are just so massive.

6:15

You know who there's a saying about this this morning.

6:17

I'm curious to get your take on this. You know, whose value just got cut by 30% with this move, the most exciting company in the last two years, tick tock.

6:25

Because if all of a sudden, every gangster internet company is perceived globally as a, as an apparatus for the Chinese security forces, are you really gonna want your kids using to talk as usual?

6:41

You come out with an interesting insight. I agree with you.

6:43

I agree with you. This is a, we got to keep on this story.

6:45

This China story is really developing in a really, there's all kinds of things happening in this country.

6:51

Warren Buffett is stepping down at the gates foundation as a trustee.

6:53

I mean, he's older. I think who knows if it was internal politics, I don't know anything and the future of the gates foundation, but I mean, he's, he's, he's, he's, he probably is cutting back on lots of stuff, but, but it's a, it's another, you know, it's an end of an era for sure.

7:09

Those two, they had a love Fest, him and Kate.

7:13

Yeah. And you, I, you know, I think you got to let the guy take a victory lap.

7:16

I think it's incredible. My father is turning 91 and you know, my FA my father is an exceptional shape.

7:25

Worked out his whole life got me into working out, has lived a fairly, you know, a fairly healthy life is, is, is thin swims every day.

7:32

And I'll tell ya, 90 is rough.

7:35

I think it's incredible that Warren buffet has been as I, you know, I, I, it's just very incredible.

7:41

He's not only an impressive man.

7:43

What's incredible is how impressive he is a 90.

7:46

Yeah. And so the fact that the fact that he's stepping back and doesn't feel a need to get on a plane and go to board meetings four times a year.

7:54

We, when we were word brother Weldon, He

7:58

was nice. I had dinner with him a couple of years ago, two years ago.

8:01

And he was very likely, although you could just say, you know, I was like, I wonder how, you know, he was elderly.

8:06

I just don't know. You know what I mean? He was definitely slower.

8:08

But then he ate, you know, a plate of meat as big as my head and then ate the stuff on my plate.

8:15

So I felt like, all right, okay.

8:17

Like in life, lively is can be, but definitely it's an interesting thing.

8:21

I think it will be interesting to see where the gates foundation goes with this.

8:23

You know, Melinda has her own stuff that she's going to be working on.

8:27

And obviously gates has dedicated his life to the gates foundation and both of them have.

8:32

And so, you know, working together is going to be, especially, it looks like a pretty acrimonious divorce considering, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be given there's so much money to go around, but it doesn't look like a pretty divorce for sure.

8:45

And so it'll be interesting this, you know, the gates foundation has been the most important philanthropy of this.

8:51

Yeah. You've said that you said you think this is a big deal.

8:54

It is. I don't know what, I don't know anything about it, but it's definitely, it's going to, you know, I assume it's going to settle out at some point, it'll be the bill gates foundation essentially, but who knows.

9:03

And then they have children and we'll see how involved they are in this they're little older children.

9:07

I mean, they're not children.

9:08

I Would think it's going to be just fine though.

9:11

I think that my understanding is it so has had a reputation.

9:14

I remember meeting Patty Stonesifer like 15 years ago and named me, she was a really impressive woman and she was running it at the time.

9:20

My sense is that gray management.

9:22

And I think they both have a vested interest in it, regardless of what happens between them and around them.

9:29

I think they have a vested interest in making sure that that is not a factor with These

9:32

foundations owned by rich people. I was offered a job at one of them, someone I like a billionaire.

9:37

I like, and I, and I literally said to this billionaire, I said, I can't work for one billionaire.

9:41

Like, you know what I mean? Like, who knows if you go crazy or if you've got a crazy partner or your kids, like, I just don't like, it doesn't feel stable to me to be, you know, to have an a kingdom essentially.

9:53

And that's why I turned it down.

9:55

I just was like, I can't say no to you essentially, which was in any way, it was an interesting thing.

9:59

We'll see where it goes. I think they've done, you know, but Boston, you have an actual person who owns the money.

10:07

Like it, it's a different thing.

10:08

It's a different thing to be able to.

10:11

That's why, like a lot of these things happen to these internet companies.

10:13

People can't talk to the boss. That's what happened with bill gates at Microsoft.

10:17

They certainly did something.

10:19

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Speaking of power of Britney Spears and her bombshell statement to Los Angeles judge about ending the conservative ship, which has been really interesting.

10:27

The New York times did a really interesting video about it.

10:30

I mean, a documentary as she's been under it for 13 years, she said she's been compelled to work against her, will drug not able to make choices about her physical health.

10:38

And, you know, she's got a real contingent of people that are trying to free or free Brittany a conservatorship is for people who are in some way incapacitated.

10:45

She certainly had mental illness issues.

10:48

And, but she's been working steadily up until 2019 when she decided not to work any more she's at, in, at odds with her father as a financial conservator gets a salary, gets a percentage of any deals.

10:59

He signs her. He hasn't done that will managing her finances.

11:02

She's where $60 million for comparison J-Lo is where the 150 million Britain, they sold more albums worldwide than J-Lo.

11:08

Brittany is paying for both sides of the legal battle.

11:11

It's a really interesting issue.

11:13

You know, I actually watch her Instagram cause it's full of clues and stuff like that.

11:18

I don't know why I'm compelled by this, this woman who seems like she's definitely got mental illness issues, but I feels like she's, this is like beyond belief what's happened here with her.

11:29

I don't know. Maybe

11:31

that

11:31

was

11:31

forwarded

11:31

around

11:31

it's

11:31

you

11:31

read

11:31

it

11:31

and

11:31

it's

11:35

disturbing. And granted, it felt like you were sort of getting one side of the story if you will, but it, you know, reminded me of it Sister

11:42

on her side, but go ahead. Sorry. Yeah.

11:44

The FA fantastic film. I didn't get probably Jessica Lange's best film.

11:47

Do you remember movie called Francis back in?

11:50

I think it was in the eighties.

11:50

It

11:50

echoes

11:50

of

11:54

that. That what happens when the, the, you know, con the institutions or our governments fail someone in this situation and that it sounds like, you know, they can even fail people with a lot of money.

12:06

And what you would think is a lot of power.

12:09

Yeah. But you read it, doubt about it.

12:11

A lot of people that, that guy who was sort of running her stuff too, like, there's a thing when, when you look around, you know, this is sort of has, has Tony Shay was the same thing.

12:21

We talked about it. When you look around and everyone around you is being paid by you, you've got a real problem, but you know what I mean?

12:27

Like, you've got a real, like, you can't get any good advice from anyone.

12:30

If everyone is your employee on some level or, or benefits from your working or whatever.

12:35

And I think it's, I think it's fascinating. She refuses to work and, you know, not making more money, but it seems she put up something that was just lovely about her two kids do she and her sons.

12:44

And they look like, you know, who knows what's going on behind the scenes, but it was one of these lovely pictures of her with our kids saying, I'm so proud of them.

12:50

And they seem, you know, who knows with Instagram and stuff like that.

12:54

But it felt like I just, this is really, I mean, people make fun of it.

12:57

It's sort of like talking about the Kardashians or whatever, but it isn't really like, you have to go watch this New York times talking man.

13:04

And you're sort of like, let her out dad, like what is going on here?

13:07

And it's, it's, it should be, it's a really, it should be someday a really big case, but she's certainly been hindered at the same time.

13:14

She certainly needs help an idol.

13:16

It's a fascinating legal story at some point, but we have to move on to big story.

13:21

Brittany Spears was right.

13:23

My loneliness is killing me.

13:27

I'm thinking I'm putting nothing.

13:29

Absolutely nothing to say, becoming your conservator and Taking

13:36

all your things and letting you stay in a tiny little room of your giant Order

13:40

me around. I like People

13:42

put you under, under, under watch, like under watch.

13:47

And then we're gonna make you work This sound as if that would be a new thing.

13:50

What do you think this podcast anyway, I'm not even gonna go there.

13:55

I'm having to go, okay. I want out judge.

13:57

I want it.

14:01

I'd like a legal right to do this. All right.

14:02

Big stories. We're moving to big stories.

14:04

How

14:04

do

14:04

district

14:04

committee

14:04

is

14:04

considering

14:04

a

14:04

package

14:04

of

14:04

sweeping

14:04

antitrust

14:10

bills? I talked about it this week. A little bit with you that would reign in big tech companies last week, the house introduced a total of six bills that would take sweeping anti-trust measures, directed at big tech.

14:18

The bipartisan bills would be the most aggressive challenges, Silicon valley and Washington DC.

14:22

But this week already lawmakers are facing pushback.

14:25

We talked about like these different things.

14:27

The New York times is reporting that Apple's CEO, Tim cook called Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers and called the anti-trust bills rushed.

14:33

Although it's been 10 years, Tim advisers from Amazon and Google have spoken out against the bills.

14:38

I did talk to a representative, David miscellany about this.

14:41

Who's been on pivot. We've had him on pivot.

14:43

And so it's really, you know, he thinks they're going to go through and that this is the way to do it very slowly with each of them.

14:50

And the only that really is probably gonna pass is more fees for the FTC and mergers in order to pay for enforcement, the others are gonna have a real tough, tough row.

15:00

What do you think about where these are?

15:02

Tech companies are not happy?

15:04

Yeah, and I think, I think we're about to see a ton of money splashed around Republican candidates.

15:09

Cause I think that really why, well, I think the big tackle say that the way you defeat an enemy is you atomize them.

15:16

And the most dangerous thing about these bills right now is there's a certain level of bipartisan support.

15:21

And so the, if I were the chief lobbyist for this group of people or a big tech, I would say, right, our job is to atomize the competition.

15:31

And easiest way to do that right now is to politicize the argument as being anti-business and get every Republican on our side and then have a couple of moderates on the democratic party, come across as pro business and water down some stuff.

15:45

So I, you know, that's how I would be strategizing and the way they get to Republicans, Democrats pursue power as a means to an ideological and Republicans pursue power in and among itself, they just want political power.

15:58

And I think you're going to see a lot of freshmen and kind of early term, Republican congressmen and recovering and senators, all of a sudden start to get a lot of money from the lobbying groups from big tack.

16:10

I think they're going to go hard after a first, after the Republicans, it's going to be a war, but it's the same way with tobacco.

16:17

Well, The GOP has been very anti-tech, you know, this has been like whether it's Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan or whatever, who's on this committee, you know, there's a lot of infighting that there shouldn't be alliances between the D that's one thing that's one Fisher is that the like Ken buck didn't really want to talk to me cause he didn't want to be seen talking with a Democrat with David's miscellany I think like, I don't know, I have no idea, but I just think they're very, they they've made these alliances, which I think are the right thing to do, but then there's the issues around conservative bias that, which a lot of people on that side don't think has been addressed enough here.

16:51

I think that's gonna, they're going to sort of make a lot of noise about that.

16:55

Th th the other part is this antibusiness, it feels, you know, giving it that field Republicans naturally want to be pro-business although recently that's not been the case.

17:06

Right. And so, so it's going to be an interesting thing because they just can't let go of this conservative bias issue.

17:11

And most of these bills do not have a chance of passing and even Sicily, any sort of acknowledge that.

17:18

And the only one was the one about enforcement money, more enforcement money going to the FTC, which seems like a very easy lift of all these things.

17:27

Some of them are quite complex in terms of what they want to do.

17:32

And very, you know, it really does shove the hand of government into the market rather substantively.

17:37

And I think they have, they have a good argument that that's the case Because

17:43

between now and whenever this thing might happen, whether it's call it optimistically a couple of years, most likely the better part of a decade for this really to become new antitrust law.

17:53

And for it to be implemented, big tech is going to continue to fuck up.

17:57

They're going to continue to damage the Commonwealth.

17:59

So we, new scandals there'll be new coverups.

18:02

There'll be new evidence that our children are a lot worse off.

