September 12, 2023 • 39 mins
Silicon Valley is the centerpiece of a very specific kind of bro culture – a culture that has had a certain winner-take-all mojo over the years, but which may be running its course. To test this thesis, I present you with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, founders of such landmark companies as Tesla, SpaceX, and Meta (aka Facebook). They are both innovators, admirable risk-takers, and bazillionaires. They’ve also struggled to evolve; to have early, vaunted reputations as wise men correspond with equally wise management and wise decisions as the world around them changed. Kara Swisher is the host of the “On With Kara Swisher” and “Pivot” podcasts, and an editor-at-large at New York magazine.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and
social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm
Kim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course Elon and Zuck versus Grown
up Management. Silicon Valley is many things. It's a hub
of revolutionary technological innovation. It's home to novel creative approaches
(00:23):
to managing businesses and production. It's a giant storehouse of
wealth and startup britches, stretching along a slender strip of
land winding south from San Francisco to San Jose. It's
also the centerpiece of a very specific kind of bro culture,
a culture that has had a certain winner take all
mojo over the years, but which may be running its course.
(00:44):
That's not to say that the bro's holds will loosen.
It just may be that, as Silicon Valley matures, being
a bro is in everything that it's cracked up to be,
at least when it comes to managing a mature and
complex enterprise, instead of say, launching a world beating company
from scratch. To test this thesis, I present you with
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, founders of such landmark companies
(01:08):
as Tesla, SpaceX and Meta aka Facebook. They are both innovators,
admirable risk takers, and bazillionaires. They've also struggled to evolve
to have early vaunted reputations as wise men correspond with
equally wise management and wise decisions as the world around
them changed, and they recently considered fighting one another in
(01:30):
a cage match. Really they did. Joining me today to
consider all of this is Kara Swisher. Kara has been
watching Silicon Valley since well forever as a journalist, convener
of Ideas, raconteur, and residence smarty. She is the host
of the On with Kara Swisher and Pivot podcasts. That's
a lot of podcasting, and she's an editor at large
(01:52):
with New York Magazine. So howdy Cara, Hi, how you doing.
I'm good, I'm good. Thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
No problem.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
So we may come out of this with different definitions,
but can we develop a working definition together of Silicon Valley? Broness,
how would you define that?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, it's not meant to be nice, I think at
this point there's all kinds of cliches about groups of
people Hollywood types or producers or whatever, indie actors, and
so it's just a type of person who populates Silicon
Valley who they sort of take on the patterns of
the others who came before them, and so they pass
it down from person person I guess if you had
(02:29):
to broadly put it, and I don't think everyone fits
into this. It's you know, an arrogance youth, frequently wrong,
but never in doubt. Use a word like pivot, and
you know, failure is just an opportunity for growth, that
kind of stuff, you know, just a sort of basically
going through the world and breaking things and then thinking
it's someone else's fault almost all the time.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I mean, is it an unfair broad brush, well sort of.
And Silicon Valley and one.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
People are always like, you know, lesbian's evning a sense
of humor. I think I'm very funny, so, you know,
I don't know, I just I guess it does tend
to fit, though they do tend to dress alike. I
think what happens is when you get in any culture,
people tend to pattern match people, and so everyone suddenly
was behaving like Mark Zuckerberg, right, But Mark Zuckerberg was
behaving like people before him. So it's a little true.
Like a lot of things it's got a lot of
(03:17):
truth to it. And they often do tend to look
alike and wear the same clothes and have the same attitudes,
but they also contain multitudes. As Walt Whitman wrote.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
So have I picked well? Do you think that Elon
Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are emblematic of the culture of
Bronus Wow?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
In different ways? You know, both have changed rather significantly,
although I would say, you know, on the surface, I
guess Mark would be the tech bro, of the kind
of bro you think about. Although personally he's quite nice.
He's quite a nice guy from what I can understand.
He's quite a good parent, and he's a good husband,
you know what I mean. Like, there's a lot more
there than people would think about him. At the same time,
(03:56):
he kind of has people following him or trying to
be like him essentially, and that way, which is like
push through I'm right, even though people said I was wrong,
that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Right now, he's got a bit of an obsession with athleticism.
I assume it's because he wasn't athletic when he was younger.
It's quite aggressive. His athleticism is quite aggressive. Let me
show you me doing all these hard athletic things or
show off my body in some fashion, which I'm fine with. Fine, whatever,
he wants to be healthy. So you know, you probably
see a lot of people better match that. There's a
(04:27):
lot of people they did the same thing when everybody
was fasting or whatever, and so you know, he seems
like it. Although I think people would be surprised to
find him to be a relatively thoughtful and nice person.
I know people get angry when I say that, because
he's done a lot of damage. His company has done
a lot of damage to society. I think so, and
so it can be cross purposes with he. Well, you
(04:48):
may like him, but he's done terrible things. Well, I'm
just pointing out that he's not obnoxious. I've never found
him to be particularly obnoxious.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
But the pro phenomenon is it's a relatively new thing,
at least in the dimensions we're talking about it, right.
I mean, Silicon Valley's always been a boys club, right,
and still largely is. But there's a world of difference
between the days of Bill Hewlett and David Packard and
Elon and Zach Sure.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
They just wore ties. They were just as arrogant like,
I'm sorry they were. If you go back and look
at that, you know, Thomas Edison was kind of a jackass.
So I feel like tech pros have always been somewhat
of a jackass, you know, I don't know, there was definitely.
I mean I wrote a piece when I came to
the Wall Street Journal in the nineties because I started
to notice they all had to wear a certain kind
of vest. If you're a VCS, you had a different
kind of vest, you know, a fleece fest essentially, Patagonia
(05:34):
fleece Fest. One of the things I wrote is all
the lies they tell themselves, which was one is that,
you know, I don't like fancy things. They needed burrito
places and meanwhile, jump on the private plane two years later, right,
that kind of stuff. And so they sort of had
to sort of cosplay being a simple guy just like
everybody else, you know, that kind of thing. And I'm
not dressing well. I may wander around in Adidas what
(05:57):
are they called those things? He wears their flip pops. Essentially.
My son will kill me for not knowing what to
call this, but you know that kind of thing. I'm
a simple guy. I don't need a lot and then
of course they all live lives of ridiculous and egregious privilege.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
But there has been a cultural shift, right. I mean,
I am amused, and I like the idea of thinking
about Thomas Edison as a tech bro. He is, and
maybe in his time he was a tech bro for
you know the way he rolled then. But I think
there's sort of a bravado to it now and a
strutting to it now that seems different from Edison. It
seems different from Hewlett and Packer.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I think if you look back, do a lot of
manipulation of the press, a lot of stuntishness, that kind
of stuff. It's not unlike Elon Musk, honestly.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
But that's like a use of power, which I know
has been eternal. But I'm sort of I just wonder
if there's a cultural kind of a difference around the
ma chismo of it and the kind of public strutting
that it income.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
I think they just these are people who didn't get
a lot of attention in their youth and now they
do because of money and power, and so it's very classic.
Feels like a Genesee in song, like they got pick
lasts at basketball and they're taking it out on the
rest of us for not picking them sooner. I don't
I don't know, you know, you could boil it down
to something like that, but a lot of them Tech
has become cool and nerds has become cool. It's sort
(07:13):
of the revenge of the Nerds kind of scenario that
has happened. And what comes with it is an enormous
amount of money. Like that's really what gives them power, right,
the money they have, not necessarily it they invented something,
although that's also important. But you know, when people become
really rich, they become more and more certain they're correct,
and very few people push back against that because it's
all in their interests to get money from those people.
(07:36):
You know, everyone's on their payroll, and so that tends
to be like that. The way I sort of characterize
it is sort of a juvenilization of people who are
adults men, adult men, typically white adult men, and so
they juvenilize them by constantly licking them up and down,
telling them they're smart, saying oh right again, sir, that
kind of thing. And I think one of the things
(07:56):
that also at the same time that manifests is that
they feel like they're victims. If they're criticized or given
any feedback, they find that to be an attack. Like
you're seeing that right now with Elon and ADL. It's
their fault, you know. Naysayers. Well, in this case, he's
pulling into tropes around Jews or to blame, which is
very dangerous. And yeah, they're naysayers and they're Miami. He's
(08:18):
got to always have an enemy, you know what I mean,
Because you couldn't possibly have made a mistake. You know,
that's something that's very hard for them to accept.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So is that mindset that you're right and everyone else
is wrong and you're a strutting rooster. Are those things
necessary to be successful in Silicon Valley?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
No, not at all. There's a lot of very nice people,
not at all, not even slightly. I can think of
a dozen different people who are just lovely, Brian Chesky
being one of them from Airbnb. Most of the adults
are fine.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Even Steve Jobs wasn't that much of an asshole, not
compared to these guys, like you know what I mean,
He could.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Be eric and once he learned, he turned out to
be a pretty good manager.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Oh yeah, absolutely. And most people stayed for twenty years, right,
they didn't leave the people who work there. He could
be very difficult, but you know, he also if you
go back and listen interview, he's very thoughtful. He's very
I wouldn't say he was humble, but that's okay, that's fine.
He was a game changer, but he wasn't just petty
and juvenile. He definitely wasn't juvenile.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
He also had to kind of go through trial by fire, right,
he got kicked out of the company he built.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, I just feel like he was an adult and sort.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Of learned from his lessons and then came back and acted.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I used the term adult like he was an adult,
Like there's a lot of adults. Tim Cook as an adult.
