The U.S. and Tech After Trump: A Conversation With the Realignment's Marshall Kosloff and Saagar Enjeti

Marshall Kosloff and Saagar Enjeti, hosts of the hit podcast The Realignment, speak about the shifting state of U. S. politics on their show each week. And while they focus on political change, they spend a surprising amount of time focusing on technology, recognizing the industry’s power. The two joined this week’s Big Technology Podcast to discuss how they see the U. S. political system realigning after Trump and what that will mean for the tech industry. 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?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right, realignment in the house. How's it going, Sagar? Hey, what's up, man? How are you? Good, how are you? How are you, Marshall?

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Good, thanks for having us.

• 1:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thanks for being here. I will read the ad and then we can get going. Let's do it.

• 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 app. MediaOcean is building the mission-critical platform for omnichannel advertising. If that sounds cool, hit up mediaocean.com/bigtech and browse their job listings. And a big thanks to MediaOcean for supporting the Big Technology Podcast. Okay, let's do this.

• 2:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. If you've been listening to this show, you know that technology and politics are not distinct. We often talk about how tech companies influence politics and how politics influences tech. The future of tech is indeed tied directly to who's in charge of government and how they view these companies and what they want to do to them. Now that Joe Biden has taken office, we're about to enter a new era and we're going to talk about it today. On today's show, I'm bringing you on two guys who host one of my favorite podcasts called The Realignment that takes a similar view to this one, but from an opposite approach. Marshall Kosloff and Saagar and Jedy focus their show on politics,

• 2:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  but they spend a lot of time talking about tech, sometimes a surprising amount of time, realizing its importance. Their beliefs are more conservative than liberal, which we'll get into, and I like them because they root themselves in fact and speak to the heart of the issues. So in today's show, we'll talk about the direction of the US after Trump, and then spend time at the end talking about what it means for tech. So buckle up, we'll have a political discussion first, and then we'll move on to more technology aspects, although I anticipate we will talk about technology throughout. Marshall and Saagar, welcome to the show.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Hey, good to see you, Alex.

• 3:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  So I love the name of your podcast, The Realignment. We're certainly going through multiple realignments, you know, both in tech and politics and culture, as you point out, and that's about to heat up. And in fact, like, I wonder if we're going through even more now that, you know, Trump has obviously left office in a pretty dramatic way. So I'm just kind of curious, like, where do you guys think the state of US politics is today? And what sort of realignment are we going through? Or are there changes to the realignment that you were seeing beforehand now that we've experienced these past two or three weeks?

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, the funny thing here is... A lot of our listeners, especially when we started in July 2019, thought a realignment meant populism is rising. It means Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are going to duke it out for the future of American politics, and that big vision is going to determine everything. But we saw the literal, exact opposite happen. You saw Joe Biden win in a very crowded field. You saw him really dominate in a way that people didn't see, and you saw him then win the presidency. People look at that fact and think that it means the realignment thesis was incorrect. But the key to look at, and Saagar will expand on this, is how did Joe Biden win? Joe Biden won by winning more and more suburban voters.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Joe Biden won by education. Joe Biden won by the fact that if you have a graduate degree, you are more likely than ever to vote for the Democratic Party. That is a fundamentally different Democratic Party than the Democratic Party of the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan actually won college-educated voters, something that no one could imagine today.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, the really important thing to hear, to understand about the realignment, also why I love the name of the show, is that it's value-neutral. Yeah, in the beginning, in 2019, maybe we started the show, I think it was a reasonable supposition to say populism is rising on the left and right. And now that Joe Biden has won the presidency with 80 million votes, a record number of votes in US history, it's also reasonable to say there was a realignment. So what happened? Which is that the theory of the case that Biden and them put forward, the Democrats, was that we are going to win back white, working-class voters into the fold. That's why we're going to nominate Joe Biden from Scranton. He's going to win those guys back, and we're going to take the presidency. And that's just simply not what happened. What actually happened, well, it happened a bit on the margins, but

• 5:47Speaker 02

  it wasn't the determinative factor. The determinative factor was suburban, college-educated whites were largely the people who fled the Republican Party and voted for Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. This is the most, I think, the most fascinating part of this dynamic is Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in the House lost every single toss-up race. She has been one of the narrowest margins, I think, since the 1800s in terms of a House majority, and Republicans kept Maine, they kept North Carolina. I mean, they blew it out in places like South Carolina. I can't even remember all the races which were supposed to flip and just which didn't. And so you have this constituency which was willing to vote for Joe, Joseph R. Biden,

• 6:32Speaker 02

  not willing to vote for Democrats down ticket. The ultimate battle of American politics right now is what are those people going to do in a Biden era? Are they going to be satisfied by, you know, Joe Biden putting forward just a vaccine, coronavirus relief, that type of stuff? Are cultural issues going to maybe push them back into the fold of the Republican Party? That's the real question and it's one that we've been talking a lot about on the show recently.

• 6:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I was just thinking during the Biden inauguration of all those people that voted for Donald Trump, and they voted to break the system, like actually break it. And Biden was the vice president. So they voted to break Joe Biden's system. And I wonder what happens to those folks. I mean, obviously, like there hasn't been much of a discussion about it because the riot in the Capitol seemed to have been like a conversation ender for many people. But that issue doesn't go away. So what happens there and how do the parties vie for their affinity? And why has it been so difficult for the Democrats to capture them?

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're getting to a huge debate that Sagar and I actually have a lot on the show, which is what did 2016 mean? I'm not quite sure it's true that there was this great majority of people who are voting to overthrow the neoliberal post-Cold War order in 2016. Because if that were true, I don't think you would see a resounding Joe Biden victory. I think you had a lot of people who did not like the political system. We've consistently seen since the 1980s, people switch from

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Reagan to George H. W. Bush to Bo Clinton, back to George W. Bush, then to Barack Obama. So there's this percentage of the country that is dissatisfied of both ends of the political class, and they are always up for grabs. So in 2016, it happened to be that the Democrats nominated someone who represented the exact set of the establishment that that group of people wouldn't want to support, and Trump was the person to throw up there. But let's not forget, he did not win by a crazy high number of votes. And that also justifies why in 2020, you saw many people in that swing either stay with Trump or go back to Joe Biden. So it's a complicated picture.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really interesting, Alex, because the way I see it is, I agree, which is that if you'd asked me before the 2020 election, I would have been like, this was about, a lot more about trade and a lot more about immigration. It was a lot more about a policy case. And that's just not true. I am very, you know, I'm mad enough to admit it. I was wrong. What it is, is it's a cultural and affectational backlash against the system, quote unquote. It is largely grievance which is directed not necessarily at any one thing, but at like stature in life, at the sense that the country is changing, at the sense that they don't recognize where people grew up, et cetera. And that's why I think that you had a situation where Trump could abandon basically all the