18:06

There'll be new evidence that these platforms get weaponized by bad actors.

18:10

So I have a lot of faith, not in the Republicans or the Democrats to come together, but in big tech to continue to abuse the Commonwealth and the mental wellbeing of a lot of populace and they will continue and they will come.

18:24

They won't say, you know, we need to, we need to figure this out and be on our best behavior.

18:28

There's a level of arrogance there that they believe.

18:31

I think they, they can get away with almost anything.

18:34

And I don't think that's changed.

18:35

I don't think they feel chastened by It.

18:37

There was a poll that I think I forgot it was, it was a decent poll that showed that most people don't really kick, like 50% were like, yeah, like there's not a big, there's not a big, you know, human cry to do something about this, except among the chattering class like ourselves.

18:53

And I do, that's fine then, you know, look, people didn't just say seatbelts everybody.

18:57

Like I bet, you know, that was a small group of people who pushed for those or, or, or cigarettes let's do something about them or opiates even.

19:03

And I think that's, there is, there is indications that people, the issue is people like tech and like the uses of it, then there's sort of, of all the many things you could stack up for them to be concerned about this.

19:14

One's not high on the list, essentially.

19:16

Although, you know, they're concerned that there could, there was like, I think it was 53% who were concerned.

19:21

Others are like, yeah, whatever 40% some were like, yeah, whatever.

19:24

Not, not, I gotta worry about this, this and this.

19:27

And so I think that's where the tech is, has strength as inertia in people and that they like these tools.

19:33

And at the same time, they're like, oh, are they spying on us?

19:36

It's not like China here. Right. It's sort of, it's like China, but not right.

19:40

It's not. It's like, oh, they're not like China.

19:42

They're not trying to like, they're just trying to sell us toilet paper essentially.

19:46

So, you know, it's going to be interesting.

19:48

I don't think they're gonna pass much of it, but it is, you know, the idea of splitting them up, I think was smart from, from these legislators and like taking them piece by piece.

19:57

The other part is they want to do this so that later they can focus in on all of consolidation, whether it's pharma, like Amy Klobuchar talked about it was pharmacy or it's caskets or whatever, you know, the bigger picture of consolidation, meat processing, there's all Kinds

20:14

of areas that have consolidated rather suddenly.

20:16

But tech is the lowest hanging fruit in this area.

20:18

So we'll see. We'll see.

20:20

I think it's interesting that Tim cook called Pelosi and that they're being much more aggressive.

20:24

Interestingly, the last part I'd love your thought on this is Margaret Vestager of course took aim of Google.

20:29

She's like going right through it. She doesn't care if she loses.

20:32

Sometimes she's just keeping, keeping up the, the artillery fire at these, at these companies.

20:37

And so she took aim at an investigation of Google.

20:40

She's going to go after Amazon soon, I think.

20:42

And, and, and others, and especially with Spotify and apple, for sure.

20:47

That's the next thing moving onto her plate rather, rather strongly.

20:51

So we'll see, Europe is certainly not sitting back as us.

20:55

I think there'll be a slow, it's a slow process.

20:59

Yeah. But the cohort we haven't discussed, and I think it'll be the cohort.

21:04

I mean, we talked about, okay, the general public is busy with their own lives.

21:08

And as you know is sort of interested, not really, or not as interested as you, you said what'd you cost the chatter group, the chatter crowd chattering class Where

21:17

the Catherine class we chat or you're part of the chapter in class, not a man of the people.

21:24

I'm part of The McAfee gang.

21:25

That's right.

21:26

That's right. Oh, you're here to a second.

21:29

You're here to have, have sex with me for money.

21:32

I know you're here to kill me. Let's get married.

21:34

Well, let's get, I like the cut or Jeff anyways.

21:37

I totally agree with you.

21:39

But go ahead. Oh, discussing prostitutes Institute sent to kill me and Chuck Todd.

21:47

Those are the only two things on my mind.

21:50

Right. I'm going to go for drinks at Chuck Todd and send you a picture from there, but go ahead.

21:53

Keep going.

21:56

Yeah, I do that too.

21:58

Anyway. We're not even gonna go into that, but so yeah, the, the, the cohort you left out in the cohort that will ultimately push a lot of this legislation over the line is business.

22:11

It isn't big tech.

22:12

I don't care if you're L'Oreal I don't care if your Yelp, you fucking take these guys.

22:17

And this is big as if you just look at the S and P the S the, the, the Fang stocks are 25% of the S and P, but the other 75% hate that 25%, because they have been abused by them.

22:31

They feel they got, they play by a different set of rules.

22:34

They feel like if they do anything remotely, similar to them, antitrust is all over them.

22:38

They have laws all over them. They have consumer pushback and they see these guys up in the rents, on them, across everything they do, whether it's part of keywords, whether it's selling into Amazon, whether it's they see the tax breaks they get.

22:52

And they're just like, eh, they have lobbyists too.

22:55

So it won't be the general public.

22:58

I, I think an Alliance that will be performed here, the people in the background will be the rest of the business saying you are, these guys are hurting the economy and they're hurting us.

23:07

And Joe, we hope that you relax of the world.

23:10

Disney's the, yeah, for sure. Why not take advantage Manufacturer?

23:14

That is sick of being abused by Amazon's, you know, buyers in, in Wisconsin, you're going to see all kinds.

23:23

There are small and big businesses.

23:24

And I talk to these guys, I get emails every day from saying, you have no idea.

23:29

The level of abuse we are subject to because we, when you have, when 50 cents on the dollar is e-commerce dollars through Amazon, and you have to be an e-commerce, you have to be on Amazon.

23:40

And then you have to comply with their increasingly onerous, higher around some way you need to do stay on Amazon.

23:46

And then consumers, they do deliver, you know, it's interesting.

23:48

I got a tweet of someone saying, I think logistics exams on are terrible.

23:51

And I was like, no, I literally ordered something I'm up in, in a place in Rhode Island.

23:55

And I ordered some stuff and it was a day early here.

23:58

And I didn't think it was going to come from five to eight in the morning.

24:00

The next minute I ordered it, but it was here very early on time.

24:04

And the guy delivered a nicer your day early, he goes, yeah, we try to stay ahead of the competition.

24:08

I said, is there competition? And the guy was like, not really.

24:11

He said, this is the Amazon delivery guy.

24:14

It was so funny.

24:16

I was like, is there it's like, no, like it was, it was, it was fascinating.

24:21

Like how good they are mean anyway, correct.

24:24

Scott, you are correct. You're a big business, other big businesses going to try to fight these businesses.

24:28

But let me just say, tech is here to play and they're going to pressure every single lawmaker on this and try to water it down.

24:36

Rather significantly. Very few of these bills are going to pass at least in this session.

24:39

And we'll just have to see where it goes from there.

24:42

And again, the Republicans can't give up or they just can't quit.

24:45

The idea that they're being discriminated against, which they are not, there's no evidence to evidence, Whatever

24:51

it takes.

24:53

Yeah. That's actually that's essentially.

24:58

Yeah, David, Salini kind of said that. It's like, I don't agree with that, but I want them to focus in on the power of big tech.

25:03

All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

25:05

We'll come back to talk about Microsoft becoming a $2 trillion company.

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28:09

All right, Scott, Microsoft just hit a $2 trillion market cap that makes Microsoft this only the second us company had joined the elite group of being $2 trillion after apple people never pay attention to Microsoft.

28:19

Actually, Microsoft was largely left out of these bills.

28:20

We just talked about Microsoft reached the $2 trillion milestone just over two years after it first passed the $1 trillion market cap.

28:28

Microsoft stock has gained 64% since the pandemic lockdowns people don't pay as much attention to them.

28:33

And their power started in United States in March, 2020.

28:37

Microsoft is also launching its new windows 11 this week.

28:40

Remember how that used to be a big deal? Well, it's back again.

28:42

We'll have use of Medi the Microsoft vice president of modern life search and devices.

28:47

I've known him a long time on the show next week to talk more about the leaps at Microsoft.

28:51

So what do you think? You know, we we've talked about Satya Nadella hitting all the cylinders here and quietly.

28:57

So in the background he was nodding there's a lot.

29:00

They got, they kind of got out of these bills that they've made some changes where it only focuses on Amazon, apple and Facebook and Google.

29:08

So what do you think, what do you think There's,

29:13

there's no getting around it. It's, it's actually the third company to hit 2 trillion.

29:17

Saudi Aramco hit it briefly, but look, there's two things that, that I think have pushed it over $2 trillion.

29:25

The first is a business reason and then a non-business reason.

29:29

And that is they are cloud.

29:32

And I think of them not only as cloud, but they're kind of the purest play cloud.

29:36

Because if you look at Amazon, you might not guess it's a big cloud player.

29:39

Even, even if you look at Google, but Microsoft cloud $2

29:44

trillion club, they're not those two aren't Google and Amazon.

29:48

Yeah. Yeah. They're not there. The question is, which of those two will probably be next?

29:51

I think it'll be Amazon, but anyways, yeah, they're firing on all cylinders, cloud enterprise software gaming, but the other thing that they benefit from enormously, and it can't be underestimated is the likability as such and Adela.

30:04

Yeah, because it's B2B because they haven't been subject to as many scandals because we're not worried about a PowerPoint weaponizing, an election or depressing our teens and such in Adela is really well liked.

30:18

Microsoft has kind of gone from being Darth Vader to, you know, a Wookie.

30:22

And that is, they're just sort of big and powerful and quiet and likable.

30:26

And it, as a result, this is huge because every time Facebook, Google, apple, or Amazon think, you know what, we're missing a key component of the supply chain here of our tech stack.

30:38

Get the bankers in here.

30:39

Here are the five companies we would acquire, reach out to two of them.

30:43

They have to go well, can we do that?

30:45

Can we do that? Whereas Microsoft can just full steam ahead on their plan.

30:50

And there's probably acquisitions. They've made that.

30:54

They've got, yeah, You managed to get out of this thing.

30:55

And they, they, this, these new bills, they have a word mobile in there, which Microsoft failed in essentially.

31:00

And so it gets, someone was telling lobbyists was telling me like Microsoft has called it correctly.

31:05

And not correctly has definitely gotten out of these bills because of work and stuff.

31:11

They're, they're a variant and another person that doesn't get as much attention, not just such Intel as Brad Smith, who's sort of has been writing books about, you know, responsibility and this and that.

31:20

And he, he's sort of, he's the one that actually convinced gates and bomber to calm the fuck down, essentially during those that period.

31:28

And, and so it's a really interesting thing because they are incredibly powerful and they do, but they managed to slip out of a lot of things.

31:37

The market cap by the way of Amazon is 1.7, 7 trillion, and Google is 1.6, 7 trillion.

31:44

So they're getting close, they're getting close.

31:46

Sundar Pichai got dinged this week in a piece in the times about his lack of decision, making a lot of executives leaving there and sort of becoming like an old thing, but he's still facing enormous pressures around search and, and this and that.

32:00

So you're right. It's, it's a really, so where does Microsoft go?

32:03

They've been doing all this, this really Def stuff in gaming, obviously cloud they've made some really interesting purchases.

32:09

The gaming stuff is fascinating.

32:11

I think, and people have not paid as much attention to it.

32:14

Obviously windows is still, it used to be sort of the scary, you know, tip of the spear really of everything else.

32:22

But they they've, they've done a lot of stuff that I think has been, you know, and they've moved into defense department.

32:28

They did win that Jedi contract over Amazon, although that's now in dispute, but which we should ask you about, but what do you, what do you imagine they're going to do next In

32:39

an AI? They're already a leader in AI they're really strong in mobile computing.

32:43

It took them 33 years to get to a trillion.

32:45

And then it just took them about 24 months to get to 2 trillion.

32:50

And, and I don't know if you've heard, but they talk about an exciting, enormous contract.

32:55

They've brought one, the cloud services contract for peacock, 10 million Users,

33:01

10 million new peacock.

