Kara Swisher Rates Tech Leaders — With Kara Swisher

Kara Swisher is the author of Burn Book and host of the Pivot and On With Kara Swisher. Swisher joins Big Technology to discuss the latest tech news and share her opinion of the nature of tech leaders. We discuss Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, Andy Jassy, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, and Mark Cuban. Then we examine the nature of a great leader's personality, how much luck vs. skill plays a role in success, the impact of having lots of money. And plenty more, including how journalism and media move forward today. Enjoy! --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology Premium? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] 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?

  Kara Swisher is here to talk with us about the state of tech leadership, AI, journalism, the media business, and her bestselling Burn Book. All that and more is coming up right after this. 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.

• 0:46Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. We are joined once again by Kara Swisher. She's the host of On with Kara Swisher and the Pivot Podcast, and the author of the bestselling new book, Burn Book, which I just finished and loved. Kara, welcome back to the show.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Thank you. You have such a good podcast voice. I wish I had this good one. Hello. You can do like smooth jazz at midnight.

• 1:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's what we aim for. As long as people don't fall asleep.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's okay sometimes. Anyway.

• 1:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, I have had some people who are like, yeah, I like to put on your podcast and go to bed. And I'm like, look, as long as the analytics are complete, then we'll take it.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  That's actually better.

• 1:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  So congratulations, bestselling book.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  You signed a two book deal. This one, obviously, a memoir, talking about your interactions with the tech community and your reporting over the years. Any thoughts on what the second one's going to be about?

• 2:08Speaker 01

  There are some thoughts. It's about the future, future tech, really. It was broke broadly about, you know, where it's a little more positive. It's a little more where things are going. You know, it's as if I know a lot now, and so I want to sort of look at the positive parts of it and where it's not going to necessarily be positive because as usual, it's me, but I think it's going to be a very fair minded look at where things are going, whether it's psychedelics or the, you know, some of the drug discovery or cancer or a range of things. I'm doing it with my brother, who's a doctor. I think it's really important because a lot of it will focus on healthcare. And, you know, just, just some of the stuff, I think I'll probably have a little bit of what's been in Burn Book at the end in it. AI is obviously part of it.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  So something like that, I think, but I might change my mind. I might just write a, I'm fascinated with these, like, you know, I just interviewed Charles Duhigg, who did super communicators and you have the atomic habits. I'm thinking of trying to write one of those and see if I can have a best seller at that just because I think it's a formula. I have them all. And so I'm like, maybe I could pull this off. I don't know what I'd call it.

• 3:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  So what is the formula for those?

• 3:14Speaker 01

  They're just, there's like, not much, I'll tell you that. Like, there's, there's like a few studies that you string together. You know, I just interviewed Jonathan Haidt, for example. You have a premise, then you string a few studies together and then you get in arguments with people. That seems to be the way to do it.

• 3:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so this wasn't in my notes, but since you're fresh off a conversation with Jonathan Haidt, very interesting guy. He brought, he basically, this whole book is talking about how social media has led to a rise in depression among teens, but there's been a very big pushback to him.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  From social scientists, yeah.

• 3:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Bigger than I expected.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Not from parents, not from parents. It's interesting. Yeah, it's a lot of noisy social scientists arguing with each other and he's wrong and they're wrong. And I think it's right in the middle. He's, he included some real shitty studies. There's no way around it. And I, we just, I said, he goes, I go, I'd characterize them as, and I go. And he goes, how would you characterize them? I go shitty. And he goes, oh, and I'm like, they are, John. And he goes, yes, some of them are like, you know, I think, I think he's left himself open in that regard. At the same time, directionally, he's correct. And I just think, you know, you could either, we could either be in the situation where it's like the video games, remember video games were going to make us all killers. And that wasn't the case. That was, you know, or dirty song lyrics. Thank you, Tipper Gore. Didn't really make

• 4:28Speaker 01

  us all like dirty necessarily. And so I think some people are worried that he relies on cause, there's no causality versus correlation. And, and so I think my pushback to him was, you know, there was also COVID, and there was also Trump, and there was also climate change, and there was also, you know, lists of things. So which one of them is hurting kids more? Right? And I do, I've always been a long time believer that social media, the deleterious effects will be, will know them in 20 years. But I think he needs, if he wants to make this broad statement, he needs a little more proof. I don't think he's incorrect in the end, him and, I can't pronounce, she was the one he raised some of his work on.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  And then we had a big argument about the stuff around trans, making people trans by reading about trans people. It's just, there's such nonsense. There's no proof. It's just a right wing trope. And I thought he fell into it. And he said, he used the word in part, you know, in part, like people read about it. So then they know about it. And I was like, there's literally been no change in the amount of people who do transitioning. And I said, that in part is doing a lot of work here. Like, you know, stuff like that. So it was good, though. But a lot of what he says is absolutely true. Kids need to play more. The screens are, have a deleterious effect on especially girls. I think there's no, I think, directionally, he's correct. I just think he's got to bring more, especially on a controversial topic, especially when tech companies are going to push back at him.

• 5:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Definitely. And I've been, I've been fascinated by the debate there. So I can't wait to listen to that.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  I had a question from one of the people I thought was, some of them, some of the debaters, some of the skeptics are just, they're just not, they're not, it's not good faith argument, but some of them are, and I used one of them, who I thought was having a great debate with him about it, to ask him a question as my expert question. So I like the debate about it. And I think in the end, probably they'll be, it'll be. It won't be as unclear once we realize the impact on our kids, but it's almost like us. You know, what was the effect of the Gutenberg Bible? What was the effect of telephones? What was the effect of cars?

• 6:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Significant.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  It's a significant effect. The question is, some of the, I've heard from like gay teens, best thing that ever happened to them back in my day because they got to be able to meet other gay teens, right? That's a good thing. So I think it just has to be a little more, you know, instead of just being a moral panic, which I don't think he's doing. A couple of people are accusing of that. Instead of being a moral panic that we haven't paid attention to, and so we feel extra guilty, and so now we have to react to it. It's obviously a significant, just the way the introduction of cars was, or the introduction of the telephone. And there are, and the tech companies spend a lot of time not age gating, not giving us the real data. So, you know, I'm in the middle.