• 9:35Speaker 02

  stuff that he ran on, policy consensus, and still win 75 million votes, I mean, 10 million more votes than he won last time around, and increase margins within minority communities, despite, you know, a lot of the stuff that we heard in the media. The problem, though, is that he, in many ways, poisoned the well of his own even quote unquote "success," despite the fact that he failed pretty miserably as president in order to do much of what he wanted to do, which is that the "stop the steal" phenomenon has, and the QAnon and the empowering of that narrative within a decent segment of the Republican Party, about 68% as far as we know right now, has led to something which I believe is irreconcilable.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  So like, I believe that you have about 15 to 20% of the Republican Party. People like Liz Cheney and people like Mitt Romney and others who are just like, "No, like, we're done with Trump. We want to impeach. Like, we're totally against this," etc. But that's not a sizable portion. Let's not, let's not kid ourselves. But that's, that wing can no longer live with the QAnon, "Stop the Steal" wing. You see this now with primary challengers being lobbied against Liz Cheney. So I actually believe that Trump, in the way that he handles defeat, actually sowed the destruction of the modern Republican Party. And the only way that I could be wrong about this is if the Democrats, or Biden in

• 11:01Speaker 02

  particular, does something which can unite the entire right. Because that's the thing, is that all parties are coalitions. In many ways, the left was united under the hatred of Trump. And it changed their coalition dramatically. The right was always reunited for the last 12 years, let's be honest. They hated Obama. That's what the Tea Party and all of that was all about. Under Trump, it was loving Trump because he pissed off the people who loved Obama. Okay, but Biden is not Obama. He's not the same culture warrior. He's a much more affectationally moderate guy. So the question is, is with that gone, the boogeyman, so to speak, what are they gonna do? And look, I mean, don't underestimate the ability of many Democrats to screw that up. It's very possible. I just think it's much less likely in the next couple of years.

• 11:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  That was my second thought about Biden when he was inaugurated. I wondered, you know, if he was potentially that moderate who could, you know, just go out and speak to economic issues, which to me, I think there's room for a party to come in and, you know, talk to the people who are, who care most about the economy and the money they make and providing for their family, and potentially can solidify a pretty large coalition around a common sense message about that that speaks to everyone. So do you think, do you think Biden has an opportunity to do that? Or am I a little bit, or do you think that's even

• 12:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  possible in America today? Or am I a little bit fanciful in thinking that's a possibility?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  I don't think it's crazy. Something Sagar and I have spoken a lot about is the focus that Joe Biden needs to bring to the presidency. So if his focus is vaccines, checks, a stimulus package, some form of competence, there is a majority in favor of that. Now, that being said, it gets difficult to talk about common sense when it comes to the economy because as we get closer and closer into the nitty gritty of the big issues, it becomes less true. So for example, if you were to talk a lot of people in our audience who are on the democratic socialist left, they'd say what's common sense is student loan forgiveness. Well, there's a whole portion of the country who didn't go to college or has already paid their debt already, who doesn't think that's common sense. So I think the closer and closer

• 13:18Speaker 01

  we look at the econ issues, the less we're going to see that there's any form of consensus. But on the big ones, AKA desire to eventually reopen the economy safely, that that's how you get the vaccine, the desire to actually have competence, which is something that everyone really underrated, an idea we're really obsessed with is the idea of state capacity as mattering. People can see the fact that Wuhan, China is opening up again with the rave. I'm sure you saw that on Twitter. It was, it was a really sort of depressing thing to see. And they want that. That's where common sense lies. I don't think there's a broader opportunity there. Yeah, made me cry a little bit.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. Look, it breaks down whenever you look at some stuff, but on the top line level, there are universal options which cut through. I believe that the way out of the culture war, and I believe the culture war rules our politics today, is great policy, which is in the 75% or 80% percentile of support. So, you know, what's something I mean by that? Put a vaccine in my parents arm. That's something that happened, you know, in Texas before it happened in other places. Governor Greg Abbott, I have a lot of disagreements with the guy. Honestly, I am going to be looking at him very differently for the rest of my life because of this one decision materially impacted me and my family. That's how a lot of people think. And, you know, a lot has been written and about the

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Latino support for Trump in South Texas, my own home state. And look, go read. The articles, they asked them, they said, why did you vote for Trump? And it's not, it's not that they were Hillary voters and then Trump voters. It's that they were not voters. And then they came out huge numbers for Trump relative to the previous election. What happened? They were like, look, I got a check with the man's name on it. And that meant a lot to me and my family. That's the type of thing which can cut through so much. It can cut through immigration. It can cut through abortion. It can cut through guns. Nothing really in America cuts through that stuff. Except for when you're down and out, like right now. What helps you? Money in your bank, a vaccine in your arm.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  This is why I think Biden has the opportunity to be the most popular president of my lifetime, excepting George W. Bush post nine 11. As in like not in a rally around the flag moment. He inherited this divisive crisis. If he can actually do 100 million vaccines in 100 days and pass $2,000 checks, which you get with Biden's name on it, I think it will be dramatically popular. And I think if I was him, that's what I would be doing all day long is focusing on that goal.

• 15:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now, Saagar, you also mentioned that you think the Republican Party is going to break. I think we should focus on that for a minute. And this all matters in terms of the direction that the technology industry is going. You know, we are called the big technology podcast, but right now, technology and politics are pretty interlinked and we'll get to that soon. But I'm curious what you think is going to happen if the party breaks. And, you know, just kind of a follow up to that. Do you think Trumpism is diminished in any way? I mean, now that sort of ended with the riot at the Capitol, which not, I mean, you know, some people must have supported, but I'd imagine a large number didn't. The storm never came for QAnon. And he talked about, you know, for months, how the election was rigged and stolen.