33:03

Oh my God, no one pick Up.

33:06

He comes really successful that you're going to have to eat your words.

33:08

Just say I was watching peacock.

33:11

Then they have some good stuff on there.

33:13

No One ever said, oh, you actually were.

33:15

Well, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. I'm just telling you.

33:17

It's either Jean-Luc Picard Trevor Noah or Starship commanders on the credit card, which by the way, is my Halloween outfit fit every year.

33:24

Huge, huge crowd.

33:27

Well, I met him once at a dinner at the Shakespeare theater.

33:30

Lovely. Oh my God. He was so like so dreaming.

33:32

He was dreaming and smart and he was exactly what you did.

33:36

He was not like, I would have been sad if he was like, how you do it like that.

33:40

He was totally classic. He's a classic.

33:42

Gotcha.

33:48

Wow. That popped up. I am so channeling John McAfee today.

33:50

I see that. I see that. I wish you don't end up like Jonathan, In

33:54

any case, we'll talk about this with use it, because I think Microsoft's a really interesting, you know, you sort of see the future of some of these other companies, if they did things right, right.

34:02

The same time, it still has the same issues around, you know, power and dominance in lots of areas.

34:08

And they do slip out of it because they're not damaging in the way the others are so explicitly damaging, but still the concentration of power is problematic.

34:16

No matter what you do and the concentration of wealth, but you're right.

34:20

Sacha really has handled it in a way that is much more deft when he's coming to code.

34:25

So we'll be able to talk to him about that.

34:27

Real. Yeah, he's coming.

34:30

Yeah. I've known him since He was like a nobody, same thing with Yousif.

34:33

He was like a lower, he wasn't lower level, but he was just a product manager of a bunch of divisions.

34:38

And he used to, he was, he was, I always enjoy talking to him.

34:41

There were a lot of real jackass was at Microsoft and he was not among them when I, and use it as the same way, which is interesting.

34:48

So we'll talk to them. We'll talk about, it'd be interesting to see what happened, but they have stayed out of the limelight.

34:52

So we'll see where they go.

34:54

What are you, what do you, who will get to the next $2 trillion got Google or Amazon?

34:56

You said Amazon, you think it's Amazon?

34:59

I just think, I think the most, I think the business that will gain the most market capitalization over the next several years is Amazon.

35:07

And it'll be on the backs of their entry into healthcare.

35:10

I think that the most exciting thing coming, what was that enough?

35:16

How you don't, you don't want to color, you got what you needed.

35:18

You got what you needed. You're done. Cool. I want to hear more.

35:20

Go ahead.

35:24

Yeah. I want to control you. Oh, really?

35:26

In the future.

35:29

Anyways. So look, the one, I think the most exciting thing coming out of the pandemic from a business level is that we might be able to push 18% of our economy healthcare and disperse it away from doctor's offices and hospitals into smart phones and smart speakers and take healthcare from a defensive driven industry, disease driven industry.

35:50

We're on our heels onto our toes, more of a health driven industry and the, the absolutely the organization that has all the assets to do it is Amazon.

35:59

And it's just going to be, I mean, when 18% of the economy, all of a sudden goes up for grabs.

36:04

I

36:04

think

36:04

it's

36:04

gonna

36:04

just,

36:04

anyways,

36:04

I,

36:04

I,

36:04

I

36:04

don't

36:04

know

36:04

who's

36:04

next

36:04

to

36:04

2

36:04

trillion,

36:04

but

36:04

I

36:04

do

36:04

think

36:04

the

36:04

first

36:04

of

36:04

3

36:04

trillion

36:04

is

36:04

Amazon

36:04

on

36:04

the

36:04

back

36:04

of

36:14

healthcare. Yeah. All right. What is Microsoft BI?

36:16

I'm going to let you run some more Scott, and then we'll get to a listener mail question.

36:20

Give me agree with you anything.

36:21

Oh,

36:21

and

36:21

by

36:21

the

36:21

way,

36:21

I

36:21

have,

36:21

I

36:21

have

36:21

to

36:21

correct

36:21

the

36:21

record

36:25

again. It's like third show in a row and I hate it when people take us seriously.

36:28

Anyways, the place, the place that relative to the size of the business, that gets the least amount of attention.

36:40

And you've said, this is gaming and Microsoft has a foothold in gaming and it's just, it's, it's supposed to continue to grow.

36:50

It's a great business. It, it fits to their confidence.

36:53

So I would imagine that in addition to AI and cloud, which are amazing businesses, Microsoft will continue to be kind of a key player in, in gaming.

37:02

And it's, if you look at all media, I mean, everything like, you know, traditional media cable, that the two things that are growing are streaming and gaming.

37:11

Yeah. And, and we never end game gaming psych a hundred.

37:15

I mean, it's just crazy.

37:16

We're obsessed.

37:18

We'd constantly talk about the motion picture industry that the total domestic box office receipts are 7 billion gaming is like 150.

37:27

It is indeed.

37:29

We have this issue when I ran all things. See, we should've paid more a week.

37:32

People didn't want to read about it, even though it was bigger.

37:34

I know it sounds crazy, but oh, In

37:36

the world on gaming, you just found drone at NYU.

37:39

Yes, sir. It have Yoast on then to tell us about it, to teach us.

37:42

How about that? Why don't you, why don't you use your you're very tenuous relationship with NYU to get us, let me just say, I'm going to make a prediction Times

37:51

are on good terms.

37:53

I think Microsoft

37:54

is going to come back with Tik TOK.

37:56

I think Microsoft might come back with tick-tock tick-tock I think that's going to make a little prediction here.

38:02

I think they're going to re-look at tick-tock you're right.

38:04

They're in a state with the situation with China is going to get worse, Microsoft and tic-tac-toe they were in their very interested.

38:11

We'll see.

38:13

That would be a really interesting acquisition for them.

38:16

And to put it in the game, in the, in that unit, in that unit.

38:19

And we can ask you to put this all on Monday.

38:21

Okay. Scott, let's pivot to a listener question.

38:23

Roll tape. You've got, you've got, you've got mail.

38:29

Hello, Karen Scott.

38:30

It's mark here in American Kiwi calling from Auckland New Zealand.

38:34

I love what you both have to say about climate change.

38:36

I love that you both acknowledge the climate crisis, but I have been noticing that even though you talk about it, a very occasionally on the show, you don't give climate a lot of space on the show and you definitely don't mention, of course, as much as COVID, however, we are starting to get reports in that the climate crisis is of course, going to cost much more than COVID has caused much more disruption.

38:58

And your recent talking about the G seven, you talked about the tax treaty, but not about the impacts of G seven countries, fossil fuel companies putting in gas projects in the global south, hooking them into more fossil fuels.

39:12

We'd love to hear more sealant.

39:15

Yes I do. Because mark, that is not true. I've interviewed not just, I've interviewed bill gates about this.

39:20

I've discussed about his book.

39:23

I've done several columns about the climate crisis and discussed it a lot about where the, we should talk more about it here though.

39:29

W what are the cool companies that are moving forward?

39:32

Whether it's carbon capture, whether it's all kinds of interventions, even space travel.

39:36

As part of that, the idea of moving ourselves off this planet because of the dangers of climate crisis, adjunct food people, I've done interviews.

39:44

I talk a lot about it in a more substantive way, and we should do that here.

39:48

Just like with gaming. I think Scott is right.

39:50

This is an area that is going to be both an opportunity and a real potential for huge economic destruction destruction over the years, whether you're thinking about, you know, I happen to be in coastal Rhode Island, and they're talking about the idea of these hurricanes coming through and devastating these areas and covering them up.

40:07

And the, the amount of that's just one place.

40:10

And I think we, you know, Miami weather Scott's down in Florida, it's a big issue.

40:14

You know, people are going to start to think about this.

40:16

This idea of getting to zero carbon emissions is critically important.

40:20

And the fact that our governments keep slow rolling, this is, it doesn't really matter.

40:25

The earth is going to do what it wants in some level.

40:27

But I think it's really, I think the cost of damage of climate change is, is being compared to COVID is massive, like massive, massive, massive, and the deaths that are gonna be the result of it.

40:40

Massive. I think we're probably not going to see it as much in developed countries because they can protect themselves.

40:45

And we don't mind people that unfortunately, the, when people die and other places that we don't pay attention to, nobody pays attention to them.

40:52

So, anyway, so this one thing which we did talk about was Gary Gensler, adding climate report cards for companies, the tech companies are leading the way with renewable Amazon announced it's going to buy renewable energy sources, cover the company's activities.

41:07

You know, all these off they've been doing offsets.

41:10

That's just the beginning step. So, Scott, what do you think?

41:12

I think it's going to be an important part of corporate corporate speaking to the public, correct.

41:17

And not just, you know, virtue signaling.

41:21

Yeah. I mean, I was looking at the lamp cynical about big tech.

41:23

It's much easier for someone in a digital business, a software driven business to be very indignant about climate change versus someone that's actually manufacturing tanks is his, it's a totally different, like, it's great that they're taking it on something that has made me much more environmentally aware as COVID specifically when emissions dropped by something like 20 or 30% in the first 12 weeks of the pandemic last year, there was a noticeable change in how clear the water was, how, how crisp the air was.

41:53

And I thought, my God, why wouldn't we decide this is the new normal.

41:56

It just, yeah.

41:58

On selfishly, I wasn't even thinking about all the devastation of weather events, but just selfishly going out, you think about how housing prices housing prices have accelerated 11% or 13% quarter on quarter.

42:11

We spend millions of dollars.

42:13

It is such an incredible lift for each of us in our families to get into a nice home housing has become so expensive, which you want to own in the U S why wouldn't we, all of us make, make a somewhat of fraction of the financial effort and focus on making our backyard exceptional.

42:31

I'm just so blown away by how beautiful my backyard got.

42:36

And when I say my backyard, I mean the sea land and the sky, and also the reason I don't talk about it a lot is there are certain categories that are so important that if you don't have domain expertise, and this is how I'm sort of evolving as a person, you shut the fuck up.

42:53

And the reality is I don't really have a lot of domain expertise.

42:55

And whenever you say anything, including anything I said, here, there's a religious fervor around this topic.

43:02

And people come at you.

43:03

It's impossible to say anything that doesn't piss people off.

43:06

And especially if you don't have domain expertise here.

43:09

So my good friend, Bob Perkowitz at echo America, he, he really, he said something.

43:16

And again, I had bring everything back to me, but when he's talking about the power, that stuff, and I just look at it through the lens of how powerful or how I've come to embrace the outdoors.

43:23

When my one of my sons was struggling, he said, all you need to do is get him outside.

43:28

It's one of the, one of the most restorative things you can do.

43:30

So anyways, the bottom line is I'm trying to be more thoughtful about this stuff, because I realized not only, not only how important climate change is, but just how wonderful, you know, the outdoors is adds a great endorsement.

43:43

But anyways, I huge topic.

43:46

I don't think either of us don't feel, don't feel aren't supporters of it.

43:50

We're just are, don't recognize the problem here.

43:53

It's just, it's just it's best when you don't want to talk.

43:55

That would be really Interesting. It'd be kind of interesting as an exercise for you to look at where are the investment opportunities?

43:59

Because I, you know, I, I wrote something in a column last year and I said, the world's first trillionaire, speaking of trillionaires will be a climate change technologists.

44:07

And I made that up. I just made it up.

44:09

I was just trying to say, like, this is an area of great economic opportunity to try to make, to figure these things out, but behind just mitigation, which is carbon capture and everything else.

44:18

But where is, where is the real innovation going to happen in smart manufacturing and smart, smart home building, smart food making.

44:27

There's so much like, so much shift that could, could happen here that could just like with electrical, like beyond coal, it cleaned up, you know, it's still, we still have a dirty world, but it's not as dirty as like London used to be filthy.