Read Hastings as an adult, read Hoffman as an adult,
you know, meaning that they just they don't get into
peaks if you say, hey, I have a problem with this,
Like when I was doing an interview with Elon and
I was he was, you know, just forcing his employees
back into the office, into the factory. Before anybody knew
(09:48):
anything about COVID. You could have an argument about whether
it or not, but nobody knew, and he had a
certainty I think he said something like they'll be like
zero COVID deaths or whatever or something. He didn't know.
I've read all the studies.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
I couldn't believe it. Completely ignorant everything you said.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Of course, but he read all the studies of deep ignorance.
I was like, we don't know, we don't know. Let's
assume lack of safety until we have better information, like
why not? And you know, he threatened to walk off
the show, like I'm going to leave. I'm like, fine,
who does that? But like my two year old, My
two year old doesn't even behave like that, right, It's like,
who does that? That's an adult. I'm going to leave. Haha,
(10:23):
you know whatever, it's childish and throw out of this ever. Right,
It's just like, you know, we're someone who posts memes
of boobs, like he always puts a boob thing up.
I'm like, you're fifty two fucking years old, really, you know,
and all the young men ooh.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Cool enough with the boobs.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Cool boobs, Like, oh, come on, really, you're fifty two.
It moves in on pathetic.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
And poop emojis. Don't forget the poop emojis.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah, whatever, whatever, they're fifty two.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
It's an ecosystem too, right, isn't the venture capital community
and the media part of the development of Bronus.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah, it depends. Like the venture capitalist I always thought
them as enabling parents, like, oh, yes, you're a genius.
Their interests for money, They wanted to make money. So
anything they could say to get these guys to do
what they wanted was what they would do. So more sugar,
sure you won't get diabetes. Sure more I love you, You're
the best. And of course they would turn on them
in a second if they needed to. But yeah, I
(11:18):
think the culture was very much we support our founders,
and in fact it was just bad parenting this way
I looked at it bad parenting.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
And on the note of bad parenting, I'm going to
take a quick break to hear from a sponsor, Karen,
and then we'll come right back. I'm talking with Silicon
Valley whisperer Kara Swisher about tech Bros. And Elon Musk
and Mark Zuckerberg. Carol, let's talk about each of these
(11:47):
guys individually. Zuck found Facebook famously in his Harvard dorm
room in two thousand and four. So if you look
back on his path to an IPO and three billion
users and becoming the most vibrant global social media platform,
the apollo of the social media landscape. Is there anything
different about the path that he took to those various
(12:09):
landing pads as an entrepreneur and then a businessman, You know,
he was more driven.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
He he reminded me of a great deal of Bill Gates,
you know, very driven young man at all times and
very serious at the time. If you may not recall,
my Space was the cat's pajamas for everybody, right, everybody
loved my sise. They were cool and handsome.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Remember friends there.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, yeah, although that was never cool with my Space
and Chris, a guy who ran it, and Tom were cool.
They were cool. They were handsome, cool men, and so
that was where everybody was. And Mark was just plugging
away out.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
And the Murdochs were smart for having remember bought into
my Space.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
They did, but they think they lost money at it.
I believe they did.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
They ultimately did. But remember at the.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Time, Yeah, the thing that makes me think they're not smart,
They think they were stupid. But Mark was plugging away
with the utilitarian thing that I he kept calling it
the utility to me and you can imagine as a reporter, Oh,
a utility. How fascinating, you know, And so I thought
that was really smart actually, because he is just sort
of I'm useful, I'm useful, I'm useful, And I used
to call him a young fogie, like he was sort
of an old person in a young person's body. And
(13:07):
so he was quite serious and very like intent and
aggressive a lot like young Bill Gates, I think, in
a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
And then he grows Facebook sort of in two ways,
through this steamroller of an ad business, and then through
acquisitions he buys Instagram, WhatsApp as time goes on, and
then organic growth sort of stalls out on him and
he has to actually try to do something with the
company other than ride the wave, and the jury still
(13:35):
out as to whether or not he's up to that, right.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Right, Yeah, I mean that happens with a lot of
people like Microsoft. You remember they went into media. They
had AMAZN, they had cable, they had all kinds of
little alley ways they went down, none of which worked
out except he sold software.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
General electric in a completely different industry.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Everybody does that, like, you know, even the Google guys,
they don't like search business, even though it pays for everything, right,
I think we'll do elevators up the streets of Sanford Cisco.
What about a barge where we you know, we live
or whatever. And now you know, these people making their
town up in Solano County, you know, they get bored
with what brought them there and they want to do
something else. And I think all these things have a
life cycle. Right, people will use Facebook until something else
(14:15):
better comes alonger they don't like it anymore, they get
bored with it. There's a limit to growth of it.
And so you've got to be really prescient.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
The only company that really does this over and over
again has been Apple. Right has continued to evolve relatively successfully,
although they've had you know, if you don't remember paying
I do. It was their social network. They tried a
whole bunch of things that didn't.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Work, and they're starting to hit some plateaus.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Everyone says the proper Steve Jobs tied. It's over. It
was not over forth ten times the amount when he
was living.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
And they brought in a very competent, boring, skilled manager
and Tim Cook, not a.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Bro yeah, and grew it. Didn't just manage it, grew it.
You know, the Internet's littered with companies that were popular
and I've forgotten the names of a lot of them,
right that were super popular and then weren't. And these
are consumer products in many ways, and so that's normal
and natural for people to move on from what they're doing.
And so Facebook certainly has had the longest run of
(15:09):
successful utility for people who use it, and smartly bought Instagram,
which still remains really interesting. I think what's hard is,
just like with Google, is everything else pales in comparison
to their original product, and very few companies can change
course in that regard.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
So how do you see Mark Zuckerberg's management evolving over
that time, from those heady days when Facebook was just
a self generating piggybank to now when he's trying to
find new businesses. He turns through Cheryl Sandberg after a period.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
It was a long time. I know he was ten
fifteen years. That wasn't a short period. I think Mark
has an admirable consistency of the managers there. They were
there ten twelve years, which I think was unusual to stay.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I think the shift from Cheryl Sandberg to Nick Clegg
is meaningful in terms of.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Well that's just it's a late stage company, right, late
stage company for internet companies which have a very short,
much shorter life cycle. You know, Cheryl was critically important.
Mark had a chaotic management style for a long time
because he was young and never he's actually quite good
as a manager.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
And she was the adult in the room.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Well I hate the expression, but yeah, sure, I think
you know, she just knew how to run a business
right with stuff he wasn't interested in. He was interested
in the products. She was interested in business. And she
had come from Google where she ran the most boring
part of Google that did really well, which is this
ad serving business. And she really should get a lot
of credit for, you know, jacking the ad business as
(16:31):
high as they did, and they had a great partnership
for a very long time. And I just think it
evolves over time and again as these people get rich,
as they get wealthier, they get bored with what brong them.
They don't like oh, or in the wire hanger business,
I'd rather own a sports team, right, you know what
I mean? Like nobody wants to be what they were,
And so I think he evolved, and then of course
he got hit with all the accusations around misinformation and
(16:54):
Russian involvement and meddlesomeness and.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
For division and hate.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
And so what does he do. He renames the company
going down another alley, which is the metaverse, which I
think has proved rather expensive and quite premature.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Well, and also sort of imposed that on an entire
company because it was his idea and he thought it
was the way to get ys.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Well, because he controls the company, he can't be fired.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Right, But this is also to me another sort of
signal moment and whether or not young Mark can evolve
into a good manager, like the embrace of meta as
both an idea and a name and a direction for
the company. Yeah, that he sort of jams down.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
He was trying to pretend he wasn't you know, No, No,
I'm not Genghis Khan. I'm really Phil Jackson. I don't
know whatever. He just wanted to change his name. He
didn't want to be one thing, you know, ignore that
over there. I'm over here doing this fabulous future stuff.
He should have said AI really is what he should
have said, but he said metaverse instead. And you know,
with the time, we were like, no, this is so early,
(17:55):
this is so wrong. But it's his party's he controls
the company. So that's the way it is.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
So let's focus on Elon for a second. He launches
PayPal famously with people.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
He did not launch PayPal. No, that's not true.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Well, it was through a merger with X dot com.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
And they were they were competitors. PayPal existed, they were rivals.
They didn't like each other. That gang Elon's gang and
the other gang.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Well he had X and the other I can't remember
the other companies that merged form PayPal doesn't. We're probably
bore people all they In.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Any case, they merged them because they were competitors. They
didn't want to compete. That really was what they were
doing this.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
So so PayPal comes in.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, and they all got together and they had a
lot of problems with each other, and Elon got you know,
jammed out of PayPal in a lot of ways. And
they all made money.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
But he gets some of the spoils though when they
sell it to eBay, right.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I mean, that was a very lucky thing for all
of them.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Especially for Elon, and that it gave him a lot
of cash that he uses to seed space x and
to take a steak in Tesla all around the same period.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
It was unusual because all of them went often did
stupid things. And Elon he really attracted my notice because
he wasn't doing dumb things. I was like, huh, you
know rockets, cars, Oh cool, you know what I mean.
It was very ambitious and really interesting and AI. He
was very early. He's one of the first people who
ever talked about AI with me was Elon Musk, especially
the dangers of AI, and so yeah, he was very serious,
(19:16):
like another serious minded person who was doing substantive things
rather than oh, I think I'll become a VC and
funded dating service and you know whatever. They were all
so stupid, you were like, oh, I can't talk to you.
But Elon was always interesting well, and you know.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
He single handedly gets the US with the government's help,
notably with massive government subsidies both at SpaceX and Tesla.
