Under Biden, Bipartisan Vengeance On Social Media? A Conversation With Bradley Tusk

As Joe Biden takes office, big tech’s rough and tumble four years under Donald Trump will not come to an end. Democrats and Republicans, each for their own reasons, will now be looking to exact vengeance on the platforms. With some compromise, they may even get somewhere. Bradley Tusk, a VC who works with startups facing regulatory hurdles, has a few thoughts about what regulation the tech giants may face. Tusk joins the Big Technology Podcast to break it all down, starting with a bold prediction and ending with some thoughts about Andrew Yang’s candidacy for New York Mayor, which he is advising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put Agentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay?

• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello, Bradley.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Am I supposed to respond to this?

• 1:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you're supposed to respond.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Hi, Alex.

• 1:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  We're rolling. How you doing?

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Good. How are you?

• 1:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm good. I'm just going to read this sponsored message and we'll get right into it.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 1:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  The Big Technology Podcast is sponsored by MediaOcean. Looking for a job in big tech? You might want to take a look at MediaOcean. They were just named the number one place to work in advertising technology by Ad Age. Go to mediaocean.com/bigtech to learn more about the company and check out their careers hub. MediaOcean is building the mission-critical platform for omnichannel advertising. If that sounds cool, I'm sure it does. Hit up mediaocean.com/bigtech and browse their job listings. And a big thanks to MediaOcean for supporting the Big Technology Podcast and the Big Technology Newsletter, I might add.

• 2:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is Bradley Tusk. He's the founder and CEO of Tusk Ventures, which works with high-growth startups facing political and regulatory challenges, which we'll speak about a lot. He is also the host of Firewall Podcast. Bradley, welcome to the show.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Thank you. A podcast that you have been a guest on, no less.

• 2:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right. It's a great show. You've had, we were just talking before this, Eric Newcomer is a recent guest. He's a fellow Substacker. And I was also scrolling through your other recent guests, and another friend of mine, Teddy Schleifer of Recode, came on talking about what a Biden-Harris administration might mean for Silicon Valley. So maybe we can close that thread today.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. Sounds great.

• 2:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So, look, you're definitely exactly the guy I want to speak with this week, given that you work on the regulatory challenge front. And while there's been a lot of discussion about the move from Facebook and Twitter to ban Donald Trump, there's been less discussion talking about what it's going to mean for the big technology companies now that companies like Amazon and Apple have gone ahead and basically yanked a partisan social network like Parler off the internet. So I want to get into that in a moment. But just briefly, so you got into this work,

• 3:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  you had worked in New York City government, and then just saw how tech companies were struggling to cut through some of the red tape in government and said, hey, maybe I can help them do this?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it wasn't quite that linear. But I'd worked in politics for a while. I was Mike Bloomberg's campaign manager, worked for him at City Hall. I spent four years in Illinois as the state's deputy governor, a couple of years in Washington on Capitol Hill as Chuck Schumer's communications director. And I started my first company a little over a decade ago, and, you know, more traditional political consulting. We ran, run big campaigns for companies with problems. And then randomly, one day, I'm in a meeting, and a friend of mine called and said, hey, there's a guy with a small transportation startup. He's having some regulatory problems. Would you mind talking to him? Right. So I become Oprah's first political advisor that day. I get really lucky when Travis calls me back and says,

• 4:28Speaker 01

  "Listen, I can't afford your fee to take equity." I didn't know what equity meant, but for some reason, thank God, I said, "Yes." That was during the Series A. Spent the better part of the next few years running campaigns all over the U.S. to legalize ride sharing. That worked. Kind of repeated the process with Clear, and then it dawned on me that maybe doing this in a more systematic way would make sense. So I met my partner, Jordan Noff. He had been running Blackstone's Internal Venture Fund at the time. And it took us two years, but we raised our first venture fund in 2016, and we invested in seeing Series A companies in highly regulated industries. And where we're maybe a little different than most VC funds is we look for the same stuff that everyone does in terms of the TAM, the founder, the idea, the technology.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  But then we also ask ourselves two questions. First, is there a gating regulatory issue or opportunity that if it were solved, could really drive growth in valuation? And then if so, can we solve it? And if the answer to both of those questions is yes, that's when we deploy capital. So it's investing in FanDuel and then running campaigns to legalize daily fantasy sports. Investing in Lemonade, then running the campaigns getting their insurance licenses. Investing in Bird, then running campaigns to legalize electric scooters in different cities. So, things like that. We've, we're just about done investing at a Fund Two and about two-thirds of the way done raising Fund Three. So, so far, so good.

• 5:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, and we actually worked in New York City government around the same time. I was at the very bottom of the org chart, I mean, the way, way bottom of New York City's Economic Development Corporation in 2010 and 2011. But I was doing the marketing for them, so I actually had a chance to, you know, be there in the strategic discussions of where the projects were going to go.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  And that was, that's, Pinsky was running at the time?

• 6:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, Seth Pinsky was running it.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  That was the whole, that was the whole Cornell Tech project, right?

• 6:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh yeah, and I have a story to tell about that. Maybe we can do it in the second half.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  All right, there you go.

• 6:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  You're working with Andrew Yang now.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't think that's the main draw for people to are going to come to this show, but it is a draw and something I'm interested in. Especially he's just kicked off his campaign for mayor of New York City. So let's save that for the second half and spend the first half talking about the world of hell that the big technology companies, I believe, are going to find themselves in. Uh, now that they've stepped in politically, they're already in hot water. So, um, also before we start, do you have any financial ties to the tech firms? Are you on the payroll of any of these big companies?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 6:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  You've been accused, people have accused you of like, you know, writing about how the DOJ case against Google is going to get dropped, but you're on the payroll. That's wrong. I just want to.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  But I'm not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, people, people, look, that would be a fair accusation if it were true. But actually, as an early stage investor, uh, I support a lot of this antitrust, uh, investigating activity and investigation. Because, you know, we never really.