• 16:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it was proven out to be the case and he had to walk out of the White House. So I just want to toss that all over to you and then Marshall, you can refund it afterwards. But I'm curious what you think there.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  It's a great question, Alex. And yes, I do think the party is all, I'm not saying that it's immediately going to go the way of the Whigs, but I'm saying that directionally and functionally, that's essentially what matters. And the reason, okay, let's, let's talk about tech, right? Which is the reason why it matters for tech, which is that we had a guest on our podcast recently named Michael Lind, and he made a very profound point, which I think all conservatives need to reckon with, which is that the only debate in America which matters today is the debate between the center-left and the progressive-left, AKA, like, what the intra-democratic coalition says. And this is obvious for a variety of examples. Marshall, Marshall has a great point

• 17:21Speaker 02

  about Pornhub, which I'll let him expand on, which really does make the point. But before we get to that, the reason why I think that it all matters, quote unquote, is because if you're trying to understand where political pressure and elsewhere is going to come to bear, the right is not fundamentally serious about governing. They might win elections in the future. It's very possible. Look, some culture war issue is going to come up, and the Fox effect and all that is going to ramp up, and they might win control of the Senate, they might win control of the House, and they might even win the presidency again. It's very possible with the current coalition. But, under that circumstance, there is no animating policy force behind it. And you saw this, you know, in a tech perspective, throughout the entirety of Trump's presidency,

• 18:06Speaker 02

  which was, oh, like, we're pissed off that, like, Gateway Pundit got banned from Twitter, so let's, like, you know, go after Section 230. And you're like, you don't want to go after Section 230. That's not, you just want to punish your enemies. Like, this has nothing to do, actually, with the policy, or with anything. And at the end of the day, what happened? Or they're like, oh, well, China's, you know, infiltrating our markets and TikTok and all that. All true, 100%. I was for the TikTok ban. But guess what? On the day that Joe Biden inaugurated president, TikTok's still available on the Apple iPhone, because the Trump administration is incompetent. And I think that that is just a feature, not a bug, of Trump, the presidency, I think it is a feature of the entire Republican Party, which is unserious about governance. I'll let Marshall expand more.

• 18:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, hold on. Before Marshall goes, what happens to the Republican Party, then?

• 18:54Speaker 02

  What happens to the Republican Party? Look, you, they will find a way in order to remain coalesced. Like, right now, everybody's coalesced around Biden's illegal immigration orders that just came forward in terms of the legislation that he's passing. They'll say, he's like, you know, he campaigned on unity and this is something he's passing. So, like I said, they will still win some elections. But I think that if Biden governs the way that I think he's going to win, they will become rulers of an increasingly small kingdom. So, I went on Megyn Kelly's podcast recently, she was like, is Trump going to be the kingmaker? And I'm like, yeah, he's going to be the kingmaker of a tiny kingdom, which is that you have about 39% of the American population, right? And in a deep-red Georgia and primary system, which is low turnout and which is base-driven

• 19:39Speaker 02

  anyway, you're going to have the incentive in order to go along with Trump and stop the steal. I believe that stop the steal is now the litmus test for the modern Republican candidate. But the problem, as you find out in Georgia, is you can do that, you can get the Trump people behind you, but you're not going to win a statewide election. And so, I think that that is the modern trajectory of the party and increasingly shrinking minority party oriented around grievance. But don't underestimate the power of grievance. It can actually be very powerful in the future.

• 20:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, the former centrist Republicans then go over to the Democrats?

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Yes, which is already basically what happened.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  And that's the realignment. That's the point. The realignment is former country club Republicans no longer vote because it's not the party of George H. W. Bush anymore. They vote along with their other college and graduate school educated peers for the Democratic Party, which is a huge problem if you are on the Bernie left because your whole underlying theory no longer makes any sense. But I want to pick up first with the what happens with the Republican Party point, which is the Republican Party is going to continue to win elections. The reality, sorry, you hit this, Trump won more votes than he won last time. Trump himself is not reputed in the party. What is done, however, is the Republican Party largely as a governing force capable of implementing

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Its vision for the world. The Democrats are, so let's take section 230, something Sagar talked about. The Democratic Party is capable of passing legislation, having a comprehensive approach to section 230, but all of the different wings of the party will largely agree with. Senator Ron Wyden from my home state of Oregon and Bernie Sanders will probably fundamentally agree on section 230 reform, which places more impetus on tech companies to moderate their platforms more severely. At the same time, though, when Republicans were in power, it is just not true if there ever was a comprehensive conception of what moderation, section 230, or anything of the like, would actually look like. There was just a lot of misinformation about platforms and publishers and a lot of fake

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Kabuki theater hearings that were more about getting points for the base back home than actually implementing change. That's the culture war dynamic. Yeah, so I'll just go to the Pornhub example that Sagar brought up, which illustrates every single dynamic that we're talking about here and applies to tech companies in general. For years, you've seen socially conservative politicians, socially conservative organizations, et cetera, bemoan Pornhub and its various, in many ways, really terrible behaviors around matters on the platform, safety, et cetera. There are activists on the left and on the right who worked on this issue. However, all of that activism and talk by conservative organizations and by conservative politicians led to nothing. It's not the threat of hearings that causes change.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  It's not the threat of pickings that causes change. What it actually is, though, is Nick Kristof writing in the New York Times, wait, Pornhub is really bad, that gets Mastercard, Visa, et cetera, to kick it off the actual payment platform within five days. So that is the dynamic that the right is fundamentally going to struggle with. And frankly, it's why, if I were at a tech company, I would not fear conservative tech backlash in any way whatsoever. Because frankly, the conservative movement right now doesn't have any ability to wield the actual societal influence required to actually affect change and those functions. It used to be at the start of the Trump presidency that tech companies were concerned about the hearings, they were concerned about tech, about Trump tweets. But what currently emerged is that they discovered that if they ticked off Trump,

• 23:14Speaker 01

  yes, there'd be a White House Social Media Summit, but a bunch of right wing grifters who no one cares about would show up and then nothing would actually happen. So that's the underlying dynamic here.

• 23:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's fascinating. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but you guys, you know, tend to have like more conservative beliefs. So how do you feel about what's happened?

• 23:33Speaker 02

  I mean, look, Alex, I've said this before too, which is like in terms of conservative beliefs. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely where I am more on the spectrum. But if you have to be honest about your ability in to influence discussion about how much power you actually have in your society about where it lies. And if you want to effectuate change, work with the people who have the power to effectuate that change. And I that's, this is something that I pointed out and people were very angry with me a lot. There's a lot of social conservatives who make a lot of money. Conning their supporters and their email list and others being like, we're sticking it to porn. No, you're not. That's the truth. Nick Kristof is the one who stuck it to Pornhub.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  All he did really was aggregate the work that they've been pointing out for 10 years. But the point is, is you don't matter. So you should ask that question. Why don't I matter? Should I keep giving money to the same organizations which tell me that they're making a difference when they're not? And so the way I look at it is, yes, you know, I can believe whatever I want, but what I actually care about is getting something done. And that's just not something that right is interested in right now.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  And you're getting to my desire just to reject the label of conservative because in many ways, something that you'll look half of what I say on the podcast now is pretty consistently pro Joe Biden. Cause guess what? Joe Biden is doing the things I really support. So for example, the last act of Secretary Pompeo, we've had on the podcast was saying that what's happening in Western China is genocide. And guess what? Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State designate said, I support that too. So great. Joe Biden did that. That's really great. I the thing that's most boring about media, and we've talked about this when you came on our podcast before about the dynamics around newsletters and podcasts. Is you're incentivized to promote these fake narratives because your niche audience is interested in it.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  And look, the real talk thing is that guess what? On a lot of the issues that I care about, Joe Biden is doing a pretty good job. And guess what? If he does a bad job, if he, no offense to Bob Iger, nominates Bob Iger. To be ambassador to China, I'll call him out for it. I mean, not that that would change his mind, but I'll call him out. But if he doesn't do that, and Tony Blinken actually makes a decision that puts Disney in a difficult position, especially considering where Mulan was filmed, I'll say, good job, Joe Biden. If you're actually going to do what the three of us are trying to do, which is provide analysis, we basically have to drop the idea that our fundamental job is to be conservative, or be progressive, or be liberal in this media environment. Our job is to tell people what the truth is. Our job, because SAGA has a lot of credibility of rising, is to actually have a conservative audience