In different got alone.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
It would have gone out of business without government help.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
And he got government contracts from NASA at SpaceX.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah, he has them. He continues to he has.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Them, and it was sort of the foundation of his
viability was getting those one one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
He's the biggest government handout person I know then a
good success.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Yay.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
He literally is the ad for why government's good.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
It's corporate welfare. But it's good corporate welfare. You know.
It created a world beating commercial space center, missile enterprise,
and rocket enterprise, and a transformative EV company, So kudos
to him. Those aren't small things, oh they're not. Makes
him the world's wealthiest man. And then he decides, as
(20:18):
I think he becomes increasingly erratic, he decides to buy
Twitter for forty four billion dollars. Right, he did, and
that's hardly the sign of someone who is a shrewd
invest way.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Well we'll see, won't we Maybe he'll turn it around.
It was never a very good business, like let's start with.
It was a terrible business all of its life since
it was founded, and it was badly managed, except for
maybe Dick Costlow had a bit of a bright spot,
but it never reached the potential. Everybody thought it was you,
everyone thought it was Facebook.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
It was never a Facebook in any scope.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Never made money for the users, never moved off of
nineteen dots, was always at nineteen dollars, I recall. But
it was badly managed.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
So it wasn't necessarily a company he'd pay forty four
billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
No, I think it was. You know, it had a
high there during the pandemic. I think you know, who
knows why stock goes up or down, but you know
it definitely if you zeroed it out over the history
of it, you wouldn't have paid that. No, you wouldn't
have paid for that. But I thought he would do
a good job. I needed someone like him to come
in and be king of the place, rather than do you.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Really think he'd do a good job when he first
took it.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
I did because it was a goat rodeo over there,
and it was all these CEOs that came in and
out and all these feelings. It was the most emotional
company you've ever deal with. You're sort of like, are
you kidding me? With all your various and sundry dramas
between each other, you know, all the founders and like
this founder, you know, it was really exhausting to cover them.
And again, it never met its potential of its influence.
It had a lot of influence, but not a lot
(21:40):
of business and very difficult issues around same thing polarization.
They just didn't have the resources that Facebook did, and
so you know, anyone could come in and do something.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
With it if they were the right person, right, and.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
He certainly had the means and the motivation. He loved
the product. It obviously spoke to him in some deep
way personally and emotionally, and so I thought.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
I had no experience, and I do think managing a
media company requires a certain comp.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Well, they try to pretend. I know, of course it is,
but they pretend it is it's a communications company. I
always thought it was a media company and thought that
was the direction it should go in. And I was
working with Twitter to actually monetize spaces and all this stuff.
And then he comes in and I thought, okay, all right.
We exchanged a bunch of emails about it. I was like,
all right, you've got the money, you got the attention,
(22:27):
you could bring in a smart media executive and really
do something. Finally, like one person making a decision, because again,
you know, I used to jokingly because I'm a lesbian,
I can say that it was like a lesbian collective,
Like no decisions were made ever, like everyone with feelings
were hurt all the time. That's a cliche, Lesbian's not true,
but it was really. There was a small handful of
people who could have brought order to the place. Instead,
(22:49):
it's his personality disorders writ large unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah. I mean I think maybe we part ways on
that one because I thought in the very beginning he
was the worst sort of person to take Twitter over
because he lack the experiencing insight for that particular company.
I hid.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I thought, yes, the COVID stuff was strange.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
The COVID denier. You know, I'm a free speech absolutist,
but meanwhile he's crushing free speech within his own company,
and he's going after people who criticize him.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, that's critical textures. Well, when has that ever happened?
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Yeah, but it doesn't suggest you're the best guy to
run a media company.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
All I was saying is one person making the decisions.
I thought he would hire a very smart meet executive
and get out of the way. But he didn't, because
this is about him and his personality, right, his larger
you know, emotional well being so to speak.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Did all of that sort of erratic behavior with him,
And you know, as he see investigates him for securities
broad for saying the saud He's going to help him
take Tesla private. That seems to have definitely all been
built on smoke. Did any of that surprise you over
the arc of time from when you first met him
to who.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
He is now, Yes and no, like you saw it there.
You know, he had a juvenile interest in memes and
especially move memes, and I had teenage boys at the time.
I'm like, oh, look it's another one, you know, so
I had recognized the pattern. You know, he had a
lot of juvenilia, like very much sort of like stupid jokes.
You know. The COVID thing was the first time I
was like, huh, that's weird. You know, that's weird. And
(24:15):
then those stuff at the factories around racism and stuff
like that started to pop up. You know, he wasn't
that different from other ones. And actually he was somewhat
I would say, delightful to talk to because he was
very odd and interesting and he had you know, again,
he was the first person who talked about the dangers
of AI. This was a decade and a half ago, right,
a long time ago, and nobody was talking about that.
(24:35):
They were all talking about whatever the latest stupid trend
was for the day, and he wasn't. He was very
prescient about a lot of stuff, including cars, and space
and everything else, and so you'd see flashes of it.
I always say, like about ten percent of his personality
was really distasteful, I guess, and the rest was really interesting.
And with all the caveats you have about these egomaniacal, arrogant,
(24:57):
narcissistic founders. And then something happened, something turned. It's like
milk spoiled. Everything became about victimization. He felt under siege.
I know it sounds dumb.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Do you think that's a different turn than the turn
Zuckerberg took.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I don't think Juckberg's changed personally, No, I don't. I
think he's matured and he's developed as a man, I think.
And in terms of elon he went backwards. He's like
Benjamin Button, you know, except the jerk, the jerkish Benjamin Button.
And so those parts of his personality as he got
to be the richest man in the world, and especially
with enablers or the wrong people around him, started to
(25:34):
get really ugly. Just these people, all of whom are
paid by him. And you know, this idea of all
these fans like licking him up and down. It's affected
his personality, you know, and including his family relationships with
his now daughter. You know, if you talk to people
around him, and they'll only talk off the record because
they're terrified of getting off the gravy train. They are worried.
(25:57):
They are worried about that. But you know, they all
allow it to happen because he's the center. He's the
son of a particular universe and very powerful. It's so classic,
you know, it's classic with royalty. It's you know, this
is not a news story.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
It's how power functions.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Well some power, but like kings, they get a little nutty,
you know what I mean, Like it just happens when
nobody says, hey, just a second, and anyone who said hey,
just a second, he's thrown out of the kingdom, myself included.
You know whatever, I don't care. I have plenty of friends.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
I'm going to take another break care and then we'll
come right back. I'm back with Kars Swisher. We're talking
about tech bros and tech brodom. I asked you this earlier,
and I want to come back to the degree to
which Zuckerberg and Musque aren't that much different from their
compatriots in Silicon Valley. I think of Jack Dorsey as
(26:48):
sort of a junior mint version of this. You know,
somehow they let him be the CEO of two companies simultaneously.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
They did.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
It wasn't really good at being the CEO of one company,
much less too, but he got away with it. You
don't see many women or executives of color anywhere in
the US being granted those sorts of opportunities and second chances.
And then, you know, I do think of Tim Cook
as a sort of the polar opposite of both of
(27:17):
these guys. And I think there's a lesson in that
about how you manage the trajectory of successful companies. That
maybe you need these crazy geniuses who are completely self
assured for a certain part of the company's trajectory, but
then the grown ups have to come in and put
their hands on the steering wheel and move it along.
Do you agree with that or do you think that's
(27:38):
too simple?
Speaker 2 (27:38):
As I do think it's too similar, because I think
Tim was there from the beginning of the recovery of Apple, right,
So it wasn't like he just was brought in to
deal with difficult Steve just Sue Jobs was a great manager, right,
you know what I mean? Like, and so was Jeff Bezos,
lots of mistakes made by both of them, and.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
In fact, Steve jobs knew Tim Cook was somebody he
needed to have there must.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
So yeah, there were a lot of choices at that company,
but he picked the one who I think, you know, typically,
I remember when he died, everyone was like, oh, not
this guy, this boring guy, this guy, this guy, And
I was like, I don't know, I feel like he's
been running what's been important to that company, creativity. There's
a lot of creative people there. So this myth of
the one god who can solve everything, I think is
not a new and front. You remember Leiahkca only he
(28:19):
could do it. It's sort of part of the corporate
mental well again, but in that case, yes, right until
no speaking to someone who had really distasteful opinions about
Jewish people, et cetera. Think about that today. I just
think Twitter was around for a lot of these people. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, there would have been reputations in flames much earlier.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah maybe, but now it doesn't matter. You can be shameless,
you know, and I think Donald Trump introduced that you
can be shameless and you actually do better.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
And it's celebrated. In fact, in certain cases.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah, yeah, it's cool. I always love when they all
do this fight the man. I'm like, you are the
fucking man, Like you know what i mean, Like, that's
my favorite. I'm like, I'm sorry, but you know, revolutions
in Rome, the people who helped overthrow the Republic were
some of its nobles, right, the Cracktree brothers. I think
that's their names.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
That often happens, you know, or Donald Trump. I'm with you,
people of Goal Mining Country. I'm like, are you kidding me?
