The U.S. And Tech After The Midterms — With Marshall Kosloff and Saagar Enjeti

Saagar Enjeti and Marshall Kosloff host The Realignment, a terrific podcast about politics and policy. They join Big Technology Podcast for a bonus episode ahead of the U. S. midterms, breaking down how they expect the voting to play out, what the consequences will be, and how tech will feel the impact. Join us for a dynamic conversation about inflation, the economy, the residual culture war, the war in Ukraine, and who's running in 2024. Stay tuned for the final segment where we discuss the future of TikTok, Web3, and the Metaverse. 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?

  Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility, and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razer were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for a free consultation.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 1:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. And today we focus on the beyond and then we move back to the tech world because Marshall and Saagar are here. We've had them a couple of times. Marshall Kosloff and Saagar Enjeti from The Great Realignment Podcast, one of my favorite shows, also from Breaking Points, also from the Lincoln Network, not the Lincoln Project, not going to get that wrong. And, and look, we're going to, the world right now is in a state of transition. Politics and the economy are linked maybe more than ever before, or actually more than we've had in recent years. And so let's talk a little bit about what's going on in the US and the globe

• 2:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  ahead of the 2022 midterms, and then break down things like Elon and Twitter and the metaverse web three. It'll be fun, I promise. Okay, so let's start, let's start with this question. First of all, welcome to the show, guys.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Good to see you, man.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  Thanks for having us back.

• 2:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  I almost forgot to welcome you. Welcome. Just got excited about going right into the questions. And I just want to start here. I'm a little bit confused and maybe you guys can help bring me, you know, up to speed about like the mood in the US and what's going on in US politics. Because, you know, there's so many issues that I've been batting about, you know, inflation, culture war, real war in Ukraine, abortion, stop the steal and Trump, economy, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, it's really been tough, I think, to take the political temperature of the United States right now. What is the feel in the country? Obviously, it seems like the Republicans are heading to, you know, some wins in these midterms. But, you know, what, yeah, what is the feel in the country? What are, what are the animating issues right now?

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Well, that's a great question. It's actually not that difficult, which is that number one is economy and is inflation. Inflation is raging. It's the number one issue. Fundamentals, that's what people care about the most. Actually, after that is where there is a partisan split. So if you'll look at the number two issue, basically by voter, for GOP voters, number two issue is mostly crime and immigration. Those are intermixed depending on which part of the country that you live. If you look at Democratic voters, it's actually abortion. And then after that, uh, kind of January 6th related democracy, quote unquote. So anyway, the point being that it's effectively economy and then culture. But the culture of who, mix of the mix of those depends on the type of voter. If you were to look at an independent voter in this election,

• 3:48Speaker 02

  they're more likely to trend in their priorities to where the traditional GOP voter would be. But in general, the point that I would underscore is that no matter where you are on the spectrum, this is an election of chaos because the number of people who are saying the country is on the wrong track is based not as high as it was during 2020, but it's still pretty damn close. I think the number is like 87% or something like that. There's a deep level of dissatisfaction in general institutionally, and that's being capitalized on by both parties.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, and right at that, because I want to get to the mood part of your question. I'd say the mood of the country. Mood is just kind of down. There's this perception of things not working well, of the administration not really having a handle on the issues that are top of mind. Where I think gets to the broader political problem is that it's not as if any one specific party has an answer to this question. So I don't think we have to pretend that Kevin McCarthy's Republican Party is going to solve inflation or solve the energy issue when it comes into office. And this is also why when now Trump was up in the midterms in 2018, he also had a terrible midterms. So we're basically in this difficult political vibe right now where whoever is basically in the driver's seat is going to have to reckon with the fact that they are

• 5:05Speaker 03

  going to be able to make these like longer, let's say more structural decisions. So I think the Biden administration has made a bunch of great calls lately. I think the semiconductor crackdown on China was a great call. I think the CHIPS Act, same topic, same category, was a great call. There have been investments in energy, climate, infrastructure, but none of those long-term decisions are going to result in short-term political rewards. So that's just the real difficult situation that Biden administration finds itself in. And I have just no perception of them having a way around that.

• 5:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And last time we spoke, Sagar, you mentioned that, you know, things that mattered to you were vaccine in your arm, stimmy in your pocket, right? That was what was going to make you happy. Vaccine stuff worked out pretty well. Stimmy, you know, you know, all the stimulus contributed to inflation along with the Fed, along with the supply chain issues that we've been seeing. So when we think about, because if this is an election that's going to be run based off of inflation and the economy, how do we read it politically? Because it's not like, you know, one party came in and said, everything's going to cost more and the supply chain's going to blow up. It's actually something that's taken, you know, we were in a 12-year bull market. So this spans multiple presidencies. And, you

• 6:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  know, it's kind of a difficult issue to read politically. The Fed is involved. So how does, how do voters look at this issue when it comes to relief? And how are they going to actually act based off of their conclusions?

• 6:30Speaker 02

  I don't think voters really, look, I think voters know as little as all of us do, including the policymakers. So I don't think anybody's really looking for a quote unquote "solution." I would dispute based on, from what I've seen, that stimulus was the major cause of inflation, but I think that's probably another conversation. I will accept the, it's a multifaceted question, and the result of which I know politically is good for the GOP. Can we just put it there? Like, in terms of the, in terms of the actual explanation, look, I mean, personally, I think what they're probably going to do is, and this is actually gets to the cynical nature of politics, which is that they could crash the economy by, you know, doing the debt ceiling, not funding the government, doing everything they possibly

• 7:13Speaker 02

  could, and that aggregate chaos would still result to their benefit because Joe Biden and the president almost always gets the blame. There were a lot of, you know, it's interesting to do a replay of 2012 and some of the Tea Party shutdowns during the Obama administration. There was confidence by Obama and others that the voters would blame the shutdown on the, on the Republicans. And in the near term, they weren't necessarily wrong, but the amount of chaos that that resulted in still led to a lack of institutional trust and, and just a general vibe of things not being correct, that it probably did help in some way contribute to depressing of approval of President Obama. So I'm just generally of the opinion that the more chaos there is, as long as you are at the top, which is Joe

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Biden and the party in power, it's just going to be bad for you, regardless of whether you're quote "in the right" or not, because that's just not how politics works.