44:40

Right. So what is the way, w what is the way that we can make this an economic opportunity, which is a way to spur innovation for a lot of people.

44:49

And that I'd love to like, start, start thinking about what are the cool companies that are, what are, what are the companies that are most interesting and what are the, what are going to be the biggest companies in our world?

44:59

Because this is going to whoever dominates.

45:01

This is going to be a very important player in the next 20 years.

45:07

Yeah. And it's one of those things, too. The, it feels like the weather events or climate change inspired catastrophes, whether it's the wildfires in California or rising sea levels, whatever it might be, it feels like, unfortunately, we went from there became so many of them so fast it's, it feels as if we hit some sort of tipping point.

45:26

Yeah. That's what I worry. We're becoming a little bit, a little bit numb to it, but yeah, these, you know, it's something like 80% of the crazy wildfires that have ever happened in California have happened in the last decade.

45:36

Yeah. Go ahead and finish At

45:40

pivot con in Miami, we're going to do a section on this, on the Interesting

45:44

companies. Yeah. But the thing that, the thing that's so disappointing again, about something that's so important is how the hell did this get politicized?

45:51

Republican's Teddy Roosevelt, the first great environmentalist was a Republican.

45:55

Like when did we all decide if you're on the left, you have to be, you know, like you can't, but there's a lot of what I would call unreasonable conversations on the left, around the environment.

46:05

Not acknowledging that people at the end of the day, regardless of what's right or wrong, will vote for their economic interests.

46:11

And unless you address economic growth in the, you know, all of this in the context of climate change, you're just not gonna have a productive conversation.

46:17

And, and then on the right, they want to be science deniers.

46:22

Right. Which is how did we get here folks?

46:24

I mean, anyway, I don't, I find whenever that, how that, how the fuck did we politicize obesity, masking requirement, something that we kind of appear to all have a shared a vested interest in figuring out Everything

46:38

is politicized now, but maybe it won't be in the future.

46:41

Anyway, mark American Kiwi, we think this is important.

46:44

We should be. We're going to do our homework on this and gaming.

46:47

Okay. Scott, those are the two things, Todd.

46:49

Thanks. No, I don't. I don't care.

46:51

Chuck, Todd, Chuck, Todd, you, and I'm excited about peacock.

46:56

I'm excited about peacock.

46:59

I can say it like that. If you will, let's have a peacock show and have nobody watch it.

47:02

Anyway, Scott, one more quick break.

47:04

We'll be back for predictions.

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the show today comes from at and T active Armour.

48:21

Right now, our lives are on our phones and with our phones full of live-streamed exercise classes, midday work calls and nightly family video calls.

48:29

There's no room for fraud calls, thankfully at and T makes customer security a priority.

48:34

Helping block those pesky calls.

48:36

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48:45

Compatible devices and service required is an att.com/active armor for details.

48:59

Okay, Scott predictions go for it.

49:01

I made my little prediction.

49:03

Microsoft. You make one. Now The

49:05

most exciting thing about antitrust is that it's oxygenating for the environment.

49:09

And when I say the environment, I'm in the business environment, and we're about to see a massive amount of innovation in categories, where there was a dearth of startups because people saw monopoly power.

49:21

And that is we're going to see there.

49:23

Hasn't been a social network of any size in America launch since 2011.

49:26

And that was Pinterest in the next 24 months, we'll see two or three new viable, robust startups and social media.

49:33

We're going to see new hardware companies.

49:35

We're going to see new search engines.

49:37

We already see subscription search engine Neeva.

49:39

We're going to see new ad tech platforms, companies and their backers are going to say are going to believe that it's a credible threat that these companies are about to be broken up and antitrust is coming.

49:50

I mean, even I, one of the reasons I invested in Neeva is that the best reason you wouldn't invest, it's like, okay, let's assume it works.

49:59

Let's say, let's assume people are concerned about privacy wants subscription search, but, but Google can just go, Hey, let's take a thousand engineers and a billion dollars and let's put them out of business and guess what?

50:12

They can't do that now because the antitrust cops are on the beat for the first time.

50:16

And so you're going to start to see more funding and more M and a there's going to be more funding, more new startups, more M and a in the ad, social media search, even computer hardware space the next 24 months.

50:31

And it's going to be evidence of how, what a key component of capitalism competition is.

50:37

And we're all gonna look back and think, why the hell did we not break up these guys sooner?

50:41

I don't know. I got us kind of pushback.

50:43

I think the Empire is going to strike back.

50:45

I think they're, I think they are I do.

50:47

I think that we, we, you know, we got P we're around with a war on the axle of politics.

50:52

That's going to mess up this whole thing.

50:54

Like, look at what's going on on every bill in the Senate.

50:56

Like this is, this is to their advantage.

50:58

And they also can't.

50:59

They also are liked by people.

51:01

It's going to be a much harder road to get, to bring these people down in the way, but it's Already

51:05

impacting business. Even, even if there's an interesting thing in that is a lot of people will argue that the value of antitrust isn't an actually the antitrust action it's in the scrutiny.

51:17

And the fact that right now, Google, Facebook, and apple aren't, you know, they're being very careful right now.

51:24

It's already having an impact on the ecosystem.

51:27

That is a fair point. That is a fair point. You're a hundred percent right.

51:29

We'll see what goes on. And I think one of the things you mentioned last week, Lina Khan being hindered only by courts.

51:35

And actually there was a big Bloomberg story saying exactly.

51:37

The thing is that really what's going to happen as has happened in Europe and elsewhere is these people, these companies go to court and they win because of more conservative justices, jurors, jurists.

51:47

And so that's really where the problem is.

51:51

You know what I mean? Ultimately, they're going to win house.

51:54

It's going to be a long slog and eventually the wa those with money and means often win.

52:00

So we'll see where it goes. But I, I afforded you that story because you just mentioned it off the top of your head.

52:05

Cause you were brilliant.

52:08

We can start with a really robust social network.

52:11

Peloton. You keep saying that the passion, that passion and the demographic there and engagement, I think they could start a fit.

52:21

Like I think niche, social media platforms are going to start to emerge.

52:24

And I think Peloton is going to start niche, streaming networks, niche streaming Networks,

52:28

that sort of like old cable coming back.

52:31

Anyway. That's a very good prediction. We'll see where it goes.

52:33

We're going to be following that legislation very closely For

52:36

sure. Prediction. I like your yours is a little, I think I like yours more.

52:39

Yours is a tick-tock and Microsoft will talk about their benefits there.

52:44

Ben and Jennifer thinking about going there. Isn't That

52:46

great. Are you happy about that? Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck for those who are not paying attention and I don't want to speak to any Of

52:52

you Lauren with them, or is that their publicist stating it's like nine of us have a lot going on?

52:56

Well, they Had a whole thing going on.

52:58

No, I don't think they're that cynical.

53:00

Come on. Like, look, they both been through the ringer, especially him, right?

53:04

Like he's he's like he is round after round.

53:07

Come On. He's John McAfee with better hair.

53:10

I would like to roll. Now that John has gone, I would like to roll a Ben Affleck.

53:13

And he, He

53:15

who's he with before that beautiful actors. Anyway, he, so anyway, I am very happy.

53:22

I don't care if it's fake. I like it. I like the benefit.

53:24

I Met him once. You know, he used to come by and Ron Conway's angel investor things.

53:28

I was talking to him. I remember just sitting there typing and I'm going, Jesus Christ.

53:33

How did this guy get? So looking good, looking like there are people this good looking.

53:38

Yeah. He's very handsome. Him and Matt Damon were around the tech sector for a short amount of time.

53:44

So I dealt with them quite a bit. Did they didn't work out for them in any case, they were trying to do all these different online things, online entertainment things.

53:52

Maybe it's an interesting idea at the time Ashton

53:56

Kutcher was in that one. Oh, Ashton.

53:58

That's right.

53:58

We're the new celebrities we are doing.

54:02

You get celebrities calling you talking about tuck.

54:04

No, just, you know, honestly, I really don't.

54:09

I don't have it anyway. I don't think quietly from magazine Jewish

54:19

professor with erectile dysfunction.

54:23

We gotta go. We gotta go. Now I got things to do.

54:25

I've Got to do a roll.

54:29

Okay. All right. Rest in peace. My brother, rest in peace.

54:33

A little bit of like a little bit of note.

54:36

He was had mental issues and we should all be, feel bad about what happened to him.

54:40

Anyway. Don't forget if there's Dallas.

54:45

That was good. That was, that's why I

54:48

make 40 bucks an hour. I just Want

54:51

to say, I'm glad you're not wearing a cheerleader outfit while you do that.

54:54

Anyway, don't forget if there's a straightaway.

54:56

You get what I did yesterday.

54:58

I went to lunch in a place called watch hill, Rhode Island, and I got to view Taylor Swift's house from a long distance.

55:03

Just so you know, It's

55:06

just wrong on so many levels. There was just so many things wrong and wrong.

55:12

When I was the Kenny bang port, which is overrated and went on a boat tour and they stopped for five minutes to look at the bushes state.

55:19

I'm like what?

55:21

I'm

55:21

like

55:21

what

55:21

level

55:21

of

55:21

bad

55:21

decisions

55:21

put

55:21

me

55:21

on

55:21

a

55:21

boat

55:21

with

55:21

400

55:21

tourists

55:21

from

55:21

Boston

55:21

in

55:21

France,

55:21

spying

55:21

on

55:21

the

55:21

Bush

55:21

company,

55:34

Spying on Taylor swift. I just drove by it. I just looked upon it.

55:36

I love Taylor swift. There's a song. She it's called holiday house.

55:40

We approached it from the water side and people were taking pictures.

55:42

I would Not do that. No, I just drove past it.

55:45

It's lovely town. And it's been written about all it's the most expensive house in Rhode Island.

55:49

It's not, I'm not giving up any information.

55:50

She wrote a beautiful song. You should all listen to call the holiday house about it.

55:54

And it was owned by No,

55:58

no. She, Taylor swift writes all her own music.

56:01

I'm not even gonna, you know what, it's Taylor swift, I'm talking about not doing rather well.

56:06

And she's a wonderful artist. Anyway, people can disagree on her, but I love her anyway, holiday house.

56:12

You should listen to it. Don't forget if there's a story in the news.

56:15

And you're curious about, and want to hear our opinion on go to N Y mag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show.

56:21

Scott, read us out.

56:24

Today's show was produced by Rebecca sonatas. Ernie under-taught engineered this episode.

56:27

Thanks also to drew Burroughs. Make sure you subscribe to the show on apple podcasts, or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts.

56:35

If you liked our show, please recommend it to a friend.

56:38

Thanks for listening to pivot from box media.

56:40

We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things, tech and business.

56:44

Who would the dog rather roll with in Vegas or The

56:49

answer is yes.