You live in a golden palace in New York City
and Manhattan. But that's okay. It works for people, right,
I'm your friend. And so you have to create this
very pet Barnum like structure around you where you have
to overstate you're already myriad of accomplishments in order to
(29:31):
engender more love and more attention and everything else. And
one of the things I like about Mark is I
don't think, except for his kickboxing, which is fine, you know,
he doesn't really seek attention. I think he's kind of
proud of it. I guess I don't feel irritated by that,
And I'm not particularly irritated by Jeff Bezos putting up
chest shots of himself. You look good, Jeff, Okay, you
(29:52):
should be happy with just that you look good, But
I'm okay. I'm like, okay, he's proud of his nice
physique now because he used to be kind of wimpy looking,
and those are fine. But Elon needs attention every day,
so I has to do you know, another stunt that's
even crazier. You feel like you're in the middle of network,
the movie network. Right, What am I going to do today? Oh,
let's attack the Jews. Oh today, trans people. Let's not
(30:13):
forget I have a trans child, and so it's even
more heinous to do that. Today, Let's attack you know,
Paul Pelosi saying he's part of a gay love triangle
with no proof whatsoever, and too bad if people get hurt.
Or today it's you know, Biden's fault. Today it's reporter's fault.
Like whoever like or say something crazy and everybody pays
attention to you. It's really sad when you think about it,
(30:35):
because there are accomplishments here, real accomplishments.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
World changing accomplishments are both of their sides, but.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
They're not as big as they think they are, but
they're big. Like they're big, but they're not that big.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Elon is thirteen years older than Zuckerberg, yet he's far
more of a juvenile delinquent in my humble estimation, and
it sort of surprised me when Zuckerberg took the bait recently.
I did too.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
I did too.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
I'll go, I'll do a case match with you. We
can fight one another.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
I think he's really enthusiastic about it. I do think
he really loves it. It's given him, you know, just.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Like the pickleball.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
It's like pickleball. I have friends who've now become really
pickleball fanatics, and you're like, calm the fuck down. It's
just a game. But they love it. It changed their lives,
you know.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, yeah, But there's a little difference again, Let's go
play pickleball on Friday night as to let's beat the
hell out of each other in a cage. I think
there's sort of a qualitative.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
It's something look he feels, but I don't look at
you know what.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
It is not as sport. I think the difference between
not as sports.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
I'd say the difference between them is parenting. I know,
I know, I've come back to it. But his parents
are very nice. I would not say that of Elon's parents.
I think he had a very troubled childhood. I think
a lot of that's going to come out in this
book by Walter Isaacson that said, not everyone who has
troubled childhoods turns out to be such an asshole. Right,
You don't have to become an asshole if you have
a troubled childhood. But I do think there is a
(31:54):
difference in upbringing with those two in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
But I do want to come act for one last
second on the cage match because it's stupid. It to
me is it's stupid, but it's also emblematic. It is
emblematic of the sort of excess and mitchismo and juvenile
delinquency that pervades Silicon Valley despite its successes. In rich
it was so ridiculous, etc.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
I actually wrote Mark, I said, please, look, I know
you think we haven't gotten along for a long time
before because he thinks I'm too critical of the company,
which okay, whatever, And we had that disastrous interview where
he's sweat and stuff. So I can see why he
avoids me, but don't do this. You have daughters, you
seem to be a pretty decent parent and a very
decent husband. What are you doing? Like, I'm glad you
(32:40):
like your sport, but this is ridiculous, fucking spectacle. And
if you want to raise money, just give part of
your giant, ridiculous, obscene fortune to someone like you. Don't
need to do this.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
And so you know, so did he send you a
selfie of his bicyc No, he didn't any response, He
didn't respond.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
But can you imagine Gates and Jobs fighting. Let's have
a fight, Like No, they just what they did as
they did an interview with me and Walt Moosburg. That
was great, that was amazing. That was adult, right, you know.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
They had their problem because it was coming together.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
That's right. It was epic. They put aside their differences
and realized they realized they were together as icons of
the modern computer age. Together, they really were the two
just like John Adams and Tupman's Jefferson.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
They belonged to I call that interview. Jobs pointed out
that Microsoft gave one hundred million dollars to Apple when
it was flailing, and he posticates.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
A bit too, But it was fine. It was fine,
but at the end it was he understood because he's
an adult, and so is Bill Gates, you know, and
could just imagine them fighting.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Oh, come back. I can't imagine Zuckerberg and Musco on
a stage together. And this gets back to my early point.
I can see Hewlett and Packard on a stage together.
I could see Harvey Firestone and Thomas Edison on a
stage together. Are I can't imagine Zuckerberg and Musco on
a stage together. And in fact, all I'm thinking about
is that they're jumping around on pogo sticks, challenging each
(33:57):
other to a cage.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Matt Well, it was really Musk that was doing it right,
you know. And then he continued it with his weird
I'll show up at your house, which is creepy, just
fucking creepy. But it was all just look at me,
look at me, someone, please, for the love of God,
look at me, because I still don't have enough attence.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
You know. And of course it happened after Zuckerberg launched Threads,
which was a challenge to Twitter, which is now called x. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
In the case of Zuckerberg, I don't think he has
a bottomless well of need. The way musk does. I
do think he has a satisfying personal life. So I
just was surprised he was dragged into it. And I
don't know why he was. I guess he's so proud
of what he's done with himself that he's doing it.
But you know, I think suddenly the penny dropped. Oh wait,
maybe this guy isn't serious, right, Maybe he's making fun
(34:37):
of a sport I like, or you don't call his
sport whatever and endeavor I like. And so I just
was surprised. I'm so glad he's not doing it. And
of course then he was welcome to the lying world
of Elon. I've got Rome on the line. The coliseum
is open, like what like he just says shit and
then everyone's like, yeah, like, give me a break. There's
a famous expression from Hollywood. Hello he lied. So I
(34:59):
just feel like, maybe if he's telling you is maybe
he's not. I just wouldn't believe anything. And I think
Mark was taken in in that regard.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Linda oapst that to her, it's a great line. So
Silicon Valley is still very male and it's very white.
Are tech bros? And is that status quo a forever phenomena.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yes, sorry, what's going to change what's changed in our society?
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Well, that's when I'm asking you, like, what would change that?
Speaker 2 (35:26):
I don't know. I think our overall society is like that.
Look at most of the attacks when women are led
by men right now, like about abortion rights and everything else.
I just you know, as long as there's not equal
numbers of women in power, and not every woman has
to agree. There's a lot of anti abortion activists or
women some of the more powerful ones too. But you know,
it's just wherever you go, there you are. If you
(35:46):
have one point of view and you're homogenious about it,
you're going to have one point of view. You're not
going to reflect other people, and then you become less
and less sympathetic and you think your viewpoint is the
only viewpoint. Now we're all guilty of that, right, everyone
of us is skuilty of that, and we have to
try really hard to get out of these silos that
we have, and we don't because we're very comfortable in them.
(36:07):
But when you have that much power and you do it,
I think it's incumbent on you to reach across lines
and not demonize people. And you know, with all the
power and influence and money muscast, all he does is
pick fucking fights all day, and all I can think
of is, what the hell is wrong with you? Like,
how did you get this way? It's disappointing because of
the good he could do. He obviously has skills, but
(36:29):
instead he's decided that his lesser nature is the one
he's going to feed.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Caer I always like to ask guests what they've learned
from an event. If you think about watching the arc
of Elon and Zuck's journeys, what have you learned? What
have those things taught you?
Speaker 2 (36:45):
That power corrupts? It just does. It's such a cliche.
It just does. Money and power corrupt and you have
to be a very strong personality to resist it. And
there's so many great hopes of what tech could do,
and instead of doing that, spending your time doing this
seems sad. It really does. It seems sad to me.
And there's so much potential to help people. There's so
(37:07):
much potential to be kind, and unfortunately where we've gotten
is these people, not all of them, I don't want
to paint a broad brush, but a lot of them
forgot why they came in the first place, which was
a great love of tech like I have, and others
having a great love of the possibilities. And my book's
coming out in March, and at the beginning of it,
I talk about a quote from Steve Jobs. I had
(37:29):
this idea that you are either a Star Trek or
a Star Wars person, because you know, tech people love
sci fi and you know Star Wars is a very
dark view of the universe where they evil often and
regularly triumphs. Right that everything's quite a dark vision what
Star Wars is. It's not a hopeful vision in any
way if you really take it apart, and Star Trek
is it's like a Benetton ad. We are going to
(37:51):
get along, We're going to beat villains, and villains are
going to come on our side in fact, you know
what I mean. And it's a sort of a hopeful
humanity gets better and better and better, and we improve ourselves.
And it's a Wars you never know the next episode
might be the last. And so there was an interview
I did with Steve Jobs where he said, I want
Star Trek. I wish we could get Star Trek, and
(38:11):
I feel the same way. And we live in Star Wars.
That's where we live now, and we've got Darth Vaders everywhere,
and not redeemable Darth Vaders, just Darth Vaders that stay
that way. And so that's how I think about it.
I just am really, I'm sorry. I want Star Trek too,
you know, as Steve said.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
I want Star Trek too. We're out of time. Kara,
thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Thank you so much, Tam for a thoughtful conversation. I
appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Kara Swisher is the host of The On with Kara
Swisher and Pivot podcasts, and she's an editor at large
at New York Magazine. Next spring, she has a new
book coming out, burn Book, a Tech Love Story. You
can find her on Twitter at Kara Swisher Here at
crash Course, we believe the collisions can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising,
(39:00):
always instructive. In today's Crash Course, I learned that Silicon
Valley's tech bros. May have a hammer lock on Silicon
Valley's riches and its businesses longer than I expected. What
did you learn? We'd love to hear from you. You
can tweet at the Bloomberg Opinion handle at opinion or
me at Tim O'Brien using the hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course.