• 7:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. So let's talk a little bit about the people building these products. It would be fun to just go through a couple of the characters that you have in the book. I'd love to start with Marc Andreessen. Andreessen Horowitz just raised 7.2 billion in a new fund. Now, Marc is so smart. He's like, obviously extremely intelligent, and he's so successful, but also so bitter and so interested in shutting out any part of the debate. Like at least, at least like some people in this like, is social media hurting us debate are coming out and having the discussion, while some people just don't want to have the discussion.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Well, he is on the board of Facebook, I guess. I've never met someone who's so smart, who's so stupid. I don't know else to say with him. He's such a small minded person. I hate to say that about people, but you know, he's so, he's frequently wrong, but he's never in doubt. And it's a really bad way to be when you're, you know, and of course, he uses his wealth and successes as his shield, which I don't think it is. He's had plenty of disasters himself, so he should be, he should know better.

• 8:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so just to go from one to the next, let's talk about Elon for a minute. What's your read on the state of Elon? I mean, Tesla today, we're talking on Monday, this episode's coming out, Wednesday at 10%, they're cutting 10% of their workforce. That stock has been cut in half and then some.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  What's your read on the state of where Elon is? And do you have any sense that Tesla is struggling in part because he's distracted by Twitter?

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Yes, I think, yes, yes to all. Like, I think, look, Tesla was inevitably going to get its comeuppance because there's going to be, he's, let's see what he did that's an accomplishment. He create, he really did push forward this industry. There's no one you could give more credit to than him in pushing forward the electric vehicle thing. Google tried a little bit. But he really did it, right? And so, a lot of people tried, and he did it. And so, that was great. And he came out with a car that was innovative and interesting. It's as if Steve Jobs invented the iMac and then stopped. That's what it feels like. It's like, he hasn't, look, he hasn't done, he's done, he did the Y and the X, the Y, but, you know, then Cybertruck? Come on. Like, come on.

• 9:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  You're not gonna get a Cybertruck?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  No, it's a, it looks terrible. Like, it's fine if someone wants to buy it, but it's not a groundbreaking car everyone's gonna be in, right? So he's sort of lost the narrative on what was a very innovative company, and a very forward-leaning company, and inevitably, there was gonna be, it's as if he didn't think there was gonna be competition, once he created. But he felt like, just because he created, he owned the space. But he doesn't. There, you know, the planes are covered with the bodies of pioneers. That's how I looked at it in the US. Not everyone gets to California, some kind of thing. And so, I think he's no question a pioneer, no question a great entrepreneur, business person, more than a technologist, I suspect, is how it's gonna end up in history. And, you know, kind of

• 9:54Speaker 01

  a hand-wavy P T Barnum, too, which is part of the package of doing that, you need to be like that, who then curdled into something very strange, right? And he became less entertaining than sort of toxic. And so, obviously, he was gonna have competition, too. He wasn't, he hasn't kept an eye on the ball on innovation, and that there just hasn't been a great, the product line is sad and tired, right? You know? And it's, the design isn't, like, all these cars are coming out, the Rivian's so good-looking, and, you know, someone who's really prominent said, "I don't know why every Tesla has to look like the inside of an egg." And I agree, I don't wanna buy it, it's the most unromantic, ugh, leaves me cold, the car leaves me cold. But, but once you see cool ones, you're like, "Oh, look

• 10:38Speaker 01

  at that Porsche, look at that BMW," like, why wouldn't you? And if they're cheaper, I have a Chevy Bolt, so I shouldn't talk about sexy, but I love it. It's fun, you know? And so I just think he dropped the ball on innovation at the company. I think he alienated most of his natural buyers by being such an asshole. And I think that he's indulging his personal need to say, speaking of which, saying anything about everything and offending people. So, you know, if you have a choice and this guy's an asshole, you don't buy, and it does not new and it's not a compelling product, it's a recipe for what's happening right now.

• 11:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  But it is interesting because like if trying to wrap like a bow around what Elon is, is sort of very difficult right now because of course struggles with Twitter, Tesla is not doing very well, though we'll see what happens. It's a stock price thing. But then Neuralink is pretty impressive. So.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Sort of. Well, no, let me just tell you, there are 10 companies like Neuralink. He's not the only one. So that's the thing. He acts like he invented the moon. Like, he just didn't. There has been, there are other companies who aren't as hand wavy as him. So I don't know if it's impressive. I'd like to actually get it away from his showing off a guy who can do this is one thing. I would like to see the science. I'd like him to open it up. I'd like people to see it. I'd like reporters to report on the 10 other companies that are doing this, which they don't because it doesn't have Elon Musk attached. But several companies have put electrodes, he's embedded them, they're on the outside, whatever. There's all kinds of fascinating, interesting things. But I think that's hand waving versus actual, you know, we're a long way from doing what he wants to do. But I

• 12:14Speaker 01

  welcome it. I welcome it. This would be great. I just, how's he going to monetize it? How's he going to make it money at it? He's certainly been innovative in Starlink and SpaceX, the solar thing. Solar is now falling off. So that's going to be a problem. His solar city is going to suffer, even if it's a good company. The digging thing, okay, how's that going to make money, right? Like, you know, I think the space stuff, I think, is the most interesting stuff where he's got a really great CEO in Gwen Shotwell, who should get more credit than she does, who's managing things. So Gwen is doing a great job.

• 12:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  So also on the on the space thing, I mean, let's talk about Starlink for a second. There's been this big debate about whether Elon should be the one controlling Starlink. I mean, he did put it up there in space. Shouldn't the government?

• 13:01Speaker 01

  He didn't. His company did.

• 13:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  His company did. Not not him personally, but don't you think the government, if it's like seeing this as a national security thing?

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Should build its own version of Starlink? And so it's not like?

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Probably they should have, but he was more innovative and faster.

• 13:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  So that was a great idea. So he and his company were. Yes, they should. I think he should be just like any other vendor, Lockheed or anybody else. But he doesn't see himself that way. So

• 13:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  It's a private company. So in this case, it's the government's fault. He can do what he damn well pleases, as far as I'm concerned.

• 13:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I'm with you on that. Yeah, I think that like the criticism of like, oh, how could Elon have all this control? It's like, well, if this is a public good.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I'm worried. Why is some why is some guy who I'm not sure what he's doing at 3am in charge of this? And he's not an expert on anything. That's my issue.

• 13:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  I guess I would just say that like the focus tends to be on him, but really the government is has a large role to play here. I guess we agree there.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the government should be running it. I just don't understand why our government allowed this to happen, just like a lot of. I believe in public-private partnerships, but at some point, these are in the public interest. The public part should be driving the car, but he is.