• 26:05Speaker 01

  and tell them the truth. And if they get ticked off about that, they get ticked off.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and let me just pick up there before you come in, Alex. We, at the beginning, we're talking about realignments. Let me give you an example, which is the child tax credit. That's a policy that I deeply support. A lot of people who are on the right, conservative kind of reformers, have been pushing that for over a decade, right? Well, guess who just proposed the biggest child tax credit expansion in our history? Joe Biden, as part of his COVID relief plan. It would be foolish for me to be like, oh, you know, this is terrible because Biden is doing it. No, that's insane. This is a policy that I support, and I'm glad to see him do it. And if he didn't do it, then I would, you know, I'd be get upset about it for it. So this is again to the point of realignments, which is that an easy way for politicians

• 26:50Speaker 02

  and for political coalitions and others to move is to adopt and change their policy. I'm not going to say that it's going to win over everybody, but it can change on the margins. And the margins are what won Joe Biden the presidency, and they're also what lost Donald Trump the presidency. They're what lost, you know, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, their Senate seats. We're talking about a few 10,000 votes here. That's when it starts to matter. And that's why I urge, when I say my biggest critique of the right, has always been, they don't actually care about policy. It's mostly about cultural grievance. I think almost everyone in Silicon Valley would probably understand what I'm talking about there. Because at what point has anyone ever proposed a comprehensive moderation standard?

• 27:33Speaker 02

  It's all just like, my friend got banned from Twitter. And like, if that's as close as you're going to get, then you suck. Like, you fail. And they should laugh at you. They should not care what you think, because you're not going to do anything. If I'm Mark Zuckerberg and them, I'm scared of Amy Klobuchar and of, you know, of these other people who are running the government. They actually will come after you. Like, I understand why they're doing many of the things that they do. But on the right, that's just not a serious thing that's going to happen. And we just have four years of evidence to show you that that's not true.

• 28:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  What I like about you guys, among many things, is that you speak truth to the issues. You know, you guys don't spin or fall back on talking points. You actually like attack stuff from like a reality-based position. Why do you think there's so little of that now? Do we, is it, do we blame social media? Or what's going on in our politics where these type of discussions are so rare?

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Two things are to blame. Yeah, two things are to blame here. Number one would just be polarization as a whole, as a phenomenon. The more and more, every political question comes down to, do you have a college degree? Or do you not? You as a politician are more incentivized to deliver to your audience that exists on either end of that spectrum. So that's the number one issue. I, and so at the same time, social media is under that in the sense that social media makes it easier and easier and easier for you to identify and target the audience that you have. But at the same time, I really object to, look, we've dunked on the right a bit.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  I'm going to dunk on the left a bit. I am not happy when people on the left act as if social media just creates things as a whole. Oh, if it wasn't for the Twitter social algorithm, or it wasn't for Facebook, we would be kumbaya and it's all Mark Zuckerberg's software district. No, like, the reality is, is that the Twitter algorithm amplifies dynamics that already exist in our country. The reality around college education, the idea that our country is polarizing more around class and education instead of race, that actually means something. It's not Facebook's fault that in a state like California where you're living right now, the state actually did not pass an affirmative action bill despite being a strongly blue state. That's the underlying dynamic there.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  But here's what I do think is to blame for the lack of truth-telling in media right now, which is the internet. So that's a little different from critiquing social media, because the internet and the models of what we're doing, like, think of your, think of your Substack. Like, you're not monetizing it now with a subscription, but the easiest way for you to monetize With a subscription would be to say, look, I've got, let's say, my 10,000 readers. I need 1,000 of them to pay me $10 a month. What you would obviously do is deliver niche, specific content to that audience. They would make it so that you do not have to speak to an actual middle. There's, it would be, it would be very hard for Sagar and I to monetize or build the podcast by doing the balls and strike position. So it requires a bit of strength on our part not to do that.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  And it's very distressing to see people, both on the left and the right, give very poor analysis. It's basically structured on this short term. We just want to look really great. But you know, what I would say at the same time though, is that's also where there's a lot of opportunity and why I think I'm excited for all three of us to build our platforms. Because it's a short term value, value destroying decision to just serve everyone their clicks and their hot takes. It is a bad decision for you to be one of these people who, who is a former leftist, quote unquote, who goes on social media, becomes very pro-Trump. And then all of a sudden starts supporting Stop the Steal. Guess what you've done to your audience in three years? They're going to wake up and realize you're a liar. The same way that the people, you know, I'm sure you all have seen that QAnon forum on Reddit,

• 31:26Speaker 01

  where it's all the people who are hyperventilating over discovering that QAnon isn't fake. And the people who lied to them, I'm sure they got a huge, huge boost and got all this grifty money in 2019. But now they're totally done. And that's the dynamic.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I believe in karma whenever it comes to these things. It would be easy in the short term to lie to people and say, look, it's the easiest thing in the world in order to make money on the right is in order to just like, be like, the left sucks. Look at the left. It's so boring. Also, Marshall and I could make oceans of money, or it could have two years ago, been like, he's black and I'm Indian and here's why we support Trump. Like literally, we're looking at a Patreon in the high six figures, right? With a bunch of like boomers in the Midwest who are like, by donating $10 to this, I feel like I'm not racist. Um, look, that is all very easy to do. But look, we're on a tech podcast. You want to build a podcast?