(39:23):
You can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening
right now, and please leave us a review. It helps
more people find the show. This episode was produced by
the indispensable Anna Maserakas, Moses On Dam and Me. Our
supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson, and we had editing help
from Sage Bauman, Katie Boyce, Jeff Grocott, Mike Nizza, and
(39:44):
Christine Vanden Bilart. Blake Maples says, our sound engineering and
our original theme song was composed by Luis Gara. I'm
Tim O'Brien. We'll be back next week with another Crash
Course
Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and
social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm
Kim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course Elon and Zuck versus Grown
up Management. Silicon Valley is many things. It's a hub
of revolutionary technological innovation. It's home to novel creative approaches
(00:23):
to managing businesses and production. It's a giant storehouse of
wealth and startup britches, stretching along a slender strip of
land winding south from San Francisco to San Jose. It's
also the centerpiece of a very specific kind of bro culture,
a culture that has had a certain winner take all
mojo over the years, but which may be running its course.
(00:44):
That's not to say that the bro's holds will loosen.
It just may be that, as Silicon Valley matures, being
a bro is in everything that it's cracked up to be,
at least when it comes to managing a mature and
complex enterprise, instead of say, launching a world beating company
from scratch. To test this thesis, I present you with
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, founders of such landmark companies
(01:08):
as Tesla, SpaceX and Meta aka Facebook. They are both innovators,
admirable risk takers, and bazillionaires. They've also struggled to evolve
to have early vaunted reputations as wise men correspond with
equally wise management and wise decisions as the world around
them changed, and they recently considered fighting one another in
(01:30):
a cage match. Really they did. Joining me today to
consider all of this is Kara Swisher. Kara has been
watching Silicon Valley since well forever as a journalist, convener
of Ideas, raconteur, and residence smarty. She is the host
of the On with Kara Swisher and Pivot podcasts. That's
a lot of podcasting, and she's an editor at large
(01:52):
with New York Magazine. So howdy Cara, Hi, how you doing.
I'm good, I'm good. Thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
No problem.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
So we may come out of this with different definitions,
but can we develop a working definition together of Silicon Valley? Broness,
how would you define that?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, it's not meant to be nice, I think at
this point there's all kinds of cliches about groups of
people Hollywood types or producers or whatever, indie actors, and
so it's just a type of person who populates Silicon
Valley who they sort of take on the patterns of
the others who came before them, and so they pass
it down from person person I guess if you had
(02:29):
to broadly put it, and I don't think everyone fits
into this. It's you know, an arrogance youth, frequently wrong,
but never in doubt. Use a word like pivot, and
you know, failure is just an opportunity for growth, that
kind of stuff, you know, just a sort of basically
going through the world and breaking things and then thinking
it's someone else's fault almost all the time.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I mean, is it an unfair broad brush, well sort of.
And Silicon Valley and one.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
People are always like, you know, lesbian's evning a sense
of humor. I think I'm very funny, so, you know,
I don't know, I just I guess it does tend
to fit, though they do tend to dress alike. I
think what happens is when you get in any culture,
people tend to pattern match people, and so everyone suddenly
was behaving like Mark Zuckerberg, right, But Mark Zuckerberg was
behaving like people before him. So it's a little true.
Like a lot of things it's got a lot of
(03:17):
truth to it. And they often do tend to look
alike and wear the same clothes and have the same attitudes,
but they also contain multitudes. As Walt Whitman wrote.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
So have I picked well? Do you think that Elon
Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are emblematic of the culture of
Bronus Wow?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
In different ways? You know, both have changed rather significantly,
although I would say, you know, on the surface, I
guess Mark would be the tech bro, of the kind
of bro you think about. Although personally he's quite nice.
He's quite a nice guy from what I can understand.
He's quite a good parent, and he's a good husband,
you know what I mean. Like, there's a lot more
there than people would think about him. At the same time,
(03:56):
he kind of has people following him or trying to
be like him essentially, and that way, which is like
push through I'm right, even though people said I was wrong,
that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Right now, he's got a bit of an obsession with athleticism.
I assume it's because he wasn't athletic when he was younger.
It's quite aggressive. His athleticism is quite aggressive. Let me
show you me doing all these hard athletic things or
show off my body in some fashion, which I'm fine with. Fine, whatever,
he wants to be healthy. So you know, you probably
see a lot of people better match that. There's a
(04:27):
lot of people they did the same thing when everybody
was fasting or whatever, and so you know, he seems
like it. Although I think people would be surprised to
find him to be a relatively thoughtful and nice person.
I know people get angry when I say that, because
he's done a lot of damage. His company has done
a lot of damage to society. I think so, and
so it can be cross purposes with he. Well, you
(04:48):
may like him, but he's done terrible things. Well, I'm
just pointing out that he's not obnoxious. I've never found
him to be particularly obnoxious.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
But the pro phenomenon is it's a relatively new thing,
at least in the dimensions we're talking about it, right.
I mean, Silicon Valley's always been a boys club, right,
and still largely is. But there's a world of difference
between the days of Bill Hewlett and David Packard and
Elon and Zach Sure.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
They just wore ties. They were just as arrogant like,
I'm sorry they were. If you go back and look
at that, you know, Thomas Edison was kind of a jackass.
So I feel like tech pros have always been somewhat
of a jackass, you know, I don't know, there was definitely.
I mean I wrote a piece when I came to
the Wall Street Journal in the nineties because I started
to notice they all had to wear a certain kind
of vest. If you're a VCS, you had a different
kind of vest, you know, a fleece fest essentially, Patagonia
(05:34):
fleece Fest. One of the things I wrote is all
the lies they tell themselves, which was one is that,
you know, I don't like fancy things. They needed burrito
places and meanwhile, jump on the private plane two years later, right,
that kind of stuff. And so they sort of had
to sort of cosplay being a simple guy just like
everybody else, you know, that kind of thing. And I'm
not dressing well. I may wander around in Adidas what
(05:57):
are they called those things? He wears their flip pops. Essentially.
My son will kill me for not knowing what to
call this, but you know that kind of thing. I'm
a simple guy. I don't need a lot and then
of course they all live lives of ridiculous and egregious privilege.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
But there has been a cultural shift, right. I mean,
I am amused, and I like the idea of thinking
about Thomas Edison as a tech bro. He is, and
maybe in his time he was a tech bro for
you know the way he rolled then. But I think
there's sort of a bravado to it now and a
strutting to it now that seems different from Edison. It
seems different from Hewlett and Packer.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I think if you look back, do a lot of
manipulation of the press, a lot of stuntishness, that kind
of stuff. It's not unlike Elon Musk, honestly.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
But that's like a use of power, which I know
has been eternal. But I'm sort of I just wonder
if there's a cultural kind of a difference around the
ma chismo of it and the kind of public strutting
that it income.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
I think they just these are people who didn't get
a lot of attention in their youth and now they
do because of money and power, and so it's very classic.
Feels like a Genesee in song, like they got pick
lasts at basketball and they're taking it out on the
rest of us for not picking them sooner. I don't
I don't know, you know, you could boil it down
to something like that, but a lot of them Tech
has become cool and nerds has become cool. It's sort
(07:13):
of the revenge of the Nerds kind of scenario that
has happened. And what comes with it is an enormous
amount of money. Like that's really what gives them power, right,
the money they have, not necessarily it they invented something,
although that's also important. But you know, when people become
really rich, they become more and more certain they're correct,
and very few people push back against that because it's
all in their interests to get money from those people.
(07:36):
You know, everyone's on their payroll, and so that tends
to be like that. The way I sort of characterize
it is sort of a juvenilization of people who are
adults men, adult men, typically white adult men, and so
they juvenilize them by constantly licking them up and down,
telling them they're smart, saying oh right again, sir, that
kind of thing. And I think one of the things
(07:56):
that also at the same time that manifests is that
they feel like they're victims. If they're criticized or given
any feedback, they find that to be an attack. Like
you're seeing that right now with Elon and ADL. It's
their fault, you know. Naysayers. Well, in this case, he's
pulling into tropes around Jews or to blame, which is
very dangerous. And yeah, they're naysayers and they're Miami. He's
(08:18):
got to always have an enemy, you know what I mean,
Because you couldn't possibly have made a mistake. You know,
that's something that's very hard for them to accept.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So is that mindset that you're right and everyone else
is wrong and you're a strutting rooster. Are those things
necessary to be successful in Silicon Valley?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
No, not at all. There's a lot of very nice people,
not at all, not even slightly. I can think of
a dozen different people who are just lovely, Brian Chesky
being one of them from Airbnb. Most of the adults
are fine.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Even Steve Jobs wasn't that much of an asshole, not
compared to these guys, like you know what I mean,
He could.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Be eric and once he learned, he turned out to
be a pretty good manager.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Oh yeah, absolutely. And most people stayed for twenty years, right,
they didn't leave the people who work there. He could
be very difficult, but you know, he also if you
go back and listen interview, he's very thoughtful. He's very
I wouldn't say he was humble, but that's okay, that's fine.
He was a game changer, but he wasn't just petty
and juvenile. He definitely wasn't juvenile.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
He also had to kind of go through trial by fire, right,
he got kicked out of the company he built.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, I just feel like he was an adult and sort.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Of learned from his lessons and then came back and acted.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I used the term adult like he was an adult,
Like there's a lot of adults. Tim Cook as an adult.
Read Hastings as an adult, read Hoffman as an adult,
you know, meaning that they just they don't get into
peaks if you say, hey, I have a problem with this,
Like when I was doing an interview with Elon and
I was he was, you know, just forcing his employees
back into the office, into the factory. Before anybody knew
(09:48):
anything about COVID. You could have an argument about whether
it or not, but nobody knew, and he had a
certainty I think he said something like they'll be like
zero COVID deaths or whatever or something. He didn't know.