56:50

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Apex is ready to answer the Apex is ready to answer call. Visit apex FinTech solutions.com to learn more Visit apex fintech solutions dot com to learn more today. Apex FinTech solutions, the guts to change everything Apex fintech solutions, the guts to change everything. support for the show today comes from at and T active for the show today comes from AT and T Active Armour. Right now, our lives are on our phones and with our phones full of live-streamed exercise classes, midday work calls and nightly family video Right now, our lives are on our phones, and with our phones full of live streamed exercise classes, midday work calls, and nightly family video calls. There's no room for fraud There's no room for fraud calls thankfully. AT and T makes customer security priority. Helping block those pesky a Helping block those pesky calls. It's not complicated at and T active Armour, 24 by seven proactive network security and fraud called blocking to help stop threats that no extra charge compatible devices and service It's not complicated. AT and T Active Armor, twenty four by seven pro active network security, and fraud call blocking to help stop the rest at no extra charge. Comparable device and service required is an ATT dot com slash active armor for details. everyone. This is Pivot from the vox media podcast network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I have figured out finally in my life with my calling us. Care of. Oh, no. What? I have been called. It is so clear. It is so obvious. I will be portraying John McAfee in the upcoming biopsy. Oh, my god. I knew you and you were Google. So obvious. And by the way look like him, by the way. Just a little more Just little hair little a little beard situation. You kinda look like him a little bit. I'll be honest. I do. I do. Yeah. And, I mean, let's be honest. If you're gonna if you're gonna really go really embrace the midlife crisis. Mhmm. You have to give John as props. I mean, we have some guys going into space in Dildos. We have other guys, John McAfee, who ends up marrying a prostitute who was sent to kill him, does blow, kills neighbors, and fix heart attacks to avoid extradition. This guy was a gangster. I'm sorry. This guy was a gangster. I feel it's a tragic story of mental is the charge of story of of your mental illness. But Okay. There isn't a network to a producer or someone with iPhone that is not playing that that series. Right? Yeah. He I knew him a little bit. He was doing quite Yeah. You know, he was around for he he was he was a troubled person. Let me just say, I'm not gonna, like, take these things. yeah. It just, it was just Or are we that Didn't he haven't figured out? Are we that much in trouble? No. Maybe so. But let me just say he he Foresees retweeting, he was gonna be murder, suicide, essentially. 2nd, you know, and now there's there's a whole conspiracy theory on the internet. Like, he's moved into Epstein territory. Was he killed? Was he this? Was he that? He he was a paranoid something. I'm not a doctor, but he was really quite mad. And so I don't know what happened to him, but You're right. It's gonna be a movie. Right. I heard I heard that he found out that the trial was gonna be thirty days. Yeah. That it trial thirty days. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. 2 soon. Too soon. Too soon. Too soon. I'm gonna you know what? People they're real people in trouble. They a chilling story from The Wall Street Journal, the detail of the Ant Group, Jack Mott's and talks with the Chinese government to create a new credit scoring company that result in a trove of data on Chinese citizens finances. Being released to the state, this takeover of Jack Ma, that is 2 me the most chilling story actually, you know, in terms of having have been this entrepreneur, been celebrated in China. You you and I have talked about this. And then they're just like taking apart piece by piece. I mean, it is and he's such a fascinating character. Talk about a story. This is like it's I'd really love to know more about it, but like how it happened and what they decided to do in the decision making here. Because it's really it's really chilling. I find it. This this reminds me of one MSP, his last name, MBS, decided that there were too many people making too much money outside of the control of the ruling family or the king. Yeah. Basically, I put them all under Ritz Carlton said, I'm glad you I'm, you know, welcome. I'm glad you could all make today. Nobody's leaving until you give us x percent of your wealth and acknowledge and also come to the recognition over the next forty eight hours that we're in fucking charge. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's this is somewhat similar. These companies have become so powerful. I would like more coverage of China. Like, what's going on with the Bitcoin stuff with this, this this, like, pushed this it's just explicit autocracy. It's really it's an interesting move right now as our relations with them become more tense, and I think that's it's only going that direction. 2nd as they compete for Internet hit Germany at the same time, 2nd it goes in very ugly places. If the government has access to not only your financial records, but your credit score and can decide that maybe if your emails include anti government rhetoric, they take your credit score down such that you can't buy airline tickets. Or you can pay tuition. This is and now you wanna talk about powerful and financial, through adding it to Alipay has a billion customers, which is the same as the thing that Chuck Todd is very excited about, peacock. Oh, wait. No. That's ten million. Ten million. So Ant Financial. Ant Financial. 2 excited. Hard to cut out. Who did not take me up on the invitation for drinks? Yeah. That was it. He's excited about peacock. He is excited about peacock. Anyway, peacock has -- Yeah. -- scale. He's at China. There's another one in all times of another real estate company, Mogo's 2nd their friend who got put in jail for, I don't know, eight years for writing. We differ doing anyone, financial. About a billion data calling. Using use and financial. Two hundred million use Netflix. Five times Ant Financial has five times the customer base of Netflix. I mean, these things are just so massive. You know who this the thing about this this morning, I'm curious 2 you're taking this. You know whose value just got cut by thirty percent with this move? The most exciting company in the last two years, TikTok. TikTok? Because if all of a sudden, every gangster Internet company is perceived globally as a as an apparatus for the Chinese security foresees. Are you really gonna want your kids using TikTok? As usual? you come out with an interesting insight. I agree with you. I agree with you. This is a we 2 keep on this story. This China story is really developing and really there's all kinds of things happening. In this country, Warren Buffett is stepping down at the Gates Foundation as a trustee. I mean, he's older. I think who knows if it was internal politics? I don't know anything 2nd future of the Gates Foundation. But, I mean, he's he's he's he's he's out. He he probably is cutting back on lots of stuff. But but it's it's another, you know, it's an end of an era for sure, of those two. They had a love fest, m and gates. Yeah. And you you know, I think you gotta let the guy take a victory lap. I I think it's incredible. My father is turning 91 and you know, my FA my father is an exceptional My father is turning ninety one. 2nd, you know, my father's in exceptional shape, worked out his whole life, got me into working now, and his lived a fairly you know, fairly healthy life is is is then swims every day. And I'll tell you, ninety is rough. And I think it's incredible 2 warm buff it has been as, you know, he's just very he's not only an impressive man. What's incredible is how impressive he is in ninety. Yeah. So so He's a live bar. He's a live bar. The fact that he's stepping back and doesn't feel a need to get on plane and go to board meetings four times a year. Yeah. Word word brother, well known. Yeah. Yeah. He was I I had dinner with him a couple of years ago, two years ago, and he was very lively. Although, you could just see, you know, I was, like, I wonder you know, he was elderly. I just don't know. You know what I mean? He was definitely sore, but then he ate, you know, a plate of meat as big as mine. Twenty 2. And then my stuff on my plate. So I felt like, alright. Okay. Like in live lively as can be, but definitely it's an interesting thing. I think it'll be interesting to see where the Gates Foundation goes with this you know, Melinda has her own stuff that she's gonna be working on. And obviously, Gates is dedicated to his life to Gates Foundation. And Both of them have. And so, you know, working together is gonna be, especially looks like a pretty acrimonious divorce, considering, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be. Given there's so much money to go around, but it doesn't look like a pretty divorce sure. And so, it'll be interesting to see this, you know, the Gates Foundation has been the most important philanthropy of this tax. There you seventeen. So do you think this is a big deal? It is. I don't quite know what. I don't know anything about it, but it's definitely it's gonna you know, I I assume it's gonna settle out. At some point, it'll be the Bill Gates Foundation essentially. But who knows? then they have children, and we'll see how involved they are in this. They're older children. I mean, the actual evidence. I would think it's gonna be just fine, though. I think the I think My understanding is it's always had a reputation. remember meeting Patty Stone site for, like, fifteen years ago and maybe she was a really impressive woman 2nd she was running at at the time. My sense is they have great management. And I think they both have a vested interest in it, regardless of what happens -- Mhmm. -- between them and around them. I think they have vested interest in making sure that they've always done an issue with these foundations owned by people. I was offered a job at one of them. Someone I'm like, a billionaire, like and I and I literally said to this billionaire. I said, I can't work for one billionaire. Like, you know what I mean? Like, who knows if you go crazy or if you got a crazy partner or your kids? Like, I just don't like, it doesn't feel stable to me to be, you know, to have an a a kingdom essentially. And that's why I turn it down. I just was like, I can't say no to you essentially, which was Anyway, it was an interesting thing. We'll see where it goes. I think they've got having a boss. I don't understand the difference. You know, but you know, but boss and you have an actual person who who owns the money. Like, it it's a different thing. It's it's a different thing be able That's why, like, a lot of these things happen to these Internet companies. People can't talk to the boss. That's what happened with Bill Gates at Microsoft. They they I mean, that's just power of something. In general. Yeah. Yeah. I guess. Speaking of power, Britney Spears, and her bombshell statement 2 Los Angeles judge about ending the conservative ship, which has been really interesting. The the New York Times did a really interesting video about it. I mean, a a documentary. She's been under thirteen years. She said she's been compelled to work against her will, drug, not able to make choices about her physical help. you know, they she's got a real contingent of people that are trying to fray or free Britney. A conservatorship is for people who are in some way in capacity. She certainly had mental illness issues. And but she's been working steadily until two thousand nineteen when she decided not to work anymore. She's at odds with her father, has a financial conservator, gets a salary, gets a percentage of any deals he signs her, he hasn't done while managing her finances, she's worth sixty million dollars comparison. J. Lo is worth a hundred and fifty million dollars written. They sold more albums or more than J. Lo. Britney is paying for both sides in legal battle. It's a really interesting issue. You know, I I actually want your Instagram because full of clues and stuff like that. don't know why I'm compelled by this woman who seems like she's definitely got until illness issues, but it feels like she's this is like beyond belief what's happened here with her. know. don't know why that happened. The article that was forwarded around, it's you read it, and it's disturbing. And granted, it felt like your ducks getting one side of the story, if you will. But, you know, you're reminded me of a different fantasy. On her side, but go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. The fan fantastic film. I think probably Jessica Lang's best film. Do you remember a movie called Francis back in, I think Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it had it had echoes of that that what happens when the, you know, the institutions or governments fail someone in this situation and that sounds like, you know, they can even fail people with a lot of money what you would think is lot of power. Yeah. But you read it. But she's gotten taken advantage of a lot of people. That that guy who is sort of running your stuff too. Like, here there's a thing. When when you look around, you know, this is sort of has has Tony Shea was the same thing. We talked about it. When you look around everyone around who is being paid by you, you've got a real problem. But you know what I mean? Like, you've got a real like, you can't get any good advice from anyone. If everyone is your employee on some level or, or benefits from your working or if everyone is your employee on some level or benefits from your working or whatever. And I think it's fascinating she refuses to work know, not making more money, but it seems she put up something that was just lovely about her two kids. She and her sons they look like, you know, who knows what's going on behind the scenes? But it was one of this lovely picture shares of our with our kids saying I'm so so proud of them they seem Mhmm. -- know who knows with Instagram and stuff like that, but it felt like I just this is really I mean, people make fun of it. It's sort of like talking about the Kardashians or whatever. But it is really, like, you have to go watch this New York Times documentary, you're sort of like, let her out, dad. Like, what is going on here? And it's it's it should be it's a really it should be someday a really big case, but she's certainly been hindered at the same time. She certainly needs help. And I don't I just it's a fascinating legal story at some point. But we have to reach out to big still Okay. -- but Britney Spears was right. My loneliness is killing me. I'm thinking putting you on the way to the show. Absolutely nothing to say. Thank you for declaring becoming your conservator. I kinda like that. Yeah. I like it. I like it. You're blind, Joe. Why didn't you stay on tiny little room of your giant No. I wanna get a house. Order me around. I'm like, I like Yeah. I'm never even going for lunch. If we're gonna put you under under 2nd watch, like, under watch memory You're watching this sound as if that would be a new thing. Like, what do think this podcast anyway, I'm not even gonna go there. I'm not even gonna go Okay. That's I want out judge. I want out judge. I want it He's in a abusive relationship. Do things. I'd like the legal right to do this. Alright. Big stories. Removing the big stories. The House Judiciary Committee is considering a package of sweeping antitrust bills. I talked about it this week a little bit with you. It would rain in big tech companies. Last week, the house introduced total six bills that would take sweeping. EnterTrust measures directed at Big Tech. The bipartisan bills would be the most aggressive challenge at Silicon Valley in Washington, D. C. But this week, already lawmakers are facing pushback. We talked about, like, these different things. The New York Times is reporting that Apple's CEO Tim Cook called Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers called the antitrust bills rushed. Although, it's been ten years, Tim. Advisors from Amazon and Google have spoken out against the bills. I did talk to representative David Cecilini about this, who's been on pivot. We've had him on pivot. 