• 7:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  For you.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't really ever see any great seed or series A companies in a lot of these spaces because the idea of competing is impossible. So I would love to see that change.

• 7:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. So, yeah, so I want to ask you how the events of the past few weeks, talking about Amazon and Apple booting Parler off of, you know, sustainable cloud services and the App Store. And then Facebook, uh, suspending Trump and YouTube blocking him from uploading. So how does that change the antitrust action that the tech giants are going to face? Because the Democrats are already on board. They were upset at these companies after 2016. And now it seems to me that the Republicans are going to be on board in a big way as well. Moving into the next session. So you could see some bipartisan action against these companies. Uh, where do you think it go?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think January 6th in many ways was the death knell for section 230. Uh, for the listeners who don't know the abbreviation there. Section 230 is a provision in the Federal Communications Decency Act that protects platforms like Facebook and Twitter from liability based on what their users post. And that's effectively the shield that has allowed Twitter, for example, to let Donald Trump run wild without ever owning any fiscal responsibility or liability for it. There has been talk for a while about repealing section two thirty. In fact, that's one of the few issues that both Biden and Trump agreed upon. And then I think that, you know, anyone who might have maybe been still holding out, you know, some measure of support for the platforms.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  That was extinguished when they got locked in their chambers and had to be rescued from from people stormed into the Capitol. So, you know, they're basically, in my mind, three big tech regulatory issues that both Congress and the administration could take on.

• 9:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, but Bradley, yeah, before we go into that, I want to talk about section two thirty. I don't want to drop that.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  So what what section two thirty does is it allows uh, people to operate internet forums and not be responsible for what users post on their platforms. So Facebook, if Facebook were to post something, they could be liable. But if you were to post something on Facebook, Facebook isn't liable for what you say. So revoking it would actually make Facebook liable for what people are saying and organizing and doing on that platform. So section two thirty will make sure that these companies are are not going to be liable for what people say on the platforms. The Republicans have been talking a lot about, uh, the Republicans have been talking a lot about revoking this as a way to game the system.

• 9:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh, and a way to try to get the social media companies to, uh, not touch conservative content on the platforms.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that or, um, I would argue maybe the conservatives are actually being a little foolish in in their calls for killing section two thirty. Um, you know, they love to claim and and you're seeing this right now, that all the platforms are inherently biased against them. I think that's nonsense, right? The platforms are the only thing they're biased in favor or against or anything else is how do we make as much money as possible? Um, they're not Republicans, they're not Democrats, they're not conservatives, they're not liberals, they're they're profit centers. Um, and while, uh, you know, you they may believe in maybe things like political giving reinforce this, that uh, Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg are more liberal than conservative.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Um, Facebook has been the greatest organizing tool the Republican Party has ever had. Uh, it has made a huge difference for them and their ability. That's how the whole Tea Party movement started. Um, and it's really how Trump got elected. So, um, while I could see that, that they kind of get feel wounded when there's some content on there they don't like. Um, in reality, they should be careful what they wish for.

• 11:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. So, um, I've never seen their opposition in two thirty as a good faith move. Now, moving to the Democrats. Um, I, you know, there's maybe a better chance that they'd want to revoke this act. Uh, but it will leave a pretty serious, uh, you know, change in terms of the way that these companies do business and can they find the majority of Congress that's willing to go write a new law, um, to amend it or revoke it. Uh, I don't really see a path for that happening. So what makes you convinced that, um, that two thirty is gonna die?

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Well, I, I think that it might die, right? So we've got, you know, uh, two hundred and twenty-two, I think, Democrats in the House. You need two eighteen to pass anything. Fifty in the Senate. You still need Harris to come in to, to break any tie. Um, so everything is going to be really hard. Uh, but I think that between the administrative powers that the FCC and other agencies could take, uh, using their own authority to limit section two thirty, um, and Congress. And you've got, you know, like you said, you know, bipartisan members on both sides. Uh, so this may be one of those instances where you have people on the left and the right coming together. Uh, maybe even over the objections of, of people in the center. Um, so we'll see.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  But, you know, if there are three, I was saying earlier, kind of macro issues that Congress could take up to kind of regulate the attack. You know, it, it's section two thirty, it's privacy and it's anti-trust. They all obviously kind of fit into each other. But of the three politically, I think repealing section two thirty is the easiest.

• 12:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why is it something that Democrats would coalesce around?

• 12:49Speaker 01

  I think because, two reasons. So the more, the less cynical reason would be that they see these platforms as having just monopolistic power. They don't treat their workers well. I'm not sure that's actually true. And they really don't like companies being that big, especially kind of the socialist wing of the party. And therefore, they like punitive action, like you know, splitting them up. And that one, if you're Nancy Truss, there's actually 230 different ways. However, the maybe the more cynical would be, as I said before, Facebook's been great for the right. It has really helped them organize. Because it used to be that organizing was a physical task.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  And it was knocking on doors, it was having meetings, it was canvassing, it was posturing phone banks. And Democrats were traditionally better at that, in part because groups like Organized Labor, who could really do it pretty well, were generally Democratic supporters. The internet changed all of that and really made it a lot easier for Republicans to do it too. And that's had a big role in the Republican's success politically over the last 15, 20 years. And so arguably, if you're a really savvy Democratic, which someone like Nancy Pelosi certainly is, you may say, "Look, I'll gladly use the AOC, Elizabeth Warren rhetoric about monopolistic power and companies too big and all this other stuff, but all I really want to do is help take away that organizing advantage."

• 14:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so then how does the revocation of Section 230 then change companies like Facebook or Twitter? Because essentially what it means is if you don't have that protection, if someone organized, for instance, this recent organization of the Capitol storming, if it happened on Facebook and Twitter, then all of a sudden, you can end up having, you know, people bring legal action against these companies for allowing this stuff to fester on their platforms. That could be some, and that's just one instance. This is, you know, 300 billion, 300 billion people in the case of Twitter, 2 billion people in the case of Facebook, you're held liable for everything that's said. I don't really see a path forward to that business. So what do you think happens to these companies?