• 14:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Definitely. It's amazing in the Walter Isaacson book where that you basically see the Obama administration cede everything space to SpaceX.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Totally. And not just SpaceX, Jeff Bezos, whatever, you know, I have thoughts on the Obama administration, yeah.

• 14:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Zuckerberg. So you have some very colorful language about Zuckerberg in the book.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do.

• 14:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  You say, fuck your metaverse.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  And he did. And he's done it. Yes, and he's done. So but he did. He got he started defunding it. So I was right. So thank you.

• 14:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, he has pulled back funding on?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, he has pulled back from the car. Have you seen him waving his hands about? He's now in Mr. AI now.

• 14:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now he is.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Remember he was Mr. Cryptocurrency? That didn't work. Then he was Mr. Metaverse. Now he's Mr. AI. Good one. He finally got to the right place.

• 14:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  But in some ways, you have to take all these bets.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Not that one.

• 14:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, but but on the other hand, it's also like you have to keep reinventing the company. Clearly, he was seeing that.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Use of the blue app was.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  I think he didn't have enough people saying no on that one. If he had the right people, they would have said AI is where we need to focus, Mark, a long time ago.

• 15:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  When you think about the decisions that he's made on content, for instance, do you think Musk has made him look better in retrospect?

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Yes, that's a gift to him that keeps on giving. He looks like a lovely guy, you know, it's sort of, yeah, he is, he doesn't, he's not a villain. Like Musk is like playing a Bond villain. It's like he's moving into Bond villain territory, but and Mark was sort of adjacent, Bond villain adjacent kind of thing. No, I think Mark's a good business person. He's a little like Bill Gates and you saw the transformation of Bill Gates over the years. He has a sort of Darth Vader character to a much more interesting character in that regard. You know, he's just a businessman. I think we we tend to have an idolatry of these people and honestly, I don't know why we do. And so, you know, he's a flawed human being. He's made good decisions and bad decisions. He's good at making money. He's very, he's, he was good at his product, his one product, which he did a great job on.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  And now he's trying really hard to stay relevant like the rest of us, right? And so, so good for him to do it. He'll make mistakes along the way. It's sort of like, you know, it reminds me of haircuts, like, oh, that haircut didn't work out so well. Now this one's good, you know, that kind of thing. And, you know, he's, he's, he's right to move into the AI direction. I think he's been incredibly sloppy and mismanaging of the social network. As you know, I wrote about it in terms of his responsibility and the true costs of what he's doing. I think he's not bearing the true cause. We are. I've said that over and over again, and they're doing it again, cutting off stuff in California because they want to charge for it, you know, or Google is one of them. They're all doing it.

• 16:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, they take turns.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  They're also getting out of news and I've seen you speak critically of that. I think getting out of news is a good thing, like the messing of news and Facebook.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  I don't think, I'm not critical. I think they shouldn't be in news if they're going to do it badly. That's my, like, then get the fuck out of it. That said, they have now hollowed out the news business, the business of, you know, digital advertising they control, and they don't contribute anything back. And I think that's grotesque. But they should be able to do it, right? They've ruined the business and now they're not going to do it. And before they ruined the business and they were doing it badly. So I guess I want them to do the first, then the second. But they, you know, they, they shouldn't be in it. They weren't good at it. And so they're, I think they should, I think there's a way to do it well, but I guess I can't have them do that. They can't possibly, you know, avail themselves to do a good job at it. And there are ways to do it. It's just

• 17:38Speaker 01

  costly is what it is.

• 17:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Maybe best for everybody if they're, if they're out.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Well, except they've decimated the actual business, right? So that's not good.

• 17:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's also, but this is a thing though, right? Isn't it also incumbent upon the news business to have

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  other models that are not Facebook reliant?

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Yes, that's correct. That's, that's what I've done. I don't trust. I remember when Sheryl Sandberg called me and she's like, come on Facebook Live. I'm like, why? She goes, well, you'll be bigger. I said, I'm plenty big. Like, what do you, what do I get? And they go, well, we'll give you some money. I'm like, why should I? It's like, you're buying friends? I don't understand why you'd give me money to be on it. Like, that makes no sense. If it's a good business, it's a good business. You know, I always felt it was like, I'm, I'm like, why should I, I know, I didn't say this to her, but I thought, why should I fucking paint your fence? I'm not interested in that.

• 18:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I was at BuzzFeed News during that time and we exploded a watermelon.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Yes, you love painting other people's fences. You love painting.

• 18:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  And at the end of the day, that might've been the pinnacle. That watermelon blowing up might've been.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  That was a great moment. I mean, with the, with the, with the

• 18:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Rubber bands.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Rubber bands. Yeah, that was cool. That was cool.

• 18:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  It was, but fleeting. So.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Fleeting, but cool.

• 18:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  But cool.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 18:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Sundar, right person to leave Google? It's interesting because it's like the, they have all, they're hitting all time highs. They seem to be getting the ship together with cloud, but still seem to.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I think the, the thing on him, they think he's indecisive, right? I think that's what they're, most of the complaints you hear from internally from them. I mean, he's certainly better than Larry and Sergey. That's for sure. I, I mean, those two, like, okay, that would be a disaster.

• 19:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why a disaster?

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Because they're just, they've lost the narrative, the two of them.

• 19:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Really?

• 19:12Speaker 01

  You know, all their whack stuff they're doing, all that. When they, when they got to floating, floating showrooms out in San Francisco Bay, I was like, eh, scene.

• 19:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  That was their watermelon moment.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  That's what rich people do when they get bored.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  I, I think he's a very competent executive, probably could have someone a little more aggressive, I guess. They have so many assets, like you could imagine. They should be like at the, he and I had an argument years ago when they weren't in cloud. And I said, why are you letting Amazon take your natural business? And he's like, well, we're using all our capacity, right? For our products. And I said, well, get more, like, you shouldn't let them have, that's your business, kind of thing. And, you know, he's just a cautious person. I, they should be dominating in so many areas. I, I think they're probably hindered by regulatory issues in terms of buying things. They have to be very careful about what they buy. I like Sundar Pichai, I think he's a really thoughtful person, but I see why people think he's cautious.