2nd so it's really, you know, he thinks they're gonna go through that this is the way to do it very slowly with each of them. And the only bell that really is probably gonna pass is foresees, more the FTC mergers in order to pay for foresees. The others are gonna have a real tough, tough row. What do you think about where these are tech companies are not happy. Yeah. And think think you're about to see a ton of money splash around Republican candidates because think that Really? Why? Well, I think the big tackle say that the way you defeat an enemy is you atomize them. And the most dangerous thing about these bills right now is this certain level of bipartisan support. And so if I were the chief lobbyist for this group of people or a big tech, I would say, alright, our job is to atomize the competition. And the easiest way to do that right now is to politicize the argument as being anti business and get every Republican on our side and then have a couple moderates on the Democratic Party come across this pro business and water down some stuff. So I you know, that's how I would be strategizing. In the way they get to Republicans, you know, Democrats pursue power as a means to an ideological 2nd, Republicans pursue power in and among itself. They just want political power. Yeah. think you're gonna see a lot of of freshman and kind of early term Republican congressman and Republican senators, all of a sudden start get a lot of money from the lobbying groups from the big tech. I think they're gonna go hard after first after the Republicans. It's gonna be a war, but it's the same way as tobacco. Go ahead. Well, The GOP has been very anti-tech, you know, this has been like whether it's Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan or whatever, who's on this committee, you know, there's a lot of infighting that there shouldn't be alliances between the D that's one thing that's one Fisher is that the like Ken buck didn't really want to talk to me cause he didn't want to be seen talking with a Democrat with David's miscellany I think like, I don't know, I have no idea, but I just think they're very, they they've made these alliances, which I think are the right thing to do, but then there's the issues around conservative bias that, which a lot of people on that side don't think has been addressed enough GOP has been very anti tech. You know, this has been, like, whether it's Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan or whatever, who's on this committee. You know, there's a lot of in fight meeting that there shouldn't be alliances between the that's one thing. That's one fissures. The the the like, Ken Buck didn't really wanna talk to me because he didn't wanna be seen talking with a Democrat with Davidson's lini, I think. Like, I I don't know. I have no idea, but I just think they're very they they've made these alliances, which I think are the right thing to do. But then there's the issues around conservative bias that which a lot of people on that side don't think has been addressed enough here. I think that's going to -- they're going to sort of make a lot of noise about that. The other part is this anti business It feels, you know, giving it that feel. Republicans naturally wanna be pro business. Although recently, that's not been the case. Right? And so so it's gonna be an interesting thing because they just can't let go of this conservative bias issue. And most of these bills do not have a chance of passing. And even Cisellini sort of acknowledged that. And the only one was the one about foresees. Money, more enforcement money going to the FTC, which seems like a very easy lift of all these things. Some of them are quite complex. In terms of what they wanna do and very, you know, it really does shove the hand of government into the market rather substantively. And I think they have a But they have a good idea that that's the case. Yeah. But here's why it'll work, because between now and whenever this thing might happen, whether it's call it optimistically couple years and most likely better part of a decade for this really to become new antitrust law and for it to be implemented. Big Tech is gonna continue to fuck up. They're gonna continue to damage the commonwealth. There'll be new scandals. There'll be new cover ups. There'll be new evidence that our children are a lot worse off. There'll be new evidence that these platforms get weaponized by bad actors. So I I have a lot of faith not in the Republicans of the Democrats to come together, but a big tech to continue to abuse the commonwealth and the minimalism of the honors. Populous. And they will Well, they won't say, you know, we need to we need to figure this out and be on our best behavior. There's a level of arrogance there that they believe I think they they can get away with almost anything. And I don't think that's changed. And I'm not gonna be frustrated by this. There was a poll that I think I forgot it was. It was a decent poll that showed that most people don't really like, fifty percent were like, yeah, like -- Whatever. -- there's not a big there's not a big, you know, hue and cry to do something about this except among the chattering class like ourselves. And I do that's fine. You know, look, people didn't just say seatbelts everybody. Like, I bet you know, that was a small group of people who pushed for those or or or cigarettes let's do something about them or opiates even. And I think that's -- Mhmm. -- there is there is indication that people the issue is people like tech and like the uses of it. They're sort of of all the many things you could stack up for them to be concerned about. This one's not high on the list essentially. Although, you know, they're concerned that there could, there was like, I think it was 53% who were although you know, they're concerned. They're there was, like, I think it was fifty three percent who were concerned. Others are, like, yeah, whatever. Forty percent. Some were, like, yeah, whatever. Not not I gotta worry about this, this, and this. And so I think that's where the tech is has strength as inertia in people that they like these tools at the same time they're like, oh, are they spying on this? It's not like China here. Right? It's sort of it's like China but not. Right? It's not it's like, they're not like China. They're not trying to like they're just trying to sell us toilet paper essentially. So, you know, it's be interesting. I don't think they're gonna pass much of it, but it is you know, the idea of splitting them up, I think, was smart from from these legislators 2nd, like, taking them piece by piece. The other part is they wanna do this so that later they can focus in on all of consolidation whether it's pharma like, with with Amy Klobuchar talked about it was pharmacy or it's caskets or whatever. You know, the bigger picture of consolidation, meat processing. There's all kinds of areas that have consolidated rather see. The tech is the lowest hanging fruit in this area. So we'll see. We'll see. I think it's interesting that Tim Cook called 2nd and that they're being much more aggressive. Interestingly, the last part I love your thought of this Marguerite vestager, of course, 2 aim at Google. She's, like, going right through it. She doesn't care she loses sometimes. Mhmm. She's just keeping keeping up the the artillery fire at these at these companies. And so She took Aimant, an investigation of Google. She's gonna go after Amazon soon, I think, and and and others, and especially with Spotify and Apple. For sure. That's the next thing moving on to her plate rather strongly. So we'll see. Europe is certainly not sitting back. But US, I think, will be a slow it's a slow process. Yeah, but the cohort we haven't discussed I think it'll be cohort. I mean, we talked about, okay, the general public is busy with their own lives is sort of interested not really or not as it is you you said, would you call us the chatter group, the chatter group, the crowd? Chattering group. We're the Chattering class. We Chatter group. We like that. That's what you You're part of the gaming class, not a man of the people. I'm part of the McAfee gang. That's right. That's right. Oh, you're here to have sex. You're here to have have sex with me for money. I'm knowing you're here kill me. Let's get married. Let's get I like the cut of your chips. anyways. I totally agree with totally got it. I was Oh, that's okay. They're cohorts. They're cohorts. Combinations. All I can think about are 2 sent to kill me and Chuck Todd. Those are the only two things on my mind. I'm gonna go for drinks that checked out and send you a picture from there, but go ahead. Keep going. Yeah. I do that, dude. Why? Anyway, we're not even gonna go into that. But so -- -- the the cohort you left out and the cohort that will ultimately push a lot of this legislation over the line is business that isn't big tech. I don't care if you're L'Oreal. I don't care if you're Yelp. You fucking hate these guys. And as big as if you just look at it, the S and P the the the the FANG stocks are twenty five percent of the S and P. But the other seventy five percent hate that twenty five percent. Yeah. Because they've been abused by them, they feel they get they play by a different set rules. They feel like they do anything remotely similar to them. Antitrusts all over them. They have laws all over They have laws all over them. They have consumer pushback and they see these guys up in the rents, on them, across everything they do, whether it's part of keywords, whether it's selling into Amazon, whether it's they see the tax breaks they They have consumer pushback. And they see these guys upping the rents on them across everything they do, whether it's brand keywords, whether it's selling into Amazon, and whether it's You know, even though Whether it's You see the tax breaks they get, and they're just like, they have lobbyists too. So it it won't be the general public. I I think an alliance that will be performed here. The people in the background will be the rest of the business. You are these guys are hurting the economy they're hurting us. Yep. And Joe, we hope the paradox of world, the Disney is the yeah. For sure, why not take advantage? A signage manufacturer that is sick of being abused by Amazon's, you know, buyers -- Yeah. -- in in Wisconsin. You're gonna see all there are small and big 2nd I talk to these guys. I get emails every day from saying, you have no idea the level of abuse we are subject to because we have I think you have went fifty cents on the dollar. Is e commerce dollars 2 Amazon, and you have to be in e commerce, you have to be on Amazon, and then you have to comply with their increasingly onerous higher rents on what you need to do to stay on Amazon. And then then consumers, they do deliver you know, it's interesting. I gotta tweet at someone saying, I think logistics in Amazon are terrible. And I was no. I literally ordered something. I'm up in a in a place in Rhode Island, and I ordered some stuff. And it was a day early here. And I didn't think it was going to come from five to eight in the like, I didn't think it was gonna from five to eight in the morning the next minute. I ordered it, but he was here very early on time, and the guy delivered a nice and all your day early. He goes, we tried to stay ahead of the competition. I said, is there competition? The guy was like, not really. Not really. He said this is the Amazon delivery guy. Yeah. It was so funny. And I was like, is there? He's like, no. No. Like, it was it was it was fascinating, like, how good they are. Anyway, correct Scott, you are correct. Your big business other big business is gonna try to fight these businesses. But let me just say tech is here to play they're gonna pressure every single lawmaker on this and try to water it down rather significantly. Very few of these bills are going to pass at least in this few of these bills are gonna pass at least in this session, and we'll just have to see where it goes from there. 2nd the Republicans can't give up, but they just can't quit the idea that they're being discriminated against, which they are not. There's no evidence evidence Fine. I don't believe that. I mean, ever That's the required. Let them believe that. Yeah. That's actually, that's essentially No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. That's fine. Just just do what we want. Yeah. David Sislain had kinda said that. It's like, I don't agree with that, but I want them to focus in on the power of Big Tech. Alright, Scott. Let's go on quick break. We'll come back to talk about Microsoft becoming a two trillion dollar company. It entered that that area 2nd a listener mail question. 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Microsoft just hit a two trillion dollar market cap that makes Microsoft this only second US company had joined the Alida Group of being two trillion dollars after Apple. People never pay attention to Microsoft. Actually, Microsoft was largely left out of these bills we just talked about. Microsoft reached the two trillion dollar milestone just over two years after it first passed the one trillion dollar market cap. Microsoft's stock has gained sixty four percent since the pandemic lockdowns. People don't pay as much attention to them their power started in United States in March twenty twenty. Microsoft is also launching its new windows eleven this week. Remember how that used to be a big deal? Well, it's back again. We'll have use of Mehdi, the Microsoft vice president of modern life search and devices. I've known him a long time. On the show next week to talk more about the leaps at Microsoft. So what do you think? You know, we we've talked about Satya Nadella hitting hitting all the cylinders here quietly so in the background. He he was not there's a lot. They got they just kind of got out of these bills that they've made some changes where it only focuses on Amazon Apple. And Facebook Google. So what do you think? What do you think? There's, there's no getting around There's an up getting around it. It's it's actually the third company to hit two trillion. Saudi Aramco hit it for more briefly. But look, there's two things that I think it pushed it over two trillion dollars. The first is a business reason and then a non business reason. And that is the the day are cloud. And I think of them not only as cloud, but they're kind of the purest play cloud. Because if you look at Amazon, you might not guess it's a big cloud player. Even if you look at Google, but Microsoft Cloud. 