January 24, 2025 • 35 mins
Is AI charging you different prices for groceries than your roommate? This week, Oz and Karah bring you a news roundup featuring a look at surveillance pricing and the rise of AI companies eager to work with the U.S. military. On TechSupport with 404 Media’s Jason Koebler, the hosts dive into last weekend's temporary TikTok ban and why Mark Zuckerberg didn’t want it to end. And finally we get to the bottom of why so many PayPal alumni are showing up on our newsfeeds this week in When Did This Become a Thing?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for tuney into tech Stuff. If you don't recognize
my voice, my name is Oz Voloshian and I'm here
because the inimitable Jonathan Strickland has passed the baton to
Cara Price and myself to host tech Stuff. The show
will remain your home for all things tech, and all
the old episodes will remain available in this feed. Thanks
for listening. Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of iHeart
(00:23):
Podcasts and Kaleidoscope. I'm os Voloshan. Today, Cara Price and
I will bring you the headlines of the week, including
new personalized pricing methods and Ohio's investment in AI weapons.
On today's Tech Support segment, we'll talk to four of
four Media's Jason Kebler about Mark Zuckerberg's role in a
(00:44):
TikTok band, and then we're back with another When did
this become a thing? This time we're looking into the
history of the PayPal mafia, all of that on this
Week in Tech. It's Friday, January twenty fourth, So Carrol
wa back.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
We are back, and so is TikTok.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
And so is President Trump. That's right, a lot of
things returning, we do.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It's the great return.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
So it's time for our news round up. Who's going
first today?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Me? Okay, you went first last time.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
That's true. What have you been reading?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
So you like to read Daily Mail and I like
to read Scientific American like it's US weekly. At the
nail salon, I don't get my nails done, but I
would read Scientific American if I did. And I saw
this thing that in a way, I've always been paranoid
that this is going on, but this confirmed my paranoia.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
The FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, which is what was
run by Lena Kon who we talk about often, has
released a report about something called surveillance pricing. What has
been found is that if you shop online, you may
be getting charged a different for certain items than somebody
(02:02):
else might be at the same store.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
So, in other words, the retailer knows that you might
be less price sensitive and therefore charges you more correct
and Lena Connley FTC think this is not right.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I think they're actually more interested in looking into if
it's happening, and it clearly is happening. What they have
concluded is that this is similar to the technology being
used to feed you targeted ads, which we've talked we
talked a lot about on Sleepwalkers and targeted marketing uses
things like our browsing history to serve us ads for
(02:35):
things that we were just thinking about, like Oh, I
need snowbooths. Now I have these snowbooths in my Instagram feed.
This would work similarly. You know, if you have a MasterCard,
for example, that stores a lot of information on you,
the types of things you spend money on, where you live,
you're banking information. All of the information that is accessible
(02:55):
to companies via these third party providers, whether it be
a Fyco credit its scored or credit card company, is
now allowing retailers to make decisions on pricing that I
don't think the average American consumer is used to. I
think another really interesting thing that we didn't get in
the actual report and that the reporter from Scientific American
(03:16):
elaborated on is that this also might be happening in
brick and mortar stores.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
How is that possible?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
That could be because price tags used to be something
that if you think about that thing that would like
put the price on that in and of itself is
now becoming digitized, so you can actually change a price
that's on a computer tag, especially exactly, and those prices
are you know, based on both expiration dates or consumer demand.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Lucky if a billionaires an never do theirn shopping, that's right.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
But Walmart, which is actually not being investigated, claims that
it's digital price tags can be updated remotely within minutes.
It's just an amazing thing to think about, which is
like you usually go into a store, you trust the
price of the thing. You understand that inflation might affect
the thing, You understand that something might be on sale.
You know, this is different. This is literally real time
(04:08):
price not gouging, but price changing. And there's one other
really interesting things which is these instacart smart shopping carts.
And these are actual shopping carts that have scanners and
screens on them. These are screens that advertise to you
while you're shopping. Wow, and then they connect directly to
(04:28):
your credit card payment system.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
I'm actually looking at now that the tagline is you'll
feel like a magician each time you add an item
and pay on the cart.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
This idea of like frictionless shopping is not all about ease.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
No, it's about selling you more stuff. I mean, I
would guess the beginning of fixed prices is probably a
late nineteenth century phenomenon, and before that, like it was
a haggle every time.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
That's right, and you know what you were just saying.
That was actually mentioned in the Scientific American article. They
went back to like early BC bizarres, when people would
just in Yiddish we call it handling, where it was
like there was no set price. It was on the
basis of what somebody was deciding something costs that day,
(05:15):
or how much could you negotiate or finagle.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
And now we're kind of returning to the point where
it's a hagout every time, except way conditioned to believe
that the prices are fixed and our opponent, slash merchant,
has perfect information about us and we have no information
about them. So this sound this sounds pretty unfair.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I want to say that this is not totally negative, right,
Like demographic data can actually benefit people who are looking
for financial aid, for example, And so in the FTC report,
it wasn't like, oh my god, this is the worst
thing ever, we must change as we must take this away.
It was simply a probe into what are the ways
in which data that can then be harnessed by the
(05:54):
power of machine learning is affecting the way we shop.
It is possible that using our demographic data, using our
credit card information, it's possible that something might cost more
for me than it might cost for you. And I
think again, it's just something to be aware of, and I'm,
(06:14):
you know, as we report on this show, very aware of,
like how are small little uses of machine learning actually
affecting the daily lives of Internet users, which we basically
all are at this point.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah, and you know, the bargain we've had with the
tech companies for some time is we give them our
data and they give us their free services. But if
it starts to become a world in which like we're
actually charged on the back end for the way we
gw up our data, it makes you think very differently
about you know, Internet privacy, mvpns and all those kinds
of things.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Yeah, and this is I think the FTC being like
how free is technology? You know, how free is it
to us? And like what is the cost? What is
the cost that we pay, the hidden cost that we
pay as technology users? Is it just a friction free
shopping experience? And the answer is usually now, So what's
up with you this week? What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (07:06):
So last week you showed me that video of a
gun being remotely maneuvered and fired all by voice command
using chat GPT, And then we've got talking about how
open ai has gone back and forth about whether or
their products are allowed to be used to develop weapons. Yes, yes,
I looked into this a bit. And in October last year, Africom,
(07:27):
which is the US military command in Africa who do
a lot of drone surveillance and I think strikes on terrorists,
signed this multi billion dollar contract with Microsoft that included
open ai tools. However, when The Intercept asked open Ai
for comment, they denied they had a partnership with US
(07:47):
military and referred questions up to Daddy Microsoft.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
So they're really the Russian nesting doll.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
This is the Matrioshka of evading responsibility for weapons development.
But then in December, open Ai did in fact sign
a direct contract with a company that develops weapons andrill.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
We talked about them last week.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
The company is named after Arragoron's sword in Lord of
the Rings. In case you're wondering, I wasn't an lot.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Al Fleix, good old Palmer Lucky.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
That's right, Palma Lucky. Sam Altman, who runs open AI said,
quote open AI bills to benefit as many people as
possible and supports US led efforts to ensure the technology
upholds democratic values. Unbelievable first as tragedy them as fast.