• 20:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I was in the room when you were interviewing him and he said that line about AI being akin to fire and electricity and everyone's like, that was a weird thing to say, but

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Turns out that he was right on that.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  No, he is, he's a very thoughtful and thoughtful, and I met him when he was a product manager, when he did

• 20:22Speaker 01

  the browser, so, the Chrome browser. And I always thought he was very careful. You know, people in tech don't like careful people, so he's probably boring to them. And Tim Cook has managed to, to get over that, like, because the stock is so hot, you know, it's, it goes up and down, but it's about 10x from when Steve Jobs ran it, right? So, you know, he's managed to escape, but he still has. I was somewhere and they're like, Tim Cook is just not inspiring. I'm like, it's worth 10 times more than Steve Jobs. 10 times, like, I don't know, I feel like that's a very good performance. You know, they're just not inspired by the AirPods, I guess.

• 20:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, but it, it is a good question about Tim Cook as well. He's the next on the list, actually, because it's like

• 21:01Speaker 01

  It's 10x, it's 10x, that's all I have to say. If you're a shareholder, you think it's great. You're happy, like, I, all right, what do you expect them to do? Give you a magical unicorn every year? They're not, it's not happening. And it didn't happen under Jobs either, by the way.

• 21:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, I think the main question is, so Tim Cook has kept the culture that they had under Jobs that's helped them build this iPhone, refine the iPhone.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  He's improved, just the way Satya does too.

• 21:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. But there's, you know, you look at Apple's ability to Build the next big thing.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you wonder, no car, right? They failed there and the AI, we were apparently, we're gonna have a big announcement about AI from Apple.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Well, they had, they don't collect information, the others do. They don't have those assets. So that was their business plan was to not do that. So that that makes sense.

• 21:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Why they, they have to partner with someone. They don't collect information the way the others do. They're not information thieves, the way the others are.

• 21:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think that they'll be able to figure out the products, though, under Cook, when it comes to AI?

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, I think you'll, you'll see, it'll be something so subtle. I know, I know you're expecting some like beautiful gorgeous thing, but yeah, I think your phone will talk to your AirPods better and then it'll all coordinate. If they do that, that'll be, look at everyone's software and services have grown like enormously under Tim Cook, like.

• 22:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  It's not that exciting, but it sure does make money, right? That kind of stuff. He's not as exciting. I just think it's, um, he's just not as exciting. And at the same time, business processes are just as important as products. And, you know, I, I don't, I think to expect some wow event is, is something of the past. That's not gonna happen. A lot of it will be incremental. Um, and the incremental, since they're such big businesses, is enormous.

• 22:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  So third in a row, uh, in terms of leader who's taken over from a founder and sort of isn't as exciting, Jassy.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Oh, Jassy too.

• 22:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  At Amazon. Has his, uh, we can do Satya next. Uh, has, has Jassy's vision for Amazon come through to you? Are you sort of, do you think you have a good picture of what Amazon's gonna do under him?

• 23:01Speaker 01

  The healthcare moves, I think are really interesting. We'll see where they go, right? I think it's smart. It's smart for you to trust Amazon as your provider of, you know, he took a little while to get out of that stupid store thing. Um, but I'm sure it was compelling to them in some fashion that they, why they were doing that. Um, I think he probably doesn't know what to do with Whole Foods. Like, what are we doing this for?

• 23:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, apparently that's a disaster.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Well, it's supposed to, probably a delivery, it should have just been a delivery warehouse of food, right? I guess to make, because they're good at delivery. You know, I've always thought of the company as a logistics company, so I'm not like waiting for some mind blowing situation. But of all the companies I use, I use that most actively and regularly and it works really well. And again, it's not as exciting, but I don't see anyone challenging it. I don't see anyone challenging Amazon in the food, in the food and product delivery space of any heft whatsoever. It's not Uber. That was going to be Uber, if you remember. It's going to be this and that. But yeah, I don't see anyone challenging them.

• 23:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so you're not on the Shein and Timu train?

• 24:01Speaker 01

  I will see, you know, if you want to buy cheap shit and get it delivered to you quickly, I suppose. Yeah. No, that's logistic. I mean, they're very good at logistics. If Amazon doesn't make as much stuff as Shein does, that's a different, slightly different business. But you know, that's a different business. If you want to buy a certain product that's, you know, here in front of me, I got these from Amazon. These are these ginger chews, you know, I'm not getting them from Shein. I'm not going to eat their ginger chews either.

• 24:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  No way.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Um, you know, so I don't know. I feel like it's, I haven't seen anyone supplant Amazon as yet in that area. But, but you know, you'll get more of your stuff from them. Um, you know, they did get into fast fashion at Amazon and they just didn't do a great job of it and Shein does a better job. So in that area, sure, they'll, they'll do better. We'll see how they do it on the other products too. They're already seeing growth, growth problems that company.

• 24:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And then in terms of the pattern, I actually think Satya Nadella stands out a bit and that he is more exciting than the previous three, talking about how he wants to make Google dance, really changing the culture of Microsoft, changing the focus. Do you think he tied himself too closely to OpenAI? Because now it seems like they're trying to hedge.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Um, no, I don't. No, I think they've got, I think that was a smart move. I think he's got to do it himself. I think picking up great information and great computing resources, that company sure should be right in the middle of this. Um, no, I thought that was smart. He affiliated himself. He's going to do stuff on their own. Um, he's placing bets in several different good places. That makes sense to me. You know, I don't, I don't know. I think if they not invented here is a stupid way to behave. And I think he knows that in this case.

• 25:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Towards the end of the book, you talk about Sam Altman also.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 25:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  And Sam kind of strikes me as an earnest leader and the real deal. What's your perspective on Sam?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Oh, I think he's super aggressive. I've met him when he was 19, so I have a long history with him. You know, he's like the rest of them. He's super aggressive. He's much more thoughtful. He has much calmer voice and everything else. He at least, you know, leans in the direction of there could be problems here, you know, none of them ever said that. So that makes him a unicorn. Like when he actually admits possible mistakes. I don't think he wants to be an oracle of everything. I appreciate that. I think he, I like the people he affiliates himself with. I think he's sort of a counterweight to Elon in that regard. At the same time, he's an aggressive entrepreneur, so he's going to do everything in his interests. Again, I don't, one of the real mistakes people make is to make these people, any of them, into saviors or that they're going to change everything. They're just business people to me.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  They're not unlike the people who provided us with Coke or Twinkies or anything else. And I didn't praise them, so I'm not going to praise them. You know, they're good at what they do. I think he'll do whatever's in his interests. I don't care. I don't mind that. He doesn't pretend he's not. You know, he can go on and on about how changing the world if he wants. I, you know, maybe he will, maybe he won't, but he mostly is pretty honest about his aims, which is to build the biggest company. And boy, he's got a lot of challenges from a legal point of view. And he has everyone on his ass. So, you know, he's got to raise a lot of money, the chips thing, the expense. And he's got to make money. I mean, you have subscriptions, but I suspect it's not a very big business.