2 trillion dollar club. They're not. Those two are Google and Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. They're not. The the the question is which of those two will probably be next? I think it'll be Amazon. But anyways -- Yeah. -- they're firing on all cylinders. Cloud, enterprise software, gaming. But the the other thing that they benefit from enormously, and it can't be underestimated, is the likability of such a Adela. Yeah, because it's B2B because they haven't been subject to as many scandals because we're not worried about a PowerPoint weaponizing, an election or depressing our teens and such in Adela is really well Yeah. Because of B2B, because they haven't been subject to as many scandals, because we're not worried about PowerPoint weaponizing an election or depressing our teens. Yeah. And Sachin Adella is really well liked. Microsoft has kinda gone from being Darth Vader to, you know, a wookie. And that is -- Yeah. -- they're just sort of big and powerful and quiet and likable. And -- Yes. -- as a result, this is huge because every time Facebook, Google, Apple or Amazon think, you know what? We're missing a key component of the supply chain here of our tech stack. Get the bankers in here, here are the five companies we'd acquire, reach out to two of them. They have to go, well, can we do that? Yeah. Can we do that? Whereas Microsoft can just full steam ahead on their plan. And there's probably acquisitions they've made that. They've got, yeah, they got You managed to get out of this much 2 get out of this thing. And they they this new these new bills, they have a word mobile in there, which Microsoft, you know, failed in essentially. Yeah. And so it gets someone was Al obvious was telling me, like, Microsoft has correctly not correctly, has definitely gotten out of these bills because of warranty and stuff. They're they're very 2nd person that doesn't get as much attention, not just Sachin Dell is Brad Smith, who's sort of his has been buying books about, you know, responsibility and this and that, and he he's sort of he's the one that actually convinced Gates and bomber to calm the fuck down, essentially. During those that period. And and so it's a really interesting thing because they are incredibly powerful they do, but they manage to flip out of a lot of things. The market cap, by the way, of Amazon, is one point seven seven trillion. 2 Google is one point six seven trillion. So they're getting close. They're getting close. Mhmm. So Sundar, Pichai got dinged this week in piece in in the times about his lack of and making a lot of executives leaving there and sort of becoming like an old thing, but he's still facing enormous pressures around search and and this and that. So you're right. It's it's a really So where does Microsoft go? They've been doing all this this really deaf stuff in gaming. Obviously, cloud. They've made some really interesting purchases. The gaming stuff is fascinating. I think people have not paid as much attention to it. Obviously, windows are still it used to be sort of the scary you know, tip of the spear really of everything else. But they've they've they've done a lot of stuff that I think has been you know, and they moved into defense department. They did win that Jetty contract over Amazon, although that's now a dispute, but which we should ask you some about. But what do you do you imagine they're going to do next? More the same. In an then AI. They're already a leader in AI. They're really strong in mobile computing. It took them thirty three years to get to a trillion, and then it just took them about twenty four months to get to two trillion. Yep. Yep. And and I don't know if you've heard, but they've talk about an exciting, enormous contract. They've won the cloud services contract for peacock with ten million users. Ten million new peacock. Oh my god. You know when peacock pea comes really successfully, you're gonna have to eat your words. Just No. I'm gonna have to eat my words. By the way, watching peacock doing it. They have some good stuff on there. They got But no one ever said, oh, you actually were. What? I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. No. I'm just telling you. No. No. No. No. No. The card. Trevor Noah or Star Ship Commander's on Luca Picard, which by the way is my Halloween outfit fit every year. She's brothers or she's brothers. No. I met him once at a dinner. It the shade. He's lovely. Tell me he's lovely. Oh my god. He was so, like, so dreamy. He was dreaming smart and every day, the whole thing. He was exactly what you did. He was not like, I would have been sad if he was like, how you do it like was not like, I would have been sad if he was, Hey. How you do it? I think that now he was totally classy. He's glass for clubs, bets. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how that popped up. I am so channeling John McAfee today. I see that. I see that. I wish you don't end up like John McAfee. In any case, we'll talk about this with Youssef because I think Microsoft's a really interesting you know, you sort of see the future of some of these other companies if they did things right. Right? At the same time, it still has the same issues around, you know, power and dominance in lots of areas, and they do slip out of it because they're not damaging in the way the others are so explicitly damaging. But still, the concentration of power is problematic. No matter what you do and the concentration of wealth, but you're matter what you do in the concentration of wealth. But you're right, Satya really has handled it in a way that is much more depth. He's coming to code. So we'll be able to talk to him about so we'll be able to talk to him about that. Brill? Yeah. He's coming to come. Mhmm. Yeah. He was a He was like a nobody. Same thing with Youssef. He was like a lower he was a lower level, but he was just a product manager of a bunch of divisions. And he used to he was he was I always enjoyed talking to him. There were a lot of real jackasses at Microsoft, and he was not among them. When I and Youssef is the same way, which is interesting. So we'll talk to them. them. We'll talk about, it'd be interesting to see what happened, but they have stayed out of the talk well, it'd be interesting to see what happens, but they have stayed out of the limelight. So we'll see where they go. What do you so what do you who will get the next 2 trillion dollars? Like, Google or Amazon? You said Amazon? You think it's Amazon? I I just think, I think the most, I think the business that will gain the most market capitalization over the next several years is just think I I think the most I think the business that will gain the most market capitalization over the next several years is Amazon, and it'll be on the backs of their entry into healthcare. I think that the most exciting thing coming what was that enough? You don't you don't want any color? You got what you needed. You got what you needed. You're done. I wanna hear more. Go ahead. Seriously. I want to have an idea. I want to control you. Oh, really? In the future. Trolley. Anyways, so look, the one I think the most exciting thing coming out of the pandemic from a business level is that we might be able to push eighteen percent of our economy, healthcare, and disperse it away from doctors' offices and hospitals into smartphones and smart speakers and take healthcare from a defensive, driven industry, disease driven industry around our heels, onto our toes, more of a health driven 2nd absolutely the organization that has all the assets to do it is Amazon. And it's just gonna be I when eighteen percent of the economy, all of sudden goes up for grabs, I think it's gonna just anyway, III don't know who's next to two trillion, but I do think the first to three trillion is gonna get Amazon on the back of health care. Yeah. Alright. What does Microsoft buy? I'm gonna let you run some more, Scott. Then we'll get to a listener mail question. I don't know. I agree with you. Anything? The only thing oh, by the way, I have I have to correct the record again. It's, like, a third show in a row. And I hate it when people take us seriously. Anyways, the I just need to make it a big checker. The place? The place. Relative to the size of business that gets the least amount of attention you've said this is gaming. Mhmm. And Microsoft has a foothold in gaming, and it's just it's it's supposed to continue to grow. It's to great business. It it flips to their competence. So I would imagine that in addition to AI and cloud, which are amazing businesses, Microsoft will continue to be kind of a key player in in gaming. And it's if you look at all media, I mean, everything. Like, you know, in traditional media, cable that the two things that are growing are streaming and gaming. Yeah. Yeah. And we never and game gaming's like a hundred mean, it's just crazy. We need to focus. We need to We're best. We'd constantly talk about the motion picture industry, the the little domestic box office, pursuits were seven billion. Yeah. Gaming is, like, a hundred and fifty billion. It is And it just doesn't We have this issue when I ran all this issue when I ran all things to you. We should have paid more. We just people didn't wanna read about it. Even though it was bigger. I know it sounds crazy. Gotcha. Gotcha. World on gaming. You just found drone at MYM. Well, let's have Yos on then 2 us about it. To teach us how about that. Why don't you why don't you use your your very tenuous relationship with them by you to guess? My tenuous relationship. Let me just say I'm gonna start. Good times. Yes and I are in good terms. I think my second question talk. I think Microsoft might come back with TikTok. Stay on with that TikTok. I think that's I'm gonna make a little prediction here. I think they're gonna relook at TikTok right there in a state with the situation with China is gonna get worse. Microsoft TikTok. They were in there very -- Yeah. -- we'll see. That would be a really interesting acquisition for them. And to put it in the gate in the in that unit that unit. And can ask you to put this all on Monday. Okay, Scott. Let's pivot to a listener question Roll tape. You've got you've got to keep the leads. I'm gonna be a mailman. You've got mail. Hello, Karen. Scott, it's Mark here in American Kiwi calling from All in New Zealand. I love what you both have to say about climate change. I love you both acknowledge the climate crisis. But I have been noticing that even though you talk about it very occasionally on the show. You don't give climate a lot of space on the show, and you definitely not mentioned, of course, as much as Covid19. we are starting to get reports in that the climate crisis is, of course, gonna cost much more than COVID has cause much more disruption. And your recent talking about the g seven, you talked about the tax treaty, but not about the impacts of g seven countries. Fossil fuel companies, putting in gas projects in the global south, hooking them into more fossil fuels. We'd love to hear more. We've a lot of fans worldwide. Yes. I do. This is Mark. That is not true. I've interviewed not just I've interviewed Bill Gates about this. I've discussed about with him in his book. I've done several columns about the climate crisis. And discussed it a lot about where the -- we should talk more about it here though. What are the cool companies that are moving foresees, whether it's carbon capture, whether it's all kinds of interventions, even space travel is part of that, the idea of moving ourselves off this planet because of the dangers of climate crisis. I've talked to food people. I've done interviews. I talk a lot about it in a more substantive way, and we should do that here just like with gaming. I think Scott is right. This is an area that is going to be both an opportunity and a real potential for huge economic disruption over the years, whether you're thinking about, you know, I happen to be in Coastal Rhode Island, and they're talking about the idea of these hurricanes coming through devastating these areas and covering them up and the amount of that's just one place. And I think we, you know, Miami, whether Scottsdale in Florida. It's a big issue. You know, people are gonna start to think about this. This idea of getting to zero carbon emissions is critically important the fact that our governments keep slow rolling this is it doesn't really matter. The earth is gonna do what it wants in some level. But I think it's really I think the cost of damage, of climate change is is compared to COVID is massive, like massive, massive, massive, and the deaths that are going to be, the result of it massive, I think we're probably not going to see it as much in developed countries because they can protect themselves. And we don't mind people that unfortunately, the, when people die and other places that we don't pay attention to, nobody pays attention to and we don't mind people that, unfortunately, the when people die and other places that we don't pay attention 2. Nobody pays attention to them. So, anyway, so this site, one thing which we did talk about was Gary Gensler, adding climate report cards, or companies. The tech companies are leading the way with renewable Amazon announced it's gonna buy renewable energy sources, cover the company's activities. You know, all these they've been doing offsets. It's just the beginning step. So, Scott, what do you think? I think it's gonna be an important part of corporate corporate. Speaking to the public. Correct? And not just, you know, virtue signaling? Yeah. I mean, I was looking at the I'm cynical about Big Tech. Much easier for someone in a digital business, a software driven business to be very indignant about climate change versus someone that's actually manufacturing things. It's just a totally different -- look, it's great that they're taking it on something that has made me much more environmentally aware as COVID specifically. When emissions dropped by something like twenty percent or thirty percent in the first twelve weeks of the pandemic last year. There was a noticeable change 2nd how clear the water was, how crisp the air was. And I thought, my god, why wouldn't we decide this is the new normal? It just Yeah. On selfishly, I wasn't even thinking about all the devastation of weather events, but just selfishly going out Think about how housing prices. Housing prices have accelerated eleven percent or thirteen percent quarter on quarter. We spend millions of dollars. It is such an incredible lift for each of us and our families to get into a nice home. Housing has become so expensive that you want to own in the US. Why wouldn't we all of us make a somewhat a fraction of the financial effort and focus on making our backyard exceptional. I'm just so blown away by how beautiful my backyard got. When I say my backyard, I mean, the sealant and the sky, And also the reason I don't talk about it a lot is there are certain categories that are so important that if you don't have domain expertise and this is how I'm sort of evolving as a person. You shot the fuck up. And the reality is I don't really have a lot of domain expertise whenever you say anything, including anything I said here, there's a religious fervor around this topic. And people come out, it's impossible to say anything that does pissed people off. And especially if you don't have domain expertise here. So my good turn Bob Perkowitz at Echo America he he really he said and again, I'd bring everything back to me when you talk about the power of this stuff, and I just look into the lens of how power or how I've come to embrace the outdoors. When one of