I think on this upholding values with weapons. But Andreil,
(08:42):
as usual, you're early to the story and already talking
about it last week. Have had quite a couple of months, obviously,
the big contract with open ai in December. This week,
the New York Times reported they're planning to build a
one billion dollar factory in Ohio, which is set to
bring four thousand jobs and will build tens of thousands
(09:02):
of autonomous systems and weapons over the coming years, swarming
cruise missiles for use abroad and at home surveillance towers.
Andreill's been part of the kind of border surveillance efforts
for some time. It's remarkable to me how this burst
of AI development over the last couple of years has
in a sense, remodeled the American landscape.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Yeah, and I think it's not just a tech story anymore.
We're talking about American cities and infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
But I mean people often. I remember the old question
was like where is tech? The answer is, you can
see it now because it's building huge buildings all over America.
You mentioned Palmer Lucky.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Do you know what he looks like, the dude the mask.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yeah, it's pretty close. He always wears a Hawaiian shirt
and flip flops. He has a goatee, and he plays
Dungeons and Dragons. He's described his character in Dungeons and
Dragons as quote, a chaotic, neutral wizard.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
It's a dating app profile.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
It is. I don't know who you'd find with such
a profile that it turns out you'd find a lot
of investors if you're a founder. He got his start
lucky building VR headsets in his own garage, and then, interestingly,
given what he's doing now, went on to work in
this clinic that worked with vets suffering from PTSD and
(10:25):
using VR headsets for what's called exposure therapy to kind
of help them with their PTSD.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Wasn't he sort of integral in the creation of Oculous Rift.
That's how he made a lot of his money.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Well, that's right, he found an Oculus rift, the VR headset,
which was acquired by Facebook, making him a very young
billionaire at the time, in his mid twenties.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
They didn't figure out what to do with it, but
he doesn't care well.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
And actually he left Facebook under something of a cloud
in twenty seventeen. Some claimed he'd been forced out because
of making a campaign contribution to Donald Trump's twenty sixteen
presidential campaign. Lucky then founded Anderil after leaving Facebook, with
support from none of them Peter Teel. So right now,
(11:08):
it's a good moment to be Palmer Lucky.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
I can't even make the joke.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
What's the joke. It's Lucky, It's Lucky, that's the one.
He's been quite vocal about the threat of China, about
a potential for war in Taiwan, about how the war
in Ukraine has shown the potential for developing new autonomous weapons,
and kind of raise the alarm bell that the US
may be falling behind the curve in all of these areas.
(11:35):
What I find very striking, though, is just a few
years ago the whole of Silicon Valley was more or
less unified against military contracting, and now quite the opposite.
Palmer Lucky recently tweeted, after spending a few days at
CS twenty twenty five's clear that the vibe shift is real.
Everyone wants to help our military. Everyone wants to build.
(11:58):
Nobody's afraid.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Big beautiful buildings. That's what the president would say. We're
looking to build big beautiful buildings.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Right, and big beautiful weapons. I guess.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
When we come back, we're joined by our friends at
four afore media stay with us.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So Caro, I know you are following the the will
they weren't they? So to speak of the TikTok ban,
how did you feel the moment it went dark?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
I was there the moment it went dark online, the
moment it went dark. Yes, on the app, I was
fine because I somehow have not become addicted to TikTok.
But I have friends that were really in withdrawal and
using reels as methadone.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
How bad was it for them?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Very bad? Very bad. Even you're okay, I'm fine.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
It's back now, so you're fine. But what are you
find when it was off?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I was fine. It was off. It was just the
weird like referral to Trump in the messaging on the
app that I was like, what is going on here?
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Yeah? So when you log back on too TikTok, you
were greeted by a message which includes the line as
a result of President Trump's efforts. TikTok is back in
the US.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
It sounds like Trump wrote it, and it also sounds
like he did. It sounds like Biden's bad. Trump is good.
Use TikTok again because of Trump bite dance.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
The Chinese parent company of TikTok is sending a pretty
clear message there. But can I tell you who almost
certainly was not jumping for joy?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Who's that?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
That is Mark Zuckerberg, and he ha to tell us
more about why not. On this week's Tech Support is
four or four Media's Jason Kebler.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Welcome Jason. It's good to have you with us again.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Yeah, this has been my favorite topic of late so
stoke to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
So last week he reported on something that I think
was buried in the pre inauguration slash TikTok chaos. But
you reminded us that what Zuckerberg wanted did most was
actually a TikTok ban. Why is this?
Speaker 3 (14:04):
In many ways, TikTok has become what Instagram once was.
The simple answer is that if TikTok were to be
banned in the United States, the most obvious place for
people to go would be Instagram and Instagram reels and
so a TikTok ban was very likely to benefit Meta
(14:25):
in an outsized way.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
And how was zuck agitating for this?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
So it's very hard to say exactly how involved or
not involved Meta or Mark Zuckerberg himself or in pushing
for a TikTok ban. But Mark Zuckerberg has been sort
of beating this drum about competition from Chinese tech companies
since all the way back in twenty nineteen. He gave
(14:52):
this speech at Georgetown University where he sort of pulled
out this line where he says, you know, a decade ago,
so all of the top ten tech companies were American today,
meaning in twenty nineteen, six of the top ten were Chinese.
And that was right before a big congressional hearing about
Facebook's data privacy practices. Pretty Much anytime that he's pulled
(15:16):
in front of Congress in any way to talk about
Meta's monopoly or privacy issues, he starts talking about the
threat from China and how if there is more regulation
from the US government, basically like a Chinese app will
come in to fill that vacuum. And so he really
like seeded the ground, in my opinion, for what ultimately
(15:40):
became the TikTok ban. The Washington Post also reported back
in twenty twenty two that Meta paid a firm called
Targeted Victory to push the narrative that TikTok was dangerous
for children, although Meta has denied directly lobbying on the
TikTok ban.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
So I can imagine this. We've got to beat China.
Message is is resident with the new president. But it
wasn't always plain sailing between zuck and Trump.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Yeah, I mean, in the aftermath of January sixth Facebook ban,
Donald Trump and Donald Trump spent time last year saying
that he wanted to put Mark Zuckerberg in jail.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
But instead he put him hashtag front row.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah, he has, you know, gone to mar A Lago twice.