• 14:59Speaker 01

  I think should section two thirty be repealed or modified, they're gonna have to change the way that they police content. But right now, despite whatever they may say publicly, they love Trump, they love controversy, they love sand. They like anything that drives eyeballs and clicks because that lets them charge more for advertising, right? That's all this is about. And so they want as much controversy in their site as they could possibly get. The only reason that they ever take it off is they hit a point where they're getting enough heat from advertisers and customers and employees that all of a sudden the risk of having this outweighs the reward. But otherwise, you know, they would far prefer to be able to do it. I mean, Twitter's market cap dropped by five billion dollars

• 15:45Speaker 01

  the day after they banned Trump from the platform. So they want to have as much as they possibly can. If they lose their legal protection against what their users post, then they've got to be much more conservative in what they allow to go up there, which ultimately means the platforms will just become more bland, more vanilla, less controversial, less exciting, which means, you know, fewer clicks and fewer eyeballs and lower revenue. In fact, I would argue that when Facebook a couple of years ago introduced the concept of the payment system Libra, it was because they saw section two thirty and privacy regulations and antitrust all coming at them and said, look, the way we make money right now is probably not going to be politically sustainable.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Let's try to find some new way to do it.

• 16:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Should they? Should we revoke section two thirty? I mean, to me, it seems like a fairly common sense law. If I'm going to build an internet forum, I shouldn't be held accountable for what people are saying on it. I mean, I know there's been stuff that has been said on the, on these platforms that has led to bad outcomes. But, you know, it's one thing to, to, you know, to point that out and it's another thing completely to say, we need to basically turn user-generated content on the internet into this safe space, you know, where controversial opinions or borderline comments are out.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, all of these things are and are not a science, right? So I think before the events of January 6th, you know, I certainly would agree with you. And I think a lot of people would certainly a lot of people listening to this podcast would. But then if you look at what happened on January 6th, so far at least five lives were lost as pretty much a direct result of the content posted on Twitter. So, you know, the question goes, how do you look at it? If you look at it and just say, hey, this is purely a question of preserving speech, which is how the platforms have portrayed it so far, you know, then you would say it's an important law and we should preserve it. If you look at it and say the government has a responsibility to protect the public from physical harm all of the time.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  That's why we have laws regulating, you know, you can't put toxic chemicals in food. You can't use lead paint or whatever it is. And simply when when a product becomes so dangerous that it physically endangers someone's health, then it's the government's responsibility to step in and do something about it. And if you were to support the repeal of Section 230, that would be your perspective.

• 18:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, that makes sense. Do you worry at all? I mean, I wrote about this a little bit in the newsletter over the past couple of weeks. There are second order effects to these decisions. People can move from the more mainstream platforms to messaging groups with very little visibility. Either there's, you know, private groups or they are encrypted or both use disappearing messaging. And I wonder if people end up going from, you know, and obviously the outcomes that we've seen on Facebook and Twitter have been poor. But do more people end up going from shitposting on those sites to actually starting to go into these groups, which are echo chambers, again, unaccountable, and then further radicalize? And that leads to more violence?

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Probably that my guess is you have some people will make that shift and it might even further radicalize them. But at the same time, it's kind of like saying, well, you know, there's really no point in hunting down terrorists because there's always going to be young extremists who come up right behind them and take their place. So therefore, maybe the devil we know is better. And that's not what we do. So in reality, if you were to sort of shuttle everything off of the mainstream platforms and onto the more, you know, alternative or niche or bad or whatever you call it platforms, it probably will increase extremism on some level. But at the same time, it certainly limits

• 19:41Speaker 01

  the scale and scope, right? As you said, Facebook's got a couple of billion users. We've got 300 million users. So being able to reach that audience is ultimately a lot more powerful than if you're limited to, you know, message boards of much smaller groups of people.

• 19:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yeah. And I'm just thinking through this stuff. I'm not advocating for us to, for Facebook and Twitter not to moderate themselves. But I think it has been lost in the discussion sort of where people go. But you're right. The scale of a company like Facebook, the recommendation engine that takes people from, you know, somewhat unobjectionable content to things like anti-vax or things like stop the steal is an issue. And I think that they've, you know, I've tried to give them, you know, if not the benefit of the doubt, at least a fair shake. But it's really difficult at this point because they've sort of proven and capable of using their or structuring their product in a way that doesn't lead to this division.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it would be interesting. And this kind of gets back into maybe the innovation and competition question. But if you were to have platforms where they couldn't just get by by having the most salacious stuff on there at all times and be kind of a toxic waste dump, then they would have to be able to offer more of a value proposition to their customers, right?

• 21:07Speaker 01

  That could mean that new platforms could be born that specialize in very differentiated things and niches and say, you know, we're really good for people who are interested in kombucha or quilting or whatever it is. And they can offer things that that are much more uh specific and real and meaningful to people in that community. And whereas Facebook is just this giant, you know, kind of blob of of stuff, um, you know, they could be more successful. So right now, you know, it's really hard to compete with Facebook. Uh, but if all of a sudden Facebook is held a little more accountable, uh, then it's a question of who offers better value and more exciting content, uh, that is meaningful and substantive um

• 21:50Speaker 01

  to their customers. And that's where you could see new competition coming.

• 21:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, the interest-based social networks has always been something that people have been interested in. The only issue is that, and I think Eugene Way makes a great uh point when he wrote about how this this great post about how people are status-hungry monkeys, talking about how social networks will thrive when they can give people the most status. And there is much more status to be gained on a big social network than a small one, which is probably why some of these social, smaller social networks haven't taken off until they become become home to banned content like a place like Parler. So

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  It with that in mind, do you think that this is actually possible?