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Or a show or media which can survive as a business throughout the ages. That's not something that you can do. Look at actually successful media companies which have survived turmoil within business and payments. Because I think we all know, I'm not going to say subscription fatigue is a thing. I don't necessarily think that is true. But at some point, something's going to get figured out here. But the second thing is that look at like the New York Times, Fox, MSNBC and others. Easy to dunk on all four on CNN. It's easy to dunk on all four. They're also tremendously successful today. Even with the ratings going lower, they're actually making more money than ever on cable. Okay, so they figured out a way in order to keep their medium survivable throughout this.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  And every single time when it comes down to it, I really believe this in terms of niche audiences is when you lie, you will pay a price. Look at Fox right now. They're number three in the ratings because they indulged to stop the steal. But then they weren't willing to go all in and now they're screwed. They literally have no idea what to do. They're like firing half of their staff. MSNBC had the same problem. Rachel Maddow lost 500,000 viewers in a single night after the Mueller report came out. Because people were like, oh, wait, like she's just been feeding us complete lies about Russiagate. This always happens. I think the same thing is going to happen for a lot of, let's just say it, like I think a lot of these former leftists on YouTube. Yeah, I hope the traffic was good and I hope you're saving because I'm from Texas.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  You know, we're very familiar with like the oil workers, like in the boom times, they save a lot of money. Because sometimes in Midland, you ain't working for two or three years until the price comes back. And that's exactly what I think this is happening. It's like a boom bust cycle of grifting. And so I think that if you want to build a steady environment, yes, will we lose some people on the margins? 100% guarantee it's already happened. People get mad at me all the time, but.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  This is one of the things I love about my other show, Rising, which is that when you're truly right-left, and I mean that in terms of the makeup of the audience, you can piss off half every day. One half, you know, they're pissed. It's okay. The other half is cool with it. You piss off the other half, and this one's cool with it. And by and large, there will be a core group of people who say, you know what? I like that they call it. Sometimes I don't agree, but I'm gonna keep watching. And I think that that is the core value proposition, basically, of our show whenever it comes to, you know, bigger, bigger analysis that we do and the work that we do over there. And I think, you know, success on both platforms probably bears that out in terms of a business decision to keep going.

• 35:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I've been meaning to tell us to break, but the conversation's so engaging. So screw the break for a minute. Last question of this side. Why didn't populism work the way that you guys anticipated? We talked about that at the beginning, but I'd like to close that loop before we move to more tech subjects.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  That's the big debate. What's frustrating about this question is there's a bad faith version of the question, and you're not asking it. And then there's a good faith version of the question. And I've been stuck on both sides of this question. So this really comes back to where we started the conversation, which is what did Donald Trump's election mean in 2016? The thing I think of when I saw Donald Trump's election was, wow, Donald Trump, racism, this seems so silly to say, but racism aside, had some very interesting things to say when it came to the primary campaign. Campaigned against the Iraq war, exposed the fact that a huge portion of the Republican Party's base, now

• 36:03Speaker 01

  that they were out of the post-9/11 era, had no interest in the neoconservative, democracy-promoting vision of the Bush years. Huge development for America and the world. Two, he campaigned on not cutting Social Security, which was another huge thing that was very important during the Bush years. During his looser moments, he said things like, yeah, I'm actually totally fine raising taxes on the rich. They don't vote for Republicans anyways. That's the underlying dynamic, too. So you look at that, and you think about it purely intellectually, and you're thinking... Holy crap. He could actually affect a complete realignment of American politics. Because that version of good Trump, who said things like, let's just do popular things,

• 36:47Speaker 01

  not the war in Iraq, not cutting entitlement programs that pretty much everyone likes, not, you know, expanding Medicare in the States, so expanding Medicaid in the States. That's a Republican Party that could actually win elections. Because the key thing about the pre-Trump party is Republicans lost the popular vote in, at that point, seven out of the last eight elections. So you have a huge problem. Now, I gave the positive vision, which I think entranced a lot of good faith people, even look at how things actually implement. And when it actually implements, you don't actually have President Trump focus on increasing taxes, or even keeping taxes stable. He does tax cut. Instead of saying, hey, we're not gonna go after entitlement programs that people actually

• 37:30Speaker 01

  like, the first thing he does is try to cut Obamacare. Instead of saying, hey, let's pass an infrastructure package. To this day, I do not know why President Trump didn't show up in a city like Baltimore or Detroit for majority African American population and just say, in his Trumpy way, I know you didn't vote for me, but we're gonna make America great again for everyone. The conservative boomers would have loved it. No one would have known what to do. It would have been a real unifying moment for him, whether or not it actually happened, but he didn't do it. Because then you had the travel ban, you had Charlottesville, and it just just bring to question, is there a good faith version of populism which doesn't descend into, honestly, like, white identity politics grievance and those cultural issues?

• 38:13Speaker 02

  It's a great question, Alex. And, look, I've thought a lot about it. And why did it fail? It's because of what's some dynamic, Michael Lind, who's like, kind of our North Star, he wrote this book called The New Class War, and he says, actually pretty clear, most populists are grifters. And that's basically what happened. Why didn't Trump go to Detroit and declare an infrastructure package? Because it's easier to sit at the Oval Office and tweet about Joe Scarborough's missing, or dead intern, right? Or to solve the case of, like, Mika's facelift. Or to call Stormy Daniels horse face. I can go on and I was a White House correspondent. So I just suffer through all of this.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  There are a long list of insults.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  There's a, there's a long list of just, just, it's just pointless. And but see the, the key there is insult. Insulting the opposition in favor of a positive like program? I'm actually cool with that as long as you're actually trying to do something. But that's not what any of this is about. It was literally outside the political rim for no other reason than except to protect his ego. I think it's pretty perfect that Trump's very last act as president was pardoning Judge Jeanine's ex-husband for tax fraud. And his previous act of that was rescinding the executive order that he had signed in his first days of his administration. Banning lobbying of his aides for the previous few, five years. So yeah, like what did it devolve to?

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Into grifting of an unserious person. But, and this is where I want to present the positive case. And my friend, Michael Brennan Dougherty over at National Review recently pointed this out. Trump was a grifter. No question. Almost 99% of the people around him were also grifters. But you cannot take away the reasons why 75 million voted for this person. And the structural problems in society, culture, what the left represents and more that led to that. I'm not saying that a more competent Trump or whatever is coming. I have no idea whether any of that is true. But I know that that manifests itself in some form in our politics. And that's up to Joe Biden. That's up to whoever's going to be the leader of the Republican Party in order to parse out.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  And it will lead to changes in our political life in America.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  I have to quickly interject with one thing on that.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Not to argue with my co-host on a different person's podcast. The problem is Trump did all the grifting that we just talked about and he won more votes. So that's why I'm on the negative side of can populism right now turn into a good thing? He didn't give the speech in Detroit. He did tweet horse face. He did do all the things we didn't like. And he won more votes. So I am just skeptical that politicians will choose the good version of populism. When it turns out that not only will the bad version win you reelection, but also frankly, it's great for selling podcast tickets. And it's great for driving subscriptions and like Newsmax viewership.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I actually think you're right. I'm deeply cynical. I only I'm saying if there was any positive version of this, it might manifest itself in that way. More likely, it doesn't.