He was at the inauguration and through a party, an
inauguration party in DC.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
I threw a party.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah, he threw a party. TikTok also threw a party
for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Well.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
And one of the things that's interesting is that Trump
tried to ban TikTok during his first term in office
with the same sort of China hawk argument, right, and
now he's stalled the ban by executive order for at
least seventy five days, and when asked during the signing
why he changed his mind about the app, Trump said,
(16:52):
because I got to use it, which seems to be
Mark Zuckerberg's nightmare.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
I think that it is Mark Zucker's nightmare. I think
that TikTok being banned would have been a huge prize
for Meta, and they were so so close. I mean,
the the app actually went down. In the lead up
to the ban, Meta started buying ads on TikTok to
advertise Instagram, for example, as an alternative. They started buying
(17:20):
ads on Google saying, you know, come to reels. They
also rolled out this like affiliate program that very closely
mirrors how TikTok shop works, so sort of trying to
entice influencers from TikTok to come to Instagram. And so
I mean that there was like quite a lot of
thought put into Instagram as a replacement for TikTok. And
(17:44):
now there's still this seventy five day delay in terms
of whether the band will actually be enacted. I think
that Trump has made it clear he doesn't really want
to ban this thing. Like they are using Oracle servers
for American tiktoks more or less, which was part of
that earlier executive order that you referenced where Trump wanted
(18:07):
to ban TikTok during his first term, and as part
of that byte dance agreed to move Americans data to
Oracle controlled servers in.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Texas, an American country.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
So an American company, and so Oracle shut down TikTok
servers on Saturday, which is why it went down. But
then on Sunday, I guess Trump was able to cut
a deal with Oracle seemingly that convinced the company to
take the risk to put it back up.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Well, and Larry Ellison then is at the White House
on Tuesday with Project Stargate.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah, Larry Ellison, who is the CEO of Oracle, and
Trump are friends and they've been friends for a long time.
And so to be totally honest with you, a lot
of this seems almost reverse engineer to give Trump a
big win. The ban is incredibly unpopular, and it's incredibly
unpopular among TikTok users who are a young demographic that
(19:04):
you know, Trump has really gone after in this election.
And so I think being able to message like Biden
took your TikTok away, and I gave it back, even
if that is not exactly true. Is a very powerful
thing for Trump to be able.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
To say, Jason, just close. I'm always fascinated by the
law of unintended consequences. But there are a couple of
other apps which saw big, big inflows of users, one
of which was red Note.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yeah. So, red Note is an app that is a
sort of Chinese competitor to TikTok. It's very popular in China.
I have a lot of Chinese American friends who have
been on it for years. It's very good for finding restaurants.
From personal experience, I know that. But you know, in
advance of the TikTok band, you had a lot of
Americans downloading and going over to red Note. And it's
(19:56):
one of the few Chinese social media apps that is
available both in China and the United States. And so
you had a mix of people sort of ironically saying
I would rather give my data directly to the Chinese
government or to a Chinese app than give it to
Mark Zuckerberg. And then I think you also had people
who just didn't like the fact that the US government
(20:19):
was taking something away from them for this sort of
amorphous national security spying reason. I think that there are
very real concerns about TikTok and data privacy, but the
US government has not made it's anything specific about, you know,
(20:40):
the types of spying that may or may not be happening.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
I think you're right, Jason, that the US government has
not made it compelling enough argument for like why TikTok
should be banned. And you know, I think people don't
want to be TikTok refugees. Also because circling right back
to Zuck reels isn't as good. And you know, it's like,
if you want people to use reels, make it as
(21:03):
good as TikTok. And the problem is is I don't
think that will ever be the case.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah, I think you're right. And also, I mean, this
was a big argument ByteDance is making, but it's a
very real and important argument that hundreds of millions of
Americans we're on TikTok, are on TikTok. You have millions
of small businesses, millions of influencers who make a living
on TikTok. And I think that this sort of fractured
(21:30):
Internet that we saw for only a few hours between
Saturday and Sunday, I found it to be like a
really chilling and weird thing that I'm not used to
as an American who who I'm like, I have access
to everything on the internet more or less and suddenly
just sort of being cut off from that and not
even having a very easy circumvention. This was sort of
like a blueprint for how other types of bands could
(21:53):
work in the US, and I think that's pretty scary.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
What will you be looking out for in the next
seventy five days and beyond on this story.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
I think that by Dance is very unwilling to sell TikTok.
Whether that is because of pressure from the Chinese government
or because they have a good business and just don't
want to sell it, who knows. But I think, honestly,
the thing I'm most interested to see is whether this
just kind of fades into the background. And I'm wondering
(22:22):
if in seventy five days nothing changes and we just
sort of keep going, and you know, it will be
a question of whether the Justice Department is willing to
you know, enforce a law that was enacted by Congress
and upheld by the Supreme Court sort of for the
like political interest of the President. Jason, Thank you, thank
(22:44):
you so much.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Coming up we'll explore a crucial first family in tech
with another installment of when did this become a thing?
So Kara, Ever since the election of President Trump, any
number of tech moguls have been showing up at Mara
(23:07):
Lago and in Washington and have even taken on official
roles in the transition the new administration. But there's one
group on everybody's lips.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
The PayPal Mafia.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
PayPal Mafia, and so in today's when did this become
a thing? We want to explore the history of this
powerful group to understand just how they went from smart
investors and founders to seats of power at the top
of government, business, and even social influence. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I know these guys, but I sort of take the
PayPal Mafia for granted without really knowing what their stories are.
So I'm excited for us to do this, and you're
going to start us off.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
So let me start just by going over some of
the members of the PayPal mafia who are now closely
connected or actually inside the Trump administration. So we've got
Elon Musk running DOGE, the Department for Government Efficiency, which
tried to recruit applicants back in November, saying, quote, we
need super high IQ's small government revolutionaries willing to work
(24:06):
eighty plus hours per week on on glamorous cost cutting.
That was a tweet.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Great love it.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Then you have David OSAs another podcast host, the All
In Podcast, another South African and Trump's new AI and Cryptosa.
This is an advisory position, so Sax doesn't have to
quit his day job of being a VC.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Is being a VC, Yeah, I guess that is it
a real job.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Well, it's the intersection of VC in podcasting.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
It's obviously effect on the path heading there.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
And then of course at the center of it all
is Peter Teal. He doesn't have an official capacity in
this administration, but he's the person who introduced Trump and JD.
Vance in twenty twenty one, a key investor in Anderill
and a significant donor to Trump and Vance for many.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Years millions and millions of dollars. And I want to
add that the guy who used to be CEO of
Teal's personal philanthropic foundation that is most famous for paying
kids not to go to college, has been tapped by
Trump to be Deputy Secretary of the HHS, helping RFK
Junior Maha make America healthy.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Again, make America healthy again. So that's where some of
the leading lights of the mafia are today. But to
understand why we call them the Papal Mafia, I need
to take you back to the fall of two thousand
and seven.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Q MGMT.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Two thousand and seven was, of course, the golden age
of MGMT and prestige television. The Sopranos are just at
its final episode and then Fortune Magazine prints this photo.
Credit to Robin Toomey for the indelible image. Cary, can
you pull it up and just describe it for anyone
who doesn't have it burned onto their eyes?
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Well, red lacquer tabletops, a bunch of I mean, I'm gay,
but I still understand a good looking man. And these
are a bunch of guys dressed like they belonged to
Leonardo DiCaprio's pussy Possy.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
You're also vegetarian. There's a steakhouse vibe here as well.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Being steakhouse vibe. There's an oil painting of venice in
the background, a lot of whiskey and most absurdly, poker chips.