• 27:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  You brought up a couple of times, but this notion of these people aren't saviors kind of goes to like the first sentence of your book. So it was capitalism after all.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because they talk a lot about saving the world. And of course, like it is

• 27:19Speaker 01

  They sure did.

• 27:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  This stuff has been motivated by capitalism. But then again, like, you know, sort of like seems like none of this could have happened without it, whether they were trying to save the world or not.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  No, I don't mind it. What I minded is they're ridiculously high-minded bullshit nonsense that they had to voice on us. Like, you didn't have the guy who made Tootsie Rolls do that, right? "I am here to bring the world through sweetness to a better place."

• 27:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  That was actually world-saving technology, though.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  It was. I love a Tootsie Roll, and it makes me happier than most products. But nonetheless, it was like, you know, it's just nonsense. And so, they really, and they actually believe it. For some reason, they were, either they weren't hugged enough as children, or they just don't, I don't know what's wrong with them from a psychological point of view, but they have to be beloved and savior-like in order to excel. They're just making stuff, and they're selling it. And I wish they'd just say that and have a little more care, not to tell me they're not creating a nasty version of capitalism and then make a nasty version of capitalism. Because capitalism has great parts, but it also has real unpleasant implications. Unfettered, it's terrible.

• 28:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  And last one on the list is Mark Cuban, who's interesting, because he is like a, basically, like, straight-up businessperson.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you praise him in the book, and I'll do it here, too. He seems, at least when I've spoken with him, someone who's just the person that he is. He's not trying to put on airs.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  He was kind of a bro in the beginning. You probably didn't meet him back then, but he was a real bro. He was a heavy bro, and kind of an asshole, and we'd argue a lot. And, you know, I didn't think Broadcast.com was anything but like a, I was like, "This is a business. I think you're just taking advantage of the moment, and I can't believe they paid that much for it." He was all mad, because he thought it was a real business. Later, he'd be like, "Oh, you were right." That's kind of a nothing burger. But I think he's pursuing interesting things. I think he's very straightforward. He calls it as he sees it, you know. He's sort of a counterweight. He feels like an adult. I mean, again, it's a very, it's thin gruel out there, so you take any, you know, any port in the storm in that regard. But he's a nice, I like him personally.

• 29:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, same here. So as I was reading through the book, I was like trying to think about like, what is like, if there's a through line between what makes a successful leader, what is it? And it's so interesting because we've talked about so many different types of personalities at the helms of these companies. And you know, some leaders like they have real ego and some and so arrogant and then some are just the, they feel pretty humble and they're nice.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Nice people. Sacha's a nice guy. Sam's a nice guy. Mark's a nice guy.

• 29:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. So I'm curious what you think about like, whether that plays into at all, whether someone's successful as a business leader.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  I don't think there's anything. I think the only thing that I'd say is sort of an ability to, to, to be persistent. Their persistence. They're, they are, they stick with, I'm persistent too. So I think persistence is an unsung trait among people. Some people call it, some people think contrarianism is a good thing. I think it's always ends up becoming curdled. You know what I mean? I'm just being against it to be against it. Because I want to destroy to destroy. It doesn't make any sense to me. I think, I think persistence is the one that they're all, that I would say they're persistent and that's a good thing. And they don't get, they don't get, failure doesn't bother them as much. They are able to accept failure and move along.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  And I think that's always a good quality. Although I prefer the ones who, when they, they don't say it's not a failure. I'm like, it was a failure. Like they admit it and then they're like, okay, we're going to try this. That's what an adult does.

• 30:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  So I don't know if you saw, there was this kind of thought experiment about if you put somebody in a room with Gary Kasparov and gave them like unlimited tries to beat him at chess, how long would it take for them to do it? And a lot of the chess masters were like, they would never beat Gary. And some people are like, well, you know, it would take this amount of time and they'd eventually be able to do that. And so when I'm thinking more about like what takes a successful leader, do you think successful tech leaders have that Gary Kasparov sort of ability to build this stuff or that?

• 31:19Speaker 01

  No, not at all. No, that chess is a whole different. Yeah. I think sometimes it's luck. Oftentimes, there's a whole lot more luck going on than anything else. It's someone who has A good idea and is able to shift quickly. I think that is a quality that's great. But the idea that these are more special, you know, unicorns than you and I is just not true. It's just not true. Some of them are. Some of them are really quite gifted in what they do. What they tend to do then is shift off into other areas they're not so good at, you know, or pontificating like VC is talking about Ukraine. No, thank you. They're idiotic beyond belief, most of them. But, but, but, you know, yeah, I think there is

• 32:00Speaker 01

  a quality of, it's an entrepreneurial quality that not everybody has, and that is true. Like, I'm more entrepreneurial than the average reporter, and that's why I think I've done well. So, why am I like that? Lots of reasons. I have a disputatious personality. I, I want to work for myself, and that's just the way I am, like the way I'm built. And it helps to be that way in what my aims. But if it was, if I had to be at an office, I'd have problems. I'd be at the bottom of the totem pole, for sure.

• 32:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, same here. So, thinking about like, the people that occupy these levels of power. Do you think that we're living in something close to a meritocracy? Or is it really a shuffling of like, the top echelons of society?

• 32:43Speaker 01

  I think they end up helping each other, and then they think it's because, I think the first one, yes, I'll give it to them. The second one, not as much, right? I think they think that they're, I say, I always say, I think in the book I say this, it's a, they think it's a meritocracy. It's a meritocracy, and they, and they somehow think they did it all. And, you know, just like Elon taking credit for everything. Like, you can't do anything without taking, it's so Trumpian, like, only I can do this, which is like, give me a fucking break.

• 33:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  But I guess what I'm trying to ask is, do you think someone like, born in an average family with no connections to the tech industry could make it?

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Yes, just like everything else. They could start a yogurt store, too.