• 8:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, that's going to play in well to some questions I have towards the end of this segment about 2024, but let's keep focused on the midterms for now. Yeah, go ahead, Marshall.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, and just to not get too far to 2024, I do think what's interesting is now we've seen a very straightforward playbook with the last three Democratic presidencies. Bill Clinton comes in, 1992.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  Huge historic midterm losses. Obviously, Obama 2010, you're going to have huge historic, well, you had huge historic midterm losses. And look, what the Democrats are gonna most likely have another set of huge historic midterm losses. But in both of the previous two cases, Republicans were not able to translate the quote unquote chaos that helped them on the congressional ballot into an actual presidential win. So what we should really be looking at here is the, the real gap between who folks are going to support for Congress and who actually is going to be top of the ticket. So that's a story that someone should focus on there. I want to go back to one quick thing you said, Alex, which is a real kind of course correction moment that folks, if you listen back to our last conversation, weren't really

• 9:11Speaker 03

  prepared for on any level, which is that how the inflation issue just completely wrecked the quote unquote like narrative or the overall strategy or the frame of the administration wanted to have. So stimmys and vaccines. The Biden administration obviously is gonna, you know, have to play this carefully. They couldn't just say, oh, like, no worries, COVID's over, everyone be chill. Because if they did that and there was a variant that was particularly bad, that would hurt them very badly with their base. So the plan was let's promote vaccines, let's basically try to subtly move on from the crisis. And then we could then focus on our big economic wins. We could focus on Build Back Better, all those different policies.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  That plan was working until, once again, inflation hits and just leaves them without a big broad narrative. Sagar, you know, I've done a lot of episodes on how a huge part of the Democratic narrative going into the 2021 year was Biden is the next Joe Biden, we're rebuilding the American economy, we're making these fundamental changes. And all of those big changes and narratives ran into inflation without the ability to counteract it or tell like a useful story there. So that's something that really, I think, when people write back the history of these two years, is going to be a huge part of it.

• 10:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's pretty interesting because last time we were talking, you know, we were coming off what was, you know, I mean, Trump was judged by a lot of things, but it was largely, politics seemed motivated by culture war. We were, you know, coming off this long bull market, so it became, Sagar, I think you mentioned, you called it a, a. You called it a cultural and affectational backlash. And I said, okay, maybe Joe Biden is, you know, doesn't provoke those, you know, same type of emotions like Obama or Trump did. That might have turned out to be wrong. And we might end up speaking about economics in terms of like what leads politics and not culture war. Well, we are speaking about economics, just sort of played out the way that, in a different way. So what do you, what do you guys think about that?

• 11:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  And how, how important is culture war still in our politics?

• 11:13Speaker 02

  I would dispute that we are talking about economics. I think it's still very much couched in the culture. I mean, I actually think Biden's great failure is the fact that he is unable to translate any real message into inflation, which is actually, if you look at the GOP messaging on, on inflation, it is core to the message since like the 1980s and essentially is a script. I mean, I think Biden's great failure was just not getting his hands around inflation and the supply chain crisis from day one. A feeling of deep apathy set in across the country, which effectively in a vacuum, whoever is going to give you a message, and if you're the only one, that one is going to win. I think he had a great chance at combating this.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  He would have had to ditch many of the quote, build back better and actually, you know, focus on the issues at hand, which were gas, which were supply, which were many of the contributing causes to inflation. But he didn't really do any of that. And I remain mystified as to why it took. Okay, let's take the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. For example, there was a case to be doing many of the SPR innovation and interventions that he's been doing today over a year and a half ago. None of that was done. I mean, I remember that he visited the port of LA only one time, and that was months into the backlog in 2021. There was no attempt to use the powers of government to actually get those things working.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, I remember whenever that guy Ryan Peterson, the Flexport CEO, he arguably had more of an impact by doing a Twitter thread and renting a boat and running around and just having the, what was it, Long Beach mayor change the regulations. So anyway, I just think that the nearly year-long obsession with, quote, build back better, which is just social spending and had nothing to do with any of the major problems that the country was facing is really, was his downfall. I don't think it was possible to crawl out of that hole. And I think that's his fault.

• 13:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  But it is interesting that a motivating factor in this election doesn't, I mean, it's, it's still there, but further down is Trump, stop the steal, that type of stuff. It's actually

• 13:18Speaker 02

  That's for Democratic voters, though. That's not really for, that's not really for the general population, from what I can tell. Look, again, by the way, here's another caution. Nobody knows anything.

• 13:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, yeah, I don't feel so bad anymore. Yeah.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  Well, the thing that's interesting when Sagar, you're articulating that story here is, it's not quite clear. So for example, like, gas prices like did go down. It's not June 2022 anymore, really, the, like, the insane peak of it, yet that depression in prices didn't actually translate into further economic confidence.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  That's actually not true. Democratic polls went up significantly. I mean, look, you'll never be able to disaggregate this from Roe versus Wade. So I don't know. But I mean, it did help.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Well, no, so the point isn't that. My point is just that I wouldn't say, I'd say the real problem that Biden folks faced is that this isn't quite a policy issue specifically. So I would wager, even if they did the, you know, strategic petroleum reserve openings that you're talking about back in June, coinciding with the price decrease.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  I think there's just a broader narrative issue that any presidency is basically going to fall into, which is that we do not broadly know how to deal or have a framework under the issue of inflation. I think the Trump presidency wouldn't have been ready for inflation hitting the way it fit. I don't think the Trump administration would have had like a very specific articulable frame, and Democrats have done well in this circumstance too. So no presidency right now has figured out how to be in the driver's seat and not be punished for being in charge when these issues happen. I just, it's just there are so many issues from the abortion issue to the post-January 6 reckoning to the war in Ukraine for anyone

• 15:13Speaker 03

  to say like, oh yeah, if they'd done this policy thing, or if Biden had showed up, there would have been something useful there.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Let me just, when I say SPR, I'm talking about an administration that is forward enough thinking to do that without people even being critical. And I think that actually we're kind of synced up on this, which is that you have to have a reframe of the entire US government of what it's capable and wants to do as to whether inflation was even a real priority. By the way, it wasn't a priority in terms of what they were doing. That is actually where I would, I think you and I are synced up on this, which is that the real crime that they had is that they did not make people feel like they cared. There is a lot to be said about, you can give every speech that you want, and even policy itself, as you alluded to. IRA, nobody cares about the Inflation Reduction Act in this election. Sorry. Doesn't matter.

• 16:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  There was a...

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Kara, go ahead.

• 16:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. I mean, I think there was this feeling, you know, ask about why this was looked over. I think there was this feeling among Democrats, we even talked about it here, that, you know, the entire 2020 election would drive, you know, basically a split between the Republican Party, moderates might, you know, now start to support Democrats, you know, stop this deal, folks would take over the party. You know, it's kind of questionable what's happened there. And then there was, you know, you mentioned, you can't separate it from Roe v. Wade, but the abortion issue in the US, that it did, you know, cause Democrat approval ratings to skyrocket, but it doesn't seem like, you know, for anyone counting on those two issues to win an election, it's just not happening.

• 16:45Speaker 03

  Well, two things happened there. So one... Republicans course corrected ultra quickly on the abortion issue. And once again, this is not like, I'm talking like abortion is a difficult subject. I'm talking purely political. Blake Masters in June deletes pretty extreme abortion language from his website just instantly. And other than a few random Twitter users, there's zero backlash on the right. Like the right, the pro-life side of things very quickly was like, look, do whatever you need to do to basically survive. I think if Blake Masters had maintained, basically implying that abortion should be just permanently banned,

• 17:23Speaker 03

  even in a purple state like, even in a purple state like Arizona, that would have been more of an issue with the GOP course corrects very quickly. You also don't really have that many Todd Aiken like instances where, you know, you say, oh, you know, legitimate rape and oh, it's like they, they, they, they, there have been enough lessons of how not to do this that they course corrected. And then secondly, when it came to the January 6th election denial issue, there are a couple of candidates that I feel are really, really affected by this. So like Mastriano in, in Pennsylvania, I would really say that the gap between, so he's running for governor against Josh Shapiro. I would say the gap between Mastriano and Shapiro being as big as it is versus the fact that Fetterman and Osmond are pretty much tied,

• 18:07Speaker 03

  really would come down to a candidate not being able to move beyond just the election denial thing. But in the vast majority of cases, like Arizona, Carrie Lake, hardcore election denier. In many of these races, unlike in Pennsylvania, voters just are not voting on that decision. Voters are voting on, we don't like the status quo and Carrie Lake has made clear she's the enemy of the status quo. And I don't really care what she was up to back in January 2020. So I'm kind of interested in why Mastriano wasn't able to pull, and I think it's probably political talent. Carrie Lake is just charismatic.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:41Speaker 03

  And you're good at this.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. What do you think, Sagar? It's just pure political talent. He's a moron. Like he's not a very good speaker. She's a star. She's a television personality and she genuinely believes nothing, which probably makes it easier. I think that Mastriano is an actual stop the steal true believer, which is frankly. To his detriment.