But it's giving mafia.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
There's also a baseball bat giving mafia. Do you recognize
anyone in the picture. No, well, two of them are
somewhat recognizable, Peter Teal and Rehealth.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, Speedertael in Halfman. They just look different. Now, that's
why I said that's true.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
I mean, it's been some time has passed. They're also
dressed kind of as they're going to a costume party,
which which doesn't.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Help definitely, which they seem to be enjoying. I don't
know if I enjoy it so much.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
So in this photo is almost every single member of
the PayPal Mafia. They've been using this term in their
own circle, you know self. Self given names of groups
can be on the embarrassing side, yes, but it was
this photo, which is very iconic, that cemented them as
the PayPal Mafia as far as the wider public is concerned.
(27:02):
Right in the front are PayPal founders Peter Teal and
Max Levchin, who Fortune called the don and the conciliary
of the.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Mass, and Max is the Conix the conciliary.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
To get the full picture of how they got inducted
into this elite steakhouse brotherhood.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Dream, by the way, I just have to say, we have.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
To go all the way back to the founding of PayPal,
which started with a different name, which was Confinity not
as Good, Not as good too much like connad by
Teal and Levchin. And then in two thousand they merged
with a company called x dot com, which it was
an online banking platform you know who that was founded
by By two thousand and one, the combined company was
(27:46):
known as PayPal. This is way before Meta or ABNB
or way way before open Ai.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Yeah, it's funny because I think back, I mean, two
thousand and one is nine to eleven. I mean it's
that's really early Internet. And I, you know, as a
young person, was not interfacing with PayPal.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
This is more like Netscape. Oh yeah, a little bit.
Maybe he was at Yahoo even around those Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
YEAHO was around because I used to use yahooligans.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
But this was just a few years after Google was
founded in nineteen ninety eight. But there were some very
big differences between how these two future behemoths, Google and
PayPal were run, and a lot of it had to
do with culture. As that two thousand and seven Fortune
article explains, a few of the PayPal mafia had some
(28:32):
choice words about the Omerta the PayPal culture. The former
CFO of PayPal said, quote the difference between Google and
PayPal was that Google wanted to hire PhDs and PayPal
wanted to hire people who got into PhDs and then
dropped out. It is, he said, a different temperament.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Well, right, and you can absolutely see how Peter Tiel
would later incentivize people to drop out of college with
the foundation.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
And these weren't even PhD students, were undergraduate, that's right.
But so you know, back in the early days of PayPal,
there was this concerted effort to not hire anyone affiliated
with any kind of establishment organization. Teal and Levchin wanted
workaholics who weren't consultants, weren't MBAs, and weren't part of
the kind of elite establishment culture.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
So like, who was the ideal profile for this.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Well, co founder Max Levchin said that hiring was sort
of a process of finding like minded people. He said
he was looking for, quote, someone just as geeky and
who doesn't get laid very often. For the most part,
this worked. Elon was quickly ousted because he tried to
mandate some kind of technological overhaul, but that bad blood
(29:46):
that once existed has been put to rest, and according
to Walter Isaacson, who wrote the most biography. Musk couch
surfs on PayPal mafia couches when he's traveling.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Between hotel That's how you have one hundred billion? Is
you couch service?
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Exactly? That's right. There are stories back in the day
of disagreements turning to wrestling matches again. Another preview of
that that the yet to happen cage fight between Musk
and Zuckerberg. But it was it was quite the vibe.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
And it's I mean, it's very funny because it is
an anti establishment vibe that's so clearly yearns to be
this anti establishment.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Right. It's like totally like teenage. It's like a teenage
sort of sleepover on the you know, with this money
and as she drinks as that's right, as you are.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
But they're like, it's not a sleepover, it's just a
gathering of boys.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
But this mindset was really cultivated by the libertarian leaning
Peter Teal and there is this inherent sort of culture
and personality of the Papal Mafia that may in some
sense help explain why these contrarians went on to be
some of the most successful entrepreneurs and vcs in Silicon
Valley history. For reference, David Sachs is thought to be
(30:56):
worth in hundreds of millions, Levchin apparently about a billion,
Teal closer to ten, and Musk in the hundreds of billions.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
That money does not seem real to me, but whatever,
I don't exactly know how to wrap my head around
that level of money, but it does seem like PayPal
was such a giant Unicorn success story that all of
these guys had enough money to keep seeding this huge
wave of big companies and apps that came as the
iPhone and app store exploded and the digital economy boomed.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yeah. I mean, there's a reason they call it the
PayPal Mafia. And if you've watched The Sopranos or any
mafia movie or TV series, you know like when you
need a loan or when you need some money to
start your business, you go to the godfather or one
of the one of the captains and they gave you
some money to start your thing, and then they own you.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
That's right, they own your ass.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
And apparently, you know, this relied most heavily on the
wallet and mind of Peter Teal, at least initially.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
So PayPal is like the patriarch of a very wealthy family,
and the PayPal Mafia is the offspring of that family.
And when they all moved on, they put money into
different companies with similar principles to PayPal, or founded companies
based on their previous experience. And you know, now members
of the PayPal Mafia are some of the most influential
(32:13):
players in Silicon Valley and DC.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yeah, and I think the whole tech industry in some
sense has taken on the ethos of the PayPal Mafia.
I mean, we talked about in the early days how
Google was kind of opposed in some sense to PayPal
Mafia and how they did business, and there's still some
of that, but suddenly this is now the dominant culture
in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
And I think now, as I was just saying, traits
that will carry into the current administration. You know, if
that doge listing tells us anything.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Eight hours a week, lo pey no sleep No.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
But I just think in terms of why it was
interesting is because you can just trace the roots of
so much of the wealth that has come out of
technology in the last twenty five years, and it's wealth
that is so concentrated.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Yeah, And to be fair, these guys are also good branders.
I mean, like if Goldman started talking about the Goldman
Ges or the McKinsey mafew, you would also see like
the fingerprints of a very specific group all over corporate America.
But in some sense, these guys weren't afraid to say
the quiet part out loud and to kind of claim ownership.
(33:29):
What I find really interesting is we look ahead, is
that you know, it's easier to be on the outside
throwing rocks, it's harder to be on the inside picking
up shots of lahs. So as this group has essentially
now become the mainstream and the establishment, how are they
going to deal with that? Right?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Because they don't want to be the establishment. I mean,
that's what's really interesting watching the inauguration, is like, these
are people who built themselves in the anti establishment figures.