• 33:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Right? So, sure. Yeah, why not? I do think, again, persistence really does set them apart. They just keep going. And that is not a small thing. And that doesn't require intelligence, you know? You do have to have a level of intelligence, that's for sure. But like a lot, you know, a lot of these people aren't as highly, Steve Jobs wasn't technical. He knew about technology, but he wasn't technical. He was inspirational and he was, he could see, you know, he's the one that said podcasting to me the first time. He said something,

• 33:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  On stage, right?

• 33:50Speaker 01

  The privacy, on stage.

• 33:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Like, he's just was a big thinker. He was a big thinker and I think he was a special thinker, you know, and, and then of course he becomes the, the character he is, right? So then you have that, you know, checking in. Um, so that's a whole nother thing is they become, you know, some of them are smart enough to resist becoming savior, god, oracle-like figures and some people aren't. Um, but you know, you look at someone like Jobs and he had so many wins. It's sort of like a sports team. It's like, okay, they're better. Like so many good, so many wins. You're like, come on. At this point, they can retire on their wins. But I think about that a lot, about a lot of good in anyone else. I was, um, when I, when I was doing All Things D, there was about, in year 15, I'm like, I should just retire now.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  I've done enough. I've done enough, right? A kind of thing. And so, you know, these people keep going. Um, and that's a really great quality of them.

• 34:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And you haven't, I mean, you haven't retired and you even write in the book about like your decision to even, like you wrote right after you wrote about your stroke that you're like, I just want to work.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like working. I enjoy it. I'm good at it. I'm good at what I do and why wouldn't I want to keep? And I have all these interesting ideas and I want to bring them. I'm a, I am really an entrepreneur in a lot of ways. And so, I'm kind of interested to see, like right now I'm super interested in video. I don't know why. I just am like, huh, why is everyone calling this the end of this when I don't think it's the end, right?

• 35:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Um, and so I just want to see, maybe it is, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. Um, and so, uh, I just, I, I, I just really like to try different things and so, I, I, I, that's why I'll keep working because it interests me. If I was interested in gardening, I'd do that, but I'm not.

• 35:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So we've talked about the, in terms of the nature of, of a leader, ego, success, power. And how about money? I mean, how do you think money changes people and does it inevitably change everyone that gets it?

• 35:44Speaker 01

  No, no, there's a lot of rich people who are perfectly, Mark Cuban would be one of them. He's just, you know, he's got a lot of money, obviously. He just paid 270 million dollars and 76 million dollars in taxes.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Uh, I, not everybody, no, uh, but a lot of people, yes. Cause what happens is they get surrounded by enablers that tell them they're so smart. And then, then they think they're so smart. And so the weaker, the weaker characters tend to be, tend to become weaker still by that. And so inevitably, when you're that rich, you get more and more into a bubble of, of wealth that is really hard to break out of. I find it sometimes I'm leaving some of these people and they have their chiefs of staff and their planes and I'm like, oh my God, I got to leave and get on this bike and go out and they can't do that for lots of reasons. I don't think they can do that. And so I do think it's, it can be a real prison, a very comfortable prison, but a prison nonetheless.

• 36:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Kara Swisher is here. She's the author of Burn Book, which you can get in your bookstore of choice. We'll be back right after this. 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. It's how more than 28,000 organizations deploy AI with confidence.

• 37:21Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 38:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here with Kara Swisher, on Big Technology Podcast, talking about Burn Book, A State of Technology. And let's talk about AI a little bit more.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Okay, sure.

• 38:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  One of the most interesting things that I read from, from in the book about AI was this quote from Elon and, and then your response to it. So you say that Elon said, "We really need to think of intelligence as not being uniquely confined to humans and that potential for intelligence in computers is far greater than in biology." And you write, Musk was right.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, he was. Yeah, I agree. It's a different kind of intelligence. I think we anthropomorphize it, you know, a little too much, like they're going to kill us or they want to kill us or anything like that. But sure, it makes sense. If someone can crunch numbers faster, it's a different, it's just a different kind of intelligence. And it works very well with data.

• 39:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And so then do you think that we're sort of, that the hype around this current cycle of generative AI is, is appropriate?

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it is because it, look, there's so much data now and there's, and this computing is getting better and better and more sophisticated. It makes sense that it will, you know, years ago, I heard a speech. I was, I was in, I'm sitting up in the top of a church, which was interesting. I just have a vision of being there. And the guy said, Where right now is it was he was an AI person, I think from MIT. And he said, right now we're at dolphin level intelligence of AI. And it's soon is going to surpass humans. It's going to go from dolphin. Dolphins are pretty fucking smart to start with. It's going not smart enough, obviously to get out of nets, but nonetheless smart. But but it's going to surpass. And I thought, well, that makes sense because it's going to have more and more information. If especially if it's data heavy, it should do.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  The human brain can't like a doctor can't read all the medical journals and every all the latest new things. So it makes sense that it would be smarter in that regard. Maybe not kinder, not more creative and things like that. So, yeah, I think I think the hype is should be there. It makes sense.

• 40:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Open AI, obviously, is the leader right now. Do you think it's stable enough to continue?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  I don't know. You know, like was Netscape was the hot ticket item and then it wasn't right? So is it Netscape? I talk about with Sam like this, are you Netscape or are you something else? He's like, we're not Netscape. I'm like, well, you could be. I'm such a fun person to hang around. But, you know, they could be Netscape. Where's its business plan? There's a lot of competitors. It's, you know, he's obviously a lightning rod and this whole firing thing didn't help him much. But, you know, it's obviously at the white hot center of everything, but I don't think it will remain there. No, I don't know. I mean, unless he's the best business person in history, but I don't think he is.

• 41:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  They have a lot of competition.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  They do. That's what I mean. I'm always like, just like everyone was like, can you believe what happened to us? I'm like, yes. That was so we talked about it two years ago and I got all attacked by the Elon stance. I'm like inevitable competition, inevitable. And this is a real pricey industry. There's no business plans. So much money running into it. Speaking of the Andreessen money, I'm sure it's all going after they're taking their crypto money that didn't do as well. They are always up to some scheme, aren't they?

• 41:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, that crypto thing is still unbelievable to me. And then to have the audacity to come out and write a book about how good it is going to be after it's already failed.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Some of it is, some of it is, some of it is.

• 41:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  You write a lot about the media business and journalism in the book. So on our AI theme, do you think AI is going to not kill, but seriously injure the media business?