• 18:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  In terms of prosecuting that case.

• 19:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  On the election integrity question, um, you know, look, looking at the, there was also this belief that folks who doubted the integrity of elections would be sidelined. Obviously that hasn't happened. Do we have in, in the U S, do we have a, a, a real problem with election integrity? Like, can you, you know, seeing where we're going, can you see a, you know, democratic process be overridden in, in this country?

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Uh, I would say, yeah, the thing I'm most scared about is a genuine constitutional crisis with a Mastriano or Kerry Lake type figure where they just, look, the Supreme Court will give a tremendous amount of deference to states in terms of how they administer their elections. So if they preset it up, which effectively saying that the state election doesn't bind them on electors that they send to the Electoral College and to the Congress to certify. There's basically no way to get around that because there's just never been an inkling before that a Secretary of State or a governor who in Pennsylvania's case is responsible for appointing Secretary of State would ever do such a thing, but it's very possible. So yeah, I mean, that

• 20:05Speaker 02

  probably worries me more than anything. But as many of the center leftists who are very worried about Republican victory and many of these other schemes have been saying, they will not have to pull any of that if they just lose, if the Democrats legitimately just lose the election.

• 20:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  So that's a, I mean, I mean, they're not going to lose every election and that is a concern.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Well, in the swing states though, right? So like in Pennsylvania and in Arizona, if the GOP wins, which they have in the past and did under Trump, I mean, Trump being very close to winning, then there, a lot of this is rendered moot, but that doesn't mean the nightmare scenario isn't still a nightmare scenario.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  And this is the framing issue that Sagar really just hinted at, um, in terms of how I think center left people are starting to reevaluate the election integrity thing. So obviously there's a huge elected official level election integrity problem. Um, you know, you could just go through the list and see not only just like bad statements, but like very articulated, here is my plan that would obviously result in an election stealing thing. There are all sorts of vulnerabilities within the system that I think at a technocratic level need to be attacked and focused on. The mistake, though, that it seems to me the Biden Democrats made is they confused the, let's say, like, the serious, like, policy

• 21:27Speaker 03

  and literal real-world implications of election integrity issues with the actual political cases they needed to be making. Because it seemed to me that you should have spent your time making clear that, hey, like, to your point, Saagar, economy, the inflation, Joe Biden inherited Trump's COVID economy, and he's a firefighter, and all he's doing for these next two years is fixing that. Therefore, if anything, like, if your house is burning and a firefighter comes, you're not mad at the firefighter for there being some fire there. Instead, it was, we're just moving on, and we're dealing with this, you know, broad set of issues, including January 6th. But it really just should have been focusing

• 22:06Speaker 03

  the economy at the center of it, knowing that the thing that would cause, let's say, a 2024 election nightmare would be a bad economy plus Doug Mastriano as the governor of Pennsylvania. And if you don't solve the two of these together, quote unquote, that's actually what causes the nightmare scenario.

• 22:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  So on the bad economy, we, both parties obviously have their economic plans. Is there any hope that there's some good policy in there that could help fix this situation? Or do we just have to let it run its course?

• 22:37Speaker 02

  I haven't seen a Democratic proposal to, quote, "fight inflation." I mean, in reality, they just seem to be, this is the problem, right, which is that Inflation Reduction Act, the Inflation Reduction Act has nothing to do with inflation. This is, well, okay, I mean, it does have to do with inflation and the way that, I guess, pays, takes $300 billion and pays down the deficit. I mean, there's a technical case.

• 22:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  I did like that bill. There was, there was a lot of common sense stuff in there.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  I agree with you, Alex. I support many provisions inside the Inflation Reduction Act. They should have called it the Electric Vehicles Act. By the way, electric vehicles are very popular, so I don't really know why they didn't go with that. So if I tried to hoodwink people and say that it was the IRA... Act and inflation reduction, all that. And then when people are, you know, people aren't stupid. They could see exactly what's in it. They're like, this is bullshit. And so, look, from what I have seen, there has been no concrete proposal yet for the Democrats to quote unquote, "deal with inflation outside of very technocratic fixes." This also presumes that, quote, "inflation can be solved at this level."

• 23:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  How about Republicans?

• 23:38Speaker 02

  The Republican plan is actually quite simple, which is to cut spending and to encourage the Federal Reserve to keep what it's doing to induce a recession and have enough demand destruction occur on top of high, uh, high unemployment that we solve inflation by destroying demand. So...

• 23:55Speaker 03

  Which also happens to benefit the, uh, political...

• 23:58Speaker 02

  No, I know.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  There's a, there's a, there's the awkward...

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Happens to align with their orthodoxy and happens to align with their political. I mean, I would say the real crime on the Biden administration's side, this, I'll never get over it. It's like that entire year of 2021 and just letting so many of these problems go unfixed. I mean, air travel, uh, gas, I mean, you know, that's the other thing on inflation. You can break it down. It's not that difficult to figure it out. The vast majority of inflation that people experience in their lives is food, gas and housing. So those are the three that I would spend every single day, uh, attacking. Matt, vast majority of the early inflation in 2021 was all gas. So if, if you woke up every single day, you should have just been obsessed with the price of gas. Same with, uh, heating, oil, and this is all even pre-Ukraine, you know? I mean, that's why I've been studying this now for quite a long time. I actually don't think it was that difficult to get a hold on.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  But when you let something run its course for over 18 months, it's very hard to put back in the bottle. At this point, I think demand destruction, which is the Federal Reserve's policy, is the only thing that is going to quote unquote "work", because I don't think any plan, I don't think either party really has a political incentive to do exactly what I'm talking about, given the way things are right now. And I think that's a sad story for, for American, for the American economy, to be honest.