I've read all the studies.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
I couldn't believe it. Completely ignorant everything you said.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Of course, but he read all the studies of deep ignorance.
I was like, we don't know, we don't know. Let's
assume lack of safety until we have better information, like
why not? And you know, he threatened to walk off
the show, like I'm going to leave. I'm like, fine,
who does that? But like my two year old, My
two year old doesn't even behave like that, right, It's like,
who does that? That's an adult. I'm going to leave. Haha,
(10:23):
you know whatever, it's childish and throw out of this ever. Right,
It's just like, you know, we're someone who posts memes
of boobs, like he always puts a boob thing up.
I'm like, you're fifty two fucking years old, really, you know,
and all the young men ooh.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Cool enough with the boobs.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Cool boobs, Like, oh, come on, really, you're fifty two.
It moves in on pathetic.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
And poop emojis. Don't forget the poop emojis.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah, whatever, whatever, they're fifty two.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
It's an ecosystem too, right, isn't the venture capital community
and the media part of the development of Bronus.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah, it depends. Like the venture capitalist I always thought
them as enabling parents, like, oh, yes, you're a genius.
Their interests for money, They wanted to make money. So
anything they could say to get these guys to do
what they wanted was what they would do. So more sugar,
sure you won't get diabetes. Sure more I love you, You're
the best. And of course they would turn on them
in a second if they needed to. But yeah, I
(11:18):
think the culture was very much we support our founders,
and in fact it was just bad parenting this way
I looked at it bad parenting.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
And on the note of bad parenting, I'm going to
take a quick break to hear from a sponsor, Karen,
and then we'll come right back. I'm talking with Silicon
Valley whisperer Kara Swisher about tech Bros. And Elon Musk
and Mark Zuckerberg. Carol, let's talk about each of these
(11:47):
guys individually. Zuck found Facebook famously in his Harvard dorm
room in two thousand and four. So if you look
back on his path to an IPO and three billion
users and becoming the most vibrant global social media platform,
the apollo of the social media landscape. Is there anything
different about the path that he took to those various
(12:09):
landing pads as an entrepreneur and then a businessman, You know,
he was more driven.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
He he reminded me of a great deal of Bill Gates,
you know, very driven young man at all times and
very serious at the time. If you may not recall,
my Space was the cat's pajamas for everybody, right, everybody
loved my sise. They were cool and handsome.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Remember friends there.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, yeah, although that was never cool with my Space
and Chris, a guy who ran it, and Tom were cool.
They were cool. They were handsome, cool men, and so
that was where everybody was. And Mark was just plugging
away out.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
And the Murdochs were smart for having remember bought into
my Space.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
They did, but they think they lost money at it.
I believe they did.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
They ultimately did. But remember at the.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Time, Yeah, the thing that makes me think they're not smart,
They think they were stupid. But Mark was plugging away
with the utilitarian thing that I he kept calling it
the utility to me and you can imagine as a reporter, Oh,
a utility. How fascinating, you know, And so I thought
that was really smart actually, because he is just sort
of I'm useful, I'm useful, I'm useful, And I used
to call him a young fogie, like he was sort
of an old person in a young person's body. And
(13:07):
so he was quite serious and very like intent and
aggressive a lot like young Bill Gates, I think, in
a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
And then he grows Facebook sort of in two ways,
through this steamroller of an ad business, and then through
acquisitions he buys Instagram, WhatsApp as time goes on, and
then organic growth sort of stalls out on him and
he has to actually try to do something with the
company other than ride the wave, and the jury still
(13:35):
out as to whether or not he's up to that, right.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Right, Yeah, I mean that happens with a lot of
people like Microsoft. You remember they went into media. They
had AMAZN, they had cable, they had all kinds of
little alley ways they went down, none of which worked
out except he sold software.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
General electric in a completely different industry.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Everybody does that, like, you know, even the Google guys,
they don't like search business, even though it pays for everything, right,
I think we'll do elevators up the streets of Sanford Cisco.
What about a barge where we you know, we live
or whatever. And now you know, these people making their
town up in Solano County, you know, they get bored
with what brought them there and they want to do
something else. And I think all these things have a
life cycle. Right, people will use Facebook until something else
(14:15):
better comes alonger they don't like it anymore, they get
bored with it. There's a limit to growth of it.
And so you've got to be really prescient.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
The only company that really does this over and over
again has been Apple. Right has continued to evolve relatively successfully,
although they've had you know, if you don't remember paying
I do. It was their social network. They tried a
whole bunch of things that didn't.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Work, and they're starting to hit some plateaus.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Everyone says the proper Steve Jobs tied. It's over. It
was not over forth ten times the amount when he
was living.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
And they brought in a very competent, boring, skilled manager
and Tim Cook, not a.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Bro yeah, and grew it. Didn't just manage it, grew it.
You know, the Internet's littered with companies that were popular
and I've forgotten the names of a lot of them,
right that were super popular and then weren't. And these
are consumer products in many ways, and so that's normal
and natural for people to move on from what they're doing.
And so Facebook certainly has had the longest run of
(15:09):
successful utility for people who use it, and smartly bought Instagram,
which still remains really interesting. I think what's hard is,
just like with Google, is everything else pales in comparison
to their original product, and very few companies can change
course in that regard.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
So how do you see Mark Zuckerberg's management evolving over
that time, from those heady days when Facebook was just
a self generating piggybank to now when he's trying to
find new businesses. He turns through Cheryl Sandberg after a period.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
It was a long time. I know he was ten
fifteen years. That wasn't a short period. I think Mark
has an admirable consistency of the managers there. They were
there ten twelve years, which I think was unusual to stay.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I think the shift from Cheryl Sandberg to Nick Clegg
is meaningful in terms of.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Well that's just it's a late stage company, right, late
stage company for internet companies which have a very short,
much shorter life cycle. You know, Cheryl was critically important.
Mark had a chaotic management style for a long time
because he was young and never he's actually quite good
as a manager.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
And she was the adult in the room.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Well I hate the expression, but yeah, sure, I think
you know, she just knew how to run a business
right with stuff he wasn't interested in. He was interested
in the products. She was interested in business. And she
had come from Google where she ran the most boring
part of Google that did really well, which is this
ad serving business. And she really should get a lot
of credit for, you know, jacking the ad business as
(16:31):
high as they did, and they had a great partnership
for a very long time. And I just think it
evolves over time and again as these people get rich,
as they get wealthier, they get bored with what brong them.
They don't like oh, or in the wire hanger business,
I'd rather own a sports team, right, you know what
I mean? Like nobody wants to be what they were,
And so I think he evolved, and then of course
he got hit with all the accusations around misinformation and
(16:54):
Russian involvement and meddlesomeness and.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
For division and hate.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
And so what does he do. He renames the company
going down another alley, which is the metaverse, which I
think has proved rather expensive and quite premature.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Well, and also sort of imposed that on an entire
company because it was his idea and he thought it
was the way to get ys.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Well, because he controls the company, he can't be fired.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Right, But this is also to me another sort of
signal moment and whether or not young Mark can evolve
into a good manager, like the embrace of meta as
both an idea and a name and a direction for
the company. Yeah, that he sort of jams down.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
He was trying to pretend he wasn't you know, No, No,
I'm not Genghis Khan. I'm really Phil Jackson. I don't
know whatever. He just wanted to change his name. He
didn't want to be one thing, you know, ignore that
over there. I'm over here doing this fabulous future stuff.
He should have said AI really is what he should
have said, but he said metaverse instead. And you know,
with the time, we were like, no, this is so early,
(17:55):
this is so wrong. But it's his party's he controls
the company. So that's the way it is.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
So let's focus on Elon for a second. He launches
PayPal famously with people.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
He did not launch PayPal. No, that's not true.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Well, it was through a merger with X dot com.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
And they were they were competitors. PayPal existed, they were rivals.
They didn't like each other. That gang Elon's gang and
the other gang.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Well he had X and the other I can't remember
the other companies that merged form PayPal doesn't. We're probably
bore people all they In.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Any case, they merged them because they were competitors. They
didn't want to compete. That really was what they were
doing this.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
So so PayPal comes in.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, and they all got together and they had a
lot of problems with each other, and Elon got you know,
jammed out of PayPal in a lot of ways. And
they all made money.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
But he gets some of the spoils though when they
sell it to eBay, right.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I mean, that was a very lucky thing for all
of them.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Especially for Elon, and that it gave him a lot
of cash that he uses to seed space x and
to take a steak in Tesla all around the same period.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
It was unusual because all of them went often did
stupid things. And Elon he really attracted my notice because
he wasn't doing dumb things. I was like, huh, you
know rockets, cars, Oh cool, you know what I mean.
It was very ambitious and really interesting and AI. He
was very early. He's one of the first people who
ever talked about AI with me was Elon Musk, especially
the dangers of AI, and so yeah, he was very serious,
(19:16):
like another serious minded person who was doing substantive things
rather than oh, I think I'll become a VC and
funded dating service and you know whatever. They were all
so stupid, you were like, oh, I can't talk to you.
But Elon was always interesting well, and you know.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
He single handedly gets the US with the government's help,
notably with massive government subsidies both at SpaceX and Tesla.
In different got alone.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
It would have gone out of business without government help.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
And he got government contracts from NASA at SpaceX.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah, he has them. He continues to he has.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Them, and it was sort of the foundation of his
viability was getting those one one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
He's the biggest government handout person I know then a
good success.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Yay.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
He literally is the ad for why government's good.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
It's corporate welfare. But it's good corporate welfare. You know.