You can't really be anti establishment and be that close
to the executive branch, you would think. Or maybe you can,
and it remains to be seen, but I just, yeah,
(34:11):
I don't know how much the libertarian ethos will really remain.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
That's it for this week for tech Stuff. I'm Os
Voloshian and I'm Kara Price.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
This episode was produced by Victoria Dominguez, Lizzie Jacobs, and
Eliza Dennis. It was executive produced by me Kara Price,
oz Valoshian and Kate Osbourne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel
for iHeart Podcasts. The Engineer is Biheied. Fraser and Jack
Insley mixed this episode. Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Join us Next Wednesday for tech Stuff the story when
we share an in depth conversation with author Nathaniel Rich
about the psychological effects of colonizing mars.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Please rate, review and reach out to us at tech
Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. Do they want to
hear from you
Thanks for tuney into tech Stuff. If you don't recognize
my voice, my name is Oz Voloshian and I'm here
because the inimitable Jonathan Strickland has passed the baton to
Cara Price and myself to host tech Stuff. The show
will remain your home for all things tech, and all
the old episodes will remain available in this feed. Thanks
for listening. Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of iHeart
(00:23):
Podcasts and Kaleidoscope. I'm os Voloshan. Today, Cara Price and
I will bring you the headlines of the week, including
new personalized pricing methods and Ohio's investment in AI weapons.
On today's Tech Support segment, we'll talk to four of
four Media's Jason Kebler about Mark Zuckerberg's role in a
(00:44):
TikTok band, and then we're back with another When did
this become a thing? This time we're looking into the
history of the PayPal mafia, all of that on this
Week in Tech. It's Friday, January twenty fourth, So Carrol
wa back.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
We are back, and so is TikTok.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
And so is President Trump. That's right, a lot of
things returning, we do.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It's the great return.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
So it's time for our news round up. Who's going
first today?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Me? Okay, you went first last time.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
That's true. What have you been reading?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
So you like to read Daily Mail and I like
to read Scientific American like it's US weekly. At the
nail salon, I don't get my nails done, but I
would read Scientific American if I did. And I saw
this thing that in a way, I've always been paranoid
that this is going on, but this confirmed my paranoia.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
The FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, which is what was
run by Lena Kon who we talk about often, has
released a report about something called surveillance pricing. What has
been found is that if you shop online, you may
be getting charged a different for certain items than somebody
(02:02):
else might be at the same store.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
So, in other words, the retailer knows that you might
be less price sensitive and therefore charges you more correct
and Lena Connley FTC think this is not right.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I think they're actually more interested in looking into if
it's happening, and it clearly is happening. What they have
concluded is that this is similar to the technology being
used to feed you targeted ads, which we've talked we
talked a lot about on Sleepwalkers and targeted marketing uses
things like our browsing history to serve us ads for
(02:35):
things that we were just thinking about, like Oh, I
need snowbooths. Now I have these snowbooths in my Instagram feed.
This would work similarly. You know, if you have a MasterCard,
for example, that stores a lot of information on you,
the types of things you spend money on, where you live,
you're banking information. All of the information that is accessible
(02:55):
to companies via these third party providers, whether it be
a Fyco credit its scored or credit card company, is
now allowing retailers to make decisions on pricing that I
don't think the average American consumer is used to. I
think another really interesting thing that we didn't get in
the actual report and that the reporter from Scientific American
(03:16):
elaborated on is that this also might be happening in
brick and mortar stores.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
How is that possible?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
That could be because price tags used to be something
that if you think about that thing that would like
put the price on that in and of itself is
now becoming digitized, so you can actually change a price
that's on a computer tag, especially exactly, and those prices
are you know, based on both expiration dates or consumer demand.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Lucky if a billionaires an never do theirn shopping, that's right.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
But Walmart, which is actually not being investigated, claims that
it's digital price tags can be updated remotely within minutes.
It's just an amazing thing to think about, which is
like you usually go into a store, you trust the
price of the thing. You understand that inflation might affect
the thing, You understand that something might be on sale.
You know, this is different. This is literally real time
(04:08):
price not gouging, but price changing. And there's one other
really interesting things which is these instacart smart shopping carts.
And these are actual shopping carts that have scanners and
screens on them. These are screens that advertise to you
while you're shopping. Wow, and then they connect directly to
(04:28):
your credit card payment system.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
I'm actually looking at now that the tagline is you'll
feel like a magician each time you add an item
and pay on the cart.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
This idea of like frictionless shopping is not all about ease.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
No, it's about selling you more stuff. I mean, I
would guess the beginning of fixed prices is probably a
late nineteenth century phenomenon, and before that, like it was
a haggle every time.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
That's right, and you know what you were just saying.
That was actually mentioned in the Scientific American article. They
went back to like early BC bizarres, when people would
just in Yiddish we call it handling, where it was
like there was no set price. It was on the
basis of what somebody was deciding something costs that day,
(05:15):
or how much could you negotiate or finagle.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
And now we're kind of returning to the point where
it's a hagout every time, except way conditioned to believe
that the prices are fixed and our opponent, slash merchant,
has perfect information about us and we have no information
about them. So this sound this sounds pretty unfair.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I want to say that this is not totally negative, right,
Like demographic data can actually benefit people who are looking
for financial aid, for example, And so in the FTC report,
it wasn't like, oh my god, this is the worst
thing ever, we must change as we must take this away.
It was simply a probe into what are the ways
in which data that can then be harnessed by the
(05:54):
power of machine learning is affecting the way we shop.
It is possible that using our demographic data, using our
credit card information, it's possible that something might cost more
for me than it might cost for you. And I
think again, it's just something to be aware of, and I'm,
(06:14):
you know, as we report on this show, very aware of,
like how are small little uses of machine learning actually
affecting the daily lives of Internet users, which we basically
all are at this point.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah, and you know, the bargain we've had with the
tech companies for some time is we give them our
data and they give us their free services. But if
it starts to become a world in which like we're
actually charged on the back end for the way we
gw up our data, it makes you think very differently
about you know, Internet privacy, mvpns and all those kinds
of things.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Yeah, and this is I think the FTC being like
how free is technology? You know, how free is it
to us? And like what is the cost? What is
the cost that we pay, the hidden cost that we
pay as technology users? Is it just a friction free
shopping experience? And the answer is usually now, So what's
up with you this week? What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (07:06):
So last week you showed me that video of a
gun being remotely maneuvered and fired all by voice command
using chat GPT, And then we've got talking about how
open ai has gone back and forth about whether or
their products are allowed to be used to develop weapons. Yes, yes,
I looked into this a bit. And in October last year, Africom,
(07:27):
which is the US military command in Africa who do
a lot of drone surveillance and I think strikes on terrorists,
signed this multi billion dollar contract with Microsoft that included
open ai tools. However, when The Intercept asked open Ai
for comment, they denied they had a partnership with US
(07:47):
military and referred questions up to Daddy Microsoft.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
So they're really the Russian nesting doll.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
This is the Matrioshka of evading responsibility for weapons development.
But then in December, open Ai did in fact sign
a direct contract with a company that develops weapons andrill.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
We talked about them last week.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
The company is named after Arragoron's sword in Lord of
the Rings. In case you're wondering, I wasn't an lot.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Al Fleix, good old Palmer Lucky.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
That's right, Palma Lucky. Sam Altman, who runs open AI said,
quote open AI bills to benefit as many people as
possible and supports US led efforts to ensure the technology
upholds democratic values. Unbelievable first as tragedy them as fast.