• 25:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And judging by Big Tech's earnings last week, you know, that's, that Fed plan seems to be working well. Sorry, go ahead, Marshall.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Look at Amazon. My gosh. Yeah, go ahead.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, no, it's just, I think, I think, Sagar, you're getting to the, and look, this is what we're kind of focused on in Breaking Points in the Realignment, kind of like this story of the parties just switching off. Um, party comes in, wins the presidency, they get destroyed in the midterms. The underlying political problem right now is I don't think either party has an accurate diagnosis of the set of, the set of like deeper structural problems facing the country right now and therefore isn't able quote unquote to like focus in on addressing the problems of let's say like 2025 now. Um, this is why, you know, you, you don't, you don't want to sound partisan because look, like it's not as if like the Trump administration was crushing, prepping America's supply chains

• 26:02Speaker 03

  in 2017, 2019. So I kind of think of this honestly depressing political decade as this example of tossing power back and forth, short-term attempts to fix long-term problems that basically aren't going to work. And that's going to have to basically continue on until something structurally changes. But I think this gets to the, I think, the point for optimism where I think the place where the Biden administration has just been at its best has been semiconductor policy, especially relating to China. Um, that's an example of a, a long-term structural issue. You can't just snap your fingers and like reduce dependency on Taiwan, can't just snap your fingers and have a bunch of new fabs built in Arizona.

• 26:47Speaker 03

  Um, this requires thinking along a 10-year timeframe and they've been able to do that. They've been able to do it like very effectively. This is completely bipartisan, lots of support for this policy. But I think a real question to ask is how or why weren't they able to translate that type of approach to other sets of structural issues in the same fashion? Because there's just so much of a focusing that happens via, let's say, like China competition there, that you actually can get around that unhelpful dynamics. So that's something I'm really interested in like learning more about.

• 27:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you have any thoughts on the answer to your question?

• 27:24Speaker 02

  I don't think it's that difficult. There's a bipartisan consensus. That's it. It's one of the few areas of there's genuine bipartisan consensus, which you have to give the Trump administration credit. They set the rhetorical grounds for that and effectively won the intellectual battle. And there were a lot of people in Washington who worked very, very hard in order to bring that type of legislation and initiative to the fore on a bipartisan basis. There are people who all work behind the scenes, Republican and Democratic administrations. To me, it actually just proves the fact that if you can win the, quote, "argument with the establishment," then you're fine. These set policy. But if you're on the other side, then I think it's a crap shoot.

• 27:59Speaker 03

  And I think the other, the other answer too is just, it's very clear that Biden folks at the National Security Council and like members of Congress are like, "Oh, it's, it's a very good, it's simple. It's, oh, the US is hyper-dependent on Taiwanese microchips. There is more likely than not going to be some type of conflict, either with, between the United States and China over Taiwan, or between Taiwan and China, which would devastate microchips, would devastate production, shortages, like really disrupt our way of life. So they are so focused in on how simple this is that the solution was, once again, there's debated, debate about how effective the chip act is. But it's like, okay, hey, like, let's make sure we increase the availability of domestic ships.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  And then B, let's not let China benefit from our, like, know-how, technology, talent, et cetera. I think what you needed to have happen, and this is where I come a pretty consistent critic of Pete Buttigieg. I think Pete Buttigieg should have said to himself, "My only job right now as Secretary of Transportation, a position that people basically usually don't care about, is I am the guy who needs to make sure that America's supply chains are treated the same way as the semiconductor issue." And I think the ability to translate that straightforward focus into something real. Could have been really exciting instead of just playing defense. Obviously, Secretary Buttigieg is very engaged on the airlines issue, but that's after the fact. It's defensive.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  It's, oh, now I'm calling up airlines. Now I'm flying coach. It's just really, it's just kind of shocking to me because it seems to me that it's just such an obvious, apparent narrative issue, but the inability to translate that into something in any other issue but some of my conductors is kind of shocking.

• 29:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I want to talk about one more international issue before we move on to some predictions and then take a break and talk tech. So underlying a lot of this, even though inflation started before the Ukraine situation, the war in Ukraine, that didn't help, right? Energy costs are way up. I spent a lot of time in Europe over the past year, and it's a real crisis in places like Germany. So there's been this interesting back and forth in the US Congress where like there's, there's been some rubblings of trying to get the Ukrainians to say, okay, we've, we've held our ground. Let's just find some compromise and, and be done with this war. But that's become somewhat politically complicated. There was that letter from the progressives that ended up, they ended up retracting and

• 30:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  blaming their staff on, which was an interesting move. Where, where does the US support for the war in Ukraine stand? Sorry, support for Ukrainians in the war in, in Ukraine stand? Does that change with the, with the election? And, and how, you know, could a peaceful resolution change our situation here in the US?

• 30:50Speaker 03

  It's, yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting because so much of this, I tend to think about the war in Ukraine in like three month increments. So for example, like let's go back to June, July, August. Ukrainians are talking about how there's going to be this counteroffensive, something's happening, something's going to happen, there's lots of excitement, then nothing happens. The whole time, obviously, you're having like a brutal, brutal, brutal war in the Donbass, like lots, lots, lots of like incredible, like the high Ukrainian casualties, like the Washington Post had some very, very depressing reading on this. From my perspective, if the Ukrainians had not been able to convert that summer.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  Real like, I'm trying to find the right word for this, but if they had not been able to convert just like the death and destruction of the summer into that September offensive, the Ukraine aid debate would be entirely different. Because now, the problem is, if you're looking back to like, May and June, I know you have a lot of listeners probably listen to like David Sacks, kind of the problem with the David Sacks position is David Sacks was basically saying, hey, like, we need to force the Ukrainians to the table back in May and June, because this is just a stalemate, people are dying, they're dying for nothing. If the Ukrainians had come to the table in June, they wouldn't have taken back what they took back over the past two or three months. There wouldn't be talk of taking back Kerstin.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  So my genuine take on this issue is you are not going to see actual Ukrainian willingness to concede until they've actually reached the limits of what they could actually move. And the key thing is, like, right now, ISW, Institute for Study of War, they've done some good like analysis reporting, they've basically concluded that the Russians are not going to be able to launch major offensives going into 2023. So if you're a Ukrainian in that context, why would you possibly make concessions, quote unquote, when you're on the offensive? My real beef with folks who are on the get Ukrainians to the table position is that they pretty, and Saagar is not one of these people, so I'm not like, you know, trying to like predunk or anything, but there's just been this pretty consistent unwillingness

• 33:02Speaker 03

  to think at a strategic level, why would that make any sense? You don't go to the table when you could get an additional mile of territory. So that's the little girlfriend I'm thinking about. And as long as the Ukrainians are able to do that, I think the aid packages are going to be pretty straightforward and continue. There's still broad support for the policy. Vladimir Putin, I mean, he issued, he issued another statement, he was like, what are you talking about? Like, we were never going to launch nukes. Like, that's crazy. So I just, I think there's a, there's just like a weird, a weird dynamic here, but it's only going to change if the Ukrainian starts.