• 22:34Speaker 01

  I do, I do, because so e- e- even if you take the sort of social monkey theory uh at face value, and I actually kind of do, um, uh, but even if you do, I mean, what you often will do are are create uh communities where people feel like there is bestowed prestige and status upon them to have some sort of role in it, right? You know, there's lots of things like when Gmail, if you remember a million years ago when it first came out, you had to be invited on the platform to use it. Uh, and that created an aura of exclusivity. And then all of a sudden, because you couldn't necessarily do it, everybody wanted it. And so, you know, the the vastness of a platform is, you know, helpful to some people.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  And if you are an influencer of some kind, then that may be especially important to you because it allows you to charge more money. But if there's a niche community that's really influential and it's really high end in a specific topic, right? It's just a substantive, you know, the car community or whatever it is, that could potentially work really, really well, right? So, you know, like, for example, we see streaming services and that are extremely broad like a like a Netflix. And then there are things that are much more niche, but niche things can be very profitable.

• 23:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Like Quibi?

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Well, except Quibi.

• 23:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, I'm kidding.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  You have to be able to view it from both angles of the phone at the very least.

• 24:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm flaking. Yeah. Quibi also wasn't niche. They tried to be all things to all people and, well, we could do another whole whole show about Quibi. But yeah, you're right. There's been Discord services, for instance, Discord servers where people talk only about sports or only about games or only about certain teams. And they've been very popular. There are Slacks now that people on Substack are building that are just for their subscribers. And they're very active communities. So it could be interesting to watch that energy move there.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And without being sort of naive, the original vision of the internet, which is you're building communities where like minded people can come together, share content, build relationships, have human interaction in a positive way. The vision that you and I are talking about right now seems much more likely to make that happen than if the business model, which, you know, Twitter is, is just based on, you know, let's be as savage and negative as we can at all times and use that.

• 25:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Yell at each other for retweets.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean.

• 25:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  I don't, I, you know, I this year I quit two things. I quit drinking and I quit Twitter. And I'm not supposed to say I quit Twitter because I still have a Twitter account and my office does. But both of them to me were just things where I was like, you know what? This is just not adding to my life. It's taking away from it. Now, you're you're a journalist. You can't quit Twitter, obviously. But for me, it it felt like a much healthier thing to do.

• 25:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  I I will say that while I was writing Always Day One, I took maybe six months. Not completely off, but I didn't tweet for six, something like five, six months. And I also uh spent much less time on the platform, removed the app from my phone, et cetera, et cetera. I don't think my head has felt clearer in my adult life than those five, than those five months.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Do that and stop drinking.

• 25:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Amazing.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, everybody needs advice, Bradley, so I can't make all these big promises here, but uh. But it, how's it going for you?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Pretty good, I have to say, you know.

• 26:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  You feel clarity?

• 26:09Speaker 01

  I do, I do, you know, I was never like a really heavy drinker. Um, but uh, but I don't think I've had a drink in close six months and my head feels really clear and and I feel like. Uh, you know, look, I do a lot of different things in politics and tech and by definition a lot of it are controversial, which means. A platform like Twitter, at any given moment, someone's criticizing me. That's okay. Uh, but that's, that's fine, but but me choosing to proactively. Uh, read all that or even read some of it is totally masochistic, right? Um, so and the easy solution was just like, just don't fucking look at it. And then that really makes the problem go away and it that it more or less does.

• 26:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  It does.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm I'm back on Twitter now. I haven't had a drink in about four weeks, so.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Are you doing the dry January?

• 27:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Coming up. Uh, I I started before Christmas, just had a, had a tough uh end to the year, just a lot of work. And uh, used alcohol to get me through it. And uh, then Christmas week came and I was like, all right, take a break. So I do it every now and again, four weeks or so.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  I I found forever sports, and this was the only time I've ever even tried to stop drinking. Uh, I thought the beginning was a little harder because there were so many social cues where in a situation you would normally have a drink. Although the pandemic in some ways helps because you're not social. Um, and then once I got past like a few months, like and I kind of. You know, went out for dinner, you know, enough times, even if I was sitting outside in the cold, uh, where I didn't order a drink, then all of a sudden I kind of broke that psychological association. And all of a sudden, it it really got a lot easier. So, look, you know, of course, you would tell anyone who has a drinking problem that it'll get better longer you don't do it. Uh, but even if you're just sort of a casual drinker, you're thinking about it.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  It's amazing that we've changed the topic of this podcast completely. You can post this one like in a totally different channel, right? Um, but, but I think that, you know, for me at least, once that kind of broke past a couple of months, um, all of a sudden, it just got, it got really easy. In fact, I'll take it one level deeper even, and you can edit it out if you want, but where I thought was gonna be the hardest. What I thought was gonna be the hardest were two things. One, uh, being out socially, I'm forty seven, so I don't go to bars anymore. But being at a restaurant, everyone else is having a drink and I have one. That turned out not to be that hard, in large part because I'm an adult and it's not like my friends are giving me a hard time about it. They're like, okay, good for you, right?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  That's it. Um, and the other would be, you know, you have a tough moment, a bad day, and your natural instinct would be, okay, I'll get home and I'll have a drink. Uh, breaking both of those were easier than I expected. Uh, on the former part, again, quarantine has sort of also limited men and socializing in general, but even when there is some, people are adults about it and they're basically, their only answer is usually good for you. And then on the second part, I find that, you know, there may be kind of a ten minute stretch where it's like, oh, that would really be nice right now. And then once I kind of ignored and go into something else, by like fifteen minutes later, it's just kind of gone. Um, so those were much easier. The thing that ultimately, uh, was the hardest, and this was true also about a year and a half ago,

• 29:33Speaker 01

  I I gave up cannabis. Is always feeling the same all of the time, a hundred percent of the time. Uh, on one hand, it is nice because good, but but still like the same.