I think on this upholding values with weapons. But Andreil,
(08:42):
as usual, you're early to the story and already talking
about it last week. Have had quite a couple of months, obviously,
the big contract with open ai in December. This week,
the New York Times reported they're planning to build a
one billion dollar factory in Ohio, which is set to
bring four thousand jobs and will build tens of thousands
(09:02):
of autonomous systems and weapons over the coming years, swarming
cruise missiles for use abroad and at home surveillance towers.
Andreill's been part of the kind of border surveillance efforts
for some time. It's remarkable to me how this burst
of AI development over the last couple of years has
in a sense, remodeled the American landscape.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Yeah, and I think it's not just a tech story anymore.
We're talking about American cities and infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
But I mean people often. I remember the old question
was like where is tech? The answer is, you can
see it now because it's building huge buildings all over America.
You mentioned Palmer Lucky.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Do you know what he looks like, the dude the mask.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yeah, it's pretty close. He always wears a Hawaiian shirt
and flip flops. He has a goatee, and he plays
Dungeons and Dragons. He's described his character in Dungeons and
Dragons as quote, a chaotic, neutral wizard.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
It's a dating app profile.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
It is. I don't know who you'd find with such
a profile that it turns out you'd find a lot
of investors if you're a founder. He got his start
lucky building VR headsets in his own garage, and then, interestingly,
given what he's doing now, went on to work in
this clinic that worked with vets suffering from PTSD and
(10:25):
using VR headsets for what's called exposure therapy to kind
of help them with their PTSD.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Wasn't he sort of integral in the creation of Oculous Rift.
That's how he made a lot of his money.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Well, that's right, he found an Oculus rift, the VR headset,
which was acquired by Facebook, making him a very young
billionaire at the time, in his mid twenties.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
They didn't figure out what to do with it, but
he doesn't care well.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
And actually he left Facebook under something of a cloud
in twenty seventeen. Some claimed he'd been forced out because
of making a campaign contribution to Donald Trump's twenty sixteen
presidential campaign. Lucky then founded Anderil after leaving Facebook, with
support from none of them Peter Teel. So right now,
(11:08):
it's a good moment to be Palmer Lucky.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
I can't even make the joke.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
What's the joke. It's Lucky, It's Lucky, that's the one.
He's been quite vocal about the threat of China, about
a potential for war in Taiwan, about how the war
in Ukraine has shown the potential for developing new autonomous weapons,
and kind of raise the alarm bell that the US
may be falling behind the curve in all of these areas.
(11:35):
What I find very striking, though, is just a few
years ago the whole of Silicon Valley was more or
less unified against military contracting, and now quite the opposite.
Palmer Lucky recently tweeted, after spending a few days at
CS twenty twenty five's clear that the vibe shift is real.
Everyone wants to help our military. Everyone wants to build.
(11:58):
Nobody's afraid.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Big beautiful buildings. That's what the president would say. We're
looking to build big beautiful buildings.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Right, and big beautiful weapons. I guess.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
When we come back, we're joined by our friends at
four afore media stay with us.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So Caro, I know you are following the the will
they weren't they? So to speak of the TikTok ban,
how did you feel the moment it went dark?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
I was there the moment it went dark online, the
moment it went dark. Yes, on the app, I was
fine because I somehow have not become addicted to TikTok.
But I have friends that were really in withdrawal and
using reels as methadone.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
How bad was it for them?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Very bad? Very bad. Even you're okay, I'm fine.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
It's back now, so you're fine. But what are you
find when it was off?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I was fine. It was off. It was just the
weird like referral to Trump in the messaging on the
app that I was like, what is going on here?
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Yeah? So when you log back on too TikTok, you
were greeted by a message which includes the line as
a result of President Trump's efforts. TikTok is back in
the US.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
It sounds like Trump wrote it, and it also sounds
like he did. It sounds like Biden's bad. Trump is good.
Use TikTok again because of Trump bite dance.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
The Chinese parent company of TikTok is sending a pretty
clear message there. But can I tell you who almost
certainly was not jumping for joy?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Who's that?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
That is Mark Zuckerberg, and he ha to tell us
more about why not. On this week's Tech Support is
four or four Media's Jason Kebler.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Welcome Jason. It's good to have you with us again.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Yeah, this has been my favorite topic of late so
stoke to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
So last week he reported on something that I think
was buried in the pre inauguration slash TikTok chaos. But
you reminded us that what Zuckerberg wanted did most was
actually a TikTok ban. Why is this?
Speaker 3 (14:04):
In many ways, TikTok has become what Instagram once was.
The simple answer is that if TikTok were to be
banned in the United States, the most obvious place for
people to go would be Instagram and Instagram reels and
so a TikTok ban was very likely to benefit Meta
(14:25):
in an outsized way.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
And how was zuck agitating for this?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
So it's very hard to say exactly how involved or
not involved Meta or Mark Zuckerberg himself or in pushing
for a TikTok ban. But Mark Zuckerberg has been sort
of beating this drum about competition from Chinese tech companies
since all the way back in twenty nineteen. He gave
(14:52):
this speech at Georgetown University where he sort of pulled
out this line where he says, you know, a decade ago,
so all of the top ten tech companies were American today,
meaning in twenty nineteen, six of the top ten were Chinese.
And that was right before a big congressional hearing about
Facebook's data privacy practices. Pretty Much anytime that he's pulled
(15:16):
in front of Congress in any way to talk about
Meta's monopoly or privacy issues, he starts talking about the
threat from China and how if there is more regulation
from the US government, basically like a Chinese app will
come in to fill that vacuum. And so he really
like seeded the ground, in my opinion, for what ultimately
(15:40):
became the TikTok ban. The Washington Post also reported back
in twenty twenty two that Meta paid a firm called
Targeted Victory to push the narrative that TikTok was dangerous
for children, although Meta has denied directly lobbying on the
TikTok ban.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
So I can imagine this. We've got to beat China.
Message is is resident with the new president. But it
wasn't always plain sailing between zuck and Trump.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Yeah, I mean, in the aftermath of January sixth Facebook ban,
Donald Trump and Donald Trump spent time last year saying
that he wanted to put Mark Zuckerberg in jail.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
But instead he put him hashtag front row.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah, he has, you know, gone to mar A Lago twice.