• 33:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, there's that feeling. If I'm strong, how, no, if I'm weak, how can I compromise? And if I'm strong, why should I? So.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Well, this is the issue, which is that USAID belies all Ukrainian strength. Ukraine does not exist without the United States. In fact, current Ukrainian maximalist aims are not the aims of the United States, nor should they be. Zelensky said yesterday. That Ukraine wants to quote liberate Crimea. That's not a US aim because that's a red line for Russia. So that would actually lead to a very high likelihood of a US entrance to that war, or the very likely some sort of escalation. And this is where I just completely disagree, which is that all Ukrainian victory is a policy choice by the United States. And to what and where that line should be and how they negotiate actually is entirely

• 34:20Speaker 02

  up to us, given the fact that we backstopped their entire US military, their ISR, everything. So the entire Ukraine first, like Ukraine limits, what if it turns out that their limit is the red line across the Russians and then we enter into a war? That's not in the interests of the US. And this is why I just reject entirely Ukraine first approach. By the way, I know I'm going to get a lot of haters for this. I honestly don't care. And look, I mean, I know it's unpopular to say, well, it's unpopular in elite circles to say broadly, the US public generally says that we've given quite enough aid to Ukraine. We don't need any more aid to Ukraine. You know, if you look at much of the aid that is still being considered for Ukraine, they're considering an additional 50 billion US dollars in the next Democratic administration. And again, like there's no limiting principle as to what this aid is going to be put towards

• 35:05Speaker 02

  except for the President of the United States. And look, Joe Biden is old. He could drop dead tomorrow and then we could have an entirely new policy under the Vice President. So I'll stick up for David Sacks, which is that I'm not entirely sure that the limits of Ukrainian military potential line up with the interests of the United States at all. And considering the fact that we've literally backstopped their entire military and their government does not exist. Like this is the thing I want people to actually grapple with. Ukraine is a polity, does not exist without the United States. If tomorrow we cut off our aid from them, they would literally collapse in terms of their economy, their bonds, their budgets, everything is American. So I just think we have a hell of a lot more of a say in this than people like to think. And I think that people should be honest that their most maximalist aims in Ukraine

• 35:50Speaker 02

  are actually the opposite of major US interests. And that's something that I just get so frustrated with the debate. Yeah, go ahead.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  The quick thing in response to that, though, is the debate, in terms of, so look, Zelensky says a lot of things.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, but so does Putin. Why should people believe Putin whenever he says he's not going to use nukes? He might.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  No, but the key thing is, though. Tactically and strategically on the ground, the debate right now is not, do the Ukrainians overrun Crimea? Right now, the debate is-

• 36:20Speaker 02

  But they could bomb Crimea.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  Okay, but once again, though, the question isn't, do they overrun? But we're just talking like tactically, because you're saying they could like invade Crimea, and that's like the red line. The actual debate that's happening right now is, are the Ukrainians going to be able to take that curse? Like, that's the actual fight that's happening on the ground now. So obviously, if the Biden administration were in a position where we're saying to ourselves, holy crap, they've routed the Russians everywhere except Crimea. They've completely taken them back to the February, actually even before February 2022 status quo. Do we need to force them to the table? That is a different conversation than right now. And all I was trying to say with my beef with they need to concede in May and June and July,

• 37:05Speaker 03

  was if they made concessions, then they would not have taken back hundreds of miles of territory that they took back. And the only reason why, and one other thing in response, I know Alex, you like, you need to get in here. This is your show, I shouldn't hijack it.

• 37:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, I kind of like it when you guys hijack this thing, so go for it.

• 37:21Speaker 03

  My other line of pushback here is, like, no one, the vast majority of people are not going to say to themselves, we're just cutting off Ukraine. That is just so outside the bounds that, A, the vast majority of policymakers hold, and frankly, the vast majority of the American, like, the vast majority of the American people support, like, the current policy.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  That's not true.

• 37:42Speaker 03

  That is true.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  The vast majority of the American people, quote, "support Ukraine." They have no idea what the current policy is. And that's actually what I, my entire beef with all this is.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  You can't prove that. This is, but this is why the debate gets unfair, because you're saying-

• 37:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now I want to ask, does this change if, you know, if and when the Republicans take the House?

• 37:59Speaker 02

  It's possible, but not really. So Kevin McCarthy has said that, Kevin McCarthy has said that he won't pass any more aid to Ukraine. In my opinion, he will absolutely fall to the blob and will 100% do that. Mitch McConnell said that that's not true. I want to be clear that everything I'm saying is an absolute minority position in Washington, and that my view has absolutely zero power in the US political system. So let me just absolutely put that on the table. Including in the establishment. So that's 100% clear. Now, on Ukraine and Ukraine itself, like I said, the numbers say that people are like, we've done enough in terms of the money. Bipartisan split, Republicans are much more likely to say that we've given actually too much to Ukraine. Democrats, it's actually polarizing right along cultural lines. But by and large, I'm not even saying cut off Ukraine. What I'm saying is acknowledge that

• 38:44Speaker 02

  we are 100% in the driver's seat. John Kirby, the US National Security Advisor spokesperson of the Biden administration, continues to say, Ukraine first. Only Zelensky gets to decide when we negotiate. And my pushback against what you're saying, Marshall, is, how do you know that you're going to have the ability to tell Ukraine to stop? At that things on the battlefield move very quickly. Their offensive, the majority of the land that they took back happened in 48 hours. That's not far enough in order to prevent a major global conflagration. So this gets to my overall meta political, meta geopolitical critique, which is that people are very willing to gamble with the future of the United States in a potential war with Russia over several hundred square miles in Ukraine. And I'm just very comfortable saying that I am not willing to take that gamble. I would absolutely

• 39:28Speaker 02

  bet, and I have dreams of political polling to show this, the vast majority of Americans do not want to be put in that situation. They do not want to have any sort of major confrontation with Russia. All the no-fly zone polling put that. And that's why I would say, Marshall, that why I feel comfortable saying people quote, support Ukraine, but don't wouldn't support the current policy, is if the Biden administration and the president, who has said that we have quote, nuclear Armageddon as a possibility, were to genuinely understand that, people would say, well, what the fuck are you going to, can I curse? Sorry.

• 39:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  People are going to say, what are you going to do to prevent that from happening? And I think there's a reason that the president and the administration don't want us to have that conversation. The more that people know, there would be a hell of a lot more questioning about this.

• 40:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, let's move on to some predictions. And by the way, I think that Ukraine could end up be being left in a pretty good position. It's won back a lot of territories. So it is in that position.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Well, what does that mean? What does that mean, a good position?

• 40:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, it could, look, I think that there was, oh, God, well. Here, I'm opening Pandora's box again, but it's one back a lot of terrorists.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  A good position for who, right?

• 40:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  For Ukraine. I mean, right now, if it says, okay, it's time to compromise.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  And the US, because Russia obviously is framing itself as our enemy. The US, it's a good position for Ukraine. It's a good position for the US. It's a good position for NATO. Like Vladimir Putin is explicitly arguing this is a war against us, a war against the West.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  So why should we fulfill that? We don't want to have a war with Russia.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  We're not. That's why we don't have a no-fly zone. That's why there are no boots on the ground.

• 40:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  But the Biden policy is working. Like, that's, that's what's crazy to me.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  See, this is where I just disagree.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  Well, no, like, like Adam Kinzinger, Adam Kinzinger, look, if Adam Kinzinger is President of the United States and he's making the call to send F-16s to create civilian corridors, they could start like a fucking, sorry, a war between the US and Russia.

• 41:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  You guys are a lot to curse here.

• 41:15Speaker 03

  The, the, you, you're very, you're, you run a very professional podcast, Alex, so we're, we're reticent. But the, the underlying thing here is the Biden policy has worked. Putin consistently has figured out that the vulnerability in the American political discourse is him making fake claims about nuclear weapons. And then the second that anyone calls him on, he says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you, what are you talking about? The, the Russian ambassador to the, to the United Kingdom is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about? It's fake. It's not real. Obviously, I think you should just factor that in.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  So we should gamble with millions of lives?