• 41:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's a shame. I mean, we see it in the tech world, too, that the people who are the most vociferously negative or positive on one or other, you know, another side of an issue are the ones whose voices tend to rise to the top and define the debate. And, you know, this show is supposed to be a bit of an antidote to that. We're supposed to have nuanced conversations here. And I do feel, you know, so kinship with you guys because it seems like that's, you know, something that you guys are trying to do as well. Okay, we spent, we spent 40 minutes not talk, not really talking about tech on a big technology podcast. Let's take a break and, and go through the home stretch, talking about what these realignments mean for technology. We'll be back here right in a minute or two on the big technology podcast.

• 42:03Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 44:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back for the second half of the Big Technology Podcast here with Marshall Kosloff, Sagar and Jedy from the Realignment Podcast. You might also have seen Sagar's show, The Rising, with The Hill on YouTube. And if you haven't, you should subscribe to both the podcast and the YouTube channel. They're very good. Okay, so you guys focus a lot on tech, like a surprising amount, given your interest in politics. What realignment do you see happening in the technology world? And why are you so interested?

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm so glad you A invited us on the podcast, but B pointed out the amount of tech we focused on because it was something that people pushed back on very early. I remember back in November of 2019, this is one of the first times someone tweeted about the podcast. They said, hey, I like the realignment, but they keep talking about tech so much. And I don't get it because they're in DC and they should be talking more about politics. And this is, once again, our whole idea of we need to focus on long-term value and not short-term clicks. Well, we talked about tech because all tech is politics and all politics is tech right now. If we look at everything from

• 45:15Speaker 01

  US-China Cold War II. Guess what? Tech and TikTok. You look at debates about free speech, moderation, censorship. Tech. Does Trump stay on Twitter? Tech. Is there a divide between people who are receiving the fruits of globalization and those who aren't? Tech. Who gets to work in our white collar, excellent Zoom-fueled COVID situation? That, once again, is tech. What affects everything. But in terms of the actual realignment, here is what it's actually meant. What it means is that no, and let me take a quick step back. The biggest impact that Trump made on the way Republicans talk about political issues is

• 45:57Speaker 01

  it revealed that the base of the Republican Party, separate from the culture war issues, doesn't really have that much interest in the rhetoric of tax cuts, the free market. So I always remember, you see a lot of Republican politicians saying things like, the GOP, this is, for example, Representative Dan Crenshaw from Texas, who's a young millennial politician. He says things that the GOP is the party of Uber. Unlike the Democrats at their taxi unions, we love innovation and the free market. And I don't think any of that's true at the actual base level. So what that's meant is, as you've removed the articulation that that thing is true, you've seen something else substitute, which is tech is now the equivalent of Hollywood within the Republican Party. In the sense

• 46:41Speaker 01

  that for decades, Republicans and social conservatives, for a variety of good reasons and bad reasons, have said, hey, Hollywood doesn't reflect our values. We don't agree with it. We don't like the people who work in the industry, and we think they are opposed to what we believe in. They also donate to the politicians and the causes we oppose. But at the same time, no one actually does anything because there's nothing that could be done. Because the issue of Hollywood is, people who live in LA and work at Netflix are not social conservatives. So obviously, there's going to be a disagreement, and there's no law you could pass. Conservatives are not going to support a affirmative action bill, forcing Netflix to hire 50/50 left-right. Well, tech is now the same thing. So because you no longer have the Adoration of the market and the adoration of innovation.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  All you have is the true fact that despite all the debate about politics and antitrust in section 230, everything on the right comes down to the fact that even if you broke up Amazon, for example, let's say you hate what Amazon with AWS did to Parler. If you broke up Amazon into six different companies, AT&T style from the 1980s, all six of those companies would also not serve Parler. A startup created out of YC out of Stanford would also not host Parler. So the objection people on the right actually have isn't even policy. It's not the decisions executives are making. It's just the fact that a certain part of the country that is realigning away from their political beliefs has control over these institutions.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And look, on a more like philosophical level, why do we care about tech? Because Marshall and I realized very early on, if you care about politics, what you actually care about is the study of power. And this is something that I think has actually been lost in a lot of political journalism. But if you care about the power and power distribution in America, and if you especially care about democracy, then democracy is about litigating who in America gets to have power over what? And technology is, you know, look at the part, how much of tech is our GDP? How much of tech controls the way that we interact with each other on a day-to-day basis? How much of it controls the very basics of commerce?

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Commerce, despite how a lot of libertarians would like to talk, is not separate from politics. How we conduct business is the very definition of how we conceive of ourselves as a society. That's why they have literal rules in the Quran about doing business with each other in certain ways. It's because this is a reflection of your values. And so we cared about tech from very early on because I think we saw how it was colliding increasingly with Washington, but not just Washington, with the very basics questions of power themselves around political movements. All political organizing today is done on social media. All political donations, the vast majority of them that are taking place here are taking

• 49:35Speaker 02

  place on the internet facilitated again by online drives and more. So, understanding where that was coming was very important. And I think we saw a lot of this from the beginning. It's interesting, you know, way before the pandemic in the before times, Marshall and I had, we had dinner with a couple of like, you know, a couple of big, big people in Silicon Valley, some paper billionaires, which is probably normal for you, Alex, but I was like, oh shit, this guy's worth like 1.2, whatever. And so, we're talking to him. And one of the most insightful things that was said there was that before like 2017, you could form a unicorn company and you would not have to think about the government. And that's just not the case anymore. I just don't believe that that's the case. And so

• 50:20Speaker 02

  that means that you have to care about politics and that politics has to care about you. And I think that again, increasingly, especially in terms of the amount of wealth that's being generated, in terms of the power that's being exerted over our society. This is value neutral. Like, I'm not judging them and saying that it's necessarily a bad thing. It's empirically just the way it is. And then you add on to this geopolitics and the interaction of now our most important, you know, economic sector and its interaction with our geopolitical enemy rival, I'll choose enemy, others will probably choose rival, which is China. And you add on once again, something which is all reminiscent of the debates that we had

• 51:03Speaker 02

  in this country 100 years ago about financial capital, when finance became truly international, London was the center of the universe and the interactions of the UK and the British Empire and the American capital financial system and its own control over our politics and more. This is not new. It's just different. And so like, once again, in order to bring it back to one of my favorite quotes, it's from Mark Twain, he said, "History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes." And we could see that tech was rhyming with a key parts of our political economy and the debates around that from pretty early, I wouldn't say, you know, like we were like the first to discover it. But in Washington, we were definitely looked at as weirdos who care, they're like, why do you guys care so much? But now, you know, it's like we're, we're sitting pretty.