• 29:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  You know, and yeah, and to a certain extent, the variety, the substance abuse, I guess, or just substances uh, provides on some level uh, is enjoyable. Uh, so kind of getting used to that was actually for me uh, the hardest part. And I don't, I don't know if this is forever or not, but yeah, the whole thing feels like you said, it feels really good.

• 30:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Um, how have you, have you made it up, made up for that high in other ways like running or?

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Listening to classical music?

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Exercised a decent amount already. Yeah, I definitely am not listening classical music, but, but you know, I exercised. Um, you know, I uh, I've been working on a novel now uh, for a little while and so some, some of that.

• 30:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  There we are, breaking news.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Well, not, not just that, but it very much, it is literally, uh, it's a parody about a campaign to legalize flying cars in New York, Austin and LA. So uh, if, if there's ever anyone who would want to read the novel that gets published, it's probably people who listen to this podcast. Uh, so yeah, that's, that's been, been some of it. Um, and then, you know, uh, I think like a lot of people who are probably listeners here, you know, I'll throw myself into work, but we uh, couldn't use the opportunity to launch some new stuff. So I raised a stack. A couple of months ago, I kind of had this idea of, of bringing gaming into a new era. It really focuses on millennial and Gen Z gaming, being a euphemism for gambling in this case.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm trying to open up a bookstore and podcast studio. So I've got some other stuff that I'm working on, but uh, more than fills the void.

• 31:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's cool. All right. I want to take a quick break and then um, I want to talk to you about two more things. Uh, antitrust uh, briefly and then Andrew Yank. We will be right back after this here on the Big Technology Podcast. This episode is brought to you by AVPoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data. And most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what AVPoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data,

• 32:07Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 32:49Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 33:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Learn how to stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. The link's in the show notes.

• 33:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here for the second half on the Big Technology Podcast here with Bradley Tusk, head of Tusk Ventures, also the host of Firewall, which is a good podcast which I've appeared on, and you should go listen to it. Bradley has worked with companies like Uber to help them navigate regulatory challenges. We spoke a little bit about Section 230 in the first half. We spoke about abstaining from Twitter and drinking. Those are two good topics that weren't on the agenda.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Most people go from 230 straight to abstaining from Twitter.

• 34:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, well, it's usually the opposite, actually. Once you spend enough time on 230, you talk about what you're drinking. But let's talk a little bit about antitrust. The Facebook and Google are being sued under an old act, the Sherman Antitrust Act, that was used to break up, to put antitrust regulatory pressure on the railroads. It doesn't do a very good job regulating their marketplaces. It focuses narrowly on monopoly maintenance. Like we spoke about at the top, the Democrats have actually done some really legitimate work looking at the market and competition dynamics of these big technology companies.

• 34:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you foresee some real challenges here that might come? We know the regulators are looking into Amazon and Apple, but there could also be new laws that give regulators like the DOJ, Department of Justice, and the Federal Trade Commission the opportunity to bring new cases on new elements of these companies' businesses. So what do you think?

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think that definitely could happen. And to the point we were discussing earlier, for different reasons, the big platforms in different ways, including Amazon and Apple, have managed to antagonize members of both parties. And so that's what creates potential of the bipartisan support to actually pass something. Look, overall, while I have no problem with the current prosecutions of Facebook on antitrust grounds, and I think we'd feel just fine if Amazon and Apple face the same thing, I also, at the same time, you know, don't think that you want government being overly prescriptive with how companies should be run, because that doesn't work either. And I'm not even saying this is some sort of Silicon Valley libertarian dialogue.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  You know, I was the deputy governor of Illinois for four years, and I ran the state's operations, policy, budget, legislation, and communications. I ran the state of Illinois. So I think, I feel like I have an appreciation for what government is good at and what government is not good at. You know, there are certain roles of government plays that are really essential and only government can do. And even sometimes they're done pretty efficiently and well. And there are other things that really are way beyond the capability of government. So ultimately, you know, while I wouldn't want to have an incredibly overbearing antitrust program that was busting into every single company and trying to brighten them up, I think the way it's been used right now is totally appropriate. And, you know, Klobuchar,

• 36:40Speaker 01

  for example, throughout an idea of kind of shifting the burden of proof on antitrust grounds from government to companies, I'm not sure that will actually pass. But, you know, I think it'll be good if there's a bunch of ideas that are debated, and then, you know, maybe some of the best ones actually happen.

• 36:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you, so obviously, when you think about these big technology companies, they, on any given day, could make up between 20 and 25% or more of the S and P 500. They're a very important part of the US economy, and if they start to tank, the economy will tank. At one point during the pandemic, almost all of the growth in the US economy was coming through these five companies. So is there a worry that the government, I mean, you kind of touched on it already, but is there a worry? That the government will come in and enact rules that aren't smart and end up harming the economy overall as opposed to making it more competitive.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, there's definitely a worry, but there's also a worry that if the companies are behaving in monopolistic ways, you not only see, you know, new innovation and new, new companies not being born and not succeeding, but ultimately, you know, while these companies all still feel very aggressive in being innovative and doing R and D, you know, eventually companies do get stagnant when they've got a market position for too long. And then all of a sudden, they're actually doing in some ways more harm than good because there's less innovation happening, right? So at one point, you know, the big three in Detroit were kind of like fang right now. And people were thinking all the same things about them. And eventually.

• 38:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that's automakers?

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's automakers. And they got so big and so powerful that they kind of got bureaucratic and stagnant and lazy. And then they ended up kind of losing their position as the dominant automakers in the world. And so, you know, that could, you run that risk if you do nothing. And you also run the risk of over engineering and limiting economic growth if you do too much. And so it's a pretty tricky balance. I will say, if you look at most of the Biden appointees so far, it seems like people who generally seem to understand that balance, I think Janet Yellen especially, Treasury, you know, feels like she, she gets it really well.