• 42:09Speaker 01

  AI will, I think it will affect it. I don't know if it'll kill it. I think killing is a little dramatic. Media people are dramatic. You know, I think it could aid it in some ways, just like, did the, did the internet kill us? Yeah. But did it aid us? Yeah. You know what I mean? The ones who are innovative and use these, these tools? Sure. I don't know. It's like saying when the iPhone came out in 2007, would you have predicted Uber hurt the tech? No, you wouldn't have. Like, I don't know what's going to be made. But I do think we should take all these tools and use them and figure out where they're best to deliver stories and stuff like that. And I think those who resist it and just sort of, you know, bemoan their fate are destined to fail, that's for sure.

• 42:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Are you using it at all in your?

• 42:55Speaker 01

  I use it every day. I try all the different ones, different things. So far, I haven't found that much that is helpful to me, but I'm not trying hard enough. Right? It's my fault. Some of the summary stuff is interesting. I'm not doing enough writing for it to matter. Right? I think some of the translation things on the podcasts we're trying out for our podcast to translate into other languages is cool. I just don't know how many listeners we have in Ethiopia, for example. Like, you know, I, do I need it? It's cool, or whatever the language happens to be. So I think that's cool. I think some of the synopsis stuff is cool, the transcription. But that, that doesn't feel like groundbreaking yet in podcasts. I don't think it'll make podcasts

• 43:35Speaker 01

  that are interesting. So how does that help me? I, there's not that much it helps me with yet. But I, I haven't, I'm not in the writing business or the making of big media company business. So if I were there, I'd think of it in advertising, I'd think of it in subscriptions and targeting people and creating all kinds of new kinds of newspapers for people, personalized newspapers, I would think about that.

• 43:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, but you don't have to be in, let's say, the writing content business anymore. You know, OpenAI just transcribed half of YouTube, it seems like, according to the New York Times.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  So if they came to you and said, let us just transcribe, you know, On with Kara Swisher for free, would you let that go into the model? Or would

• 44:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  demand compensation?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Yes, I would. They can't take my stuff. Yeah. They're not shot. They're shot. The old times, they're shoplifters. They've been shoplifters forever. So no, they're not just pointing to me, they're taking my things. So no, it's just like YouTube. And to me, the record industry figured this out. So did YouTube. They had to pay, right? So they can figure this out. That's what it reminds me of.

• 44:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  So.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  I know they're making all kinds of things.

• 44:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Well, right now, we have these larger publications doing well, like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. And then it seems like the middle has really been.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Hollowed out.

• 44:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hollowed out. And then we have, I guess, like, individual creators.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's sort of my bet here with big technology.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 44:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Is that the path that you see journalism going?

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, you're gonna have individual creators who are very influential, of which there are many now. You know, or small companies, like an information or Puck or something like that, or small and whose new, whose business, whose revenues are in line with costs. That's really important, right? Even if it doesn't make that much money, your revenue needs to be in line with costs. So you're gonna see a lot of that. And they're gonna be highly influential, a lot of them. You don't need that much to be like, I have three people working on each of my podcasts. I think our podcast's very influential. I think you, you know, you have to have a good business, whether it's subscription or advertising or whatever. You choose whatever you're selling swag or whatever the heck you want to do. And then you're gonna have a couple of big ones, like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, that kind of thing.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  I think the CNNs will figure it out. It's a global information network. They'll come up with a business in line with its costs. I don't think they're, I don't think they're out at all. But that, it's just, it's just a, it's a reassessment of where you make your money, which is important to do.

• 46:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And I have, I used to have a confident answer when college students, for instance, would ask me, how do you break in to journalism? I'd be like, write your way in, and then someone like a BuzzFeed or a Vice will hire you.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's not gonna happen. No, I think one of the greatest thing that isn't happening is mentorship. There's not, the mentorship is gone, I think. And that's really hard. There's, it's gonna be in little bits and pieces, but it's gonna be very hard for younger reporters to really be mentored the way I was, for example.

• 46:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Or even find work.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, then you have to be on your, you know, it's a little more entrepreneurial. Like I said, if you're not entrepreneurial, you're gonna have a harder time.

• 46:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can I ask you how you think about your audience? Like, what is the audience for tech reporting?

• 46:41Speaker 01

  I love the audience.

• 46:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because there's clearly like tech, you know, people working in the tech industry. It is an interesting story for people outside of tech. So when do you think, how do you think about?

• 46:50Speaker 01

  I have moved on from the tech bros. I have such a different audience now. Like, I have regular people. I meet them all the time. On this book tour, it was an eye opener. It's my podcast audiences who's buying all my stuff or listening to me. You know, I have a wider range of people because I've been trying to widen it out. And I'm not talking about just tech. I'm talking about tech's impact on their lives, especially kids with kids or things that affect me. So I have, I've moved on from them a long time ago, which irks them, but oh, well.

• 47:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  So that's interesting. So it's both people who tech impacts in their daily lives.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Tech impacts everybody. Yeah. So I'm talking a couple, you know, we have couples who call us a pivot. We just learned to get along better. Well, great. That's a great product. Or, you know, I didn't really understand the deleterious effects of social media. Oh, now I do. Oh, good. Great. I'm glad. You know, oh, my job, it might be outsourced. How should I think about this? Great. I'm here to help you, you know?

• 47:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  There's also, you've also like moved beyond just tech news, right?

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I've always talked about media. We've always had a big media element to our, so I do a lot of media. I've been doing much more politics, but that's because tech has gone in the crosshairs of politicians. So that was a natural step. So I try to do adjacent things and then things that just interest me, I just do myself.

• 48:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  So just to keep going on this, so when you think about your audience, it's basically it's tech for everyone.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 48:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  And to do that, you've kind of had to shift beyond some of like the day to day stuff, like the stuff.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't do beat reporting anymore.

• 48:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  But even like what's happened, but you did do the, you broke a lot of news on the OpenAI firing.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  I did. I just was bored. That's because I was really bored. My wife was away with the kids that weekend and I was irritated by how bad the reporting was. And, and one of the things that really irritated me, this idea, there are all these rumors around smart people I know that were like, he's getting let go because of some gay love thing. And I was like, that's not true. Like, it pissed me off, like, you know, and I don't know why I was like, oh, you fucking kidding me, these assholes. This is what they're, this is what the shit they're peddling. And so I got mad and I started looking into it and then I'm like, oh, I'll just read it. And I'm really good. I have to say, I did a good job, didn't I?