• 51:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it's interesting that Marshall, you mentioned the parlor example because I wrote a question down before we got on the line that I really wanted to ask you guys, which is that these companies are more powerful in some ways than the state. I mean, Donald Trump got banned from Facebook and Twitter. We haven't heard from him since. I mean, of course, he could have found ways around, but he was basically gone from public life, even though he was the president of the United States. So what happens when you have a dynamic like that? And what does the state end up doing?

• 52:21Speaker 01

  I have to, I have to push back on a bit of the premise. I strongly disagree with this rhetoric about tech companies having more power than the state. Look, Donald Trump was kicked off of two social media platforms when he actually has the presidency of the United States. He could air as many pressers as he wants. As Donald Trump proved, the press will cover him no matter what he does. So I just, I just don't think it's philosophically true that tech companies have more power than the state. The state, if it wanted to, could be capricious in incredibly different ways that would actually overwhelm it. So I just don't think that that premise

• 53:04Speaker 01

  has been proven. But that being said, there is a difficulty in the current situation. And this is where I do not believe tech companies are crypto handle. So for me, it's not that tech companies have more power than the state. It's just that they've gained more control and power in areas the state has traditionally not been concerned with. So traditionally, aside from the rate from concerns about racial discrimination, the state has not been concerned with the way that you run your private company or your private club. So let's say we have a country club and separate from racial discrimination, we just say, you know what, I just don't like Alex, or I just don't like Saagar, because every other week, Saagar gets too drunk at dinner and

• 53:47Speaker 01

  embarrasses me at the club, and I just don't want him there. He brings a bad vibe. That's not a question the state has any concern over because it doesn't have anything to do with racial discrimination. Well, that's basically what happened with Twitter. Trump was intolerable on Twitter. Trump behaved to a point where he repeatedly violated all the rules. I think Twitter was correct to basically keep him on the platform until he had been democratically repudiated. I know Mark and Jack are getting a lot of crap for this, but no, I think it would have been a terrible decision to take him off the platform before he lost reelection. That would have not been a good thing for American society. With that being said, he broke the rules. So once again, that's not that they have more power than the state. It's just that a question the state has not concerned itself

• 54:30Speaker 01

  with, which is moderation, who gets to be a part of what, has now taken on greater importance. And the bigger concern I have, and I know Sagar could follow up on this, is I feel as if a huge issue driving this problem is that Twitter and Facebook have the exact wrong enemies to produce the optimal outcome. When what you're doing is banning QAnon folks and Alex Jones and Donald Trump as he's literally instigating violence, you have no act, no one's going to actually question you. Every single critic of Facebook is like, oh yeah, you know what? That was the right decision. Good job. Like, good job, Mark. You finally got it right for once. I would much rather we had a situation where frankly, I want to see someone on the center left who matters. Like, I'm not just saying I'm

• 55:12Speaker 01

  callous when I say this. I want a situation where a Black Lives Matter activist who has a lot of sympathy in the institutions in our society, maybe gets deplatformed and there's actual backlash that matters for Twitter. I want Twitter to actually have to sit down and say, wow, this backlash on this decision, because we made it on the fly, because we didn't think beforehand, was so bad that we have to make sure this never happens again. When Twitter took Hunter Biden, when Twitter banned the New York Post story over Hunter Biden, everyone largely agreed that was a huge mistake. You go to The Atlantic, you go to The New York Times, and you'll find a critical consensus that was the wrong decision. But they didn't actually suffer for it because once again, the victim

• 55:55Speaker 01

  was a right wing newspaper that frankly doesn't really matter that much in the corridors of power. If that had been The New York Times, the situation would have been completely different. So that's the problem we're trying to shift through.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's fascinating. And again, it goes back to what we said earlier, which is that the only debates in America which matter are debates between the center-left and the progressive-left, which is that intra-left debates are largely ones that rule power. I mean, even look at tech companies. That's basically what we're talking about, right? Where we have like, free speech wing of the Free Speech Party, that's left libertarianism. It's not libertarianism which is aligned with the Republican Party versus, you know, some more Twitter employees. Same thing with Facebook. Like, Mark Zuckerberg is like a pretty typical neoliberal, like, that's fine, like, whatever. But it's like him versus, and it's like generic commitment to liberal values and all of that, versus increasingly

• 56:49Speaker 02

  vocal, you know, element of his own employees. That's the only debate, I think, which actually matters in America. And it's, you're right, which is that, and yeah, look, let's not mistake this. The state is obviously more powerful. Like, they could shut Twitter down tomorrow if they wanted to. They don't necessarily have the political will in order to do so. But that doesn't obscure the fact that Twitter does have power over realms of our society, which we are not previously capable of understanding as needed of government intervention, or even of government thought. And so, that, again, though, I think this is a good thing. This is politics, which is that the reason the democratic process and system exists

• 57:33Speaker 02

  is specifically for us to litigate new, you know, challenges to our discourse, to our society and more, and say, okay, like, how the hell do we handle this? And I actually am increasingly, I mean, if I was, you know, like, hard right or something, I would be pretty depressed. Because it's like Marshall said, you could break AWS off of Amazon, and AWS would still be a phenomenally, you know, profitable company, they're still gonna make the exact same decision. So we're really talking here is about ideological capture. And when we're talking about ideological capture of a specific sect, an entire, a specific sect of our entire economy, and then that part of our economy is more dominant, knows how to scale itself to billions and trillions of dollars.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  Then what you're really saying, the only alternative viable alternative you actually have is nationalizing it. This is US, it's not going to happen. So what are you going to do? And I increasingly tell people on the right who are like, I want to do something about this. Like, we need to see, you know, the Twitter change. I'm like, okay, you should start getting to know people like Alex Kantrowitz. Or, you know, talking to the New York Times, because what they write is the only thing that matters. I'm like, what you think literally doesn't matter. You could go and get a Republican Senator to say it. And if it's the right Republican Senator, Facebook would actually be better off in the eyes of the people who matter, ignoring that Senator than actually indulging them.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  And this again is a power dynamic, which nobody really wants to admit. Because there's an entire grifting ecosystem of political dollars raised upon grievance. But which if you're actually interested in effectuating change within the industry, this is where it would come from.

• 59:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and I said that they have powers over the state in some ways, not not fully.