• 39:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  So how would you, if you had, I mean, if you want to try to preserve that balance, you've spent time in government, so we will accept no cop out answers on this one.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  How would you actually go about trying to regulate these big tech companies? Like, would you pass new laws? Or what would you do?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, here's how I would do it if I were still working in, in government. And let's say this was a government where people genuinely constructively wanted to try to accomplish things and not just, you know, play politics. If I were, say, working on the Senate, you know, Commerce Committee, or whatever the relevant committee might be there, I would go to the FTC and DOJ's antitrust people and say, look, Where do you feel like the current law is not sufficiently evolved to give you the tools to do your job properly? And, you know, my guess is they would list rattle off ten different things. And you'd go back and look and say, okay, some of these things, I understand how it would help you. Uh, but quite frankly, that's too much power.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Uh, and the risk of even if you, you, this particular regulator is really smart and wise and judicious. Overall, you know, you can't risk, uh, giving people this much authority. But then another five, say, you know, these, these are reasonable changes that we can make. Uh, and then you would craft legislation and go through the process and try to do it now. Obviously, I just described in theory how policy should work, and that's not very close to the reality of how it usually does work. Um, but, but that's how I would go about it. And, you know, I'm not even close enough to pretend to know like that there are these three specific tweaks that need to be made. Uh, to legislation that would really make it, um, a, a lot easier for antitrust regulators to do their job.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Um, but I, but we have smart people working in government. They know what those changes would be. Uh, and in a perfect world, you know, we would, we would be able to get a list of them, think about which ones make the most sense. Uh, and move them forward. So, and look, maybe there's now enough bipartisan frustration towards big tech. Um, that there's some willingness to actually do that.

• 41:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I think there, there is. Uh, but in terms of actual policy prescriptions. I think you talk about a process. That's good. You have any policies that you've been thinking about or?

• 41:21Speaker 01

  I don't know. I mean, yeah, I don't know. I mean, look, I, the, the Klobuchar notion of, of shifting the burden of proof, um, is interesting. And I understand how in a actual legal prosecution, you know, whoever bears the burden of proof, you know, has a harder job inherently. Um, and so if you shifted it to from the government to the companies, then you would significantly increase the odds of success in an antitrust prosecution, which then means the threat of it will become a lot more potent. Uh, which would then manage to have a lot more return effect. Um, you know, with that said, I, I don't know. I haven't sort of studied enough to say that this is, you know, I'm kind of, I'm the worst kind of lawyer because like I went to law school.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  I took the bar. I technically have a, a law license and yet I've never practiced for a day in my life. So, uh, I know just enough to be dangerous here.

• 42:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, there are worse kinds of lawyers. I'll tell you that much.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Worse kind of lawyers. That's a fair point. Like eighty percent of practicing lawyers, probably.

• 42:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, okay, well, I want to just, so with that being said, let me direct it here. The argument that every single tech company and every single big tech company is going to make this argument is that harming us is going to empower China. And you look at TikTok. And you look at the way that the internet seems to be bifurcating across the world. And I'm curious, because clearly the US government is going to think about that. I'm curious how that plays out.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think, it kind of gets back to the point earlier. When we're talking about the example of like, you know, do you take out terrorists? Do you kind of go after the bad actors, even if the devil you don't know might be worse? I think you can't use the fear of China to handcuff yourself from doing what you think is necessary and right. And I think that, you know, look at Joe McCarthy, right? He was able to use the fear of Russia to do all kinds of things that were pretty horrific to American citizens, right? And really subvert and pervert who we are. And in fact, there's a direct line from McCarthy to Roy Cohn to Donald Trump. So I think we're still paying the price for that today.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  So I would be reluctant to say that just because you raise a competitive threat of China, therefore, you can argue not to do anything in the form of regulation or improvement. And look, let me give you a corollary. Out of my foundation, Tuscaloosa Land Thropies, we're funding and running the effort around the US to create mobile voting. What I learned in politics, and I spent in total, you know, a good fifteen years between federal, state, and local government, is that every policy output is the result of political input. Politicians by nature are generally desperately insecure, self-loathing people that can't about the validation of holding office. And they are never, ever, ever going to do anything to risk their ability to stay in office because it fills a hole in their psyche. And filling

• 44:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  And this is a guy who works with politicians for a

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Lots of them. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm saying, I'm saying on the record.

• 44:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  So you

• 44:29Speaker 01

  And and it fills this hole in their psyche. So they can't live with that. So expecting them to do something that's not in their interest is unrealistic. And the problem is because of gerrymandering, ninety nine percent of the districts in this country at all well so government are really the only election are not competitive. And the election only matters in the primary. And turnout in most US primaries is like ten to fifteen percent. So as a result, if you are, whether you're Democrat or Republican, you know, hey, all I have to do is win the next primary to keep my seat. You gotta keep that ten to fifteen percent happy, and they tend to be the most ideological and the most rigid on either side, right? So like, for example, you topic that you cover a lot, you know, when when Amazon tried to come to New York City and build their second headquarters in Queens,

• 45:14Speaker 01

  a couple of local elected officials from the district where the site would have been objected to it, were able to kill the deal. And while they certainly weren't reflecting the will of their district as a whole, or the city as a whole, based on all the polling, they were right. If you look at the ten, twelve percent of the people in the district who voted in their elections, those people genuinely hated Amazon, and therefore the smart political move was to opposing. In fact, all those people got reelected last June, each with over seventy percent of the vote. And that's true on both sides. But if you think about most issues, take guns. Seventy percent of this country would agree with this. One, you shouldn't walk into every household and confiscate every gun. Two, you shouldn't be able to walk in off the street and buy an assault weapon.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Seventy percent of people in the country would agree with this on immigration. You shouldn't deport every single person who might be here illegally, nor should you have wide open ports where they can just walk in whenever they want. The problem is that seventy percent don't vote in primaries. So while they may have a view that's logical and could produce, you know, some compromise and actually get something done. Their views don't actually matter. So the only way, if you want more consensus and more progress and a more mainstream approach, i- is to radically increase turnout. Uh, and my view is the only way to do that is through mobile voting. And I learned that lesson. We talked earlier about Uber. Uh, when I ran all those campaigns to legalize ride sharing, the way that we took on taxi, which at the time was a really powerful cartel, really we beat them, that we mobilized our customers.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  And through the app, they were able to advocate politically and tell their city councilman or the mayor or the state senator, whoever the relevant person was, hey, I want to be able to use this thing. And enough people did it.