• 49:02Speaker 01

  I still got it. I still got it. I don't want to have it for that much, but I was like, I just wanted to see how good I was and if I could use Twitter and threads to do that. And I did. I got it all out. It was, it was, it was fun. I'm not going to do it regularly. I hear a lot of things I pass on to other people.

• 49:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think you needed a larger audience to then go into the tech for everyday people?

• 49:23Speaker 01

  No.

• 49:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Aspect?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  No, I, no, because you could have the audience. I've always thought you have the, I'm into the fan based economy, right? I believe in fans. I have fans. I don't have readers. I have fans who want to hear what I have to say. And so I've always thought that, like, from the minute I did podcasts, I understood that right away. It was not the regular people. It was the people who were, you either have to be useful, entertaining, or must have. You can't get anywhere else. Those are my three, my three rules for any product I make. And so if I, if you meet all three of them, you usually are successful.

• 49:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I want to ask you about the, you know, speaking of this, the motivations of people that leak. Now, obviously people leak because they have an axe to grind sometimes, but oftentimes people just leak because they want to. So can you talk about that a bit, like the motivation?

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think that, you know, I don't, some people are nefarious and they have some, they want a job or something, but mostly they're just mad because it's not out there. And so they want to tell someone they trust. And so I'm, have become a very trustworthy people for someone like that. They feel like they're going to get a fair shake or that I can, I have the ear of powerful people and therefore, you know, if they tell me they'll, it'll have some impact. You know, sometimes you get, you know, people are close. I have a lot of people close to Elon who are texting me, which I'm like, oh, I don't want to hear about this, you know, about his personal problems.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  You know, they just think. No, I don't. I don't because I don't know if they're true or not. So I suspect they are, but I don't know. But, you know, I think people just want to talk. And so I'm a good listener. You know, and I know a lot and I can find the right place to put it. And so I think that's why they leak. I think in general, you know, I, I, I think everybody leaks. It's just not, I don't think it's a, it's a, such a shock that people would do that. Now today, everyone feels the, the ability to share is very, you know, it's very. Current, people do that now on social media, so they don't mind sharing in general. There's no, you know, was it Scott McNeely, there's no privacy, get used to it. I think he was right when he said that.

• 51:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. What do you think sources look for than in a reporter? I mean, obviously, brand and publication work.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Sometimes, it used to be we'd get everything at the Wall Street Journal. So, no, it doesn't, that doesn't matter anymore. I think it's people they trust. I think it's people they think know what they're talking about, or there's, they can reach a certain person. So, I think a lot of it is trust, is the trust that you will do a good jo, a good and fair job for them. That's who leaks to me, people who think I'll do a good and fair job. And so, I, that's who I focus in on. I don't, you know, you don't get it right. I try to avoid people who are angry.

• 51:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  I just, I just, they're never gonna be quite accurate, and then you get fucked. So.

• 52:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  I haven't yet gotten fucked, but I, I, I really do, you know, I'm very careful about why they're talking to me. I suspect, I always suspect they're up to something, and then usually they're not. But I start with the premise they're up to something.

• 52:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And it's, I had this question for you about like the fact that you did six interviews with jobs, and that tech leaders are going direct now. But it's almost like, when tech leaders go direct, and like tech companies are just going direct, it's almost a bigger opportunity for, you know, real reporting.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Oh, I love it. Go, keep talking. Like, I, you know, they, they never do well in those three-hour conversations.

• 52:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  And the people that see that stuff are gonna wanna get the real story out.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Let them do it. Good luck. You remember when Andreessen Horowitz was doing its media upper, whatever.

• 52:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's the past now.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Good luck. When they did that, they're like, one of them called me, and they're like, we're gonna beat you, it's your own game. I'm like, one, you'll suck. Two, it's a shitty business. Enjoy.

• 52:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  I don't know what to tell you. Good luck. You aren't gonna beat me. Good, you'll close it down. And they course close it down. 'Cause it's a shitty business, it doesn't really have that much impact, and it's just easier to talk to a reporter.

• 53:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  You know, I've never met a group of people that actually talk about their disdain for the media, that never stop thinking about the media. That's my, my interesting little, they're just very obsessed with the media in a way that's, I'm not obsessed with them, for sure.

• 53:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  You know?

• 53:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, last one for you. I've watched a good chunk of the, watched and listened to a good chunk of the book tour. You've been interviewed by Sam Altman, and you've gone on Bill Maher. Who is the favorite person that you were interviewed by?

• 53:31Speaker 01

  None of them.

• 53:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Come on, they have to pick one.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Probably Cuban. The best conversation was Cuban, because I like him, and we laughed a lot. So that was fun. But I'm always surprised by who does really, I thought Don Lemon was interesting. You know, I thought that was, because I was right about Elon firing him. Well, I told him Elon was going to fire him the minute that interview came out, and he did. And Don was like, you're wrong. And I'm like, okay, I'm sorry. Night follows day in that regard. I like, you know what, I am being honest. I like them all because they're all different. That's why I designed it that way. If I did it with reporters who would have done a great job, there would have been similar interviews every time. And I thought, these people have never done interviews, and they tried really hard to be good, right? And so every question, that was kind of cool, the effort. And then they're always different.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Every conversation was different. And so it became interesting for me, as opposed to just them. And so I was more interesting. And that way, I liked it. Sometimes people surprise you. Sam Altman was a very, he could have been a journalist, my friend. Like, him going, I noticed, you know, he goes, you write a lot about your dad, but there's only one line about your mother. And it's very glancing, but not very nice. What's that about? Oh, he really, that was a very good guy. I didn't answer it either. But he, he had it, he, he knew where to push. I thought, wow, that guy could be a reporter. It was very funny. I was laughing. And I said afterwards, I was like, well done, Sam Altman. How did you see that? And then, no reporters have ever asked me that, and he did. And that's a really good question. So, anyway.

• 55:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  The book is Burn Book. It's by Kara Swisher, bestselling book. You can pick it up at your bookstore of choice.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Bestselling.

• 55:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, congratulations. And then

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 55:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  You learned a little bit more about what the second one is going to be. So stand by for that. You can also find Kara on the Pivot Podcast and On with Kara Swisher. Kara, thank you so much for joining. Great speaking with you.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. I'm glad you're an entrepreneur now. It's fun, isn't it?

• 55:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, the last place I was at BuzzFeed News, no longer in existence. So

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm grateful to be doing the job.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  And you are. Anyway. All right. Thank you so much.

• 55:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thank you, everybody, for listening. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

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