• 41:48Speaker 03

  No, but we're not, we're not, this is, we're not gambling.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  But no, it is. It is.

• 41:51Speaker 03

  No, can't, no, that's, that's, gambling, it's, let's, let's, yeah.

• 41:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Last thing, then we're moving on.

• 41:55Speaker 03

  The, the definition of gambling was the no-fly zone. That was a literal gamble. The gamble would be if we save this no-fly zone, the US would be in a position where it would have to shoot down a Russian aircraft. We think that they wouldn't actually use a nuke, they did it, so we're gonna do it anyways. There has been no equivalent of that gamble, and that's the key thing.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  I will say, for my final word, which is that saying that the quote-unquote "policy has worked" in a conflict which is going to drag on for years is like saying X policy has worked in 1939, nine months after Hitler invaded. X policy worked after the beginning of World, you could make a very credible case for the First World War in the first nine months. You could make a very credible case on the other side. We'll find out. I see many pitfalls, and I don't see anybody raising any of the questions that I think should have been raised in many of those conflicts. I hope you guys are right. The consequences are very wrong if you are. And I care more about the consequences than I do about any of the quote-unquote "potential success" on the battlefield. And I'd be willing to bet, I would be willing to bet in the long run, most people will agree with me.

• 42:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  I just want to state that for the record that my position is that they are either at the point or close to the point where it's time to come to the table and find a way to end this.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Oh, I disagree with that completely, Alex, but you.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  Wait, you don't.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  We will move on to the tech part of this. You think there's going to be a negotiation tomorrow?

• 43:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, anyway, let's move on.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 43:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Predictions, so let's just go through some quick predictions. First of all, where do you guys think the midterms are gonna net out? What does the, what do you think the results are gonna be?

• 43:27Speaker 03

  This is gonna be a point of agreement. We've seen a disagreements saga too. Own this segment, you're the political analyst.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Red wave.

• 43:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Red wave.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Easy. Fifty-three seats in the Senate for Republicans. I think they sweep and win every single contestable one, including Nevada.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  He speaks for me on this topic.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  By the way, I don't, I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm just telling you, based on, look, I believe in fundamentals. Economy is terrible, inflation is high, crime is high, party in power always loses. Combine all those three, it's not difficult. All polls are moving in that direction. Reams of political science data tell us that people don't care about elections until three weeks out. That's right now, which is why the polls now actually matter a lot more than the polls. Two months ago, voter activity and all of that, even in the individual level for many of these races, everything seems to be converging in that direction. Again, look, it's possible, I mean, I should, I should tell people, like, it's actually very possible that we could have a redux of the 2020 election, whenever you have, whenever you have the runoff

• 44:27Speaker 02

  in Georgia be the deciding factor. In Georgia, you have to go over 50 in order to win the election outright. Not possible currently that Herschel Walker may do that. And actually, a runoff, you know, the political climate could change in January. We don't know necessarily. But for that to matter, it would mean that Mark Kelly hangs on to a seat in Arizona, that Dr. Oz doesn't win in Pennsylvania, that, you know, Nevada doesn't go to, I think his name is Adam Laxalt. Anyway, so it's complicated. It's possible a polling miss goes in the other direction. But if you look at the miss from 2020 and 2016, of which I am, you know, I am liable to do, given the way that polls have been wrong, whenever Republicans have been on the ballot and underestimated, I don't think it's a, that's difficult of a story.

• 45:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  And here's the follow-up. What does the US look like for the next two years after this red wave?

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Oh, Tea Party 2010 to 2012 is a pretty good, uh, pretty good analogy.

• 45:21Speaker 03

  Quick disagreement, though, the key thing, though, and this is what's so fascinating. Tea Party 2010 to 2012 is establishment GOP versus insurgent GOP. That isn't true now because, and a DeSantis versus Trump race would kind of maybe push on this pressure point, but what the GOP establishment has really managed to do over like the 2010s period, and this is, you know, there have been some moral concessions that made this possible. The GOP establishment has fully been able to subsume many, if not most, of those like internal debates. So like in 2010 and 2012, it's like all these primaries and all these establishment figures are getting knocked

• 46:03Speaker 03

  out, like Eric Cantor was going to be Speaker of the House, and in 2014, he's like knocked out. That's over because the only question that really matters for the GOP for the next two years is, do you support Trump, yea or nay? Vast majority of Republican electeds like obviously do support Trump despite the talk of DeSantis. And B, even if there was like a point of like battle, quote unquote, you have one presidential debate where Trump smacks DeSantis, which I think he would. That's over very, very, very quickly. So there's no like big existential debate about like the, the direction of the party. Are we defunding Obamacare, yea or nay? That's the real difference in those two periods.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  I don't disagree. I, what I more meant is just chaos, which is that general functions of, general functions of government are not going to work. Like the government will not get funded on time. There will be debt ceiling crises. There will be like holdups of if a Supreme Court position, you know, somebody dies, it's definitely not going to get filled. So just get ready for that. I meant like obstruction on a very basic legislative level. That's what the next two years are going to be.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  And at a moment where our economy is already teetering, that, that sounds bad. Um, okay, next question for you guys is, uh, are they going to impeach Biden? There's gonna be, there's gonna be like, there's gonna be some, some like talk of it. But look, the problem, it's, it's Uncle Joe, it's Joe Biden. It's like, remember Alex at the start of the episode, you were talking like Joe Biden, it's a little harder to do the

• 47:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Boogeyman stuff.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  Joe Biden culture war specifically.

• 47:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  I really just think, it also hasn't been like a scandal, there's not been a Joe Biden scandal. And also, no one cares about Hunter Biden. Like I was saying, like, remember, there's no people, Hunter Biden is a terrible look. People like, kind of like, don't like Hunter Biden. That said, it's like, wow, the president has this super screwed up kid who needs to work with things. There's just like no, there's no equivalent of, I think, those Obama era or Trump era scandals.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  I'm trying to think, it's possible that they would impeach him just because, remember everybody that the technical definition of impeachment is just that it has to pass the House of Representatives. I actually could see that happening. Would there be a trial in the US Senate and eventual conviction? No, I don't think so. So is that, you know, does that square it?

• 48:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's okay. And last one is, before we go to break, is Trump running again in 24 and is he gonna win?

• 48:21Speaker 02

  Uh, yes, to run, win.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  If he doesn't get indicted, I think he'll probably win.

• 48:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Marshall?

• 48:29Speaker 03

  The thing that's weird for me, Trump is going to run, Trump easily wins the primary. I'm, I'm in this weird position where I think, this is why it's weird if you're like a pro-Trump person. Trump is the Republican who could lose to Biden, just

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's the only one.