• 46:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  I can't wait for you to tie this back to the China stuff.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's coming, it's coming. And enough, enough people did it that we won in every single jurisdiction. And so, um, at the time, I remember thinking, you know, this would be an amazing way to vote, but the tech is not there yet. But over time, blockchain, the cloud both progressed. Uh, and over the last two and a half years, we've funded elections down eighteen different jurisdictions across the U.S. Uh, where either deployed military or people with disabilities, uh, have voted on their phones. All eighteen elections have been audited independently by the National Cyber Security Center, uh, come back clean. Turnout on average has more than doubled. So everything seems to be working the way that it should. But we have a lot of critics.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  And those critics say, well, something could go wrong if we had an online election. Someone could try to hack it. And the risk of that is so great that even though the system we have is totally broken, it doesn't make sense to improve it, um, because the, because the risk is even higher than that. And to me, that's nonsense. And that's a lot like the arguments that companies would use, um, to try to stop themselves from being regulated, which is say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we may be, you know, committing all kinds of monopolistic violations. We may be, you know, uh, totally violating people's privacy. We may be, you know, platforms to incite violence, but, um, China's even worse. And if you try to limit us in any way, you're only going to empower them.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  So you have to let us do whatever we want. And to me, it's how I feel when our critics say, um, you can't do mobile voting because while the system's completely broken and politics are polarized and dysfunctional and no one trusts or believes in them. At the same time, maybe something even worse could happen. So therefore, we can't even try. So to me, they're very similar. So I think I did bring that back around.

• 48:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  You tied that knot. You tied that knot. I'm impressed. Once you started going China and Uber, I was like Bradley is not taking us back, but you did. So I appreciate that.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  You know what? If I didn't have the clarity of not drinking or cannabis, who knows that I could have pulled that off?

• 48:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you would be some, you'd be somewhere else completely. The, yeah, and the whole China argument from the big tech companies isn't, isn't working very well, given the fact that the people that have been making it most strongly, Google and Facebook are now facing serious anti-trust action from the FTC and DOJ and dozens of state attorney generals.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  So.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  It's like, I think it's all but three or four at this point. Yeah.

• 49:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And who knows what's going to happen with those holdouts. So it's easy to make a settlement with one government agency. It's much difficult, much more difficult to appease 48 state attorney generals.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  The mobile voting thing, I mean, I, I won't get into it because I feel like that's a whole new episode.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Separate episode. Yeah, I'll come back if you want. Yeah.

• 49:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  I want to end with Andrew Yang.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 49:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  He's off to the races in New York City. He's had in his first week, more controversies than I've ever seen a local politician get into in like five days.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  One was that he doesn't spend a lot of time in New York and had this line saying, you know, how could anybody imagine, you know, doing what I'm doing, like having a job in a two bedroom apartment with kids running around and New Yorkers were all like, well, we could certainly imagine that. Then he, he filmed a video in a nice grocery store and called it a bodega. And everyone was like, Andrew, that's not a bodega. So, so what's going on with this guy? And, and how, what's his path to victory?

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think there's sort of three things. Let me answer the very specific and then we'll talk about kind of why I'm doing this and then why I think we're going to win. So, you know, the. There's always this very tricky balance in politics, which voters clearly want a candidate who is genuine and authentic. They have shown that time and time again. They don't want someone who just delivers the best soundbite and has the longest list of bullet points and the longest white paper from the most people worked on who went to yell. If that were the case, Al Gore would have beaten George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton would have succeeded Gore, and next Wednesday we'd be inaugurating Elizabeth Warren to her second term. So that's clearly not what the voters want. But when you are genuine and authentic,

• 51:11Speaker 01

  that means you're human and you say things. And if you recorded anything that all of us said over the course of a day, we're all going to say things that later we're like, oh, that doesn't sound great in retrospect. And so the the risk and reward are kind of both there and apparent. And at least my strategy and philosophy is, I gotta let Andrew be Andrew. You know, he's an incredibly charismatic guy. People really, really like him. And they like him because of who he is, not because of who he pretends to be. And that means he'll make some stupid mistakes. And my hope is that we'll learn from those. I think he understands in that time story what he said and why it was politically problematic. And so he'll get better and better. But that's sort of the inherent risk you have when the

• 51:54Speaker 01

  candidate is someone with that kind of talent and is that kind of a conoclast. So now the question is, why do this? And then, you know, how do we win? So, you know, as we discussed, I spent a lot of time working in city government. I was with New York City Parks Department for four years.

• 52:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Riley, before you get into it, I just want to say, I think there's a lot of potential for him. And I'm not writing him off after this.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Oh, we're gonna win.

• 52:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, as we mentioned at the top, a New Yorker, you know, even though I live in San Francisco, I'm always going to be a New Yorker. And I think that the city's been poorly served by the leadership, who have been more interested in an image and appearances than actual doing what's right for people. And I'm speaking about Bill de Blasio. I think he's done a terrible job with the city.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Worst mayor in history.