He was at the inauguration and through a party, an
inauguration party in DC.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
I threw a party.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah, he threw a party. TikTok also threw a party
for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Well.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
And one of the things that's interesting is that Trump
tried to ban TikTok during his first term in office
with the same sort of China hawk argument, right, and
now he's stalled the ban by executive order for at
least seventy five days, and when asked during the signing
why he changed his mind about the app, Trump said,
(16:52):
because I got to use it, which seems to be
Mark Zuckerberg's nightmare.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
I think that it is Mark Zucker's nightmare. I think
that TikTok being banned would have been a huge prize
for Meta, and they were so so close. I mean,
the the app actually went down. In the lead up
to the ban, Meta started buying ads on TikTok to
advertise Instagram, for example, as an alternative. They started buying
(17:20):
ads on Google saying, you know, come to reels. They
also rolled out this like affiliate program that very closely
mirrors how TikTok shop works, so sort of trying to
entice influencers from TikTok to come to Instagram. And so
I mean that there was like quite a lot of
thought put into Instagram as a replacement for TikTok. And
(17:44):
now there's still this seventy five day delay in terms
of whether the band will actually be enacted. I think
that Trump has made it clear he doesn't really want
to ban this thing. Like they are using Oracle servers
for American tiktoks more or less, which was part of
that earlier executive order that you referenced where Trump wanted
(18:07):
to ban TikTok during his first term, and as part
of that byte dance agreed to move Americans data to
Oracle controlled servers in.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Texas, an American country.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
So an American company, and so Oracle shut down TikTok
servers on Saturday, which is why it went down. But
then on Sunday, I guess Trump was able to cut
a deal with Oracle seemingly that convinced the company to
take the risk to put it back up.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Well, and Larry Ellison then is at the White House
on Tuesday with Project Stargate.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah, Larry Ellison, who is the CEO of Oracle, and
Trump are friends and they've been friends for a long time.
And so to be totally honest with you, a lot
of this seems almost reverse engineer to give Trump a
big win. The ban is incredibly unpopular, and it's incredibly
unpopular among TikTok users who are a young demographic that
(19:04):
you know, Trump has really gone after in this election.
And so I think being able to message like Biden
took your TikTok away, and I gave it back, even
if that is not exactly true. Is a very powerful
thing for Trump to be able.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
To say, Jason, just close. I'm always fascinated by the
law of unintended consequences. But there are a couple of
other apps which saw big, big inflows of users, one
of which was red Note.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yeah. So, red Note is an app that is a
sort of Chinese competitor to TikTok. It's very popular in China.
I have a lot of Chinese American friends who have
been on it for years. It's very good for finding restaurants.
From personal experience, I know that. But you know, in
advance of the TikTok band, you had a lot of
Americans downloading and going over to red Note. And it's
(19:56):
one of the few Chinese social media apps that is
available both in China and the United States. And so
you had a mix of people sort of ironically saying
I would rather give my data directly to the Chinese
government or to a Chinese app than give it to
Mark Zuckerberg. And then I think you also had people
who just didn't like the fact that the US government
(20:19):
was taking something away from them for this sort of
amorphous national security spying reason. I think that there are
very real concerns about TikTok and data privacy, but the
US government has not made it's anything specific about, you know,
(20:40):
the types of spying that may or may not be happening.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
I think you're right, Jason, that the US government has
not made it compelling enough argument for like why TikTok
should be banned. And you know, I think people don't
want to be TikTok refugees. Also because circling right back
to Zuck reels isn't as good. And you know, it's like,
if you want people to use reels, make it as
(21:03):
good as TikTok. And the problem is is I don't
think that will ever be the case.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah, I think you're right. And also, I mean, this
was a big argument ByteDance is making, but it's a
very real and important argument that hundreds of millions of
Americans we're on TikTok, are on TikTok. You have millions
of small businesses, millions of influencers who make a living
on TikTok. And I think that this sort of fractured
(21:30):
Internet that we saw for only a few hours between
Saturday and Sunday, I found it to be like a
really chilling and weird thing that I'm not used to
as an American who who I'm like, I have access
to everything on the internet more or less and suddenly
just sort of being cut off from that and not
even having a very easy circumvention. This was sort of
like a blueprint for how other types of bands could
(21:53):
work in the US, and I think that's pretty scary.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
What will you be looking out for in the next
seventy five days and beyond on this story.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
I think that by Dance is very unwilling to sell TikTok.
Whether that is because of pressure from the Chinese government
or because they have a good business and just don't
want to sell it, who knows. But I think, honestly,
the thing I'm most interested to see is whether this
just kind of fades into the background. And I'm wondering
(22:22):
if in seventy five days nothing changes and we just
sort of keep going, and you know, it will be
a question of whether the Justice Department is willing to
you know, enforce a law that was enacted by Congress
and upheld by the Supreme Court sort of for the
like political interest of the President. Jason, Thank you, thank
(22:44):
you so much.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Coming up we'll explore a crucial first family in tech
with another installment of when did this become a thing?
So Kara, Ever since the election of President Trump, any
number of tech moguls have been showing up at Mara
(23:07):
Lago and in Washington and have even taken on official
roles in the transition the new administration. But there's one
group on everybody's lips.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
The PayPal Mafia.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
PayPal Mafia, and so in today's when did this become
a thing? We want to explore the history of this
powerful group to understand just how they went from smart
investors and founders to seats of power at the top
of government, business, and even social influence. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I know these guys, but I sort of take the
PayPal Mafia for granted without really knowing what their stories are.
So I'm excited for us to do this, and you're
going to start us off.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
So let me start just by going over some of
the members of the PayPal mafia who are now closely
connected or actually inside the Trump administration. So we've got
Elon Musk running DOGE, the Department for Government Efficiency, which
tried to recruit applicants back in November, saying, quote, we
need super high IQ's small government revolutionaries willing to work
(24:06):
eighty plus hours per week on on glamorous cost cutting.
That was a tweet.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Great love it.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Then you have David OSAs another podcast host, the All
In Podcast, another South African and Trump's new AI and Cryptosa.
This is an advisory position, so Sax doesn't have to
quit his day job of being a VC.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Is being a VC, Yeah, I guess that is it
a real job.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Well, it's the intersection of VC in podcasting.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
It's obviously effect on the path heading there.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
And then of course at the center of it all
is Peter Teal. He doesn't have an official capacity in
this administration, but he's the person who introduced Trump and JD.
Vance in twenty twenty one, a key investor in Anderill
and a significant donor to Trump and Vance for many.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Years millions and millions of dollars. And I want to
add that the guy who used to be CEO of
Teal's personal philanthropic foundation that is most famous for paying
kids not to go to college, has been tapped by
Trump to be Deputy Secretary of the HHS, helping RFK
Junior Maha make America healthy.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Again, make America healthy again. So that's where some of
the leading lights of the mafia are today. But to
understand why we call them the Papal Mafia, I need
to take you back to the fall of two thousand
and seven.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Q MGMT.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Two thousand and seven was, of course, the golden age
of MGMT and prestige television. The Sopranos are just at
its final episode and then Fortune Magazine prints this photo.
Credit to Robin Toomey for the indelible image. Cary, can
you pull it up and just describe it for anyone
who doesn't have it burned onto their eyes?
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Well, red lacquer tabletops, a bunch of I mean, I'm gay,
but I still understand a good looking man. And these
are a bunch of guys dressed like they belonged to
Leonardo DiCaprio's pussy Possy.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
You're also vegetarian. There's a steakhouse vibe here as well.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Being steakhouse vibe. There's an oil painting of venice in
the background, a lot of whiskey and most absurdly, poker chips.