• 48:49Speaker 03

  He's, that's, that's the weird counter. So like, he easily beats DeSantis. But like that said, I think Trump just provokes such a visceral, the hatred that Trump provokes in, in centrist to independent to many left voters is just enough that I see him being able to pull it out for Biden. That's the weird, but that's like the best, that's the weird contradiction here. I would not want to be, oh, and this is, and this is also why DeSantis can't win the primary. DeSantis can't actually make that argument. Like DeSantis, like the most obvious argument for DeSantis to make is, guys, are we really, during the most layup election opportunity of all time, Joe Biden is going to be like 81

• 49:32Speaker 03

  years old, we're really going to renominate Donald Trump, who everyone hates. He can't actually, A, he's not brave enough to say it, he's not bold enough to say it. But that would also activate the hatred that people in the GOP's base feel for people who don't side with Trump. So like, DeSantis, I do not see a political way that DeSantis gets out of that dynamic.

• 49:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, let's take a break. We come back right back after this, talk a little bit about tech. We have Marshall Kosloff and Sagar and Jedy here from the realignment. 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, now extended across your entire AI estate. Your data, your cloud, and the agents acting on your behalf.

• 50:34Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 51:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 51:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  and how to lock it down before a threat reaches their front door. That's ironwall.com/bigtechnology. Learn how to stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. The link's in the show notes.

• 52:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Sagar Angedi and Marshall Kozla from Realignment. You might also see them on YouTube at Breaking Points. Some of my favorite stuff, I recommend you go check it out, both in your podcast app of choice and on YouTube. We've got 15 minutes left. Why don't we hit some tech topics? First of all, Twitter. So Elon did it. It's been a couple of days.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  Not by choice, it looks like.

• 52:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes.

• 52:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do we no longer hear the complaint about how social media censors conservatives now that Elon is running Twitter?

• 52:39Speaker 02

  I have no idea.

• 52:40Speaker 03

  I saw you tweet that. That was a good take. I think you tweeted this.

• 52:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I did.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  This is a good take from you because also you may have, Sagar, I'm sure you've noticed this in the discourse, like, social media censorship is a very, like, 2019 era issue. It's just not even like separate from just like Twitter, separate from just, oh, there's a reason I throw social has just not blown up. I think we are just in this weird moment where the broad electorate is moving past that set of issues in both directions. So like talking about... I think one of Obama's worst political calls was like literally like right before the inflation issue blowing up, doing that big conference on disinformation and misinformation, not in the sense that they aren't real issues, but in the sense that you would just clearly look at the space right now, these are not going to be the animating issues

• 53:27Speaker 03

  of for the electorate. I think that's actually true in both cases.

• 53:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  And what about Elon's ties with China? We're already seeing, you know, members of the, you know, I call it Chinese propaganda machine, you know, telling Elon to please take their labels off. Is that, you know, him running Twitter? Is that is that some sort of liability there?

• 53:49Speaker 02

  It's a huge concern. I've talked, I did a whole monologue on it about Tesla and about the amount of interest. Here's the issue, the vast majority of his wealth is where? Tesla stock. Well, Tesla, they made a huge bet on the CCP, on their supply chains. So, look, I have no idea, which is, this is always the issue with Elon. When is he serious? When is he not? When is he actually committed to free speech? When isn't he? Is he going to buy Twitter? Is he not? Is Twitter really going to change that much? My honest answer is no. I really don't think so. And so on the Chinese thing, I just think it would be so insane for him to remove those labels that he, I don't think that he would do that. Am I concerned on other areas? If they're like, hey, please ban the Xinjiang activists in Singapore

• 54:32Speaker 02

  or something like that? That is where I think we should really watch and see. But again, you know, the backlash to him doing so in the US would be so immense that he's kind of squeezed on all sides. I just want to reiterate, this is why Bob Iger did not buy Twitter, and I think he made one of the great calls of all time. And he was like, you know what? I don't want to deal with this shit. And he was right.

• 54:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. And the key thing to add to what Sagar Ruiz said too is regardless of whether Ian Bremmer was right or Elon was right, I hope the lesson that Elon has learned the past month is that this geopolitical stuff, quote unquote, to be super non-technical, is so perilous, do not touch it. Like this is like genuinely Elon, like do not offer peace plans for Taiwan. Um, just don't do it.

• 55:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Good luck with that advice.

• 55:20Speaker 03

  Just, yeah, like, but, but this, but this is, but here's the thing, though.

• 55:25Speaker 03

  This is getting so perilous, I think he's actually gonna have to take the advice. Um, like that, I think, I think, I think that's the key thing. Um, look, our show, the realignment, like breaking points, our whole show is about how our shows are about the fact that the world is changing. In the world of 2023, 2024, where there is open talk of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the freelancing, it's 2010s, we're having a good time vibe doesn't genuinely like is not sustainable anymore. Um, so it's not gonna really matter, um, if those mistakes keep getting made.

• 55:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's talk, uh, speaking of China, let's talk about TikTok. Um, it's interesting in the Trump administration, there was talk that, uh, you know, TikTok would be banned, didn't happen. We actually talked about on our last show, if anything, it seems like there's more interest in banning TikTok. But where does that go?

• 56:14Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't think the Biden administration is the ballast to ban it. I really just don't. I mean, everything that I've seen, uh, you know, they did the Huawei thing. That's cute. Everybody knows Huawei is a Chinese spy operation. I just don't think that they're willing to sacrifice the eventual backlash amongst the young voters. They had a bunch of TikTok stars at the White House just yesterday on an administrative case. Everybody knows it should be banned. We've got reams of evidence at this point. It's a huge knock against Trump that he was such a moron that he wasn't even able to do it in the first place. But I do not see a world right now where the Biden administration is able to do it, given the backlash that they would receive amongst younger voters of whom they are already, uh, whom they're already suffering. It's possible. I just don't see it.

• 56:56Speaker 03

  I think the interesting fact, though, add to your point, Saagar, is that if you're talking about 2022 to 2024 as being a period of chaos, I do see there as being a war where you're just looking for a like consensus bod broad bipartisan win. At my perspective, if TikTok gets banned, it's like in mid 2023.

• 57:16Speaker 03

  Voters are disengaged, like the election isn't happening. Um, you, you, you just, you, you, and also we were saying the word ban, but there's a variety of other things too. There's the, there's the, there's the for sale. And it's, it's generally genuinely like a flabbergasting issue to me. Because also, if there is any conflict with Taiwan, it's gonna happen anyway. For me, the question isn't like, is there gonna be some form of TikTok spin out disinvestiture? Then it's gonna happen at some point. Um, the unwillingness to pull the pin despite the awkwardness is deeply frustrating.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  Because I want to use TikTok. I don't use TikTok. Someone had a funny, Alex, I'm curious what you think about it. Someone had a funny take on Twitter where they're like, hey, like, there's a world where, like, you know, spinning it out, it's like a value creation opportunity. There are like huge limits on like people who could use TikTok, how it could be used TikTok, how you could use it, like the uncertainty about like the actual like policy space that can make it so like a more, a safer TikTok, quote unquote, would actually create a lot more value. So that's frustrating for me.

• 58:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, the question is, if you do spin it out, do you then divorce it from the innovation taking place at ByTance, which has led to it, right? This is, Facebook is trying hard to catch up with TikTok. It can't. So I think that it's difficult to just say, let's take it as it is today and spin it out and it will remain competitive. What do you guys think about, I love talking to you guys about Web3. I feel like every time we check in with each other, there's, you know, a different perspective. What is Web3? Is this actually hype now? You know, I've been getting all these pitches in my inbox from Web3 companies. And I feel like they're like using the last bits of their funding to try to, you know, build that last, can we get that last bit of hype before we die? What do you guys think?