• 52:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  People inside the agencies who talk about how corrupt everything feels. I won't say it is, but feels corrupt. It feels like it's being done in service of, you know, de Blasio and his friends and not for the people in New York. And, and I think the city deserve a leader whose head is in the right place and, and who's going to do it not for themselves, but for the people. And I think Yang has the possibility to do that.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And in fact, so, so what's interesting, Alex is, so I, you know, I, because of my work, I, I know most of the candidates for running, right? And I asked myself, what made Mike Bloomberg successful mayor? And, and I all ended up with three answers. Uh, and the first one actually is funny because it pertains to you personally, which is Mike said, I am going to hire the most talented people that I can get. I don't care about politics. I don't care where they're from. I don't care who they know. I just want talent. And he said to all of his commissioners, you have to hire the same way. And then on top of that, we're going to give these people the freedom to come up with big ideas, take risks, sometimes even fail.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  And that's okay, because that's where we're going to have great ideas. And that's how we're going to get things done. If you look at, say, the hundred best things that happened in the Bloomberg administration, I don't know that Mike personally thought of any of those hundred things. But he created the environment where really talented people could come to someone like you, who would never have worked in a de Blasio administration, you know, was recruited and came into EDC and did really great work, I'm pretty sure. Uh, and that was very emblematic of the Bloomberg administration because Mike created a world and a culture and the approach to hiring, uh, that made that happen, right? So one is you need a mayor who really believes in that. De Blasio has been the opposite, in all patronage, all hacks. And he can't attract or retain talent, uh, simply because, uh, he's so terrible to work for.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Uh, the second thing is you need a mayor who won, you know, will go for really big visionary ideas. But the job just can't be, you know, throwing out these giant concepts. It's picking up the trash, like literally. And the mayor has to understand that their job is to make sure the street light turns from red to green. The water comes out of the tap cleanly, the snow gets removed, uh, and they've got to take that stuff seriously. And third, um, they've got to really love the job, right? Part of de Blasio's problem is he hates being mayor. And as a result, eh, eh, being around him and just doing it with him is a bummer. And, you know, with you want a candidate who's excited about it, who's enthusiastic,

• 55:12Speaker 01

  who's coming every day, who wants to work day in, day out, weekend, weekdays, weekends, all of that. And by the way, has like a core appreciation for sort of ethics and morality, which again, our current mayor does not. And so I took those three standards and I met with almost all the candidates running. And, and by the way, there's some nice people who are running and I like someone, I've known someone for a long time. And a lot of them would be a lot better.

• 55:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, there's like 20 people already in the field.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  12, yeah. And by the way, maybe all 12 would be better than the logic, probably the case. But no one was really quite.

• 55:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's a low bar.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  Yes. But no one was quite doing it for me either. And I had met Andrew Yang because when Mike Bloomberg ran for president, you know, I wasn't like super involved in the campaign, but I was helping where I could. And Yang had dropped out and I got tasked to go try to convince Yang to endorse Mike. And I wasn't able to do that. But I started building a relationship as a result, stayed in touch with him and the team. And through that, started talking about, okay, you know, here's what, what New York City government would really look like. And here's the situation we're facing right now. And the more and more and more I talked to Andrew, they were like, you know what? This guy will attract incredible talent and people will come here to work for him. And because he's not of the political system, he's not going to have this long list of hacks that he has to hire.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  And he is someone who's incredibly enthusiastic and energetic. And he's someone that is able to obviously generate really big ideas like UBI, but at the same time, seems to really get them. Most of the job is a severe relentless focus on day to day operations. And so for all those reasons, I ultimately decided, we're going to support him and we're going to work with him. And we've been doing that now for a little while. And we watched the campaign yesterday. So here's how we win. And, and again, if I didn't think Andrew could win.

• 56:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, Bradley, quickly, the work that you're doing with him is you're just like consulting with him? Or are you taking a more official?

• 57:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we're running, well, so my firm is kind of running a lot of the campaign. We're overseeing media, policy, politics, endorsements, you know, a lot of operations, scheduling, you know, all field, ads.

• 57:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  So that basically is the campaign.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  A lot of it, you know, and Andrew's got a great team of people.

• 57:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I love there was a.

• 57:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  There was a New York Times profile of the Bloomberg campaign back when you were on it. And people were like, oh, yeah, Bradley Tusk, he likes to keep lists. He's very organized.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Yes, I still keep lots of lists.

• 57:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, any campaign could use that.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  That's what we do.

• 57:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  You can talk about how he wins, but we're running up over time. So like 90 seconds or less.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Candidate with the most, the highest name ID, the most energy and enthusiasm in a ranked choice votes, choice voting system for the first time, which really rewards the candidates that people know and like in a climate where A, everyone will have the same amount of money because of the city campaign finance system. And B, we're going to be running this whole thing in a pandemic, which means the campaign will be much more digital than physical and the Yang did it operations head and shoulders better than everyone else.

• 58:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. Yeah, he has an advantage there. Okay, Bradley, thank you for joining us. Let everyone know where they can get, follow you and your podcast.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. Sure. So the podcast is called Firewall and you can find it on any single platform. You can follow me on Twitter, although I've already admitted that I'm not the one doing the tweets, but it's at Bradley Tusk. Or if you go to BradleyTusk.com, you can, you can sign up for, I write a column monthly for Fast Company. So you can sign up and get those sent to you and anything else that I write as well.

• 58:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great. Well, Bradley, it's been a true pleasure. It's always great to talk.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  It's really fun.

• 58:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  We covered a lot of ground today.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  I know.

• 58:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  We covered the section 230 and antitrust.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna skip therapy next week. Yeah.

• 59:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Drinking and Twitter. That's how we know an interview has gone well. And Andrew Yang's candidacy. Thanks, everybody for listening. We are back every Wednesday with a new episode of the Big Technology Podcast. So subscribe if you're here for the first time. If you've listened for a while and are enjoying it, all we ask is that you add a rating to your podcast app of choice if you're able to. And thanks as always for coming back week in, week out. We've seen the audience growing recently and it means a lot. And I hope you stick around. So we'll be back next Wednesday. Thanks again, and we will see you then.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, theHouseMajorityPact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

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