my sons was struggling, he said, all I need to do is get them outside. It's one of one of the most restorative things you can do. So anyways, the bottom line is I'm trying to be more thoughtful about this stuff because I realize not only not only how important climate changes, but just how wonderful you know, the outdoors is that's a great endorsement. But anyways, IIA huge topic. I don't think either of us don't feel don't feel our supporters of it. We're just are, don't recognize the problem We're just or or don't recognize the problem here. It's just it's just it's best when you don't know what you're gonna do. Be really staying. It'll be kind of interesting as an exercise for you to look at where are the investment 2? Because I, you know, I I wrote something in a column like my last year and I said the world foresees Speaking of trillionaires will be a climate change technologist. And I made that up. I just made it up. up. I was just trying to say, like, this is an area of great economic opportunity to try to make, to figure these things out, but behind just mitigation, which is carbon capture and everything was just trying to say, like, this is an area of great economic opportunity to try to make to figure these things out. But behind just mitigation, which is carbon capture everything else, but where is where is the real innovation gonna happen in smart manufacturing, in smart home building, smart food making, there's so much, like, so much shift that could could happen here that could just, like, with electrical, like, beyond coal, like, cleaned up, you know, it's still we still have a dirty world, but it's not as dirty as, like, London used to be filthy. Right? So what is the way what is the way that we can make this an economic 2, which is a way to spur innovation for a lot of people. And that I'd love to, like, start start thinking about what are the cool companies that are what are what are the companies that are most interesting what are the what are gonna be the biggest companies in our world? Because this is gonna whoever dominates this is gonna be a very important player in the next twenty years. Yeah. it's one of those things 2 the it feels like the weather events or climate change inspired catastrophes whether it's the wildfires in California or rising sea levels, whatever it might be. It feels like, unfortunately, we went from there there became so many of them so fast. It's it feels as if we had some sort of tipping point. Yeah. That's that's why we're becoming a little bit a little bit numb to it. But these, you know, it's something like eighty percent of the crazy wildfires that have ever happened in California have happened in the last decade. Yeah. You know what we're gonna do, Scott? Go ahead. Finish. Well, I did At PIVOT CON in Miami, we're going to do a section on this, on the interesting con, please. Yeah. And the thing that the thing that's so disappointing, again, about something that's so important, is how the hell did this get politicized? Republicans, Teddy Roosevelt, the first grade environmental was Republican. Like, when did we all decide if you're on the left, you have to be, you know, like, you can't There's a lot of what I would call unreasonable conversations on the left around the environment, not acknowledging that people at the end of the day, regardless of what's right or wrong, will vote for their economic interests. Unless you address economic growth 2nd all of this in the context of climate change, you're just not going have productive conversation. And then on the right, they wanna be science deniers. Right. It's just, well, how did we get here folks? I mean, anyway, I don't I I find whenever that how the how the fact we politicize obesity masking environment? Have you Something 2 we kind of up here to all have a shared divested interest in figuring out Everything is politicized now. But maybe it won't be in the future. Anyway, Mark, American Kiwi, we think this is important. We should be. We're going to do our homework on this and gonna do our homework on this and gaming. Okay, Scott. Those are the two things. Well, I wonder what Chuck Todd thinks. No, I don't. I don't care. Chuck Todd. Chuck Todd, you and your other. I'm excited about peacock. I'm excited about peacock. Peacock. I can say it like Say it like that. If you let's have a peacock show and have nobody watch it. Anyway, it's got one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. How How do I fire an do I fire an employee? What goes in an employee handbook? What is my state's pay time off policy? These are not questions you should be Googling. If you're a small business owner, you kind of need professional help for these kinds of A small business owner, you kinda need professional help for these kinds questions. 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Bambi is month to month, no hidden Bambi is month to month, no hidden fees. Cancel cancel anytime. Go to bambi.com/pivot right now to schedule your free HR go to bambi dot com slash pivot right now to schedule your free HR audit. That's bambi.com/pivot, spelled B a M to the B e.com/pivot That's bambi dot com slash pivot spelled BAM 2 the BEE dot com slash pivot. Support for for the show today comes from at and T active the show today comes from AT and T Active Armour. Right now, our lives are on our phones and with our phones full of live-streamed exercise classes, midday work calls and nightly family video Right now, our lives are on our phones with our phones full of live streamed exercise classes, midday work calls, and nightly family video calls. There's no room for fraud calls, thankfully at and T makes customer security a There's no room for fraud calls thankfully. AT and T makes customer security priority. Helping block those pesky a Helping block those pesky calls. It's not complicated at and T active Armour, 24 by seven proactive network security and fraud called blocking to help stop threats at no extra It's not complicated. AT and T Active Armor, twenty four by seven pro active network security, and fraud call blocking to help stop the rest at no extra charge. Compatible devices and service required is an att.com/active armor for compatible device and service required is an ATT dot com slash active armor for details. Okay, Scott predictions Go for it. I made my little prediction about Microsoft. Do you make one now? The most exciting thing about antitrust is that it's Ox designating for the environment. And when I say the environment, I mean, the business environment, and we're about to see a massive amount of innovation in categories where there was a dearth of startups because people saw monopoly power that is we're going to see there hasn't been a social network of any size in America launch since two thousand eleven that was Pinterest. In the next twenty four months, we'll see two or three new viable -- Mhmm. -- robust startups in social media. We're going to see new hardware companies. We're going to see new search engines. We already see subscription search engine neither. We're going to see new ad tech platforms. Companies and their backers are gonna say, are gonna believe that it's a credible threat that these companies are about to be broken up antitrust is coming. I mean, even I one of the reasons I invested in nivo -- Mhmm. -- is that the best reason you wouldn't invest, it's like, okay. Let's assume it works. Let's assume let's assume people are concerned about privacy, one subscription search. But but Google can just go, hey, let's take a thousand 2nd a billion dollars, let's put them out of business. And guess what? They can't do that now. Yeah. Because the antitrust cops are on the beat for the first time. Oh, we hope. And so you're going to start to see more funding and more M and A. There's going to be more funding, more new startups, more M and A in the ad tech social media search even computer hardware space in the next twenty four months, and it's gonna be evidence of how, what a key component of capitalism competition And we're all gonna look back and think why the hell did we not break up these guys sooner? I don't know. I'm I got us gonna push back. just got them. Think the empire is gonna strike back. I think they're I think they are. I do. I think that we we, you know, we got we're around we're they we're on the axle of politics that's gonna mess up this whole thing. Like, look at going on in every bill in Senate. Like, this is this is to their advantage. And they also can't they also are liked by people. It's gonna be much harder road to get to bring these people down in the way that But it's already impacting business. Even even -- Yeah. -- there's an interesting thing in that is a lot of people will you that the value of antitrust isn't an actually antitrust action. It's in the scrutiny. And the fact that right now, Google, Facebook, and Apple aren't you know, they're being very careful right now. It's already having an impact on the ecosystem. That is a fair point. That is fair point. point. You're a hundred percent hundred percent right. See what goes on. And I think one of things you mentioned last week, Lina Khan being hindered only by courts. And actually there was a big Bloomberg story saying And actually, there was a big Bloomberg story saying exactly the thing is that, really, what's gonna happen as as happening in Europe. And now, as far as these these companies go to court they win because of more conservative justices, jurors, jurists so that's really where the problem is. You know what I You know what I mean? Ultimately, they're gonna win house it's gonna be a long slog eventually, those with money and means often win. So we'll see where it goes. But III I've 2 you that story because you just mentioned it off the top of your head because were brilliant. And you know who I We can start with a really robust social to start a really robust social network? Oh. Peloton. You keep saying that. I'm like The passion, the passion, and the demographic there, and engagement, I think they could start a fit. Like I think niche, social media platforms are going to start to like, I think niche social media platforms are gonna start to 2, and I think Peloton's gonna start. know, niche streaming or there's a niche streaming network. It's sort of like old cable com coming back. Anyway. That's a very good that's a very good prediction. We'll see where it goes. We're gonna be following that legislation very closely. Can your prediction I like your yours is a little I like yours more yours is a TikTok Microsoft will talk about their benefit there Ben and Jennifer thinking about getting that together. Great. Are you happy about that? Jennifer Lopez Ben Affleck for those who are not paying attention don't wanna speak to anybody. That their public is stating. It's like, nine of us have a lot of points. Professional. Had a whole thing going Whole thing going on. No. I don't think they're that cynical. Come on. Like, look, they both been through the ringer, especially him. Right? Like, he's he's like He is round after round of of drinking it. He's gone by and he would better hair. I would like to roll Well, now that John is gone, I would like to roll up an Aflac to roll this. 2nd knows he was before that beautiful actors. Anyway, he, so anyway, I am very Anyway, he Jennifer Gardner. So anyway, I am very happy. I don't care if it's fake. I like it. I like it. I like it. like it, Jennifer. I don't once. You know, he used to come by and Ron Conway's angel investor know, he used to come out Ron Conway's Angel Investor things. He was farther into I remember just sitting there talking to him I'm going, Jesus Christ, how did this guy get so looking? Good looking. Right? There are people that's good looking. Yeah. He's very handsome. Him and Matt Damon were around the tech sector for a short amount of time, so I dealt with them quite a bit. Did they didn't work out for them. In any case, they were trying to do all these different online things online, you know, James You're gonna make a few confusing ideas. Turn stuff? Didn't know how much? Ashton Kutcher was in that one. No, Ashton. That's right. Mhmm. Afternoon. Could you We're the new celebrities. We are. Don't you get celebrities calling you talking about tech? No. Just you. I really got a lot of celebrities. Go on. I really don't. I don't. But anyway Alright. Control you. I quietly from behind the scenes. My dream is to control a fifty six year old Jewish professor with erectile dysfunction. Listen, McAfee, we gotta go. We gotta go. I got things to do. I've got That guy knew how to roll. That guy knew how to roll. Okay. Alright. Rest in peace, my brother. Rest in peace. Alright. A little bit of, like, a little bit of note. He was had mental issues, and we should always feel bad about what happened to him. Anyway, don't forget if there's I did it again. That was good. That was good. That was that was that's why I make foresees, bucks an hour on I just wanna talk about that. I'm glad you're not wearing a cheerleader outfit while you do that. Anyway, don't forget if there's control me. You can show me I went to lunch in a place called Watch Hill, Rhode Island, and I got to view Taylor Swift's house from a long distance just That's my tip. Like, there's just wrong on so many levels. There was so many things on We can't not see it. Too long and long. I like when I was, like, any bong port. Which is hugely overrated went on the boat 2, and they stopped for five minutes to look at the bushes state. I'm like, there's one that's one that's one that's one that's one that hit. What's Oh, okay. One sport. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I understand. I'm like, what level of bad decisions put me on a boat with four hundred tourists from Boston in front spying on the push compound. Buying on Taylor Swift. I just drove by it. I just looked upon it. I love Taylor Swift. There's a song she has called it all in her house. We approached it from the water side and people were taking pictures of mine. I would not do that. No. I just drove past it. It's lovely town it's been written about all its most expensive house in Rhode Island since I'm not, like, giving up any information. She wrote a beautiful song. You should all listen to call the holiday house about You should all listen to a called a holiday house about it. And it was owned by a representative. She wrote just to write her own music. Yeah. She know that. Taylor Swift writes all her own music. I'm not even gonna, you know what, it's Taylor swift, I'm talking about not doing rather I'm here. You know what? Taylor Swift. I'm here. Taylor Swift. I'm here. She's not she'd rather well. And she's a wonderful artist. Anyway, people can disagree on her, but I love her. Anyway, holiday house, you should listen it. Don't forget if there's a story in the to it. Don't forget If there's a story in the news and you're curious about and wanna hear our opinion on, go to n y mag dot com slash pivot to submit a question for the show. Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Rebecca Synanas, Ernie, Inter Todd, Incorporated this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. Or if you're an android user, check us out on Spotify or, frankly, wherever you listen podcasts. If you liked our show, please recommend it to friend. Thanks for listening to pivot from box friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot. From Fox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Who would the dog rather roll with in Vegas? John Mac can be or Chuck Todd. The answer is yes.