But it's giving mafia.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
There's also a baseball bat giving mafia. Do you recognize
anyone in the picture. No, well, two of them are
somewhat recognizable, Peter Teal and Rehealth.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, Speedertael in Halfman. They just look different. Now, that's
why I said that's true.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
I mean, it's been some time has passed. They're also
dressed kind of as they're going to a costume party,
which which doesn't.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Help definitely, which they seem to be enjoying. I don't
know if I enjoy it so much.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
So in this photo is almost every single member of
the PayPal Mafia. They've been using this term in their
own circle, you know self. Self given names of groups
can be on the embarrassing side, yes, but it was
this photo, which is very iconic, that cemented them as
the PayPal Mafia as far as the wider public is concerned.
(27:02):
Right in the front are PayPal founders Peter Teal and
Max Levchin, who Fortune called the don and the conciliary
of the.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Mass, and Max is the Conix the conciliary.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
To get the full picture of how they got inducted
into this elite steakhouse brotherhood.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Dream, by the way, I just have to say, we have.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
To go all the way back to the founding of PayPal,
which started with a different name, which was Confinity not
as Good, Not as good too much like connad by
Teal and Levchin. And then in two thousand they merged
with a company called x dot com, which it was
an online banking platform you know who that was founded
by By two thousand and one, the combined company was
(27:46):
known as PayPal. This is way before Meta or ABNB
or way way before open Ai.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Yeah, it's funny because I think back, I mean, two
thousand and one is nine to eleven. I mean it's
that's really early Internet. And I, you know, as a
young person, was not interfacing with PayPal.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
This is more like Netscape. Oh yeah, a little bit.
Maybe he was at Yahoo even around those Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
YEAHO was around because I used to use yahooligans.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
But this was just a few years after Google was
founded in nineteen ninety eight. But there were some very
big differences between how these two future behemoths, Google and
PayPal were run, and a lot of it had to
do with culture. As that two thousand and seven Fortune
article explains, a few of the PayPal mafia had some
(28:32):
choice words about the Omerta the PayPal culture. The former
CFO of PayPal said, quote the difference between Google and
PayPal was that Google wanted to hire PhDs and PayPal
wanted to hire people who got into PhDs and then
dropped out. It is, he said, a different temperament.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Well, right, and you can absolutely see how Peter Tiel
would later incentivize people to drop out of college with
the foundation.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
And these weren't even PhD students, were undergraduate, that's right.
But so you know, back in the early days of PayPal,
there was this concerted effort to not hire anyone affiliated
with any kind of establishment organization. Teal and Levchin wanted
workaholics who weren't consultants, weren't MBAs, and weren't part of
the kind of elite establishment culture.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
So like, who was the ideal profile for this.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Well, co founder Max Levchin said that hiring was sort
of a process of finding like minded people. He said
he was looking for, quote, someone just as geeky and
who doesn't get laid very often. For the most part,
this worked. Elon was quickly ousted because he tried to
mandate some kind of technological overhaul, but that bad blood
(29:46):
that once existed has been put to rest, and according
to Walter Isaacson, who wrote the most biography. Musk couch
surfs on PayPal mafia couches when he's traveling.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Between hotel That's how you have one hundred billion? Is
you couch service?
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Exactly? That's right. There are stories back in the day
of disagreements turning to wrestling matches again. Another preview of
that that the yet to happen cage fight between Musk
and Zuckerberg. But it was it was quite the vibe.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
And it's I mean, it's very funny because it is
an anti establishment vibe that's so clearly yearns to be
this anti establishment.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Right. It's like totally like teenage. It's like a teenage
sort of sleepover on the you know, with this money
and as she drinks as that's right, as you are.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
But they're like, it's not a sleepover, it's just a
gathering of boys.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
But this mindset was really cultivated by the libertarian leaning
Peter Teal and there is this inherent sort of culture
and personality of the Papal Mafia that may in some
sense help explain why these contrarians went on to be
some of the most successful entrepreneurs and vcs in Silicon
Valley history. For reference, David Sachs is thought to be
(30:56):
worth in hundreds of millions, Levchin apparently about a billion,
Teal closer to ten, and Musk in the hundreds of billions.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
That money does not seem real to me, but whatever,
I don't exactly know how to wrap my head around
that level of money, but it does seem like PayPal
was such a giant Unicorn success story that all of
these guys had enough money to keep seeding this huge
wave of big companies and apps that came as the
iPhone and app store exploded and the digital economy boomed.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yeah. I mean, there's a reason they call it the
PayPal Mafia. And if you've watched The Sopranos or any
mafia movie or TV series, you know like when you
need a loan or when you need some money to
start your business, you go to the godfather or one
of the one of the captains and they gave you
some money to start your thing, and then they own you.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
That's right, they own your ass.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
And apparently, you know, this relied most heavily on the
wallet and mind of Peter Teal, at least initially.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
So PayPal is like the patriarch of a very wealthy family,
and the PayPal Mafia is the offspring of that family.
And when they all moved on, they put money into
different companies with similar principles to PayPal, or founded companies
based on their previous experience. And you know, now members
of the PayPal Mafia are some of the most influential
(32:13):
players in Silicon Valley and DC.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yeah, and I think the whole tech industry in some
sense has taken on the ethos of the PayPal Mafia.
I mean, we talked about in the early days how
Google was kind of opposed in some sense to PayPal
Mafia and how they did business, and there's still some
of that, but suddenly this is now the dominant culture
in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
And I think now, as I was just saying, traits
that will carry into the current administration. You know, if
that doge listing tells us anything.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Eight hours a week, lo pey no sleep No.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
But I just think in terms of why it was
interesting is because you can just trace the roots of
so much of the wealth that has come out of
technology in the last twenty five years, and it's wealth
that is so concentrated.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Yeah, And to be fair, these guys are also good branders.
I mean, like if Goldman started talking about the Goldman
Ges or the McKinsey mafew, you would also see like
the fingerprints of a very specific group all over corporate America.
But in some sense, these guys weren't afraid to say
the quiet part out loud and to kind of claim ownership.
(33:29):
What I find really interesting is we look ahead, is
that you know, it's easier to be on the outside
throwing rocks, it's harder to be on the inside picking
up shots of lahs. So as this group has essentially
now become the mainstream and the establishment, how are they
going to deal with that? Right?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Because they don't want to be the establishment. I mean,
that's what's really interesting watching the inauguration, is like, these
are people who built themselves in the anti establishment figures.
You can't really be anti establishment and be that close
to the executive branch, you would think. Or maybe you can,
and it remains to be seen, but I just, yeah,
(34:11):
I don't know how much the libertarian ethos will really remain.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
That's it for this week for tech Stuff. I'm Os
Voloshian and I'm Kara Price.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
This episode was produced by Victoria Dominguez, Lizzie Jacobs, and
Eliza Dennis. It was executive produced by me Kara Price,
oz Valoshian and Kate Osbourne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel
for iHeart Podcasts. The Engineer is Biheied. Fraser and Jack
Insley mixed this episode. Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Join us Next Wednesday for tech Stuff the story when
we share an in depth conversation with author Nathaniel Rich
about the psychological effects of colonizing mars.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Please rate, review and reach out to us at tech
Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. Do they want to
hear from you
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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