It created a world beating commercial space center, missile enterprise,
and rocket enterprise, and a transformative EV company, So kudos
to him. Those aren't small things, oh they're not. Makes
him the world's wealthiest man. And then he decides, as
(20:18):
I think he becomes increasingly erratic, he decides to buy
Twitter for forty four billion dollars. Right, he did, and
that's hardly the sign of someone who is a shrewd
invest way.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Well we'll see, won't we Maybe he'll turn it around.
It was never a very good business, like let's start with.
It was a terrible business all of its life since
it was founded, and it was badly managed, except for
maybe Dick Costlow had a bit of a bright spot,
but it never reached the potential. Everybody thought it was you,
everyone thought it was Facebook.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
It was never a Facebook in any scope.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Never made money for the users, never moved off of
nineteen dots, was always at nineteen dollars, I recall. But
it was badly managed.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
So it wasn't necessarily a company he'd pay forty four
billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
No, I think it was. You know, it had a
high there during the pandemic. I think you know, who
knows why stock goes up or down, but you know
it definitely if you zeroed it out over the history
of it, you wouldn't have paid that. No, you wouldn't
have paid for that. But I thought he would do
a good job. I needed someone like him to come
in and be king of the place, rather than do you.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Really think he'd do a good job when he first
took it.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
I did because it was a goat rodeo over there,
and it was all these CEOs that came in and
out and all these feelings. It was the most emotional
company you've ever deal with. You're sort of like, are
you kidding me? With all your various and sundry dramas
between each other, you know, all the founders and like
this founder, you know, it was really exhausting to cover them.
And again, it never met its potential of its influence.
It had a lot of influence, but not a lot
(21:40):
of business and very difficult issues around same thing polarization.
They just didn't have the resources that Facebook did, and
so you know, anyone could come in and do something.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
With it if they were the right person, right, and.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
He certainly had the means and the motivation. He loved
the product. It obviously spoke to him in some deep
way personally and emotionally, and so I thought.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
I had no experience, and I do think managing a
media company requires a certain comp.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Well, they try to pretend. I know, of course it is,
but they pretend it is it's a communications company. I
always thought it was a media company and thought that
was the direction it should go in. And I was
working with Twitter to actually monetize spaces and all this stuff.
And then he comes in and I thought, okay, all right.
We exchanged a bunch of emails about it. I was like,
all right, you've got the money, you got the attention,
(22:27):
you could bring in a smart media executive and really
do something. Finally, like one person making a decision, because again,
you know, I used to jokingly because I'm a lesbian,
I can say that it was like a lesbian collective,
Like no decisions were made ever, like everyone with feelings
were hurt all the time. That's a cliche, Lesbian's not true,
but it was really. There was a small handful of
people who could have brought order to the place. Instead,
(22:49):
it's his personality disorders writ large unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah. I mean I think maybe we part ways on
that one because I thought in the very beginning he
was the worst sort of person to take Twitter over
because he lack the experiencing insight for that particular company.
I hid.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I thought, yes, the COVID stuff was strange.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
The COVID denier. You know, I'm a free speech absolutist,
but meanwhile he's crushing free speech within his own company,
and he's going after people who criticize him.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, that's critical textures. Well, when has that ever happened?
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Yeah, but it doesn't suggest you're the best guy to
run a media company.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
All I was saying is one person making the decisions.
I thought he would hire a very smart meet executive
and get out of the way. But he didn't, because
this is about him and his personality, right, his larger
you know, emotional well being so to speak.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Did all of that sort of erratic behavior with him,
And you know, as he see investigates him for securities
broad for saying the saud He's going to help him
take Tesla private. That seems to have definitely all been
built on smoke. Did any of that surprise you over
the arc of time from when you first met him
to who.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
He is now, Yes and no, like you saw it there.
You know, he had a juvenile interest in memes and
especially move memes, and I had teenage boys at the time.
I'm like, oh, look it's another one, you know, so
I had recognized the pattern. You know, he had a
lot of juvenilia, like very much sort of like stupid jokes.
You know. The COVID thing was the first time I
was like, huh, that's weird. You know, that's weird. And
(24:15):
then those stuff at the factories around racism and stuff
like that started to pop up. You know, he wasn't
that different from other ones. And actually he was somewhat
I would say, delightful to talk to because he was
very odd and interesting and he had you know, again,
he was the first person who talked about the dangers
of AI. This was a decade and a half ago, right,
a long time ago, and nobody was talking about that.
(24:35):
They were all talking about whatever the latest stupid trend
was for the day, and he wasn't. He was very
prescient about a lot of stuff, including cars, and space
and everything else, and so you'd see flashes of it.
I always say, like about ten percent of his personality
was really distasteful, I guess, and the rest was really interesting.
And with all the caveats you have about these egomaniacal, arrogant,
(24:57):
narcissistic founders. And then something happened, something turned. It's like
milk spoiled. Everything became about victimization. He felt under siege.
I know it sounds dumb.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Do you think that's a different turn than the turn
Zuckerberg took.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I don't think Juckberg's changed personally, No, I don't. I
think he's matured and he's developed as a man, I think.
And in terms of elon he went backwards. He's like
Benjamin Button, you know, except the jerk, the jerkish Benjamin Button.
And so those parts of his personality as he got
to be the richest man in the world, and especially
with enablers or the wrong people around him, started to
(25:34):
get really ugly. Just these people, all of whom are
paid by him. And you know, this idea of all
these fans like licking him up and down. It's affected
his personality, you know, and including his family relationships with
his now daughter. You know, if you talk to people
around him, and they'll only talk off the record because
they're terrified of getting off the gravy train. They are worried.
(25:57):
They are worried about that. But you know, they all
allow it to happen because he's the center. He's the
son of a particular universe and very powerful. It's so classic,
you know, it's classic with royalty. It's you know, this
is not a news story.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
It's how power functions.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Well some power, but like kings, they get a little nutty,
you know what I mean, Like it just happens when
nobody says, hey, just a second, and anyone who said hey,
just a second, he's thrown out of the kingdom, myself included.
You know whatever, I don't care. I have plenty of friends.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
I'm going to take another break care and then we'll
come right back. I'm back with Kars Swisher. We're talking
about tech bros and tech brodom. I asked you this earlier,
and I want to come back to the degree to
which Zuckerberg and Musque aren't that much different from their
compatriots in Silicon Valley. I think of Jack Dorsey as
(26:48):
sort of a junior mint version of this. You know,
somehow they let him be the CEO of two companies simultaneously.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
They did.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
It wasn't really good at being the CEO of one company,
much less too, but he got away with it. You
don't see many women or executives of color anywhere in
the US being granted those sorts of opportunities and second chances.
And then, you know, I do think of Tim Cook
as a sort of the polar opposite of both of
(27:17):
these guys. And I think there's a lesson in that
about how you manage the trajectory of successful companies. That
maybe you need these crazy geniuses who are completely self
assured for a certain part of the company's trajectory, but
then the grown ups have to come in and put
their hands on the steering wheel and move it along.
Do you agree with that or do you think that's
(27:38):
too simple?
Speaker 2 (27:38):
As I do think it's too similar, because I think
Tim was there from the beginning of the recovery of Apple, right,
So it wasn't like he just was brought in to
deal with difficult Steve just Sue Jobs was a great manager, right,
you know what I mean? Like, and so was Jeff Bezos,
lots of mistakes made by both of them, and.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
In fact, Steve jobs knew Tim Cook was somebody he
needed to have there must.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
So yeah, there were a lot of choices at that company,
but he picked the one who I think, you know, typically,
I remember when he died, everyone was like, oh, not
this guy, this boring guy, this guy, this guy, And
I was like, I don't know, I feel like he's
been running what's been important to that company, creativity. There's
a lot of creative people there. So this myth of
the one god who can solve everything, I think is
not a new and front. You remember Leiahkca only he
(28:19):
could do it. It's sort of part of the corporate
mental well again, but in that case, yes, right until
no speaking to someone who had really distasteful opinions about
Jewish people, et cetera. Think about that today. I just
think Twitter was around for a lot of these people. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, there would have been reputations in flames much earlier.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah maybe, but now it doesn't matter. You can be shameless,
you know, and I think Donald Trump introduced that you
can be shameless and you actually do better.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
And it's celebrated. In fact, in certain cases.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah, yeah, it's cool. I always love when they all
do this fight the man. I'm like, you are the
fucking man, Like you know what i mean, Like, that's
my favorite. I'm like, I'm sorry, but you know, revolutions
in Rome, the people who helped overthrow the Republic were
some of its nobles, right, the Cracktree brothers. I think
that's their names.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
That often happens, you know, or Donald Trump. I'm with you,
people of Goal Mining Country. I'm like, are you kidding me?
You live in a golden palace in New York City
and Manhattan. But that's okay. It works for people, right,
I'm your friend. And so you have to create this
very pet Barnum like structure around you where you have
to overstate you're already myriad of accomplishments in order to
(29:31):
engender more love and more attention and everything else. And
one of the things I like about Mark is I
don't think, except for his kickboxing, which is fine, you know,
he doesn't really seek attention. I think he's kind of
proud of it. I guess I don't feel irritated by that,
And I'm not particularly irritated by Jeff Bezos putting up
chest shots of himself. You look good, Jeff, Okay, you
(29:52):
should be happy with just that you look good, But
I'm okay. I'm like, okay, he's proud of his nice
physique now because he used to be kind of wimpy looking,
and those are fine. But Elon needs attention every day,
so I has to do you know, another stunt that's
even crazier. You feel like you're in the middle of network,
the movie network. Right, What am I going to do today? Oh,
let's attack the Jews. Oh today, trans people. Let's not
(30:13):
forget I have a trans child, and so it's even
more heinous to do that. Today, Let's attack you know,
Paul Pelosi saying he's part of a gay love triangle
with no proof whatsoever, and too bad if people get hurt.