• 59:03Speaker 02

  Ask Marshall.

• 59:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Marshall.

• 59:04Speaker 02

  Go ahead, Marshall.

• 59:06Speaker 03

  I.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  I'm trying not to be too mean.

• 59:10Speaker 03

  Because like, because this is, okay, quick, quick, quick side note. I said this to Balaji Srinivasan once. Balaji was, you know, bringing up like, remember in 2000 when that Business Week analyst said that Amazon was just killed? That shows how bad the tech press can be when it comes to like getting these things wrong. But I think everyone who talks about tech now has the image of that cover in our head. So none of us want to actually go in and say, oh yeah, like, they're done, owned. Like, no one's actually, so ever, I just, it's just very funny, like this idea that mental frameworks actually shift how people do it. Like, so to not be the Amazon business analyst.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  I think Web three. Look, I never bought any white crypto seriously. I was interested in Web three. I think there was a narrative idea that really mattered to people. This idea that the internet status quo was not working. No one is happy with where Web two ended up, quote unquote. All the social media platforms are really having trouble right now with some, you know, Twitter power users aren't tweeting as much anymore.

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  It's clear that something is ending and something new is beginning. If Web three founders and builders focus in on let's build the next thing rather than the skewed financial incentives of basically 2020 to 2022. That's what I'm basically excited about because there's just like a real openness to something real. But there needs to be more focus on the something real because I did a lot of Web three tech interviews. And I genuinely would not know what people are talking about. Like I do, I listen to this podcast about the deep end. I went on deck, Alex has been on, I interviewed these Web three founders. And I genuinely would be like, am I missing something?

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  I'm sort of like, I don't know. Like people say things like, oh, you know, we were promised this internet, but they lied to us. I'm like, I don't know. Like, does an average consumer like feel that way?

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:03Speaker 03

  So people, it's on, it's on the onus for people to prove they're real right now.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel the same. I mean, I think a lot of the hype was cringe. I think a lot of the people who were pushing it really beclowned themselves. That being said, like, I'm not gonna, I don't want to dismiss the technology for that reason. I'm not a technologist. I don't know. There were a lot of promises, but there were also a lot of promises around the way the web would evolve from 1999. Everybody was wrong, but they were also right that the web did change everything. So I, you know, look, I'm just waiting. I'm waiting to see proof in the pudding. I would be, I would like to see a change to the modern internet. But I would really counter to a lot of the Web three folks, which is that it turns out that one of the most significant developments in Web two was just Elon buying Twitter. What if Elon is able to restore the Wild West feeling of the web

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  on Twitter, which is an ad-supported platform, which is centrally controlled? That kind of, you know, it's kind of a case against some of the use case.

• 1:01:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  I'm going to be interested to see if that happens and if that's possible. You know, I've heard a lot of hype around the blockchain and all that other stuff. But again, you know, look, it's possible. The whole web one.com thing laid all the fiber optics and made web two possible. You know, so it's who knows, who knows what's gonna happen.

• 1:02:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's hit metaverse before we leave. Zuckerberg seems intent to build this metaverse, even if it turns Facebook into a company whose valuation is less than its annual revenue. I mean, I'm being a little facetious here, but Facebook's been absolutely hammered due to its commitment to this metaverse idea. You guys can answer quickly. Do you think that this metaverse thing is gonna happen?

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  I struggle with this one. You know why? All recent history tells us you should never bet against suck. Like, he was right about Instagram. He was right about mobile. He was right about the news feed.

• 1:02:47Speaker 03

  Don't tell Yahoo, you know, big calls.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  Like, he was right against every single big call in the history of Facebook. That said, I don't get this one. Like, the world is just not signing up to attend virtual conferences. They're just not. I haven't used an Oculus yet. See, this is where I'm just torn. I'm like, man, I don't know. I shouldn't bet against a guy. I'm like, should I buy one? But I'm like, I don't need one. I actually, there's literally nothing that I could do with it that I want or need to do. And then, like, there's something about that key has not yet been switched with the technology. I don't know. I'm curious. What do you think, Alex? I mean, you might know more than I do.

• 1:03:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, it's really tough. I mean, I think that we're definitely gonna see some enterprise uses for it. We might see, you know, some training, education. You can see it in museums. All that stuff makes sense.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:03:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  But when it comes to like us all hanging out in some metaverse, I just don't see the case for it. So.

• 1:03:42Speaker 03

  The quick closing call I'd give here that speaks to my optimism, my East Coast side makes me skeptical of everything. My West Coast side makes me wanna say like, let's not count people out. Add Matthew Ball on the podcast. He's a great like metaverse analyst. And he just gave me, he gave me the articulation that makes me like long-term positive on the metaverse, which is it's adding a 3D layer to the internet. And I'm like, you know, just putting it that simply, I'm like. Okay, that makes sense to me. Now, that's a different question of like, would I make a generational bet on my company with that intuition? But I think it's important to kind of separate. Let me put it this way, like, I don't think Meta is going to be the Kleenex of like, the Metaverse in the sense that like, we say a Kleenex, but like, it's paper

• 1:04:26Speaker 03

  tissue. It just owns the space so much we use the term. I don't think Meta and Facebook, despite that effort, are going to be the equivalent thereof. But I'm really, I'm bullish on in the long term, so when adding a 3D layer to the internet. I just hear that. I'm like, that makes total sense.

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  I completely agree. So, Alex, sell or buy Meta, down 20 right now?

• 1:04:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Geez.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  I'm thinking about buying it.

• 1:04:48Speaker 03

  This podcast is not financial.

• 1:04:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  I would buy it. I would buy it.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't, I trust the guy. I mean, look, I'm putting aside my content, you know, anything. I'm just like, look, from a business perspective, one of the best bets in the world you could do is give Mark Zuckerberg your money in the year 2007.

• 1:05:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Also, you're, you're, so if you buy Meta today, you make two bets, right? You can sort of get two bets for, for your $1, right? One is Metaverse works out, you're in great shape. Two is Mark Zuckerberg says Metaverse isn't going to work, and then the stock shoots up, it's going to double in valuation. So, so it's good. The only way you actually lose that money is if Zuckerberg says, we're going to put more money into the Metaverse, which he did say on the most recent earnings call. So, sorry to all the investors that hold it. Marshall, Saagar, thank you so much for joining. Really great to catch up with you guys.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  Hey, good to see you, man.

• 1:05:36Speaker 03

  This is fun.

• 1:05:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's super fun. You can check out Marshall and Saagar on the Realignment, available in your podcast app of choice, one of my go-to podcasts. Also, check out Breaking Points on YouTube. Realignment's also on YouTube. All the places. Go check it out. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Thank you, Nick Guatney, for doing the audio. Thank you, LinkedIn, for having me as part of your podcast network. We'll be back on Wednesday with another show. Thank you for being here for the past couple ones. We've done tech strategy, we've done tech finance, and now the bigger world, the broader world. So, we're covering all bases. All right, we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 1:06:20Speaker 04

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