• 59:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  But I do appreciate that, yeah, the state could kick Twitter's ass in a second if they wanted to. So where does this go? Because eventually people want to strike back. By people, I mean the government.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  So this is the thing that's interesting, which is

• 59:37Speaker 02

  where eventually I'm more and more obsessed with Antonio Garcia Martinez and Jeff Jarvis's invocation of the Gutenberg era and the 30 years war as being the framework to understand our moment. So the printing press happens, the print in the 1400s, you get the printing press. You get the Bible distributed more, literacy goes up, that literacy leads to debate and contestation with the Catholic Church. You then see horrific warfare that leads to millions and millions of death, huge percentages of the population in countries such as Germany dying away, the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire. All this terrible stuff, and it eventually culminates in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia,

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  which is a new consensus around the nature of the nation state and the limiting of the power of the Catholic.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Church. I think we are in the, in the, in this 30 years, in this 30 years war moment, when it comes to social media, social media is the equivalent of the printing press. The thing is with that point, and this is as libertarian as I, I would get on this question is, there's no putting social media away. There's no, we're going to pass this bill that reforms, section 230 to the point which Facebook goes away or Twitter goes away. We are stuck with it. There's no putting the toothpaste back in the tooth, in the, you know, in the container, the horse is out of the barn. That's the dynamic. Now, the good news is that it's not as if we're actually, all of the warfare has become purely social mostly. So obviously,

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  there's a, there's a death at the Antifa protests in Portland in July. There is a more, there are five deaths at the Capitol and that's tragic and that's terrible. But when we look about conflict, it's never going to look at that 30 years war scale. But the whole point of the metaphor and why it's the right construct is we are just going to have to get through this current struggle, especially in the 2020s, to the point where we eventually have to have a new consensus be formed. Now, the problem, and where I'm least optimistic, is that right now, we don't actually have a political class, which is actually trained to create consensus. So we don't have democratic politicians who could say, hey, look, we're on the left, we don't like the right for various

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  reasons, but it is definitely true that Jack Dorsey and Twitter do not have any form of fair adjudication of claims by people on the right. We all know that's true. It doesn't exist. It's slapdash. That's not a partisan point. We should pressure Jack Dorsey to actually do something about that, even if those people are not our voters. At the same time, you don't have Republican, you have Republican politicians who are incentivized to basically lie to their voters by saying things like, well, section 230 means that there's publishers and platforms, or they lie and say things like, if you elect me, I'll finally spank Jack Dorsey enough to leave. So what we need is a development of a new political class that reconcedes of what its role in society is, which is rather than fighting for our little tribe of militia, we need to govern for the whole country.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's exactly right, Marshall. And you know, to even borrow from that, that's why I think I said previously, I think this is a generational question. I don't think the current political class has what it takes in order to tackle that. And it did take 30 years of 30 years war and more in order to litigate these questions of power, democracy, and more. In the near term, here's what I think is going to happen. I think that the Democrats and Biden and others are wholly convinced that like Zuckerberg and Twitter did not do enough in order to combat Trump, and that with unified democratic government, something will happen. I think that that something will actually be very bad for people who are, I wouldn't say dissidents, but people who are outside the mainstream on Facebook and Twitter. As

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  you've discussed on your own podcast, Alex, the removal of Section 230 would actually impact. Actually, it was so fascinating. One of your most recent guests, I forget who it was, was like, oh, yeah, if I was Nancy Pelosi, I'd be like, yeah, AOC, I'm going to use their anti-monopoly rhetoric in order to crush AOC's ability in order to fundraise on Facebook, which is genius, actually, if you're Nancy Pelosi, and if you're a mainstream Democratic politician. Totally true. Which is that, here's the truth, censorship and particularly empowering Facebook and Twitter in order to take objectional content off of its platform would be devastating to the right, and it would also be particularly devastating to the progressive left. So whenever we think about that, what we're going to see is a series

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  of yo-yo-like decisions, just like we saw with printing, the printing press, or in the early days of internet, whenever people would like ban YouTube. Remember when like Turkey banned YouTube because it had one video that was mean to Ataturk? It's like, stuff like that.

• 1:04:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  I was there. I was in Turkey when YouTube was banned. I spent a semester there. We used workarounds to watch YouTube. So even still, and in China, they use VPNs. Like, you can only put the internet so far back in the toothpaste tube.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  Exactly, though. And then that's my point, which is that you're going to see a series of decisions in American politics over the next 30 years, which are just going to create more backlash. So I think the left, the mainstream left, right now, they hold real power in America. They're going to do what they think needs to be done because they're like, oh, you know, we need to punish Mark Zuckerberg by censoring him even more. So they're going to do that. And then that's going to create a right wing backlash. And maybe we'll see, you know, the Signal Foundation is actually, I think, a preview of something in my, in the future, from my opinion, which is a nonprofit based entity, which is basically inured from market backlashes and market boycotts, which will become the home of dissidents. And then eventually,

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  those dissidents will, once again, gain power because at least we do live in a democracy, and some of that will get rolled back. So if you know, if you're in, if you're in tech, like buckle up, it's going to be fun. I really, I really think it is going to be a wild ride in terms of public policy over the next like 20 years.

• 1:05:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, I agree completely. And I do think, I mean, I think we're, you know, speaking of realignment, I think we're aligned on the fact that the intersection of tech and politics is going to be freaking fascinating over the next few years. And we're at the beginning of the story, nowhere near the end. So absolutely. I mean, I will keep following along with you guys. I'm a fan of the show. I'm a fan of the podcast. Do you want to let everybody know where they can, where they can find those and find you guys online?

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. We're at the realignment pod on Twitter, realignment, the realignment on and wherever you get your podcasts. And we have a Substack, weekly Substack where we give out transcripts and, you know, listener feedback and more at the realignment.substack.com. And what am I missing, Marshall? Oh, and the realignment on YouTube. There we go.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you can find Saagar at E Saagar and me at M A Kosloff on Twitter.

• 1:06:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And when you go over there, folks, make sure to give them a five star review on their iTunes.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  And likewise, give this guy a five star review. Give him a five star review and write him a five star rating because it really helps him in the algorithm.

• 1:06:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's true. It's all about those big tech algorithms. Well, I appreciate it. At the, at the end of the Capitol riot, Mitt Romney came up and said, the way that you respect people is not by playing into their fantasies, but by telling them the truth. And I think that you guys are standout example of folks who will tell people the truth even when it's unpopular. We may not agree on all the policies, but I think discussions like this are super productive and. And I appreciate what you guys are doing. So absolutely. It's a thrill to have you on. Would love to have you back at some time soon. And I really love the discussions about tech on your show. I learned a ton from them. So thank you.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  Thanks, man. Anytime. Thanks, Alex.

• 1:07:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, to everybody listening, if it's your first time listening, I would love it if you could subscribe. We have a new episode every week. If you're a longtime subscriber, as Saagar mentioned, a five star review or even a review goes a long way. So if you'd be willing to do that, that would be great. I want to thank the folks at Red Circle for hosting and selling ads on the show and Nate Guatney for editing and mastering this thing. It's not an easy task. And that will do it for us this week. We'll be back next week with another episode. It will be a recording of my conversation with Glenn Greenwald for a story we just published on 1-0. So stand by for that. Thanks again for listening and we will see you next week.

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

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