Or today it's you know, Biden's fault. Today it's reporter's fault.
Like whoever like or say something crazy and everybody pays
attention to you. It's really sad when you think about it,
(30:35):
because there are accomplishments here, real accomplishments.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
World changing accomplishments are both of their sides, but.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
They're not as big as they think they are, but
they're big. Like they're big, but they're not that big.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Elon is thirteen years older than Zuckerberg, yet he's far
more of a juvenile delinquent in my humble estimation, and
it sort of surprised me when Zuckerberg took the bait recently.
I did too.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
I did too.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
I'll go, I'll do a case match with you. We
can fight one another.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
I think he's really enthusiastic about it. I do think
he really loves it. It's given him, you know, just.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Like the pickleball.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
It's like pickleball. I have friends who've now become really
pickleball fanatics, and you're like, calm the fuck down. It's
just a game. But they love it. It changed their lives,
you know.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, yeah, But there's a little difference again, Let's go
play pickleball on Friday night as to let's beat the
hell out of each other in a cage. I think
there's sort of a qualitative.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
It's something look he feels, but I don't look at
you know what.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
It is not as sport. I think the difference between
not as sports.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
I'd say the difference between them is parenting. I know,
I know, I've come back to it. But his parents
are very nice. I would not say that of Elon's parents.
I think he had a very troubled childhood. I think
a lot of that's going to come out in this
book by Walter Isaacson that said, not everyone who has
troubled childhoods turns out to be such an asshole. Right,
You don't have to become an asshole if you have
a troubled childhood. But I do think there is a
(31:54):
difference in upbringing with those two in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
But I do want to come act for one last
second on the cage match because it's stupid. It to
me is it's stupid, but it's also emblematic. It is
emblematic of the sort of excess and mitchismo and juvenile
delinquency that pervades Silicon Valley despite its successes. In rich
it was so ridiculous, etc.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
I actually wrote Mark, I said, please, look, I know
you think we haven't gotten along for a long time
before because he thinks I'm too critical of the company,
which okay, whatever, And we had that disastrous interview where
he's sweat and stuff. So I can see why he
avoids me, but don't do this. You have daughters, you
seem to be a pretty decent parent and a very
decent husband. What are you doing? Like, I'm glad you
(32:40):
like your sport, but this is ridiculous, fucking spectacle. And
if you want to raise money, just give part of
your giant, ridiculous, obscene fortune to someone like you. Don't
need to do this.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
And so you know, so did he send you a
selfie of his bicyc No, he didn't any response, He
didn't respond.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
But can you imagine Gates and Jobs fighting. Let's have
a fight, Like No, they just what they did as
they did an interview with me and Walt Moosburg. That
was great, that was amazing. That was adult, right, you know.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
They had their problem because it was coming together.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
That's right. It was epic. They put aside their differences
and realized they realized they were together as icons of
the modern computer age. Together, they really were the two
just like John Adams and Tupman's Jefferson.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
They belonged to I call that interview. Jobs pointed out
that Microsoft gave one hundred million dollars to Apple when
it was flailing, and he posticates.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
A bit too, But it was fine. It was fine,
but at the end it was he understood because he's
an adult, and so is Bill Gates, you know, and
could just imagine them fighting.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Oh, come back. I can't imagine Zuckerberg and Musco on
a stage together. And this gets back to my early point.
I can see Hewlett and Packard on a stage together.
I could see Harvey Firestone and Thomas Edison on a
stage together. Are I can't imagine Zuckerberg and Musco on
a stage together. And in fact, all I'm thinking about
is that they're jumping around on pogo sticks, challenging each
(33:57):
other to a cage.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Matt Well, it was really Musk that was doing it right,
you know. And then he continued it with his weird
I'll show up at your house, which is creepy, just
fucking creepy. But it was all just look at me,
look at me, someone, please, for the love of God,
look at me, because I still don't have enough attence.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
You know. And of course it happened after Zuckerberg launched Threads,
which was a challenge to Twitter, which is now called x. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
In the case of Zuckerberg, I don't think he has
a bottomless well of need. The way musk does. I
do think he has a satisfying personal life. So I
just was surprised he was dragged into it. And I
don't know why he was. I guess he's so proud
of what he's done with himself that he's doing it.
But you know, I think suddenly the penny dropped. Oh wait,
maybe this guy isn't serious, right, Maybe he's making fun
(34:37):
of a sport I like, or you don't call his
sport whatever and endeavor I like. And so I just
was surprised. I'm so glad he's not doing it. And
of course then he was welcome to the lying world
of Elon. I've got Rome on the line. The coliseum
is open, like what like he just says shit and
then everyone's like, yeah, like, give me a break. There's
a famous expression from Hollywood. Hello he lied. So I
(34:59):
just feel like, maybe if he's telling you is maybe
he's not. I just wouldn't believe anything. And I think
Mark was taken in in that regard.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Linda oapst that to her, it's a great line. So
Silicon Valley is still very male and it's very white.
Are tech bros? And is that status quo a forever phenomena.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yes, sorry, what's going to change what's changed in our society?
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Well, that's when I'm asking you, like, what would change that?
Speaker 2 (35:26):
I don't know. I think our overall society is like that.
Look at most of the attacks when women are led
by men right now, like about abortion rights and everything else.
I just you know, as long as there's not equal
numbers of women in power, and not every woman has
to agree. There's a lot of anti abortion activists or
women some of the more powerful ones too. But you know,
it's just wherever you go, there you are. If you
(35:46):
have one point of view and you're homogenious about it,
you're going to have one point of view. You're not
going to reflect other people, and then you become less
and less sympathetic and you think your viewpoint is the
only viewpoint. Now we're all guilty of that, right, everyone
of us is skuilty of that, and we have to
try really hard to get out of these silos that
we have, and we don't because we're very comfortable in them.
(36:07):
But when you have that much power and you do it,
I think it's incumbent on you to reach across lines
and not demonize people. And you know, with all the
power and influence and money muscast, all he does is
pick fucking fights all day, and all I can think
of is, what the hell is wrong with you? Like,
how did you get this way? It's disappointing because of
the good he could do. He obviously has skills, but
(36:29):
instead he's decided that his lesser nature is the one
he's going to feed.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Caer I always like to ask guests what they've learned
from an event. If you think about watching the arc
of Elon and Zuck's journeys, what have you learned? What
have those things taught you?
Speaker 2 (36:45):
That power corrupts? It just does. It's such a cliche.
It just does. Money and power corrupt and you have
to be a very strong personality to resist it. And
there's so many great hopes of what tech could do,
and instead of doing that, spending your time doing this
seems sad. It really does. It seems sad to me.
And there's so much potential to help people. There's so
(37:07):
much potential to be kind, and unfortunately where we've gotten
is these people, not all of them, I don't want
to paint a broad brush, but a lot of them
forgot why they came in the first place, which was
a great love of tech like I have, and others
having a great love of the possibilities. And my book's
coming out in March, and at the beginning of it,
I talk about a quote from Steve Jobs. I had
(37:29):
this idea that you are either a Star Trek or
a Star Wars person, because you know, tech people love
sci fi and you know Star Wars is a very
dark view of the universe where they evil often and
regularly triumphs. Right that everything's quite a dark vision what
Star Wars is. It's not a hopeful vision in any
way if you really take it apart, and Star Trek
is it's like a Benetton ad. We are going to
(37:51):
get along, We're going to beat villains, and villains are
going to come on our side in fact, you know
what I mean. And it's a sort of a hopeful
humanity gets better and better and better, and we improve ourselves.
And it's a Wars you never know the next episode
might be the last. And so there was an interview
I did with Steve Jobs where he said, I want
Star Trek. I wish we could get Star Trek, and
(38:11):
I feel the same way. And we live in Star Wars.
That's where we live now, and we've got Darth Vaders everywhere,
and not redeemable Darth Vaders, just Darth Vaders that stay
that way. And so that's how I think about it.
I just am really, I'm sorry. I want Star Trek too,
you know, as Steve said.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
I want Star Trek too. We're out of time. Kara,
thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Thank you so much, Tam for a thoughtful conversation. I
appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Kara Swisher is the host of The On with Kara
Swisher and Pivot podcasts, and she's an editor at large
at New York Magazine. Next spring, she has a new
book coming out, burn Book, a Tech Love Story. You
can find her on Twitter at Kara Swisher Here at
crash Course, we believe the collisions can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising,
(39:00):
always instructive. In today's Crash Course, I learned that Silicon
Valley's tech bros. May have a hammer lock on Silicon
Valley's riches and its businesses longer than I expected. What
did you learn? We'd love to hear from you. You
can tweet at the Bloomberg Opinion handle at opinion or
me at Tim O'Brien using the hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course.
(39:23):
You can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening
right now, and please leave us a review. It helps
more people find the show. This episode was produced by
the indispensable Anna Maserakas, Moses On Dam and Me. Our
supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson, and we had editing help
from Sage Bauman, Katie Boyce, Jeff Grocott, Mike Nizza, and
(39:44):
Christine Vanden Bilart. Blake Maples says, our sound engineering and
our original theme song was composed by Luis Gara. I'm
Tim O'Brien. We'll be back next week with another Crash
Course
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